Ravok redirected.
He stopped feeding the wall directly and split the ash stream—pulling it sideways, sending it around Drex's concentrated field rather than through it, the ash moving in two flanking columns that curved around the pressure shell and began reforming behind Drex's position. Surrounding rather than breaking through.
The temperature behind Drex's field climbed.
The ash was wrapping him.
Drex felt the heat rise from behind and made a choice—he released the concentrated forward field entirely and fired a full-body omnidirectional pulse. Bigger than the first one. Everything he had compressed released at once in all directions.
The blast cleared the ash completely.
Every wisp. Every layer. The entire accumulated environment Ravok had spent the fight building stripped from the arena floor in a single second, pushed to the walls, dissipated into nothing.
The arena floor was clean stone again.
And Drex was on one knee.
