They arrived at a dead sprint.
Moto didn't slow down to read the situation. He compressed the smoke into a tight, dense ball and threw it sideways to Sheu without breaking stride. She caught it, clapped her hands around it, and drove a concentrated burst of wind straight into it — the cloud shot forward like something fired, thick and black, swallowing the two men holding Naomi whole.
Moto was already inside it.
One guard went down hard. Sheu came in behind, found Naomi through the haze, and pulled her clear. By the time the smoke began to thin, the second guard was down too.
The lightning bolt came from Nawick before the dust had settled — a clean, vicious strike aimed at Moto's back. Najo blitzed across the gap and caught it with his own, the two forces meeting in a crack that lit up the barren ground. The silence after it was the kind that hums.
Najo turned, breathing hard. He'd moved fast, hoping to get ahead of all of it, to have it handled before his friends arrived.
"Look, just watch Mom. I'll handle thi—"
Moto was already running at Nawick.
The punch landed in Nawick's palm — caught cleanly, the older man barely shifting his weight. Moto rolled straight into it, drove his elbow hard into Nawick's forearm, and stamped down on his foot in the same motion.
Nawick grunted. He got both hands on Moto and lifted him off the ground, flipping him upside down.
Moto kept going. Both knees hammered into Nawick's face, once, twice, again. Nawick raised him higher to get distance and Moto just kept kicking. With a sound somewhere between a snarl and pure exhaustion, Nawick hurled him into the scorched earth and stepped back.
In the space that opened up, Sheu scooped a loose stone from the ground and sent it on a burst of wind — not at Nawick's hand but it found his hand anyway, striking something small and metal there. His wedding ring cracked apart, the pieces scattering across the dirt.
Nobody moved for a moment.
Nawick looked down at his hand. When he looked up, whatever had been keeping his voice level was gone.
"Well," he said quietly. "This marks the official end of our relationship." His eyes moved across all of them. "And your lives."
The lightning came off him in sheets.
He went for Najo first, and Najo met him — their powers colliding in a blinding, sustained crack, the ground blackening between them. Moto threw a smoke screen across it and Nawick slashed straight through with a lightning-laced strike, shredding the haze like paper.
"You're delaying the inevitable!" Nawick drove forward, pushing Najo back step by step. "You're nothing but a pawn. I never wanted a child — Father forced me. Thought I was weak. Thought he could withhold what was rightfully mine by dangling you in front of me—"
Najo's feet found ground. He stopped moving backward.
"So you're just a puppet too," he said. Something in his voice had gone very cold. "Chasing power that was never yours. Pathetic."
Nawick's face changed completely.
He moved through all of them after that — efficient, furious, barely looking at who he was hitting. Sheu went down with a cry. Moto hit the ground and stayed there a moment, winded, pressing a hand into the dirt. Nawick stepped over him and kept walking until he stood above Najo, lightning gathering slow and bright in his raised hand.
From behind him, still bound, Naomi made a sound and threw everything she had — a boulder, dragged up from somewhere and flung with both arms. Nawick turned and crushed it with a single bolt, fragments raining down, his eyes already back on Najo before the dust cleared.
"This is the end for you."
He raised his hand higher. The light built. Najo looked up at it and didn't look away.