The pole was only half formed when Yui reached him.
Elias slapped at the incoming arm with more panic than technique. The contact jarred his wrist, but it knocked the strike off line. For one clean second, Yui looked mildly interested.
Elias used that second badly.
He twisted into a kick, aiming for Yui's ribs. Yui dipped under it, stepped inside, and drove his heel up into the side of Elias's head.
The stadium tilted.
Elias hit the dirt hard enough for the suit to chirp another reserve warning. The pole came apart in his hands, fading into flecks of dull metal before it ever became useful.
Yui stopped a few steps away. "That was not full force from me."
"Comforting enough to put on a pillow," Elias said.
"Seventy percent output is authorized now," Yui said, then came in faster.
The problem was not only speed. Elias could see pieces of the attack and still fail to put his body in the right place. His feet dragged. His hands lifted late. Every correction arrived after pain had already explained the mistake.
The first palm strike caught Elias across the mouth. The second hit his shoulder and numbed his arm. The third would have landed in his chest if Dot had not screamed and shoved both hands against the shard.
A jagged metal block appeared between them.
Yui struck it instead.
Spikes scraped his glove. He pulled back before they caught, then knocked the block away with a sharp backhand.
Elias kicked from the ground.
Yui caught his ankle and threw him sideways.
Dirt filled Elias's mouth. The suit absorbed enough to keep bones from breaking, but it did not make landing pleasant. He pushed up on one elbow, blood warm on his lip.
Dot hovered in front of him, shaking.
"I do not know how to open the vision again. I pressed the shard before, and it happened, but now I keep reaching and there is nothing."
"Dot, breathe if you can manage it."
"I do not breathe like humans," she said, so Elias held her gaze. "Then do the emotional version instead."
Yui walked toward them without hurrying, which made it worse.
Elias forced himself to his knees. The memory from the road fight came in broken flashes: pressure, darkness, a shape forming from possibility, and a phrase that had felt like a command from somewhere under his own skin.
Break the cage before transforming.
He did not understand it, but he was out of better ideas.
Yui's elbow drove into his chest. The suit locked, but the force still shoved him backward. A follow-up punch snapped his head to the side. Elias staggered, caught himself, and nearly fell anyway.
"Most bearers surrender around this point," Yui said. "There is no shame in admitting the gap."
"I am not worried about shame right now."
"Then worry about injury instead of shame."
Elias brought his hands together, and the clap cracked across the stadium.
Dot looked at him with wide fear.
Elias closed his eyes and reached for the place the phrase had left behind.
"Show me the way and open the path," he said.
The words were not elegant. They were barely his.
The world dropped to gray.
Sound pulled away. The field, the lights, even Yui's suit flattened into lines and pressure. In the center of it all, Elias saw metal springs stacked in an impossible shape, each coil loaded with force.
Dot's voice reached him from far away.
"I see it too, Elias, and I can see it clearly."