"Truly worthy of an Arbiter. What extraordinary talent."
Jué watched him with undisguised admiration. If this frozen pocket of space was her world, then Rover had done something that should have been impossible. He'd clawed back his own color from the grey, adjusted the flow of time in a sphere around himself, and carved out a domain where he could move freely.
A world within her world.
But with the Arbiter's current strength, this shouldn't be possible. Wait... ah. So that's how.
Understanding struck like lightning. Her Arbiter was still growing. His fledgling Temporal Mandate couldn't match hers, not when she'd been granted high-level temporal Authority from the very beginning. But Rover didn't wield time alone. He'd pushed his Spatial Power to its absolute limit, and the two forces layered together. Not enough to shatter her time-stop, but enough to open a pocket of freedom at its center.
If Jué's Temporal Mandate was a raging sea, then Rover had built an island in the middle of the storm.
And then...
"His power is still climbing. This fast?"
Shock rippled through her again. Every strike he landed hit harder than the last. The rate of growth was visible in real time, each blow carrying noticeably more weight than the one before.
Rover felt the change too.
It's her. It's the female Rover.
Somewhere on another battlefield, she was fighting without pause, devouring the Frequencies of every Tacet Discord she cut down. And as her strength surged, it flowed through their connection straight into him.
Like fighting side by side.
A grin split his face. Above, the Sentinel forged a blade of thunderlight hundreds of meters long, clamped it between her jaws, and spiraled through the sky to build momentum before diving straight at him.
A strike that could cleave mountains and part oceans. The same technique that had felled the Ovathrax in ages past. Even now, diminished as Jué was, her lifeforce guttering toward its end, the blow still carried enough force to level a city.
"Bring it!"
Nothing but joy and battle-hunger burned through him. The thrill of this fight, the warmth of his connection to the female Rover, set every nerve alight. Nothing in his previous life had ever come close to this.
If life was a piece of dead wood, then right now it blazed like an inferno.
And in the crucible of that clash, something else was happening.
He and the Sentinel were falling into Resonance.
Their Temporal Mandates collided, and from the impact, power greater than either could produce alone began to spark.
The Arbiter won't disappoint. At this rate, he'll complete his Second Awakening with me soon. But Jinhsi...
Jué glanced toward the girl, and a flicker of regret crossed her ancient eyes. The young Magistrate couldn't even break free of the time-stop. A brutally unfair test, yes, but Triple Resonance had always demanded transcending one's limits in the most desperate way possible. Not everyone possessed the Arbiter's strength. If Jinhsi couldn't clear even this threshold, then this was where her road ended.
...No matter. If the Arbiter and I complete our Resonance, we'll have achieved the original plan at least. Perhaps Triple Resonance was too much to hope for. A dual Resonance should suffice.
"Don't underestimate her, Jué."
"Arbiter?"
"Jinhsi isn't the kind of person who stops."
He said it with a quiet, knowing smile. The Emerald of Genesis in his hand crashed against the Sentinel's thunderlight blade over and over, each impact shaking the sky. Against a weapon forged from the Sentinel's own power, condensed like a natural catastrophe given edge and point, even a five-star sword couldn't hold forever. Fine cracks spiderwebbed across the ice-blue blade.
Not from poor craftsmanship. From the sheer violence of the fight.
But the Emerald of Genesis had power of its own. Rover channeled his Resonance into the blade and frost crystallized along its edge, sealing the fractures shut as if they'd never existed.
Thank you for the weapon, Jinhsi.
Any lesser sword would have shattered ten exchanges ago, let alone repair itself.
"Arbiter, how do you know her so well?" Jué asked between clashes, genuine curiosity bleeding through the combat. By her reckoning, Rover and Jinhsi had known each other for a single day. Yet his faith in the girl was absolute.
"Ha. Would you believe me if I said I knew her in a past life?"
He said it like a joke, but something flickered at the edge of his senses. His eyes went wide with delight, and he kicked back several steps, opening distance from the Sentinel.
The next instant...
"Answer me... Heed My Calling!"
Jinhsi's Forte blazed to life. A dragon of pure light erupted from her, roaring, and hurled itself at the very source of its power: the Sentinel herself. The Temporal Mandate surged forward laced with golden lightning, a force that could scour away every darkness in the world.
"Jinhsi?!"
The blow landed, and Jué recoiled in genuine surprise. She turned to find the girl already free of the time-stop.
Jinhsi had no Spatial Power to fall back on. All she could do was drive her own Temporal Mandate to its absolute limit, and then past it, tipping over the edge into Overclocking.
"I'm not done yet! I can still fight!"
Dragon horns had sprouted from her temples. Pearlescent scales traced delicate patterns across her skin. She looked like an exquisite porcelain vessel, breathtaking and terrifyingly fragile.
Cracks.
Spreading.
Golden fractures had begun to appear across her body. Most Resonators would collapse the moment they even approached Overclocking. Camellya and Calcharo made it look effortless, but they were the exceptions, not the rule.
Jinhsi knew the cost. She knew that Triple Resonance demanded nothing less than gambling her life.
So the girl who always planned three steps ahead abandoned every calculation. She ignored the scales multiplying across her skin, ignored the golden fissures spreading in their wake, and unleashed her Temporal Mandate without restraint.
"Celestial Court's Radiance!"
"Celestial Court's Radiance!"
Pride warmed Jué's ancient eyes. She echoed Jinhsi's words, and twin streams of golden lightning breath erupted in unison: one from the Sentinel's maw, one from the light-dragon Jinhsi had summoned. A technique the Sentinel herself had taught the girl.
The two collisions detonated against each other.
Jué stood on what should have been the winning side of this exchange. The gap in raw power was still enormous.
"Not so fast!" Rover warped directly into Jué's face, poured every ounce of temporal force into his fist, and struck. "Echo... resonate!"
For half a heartbeat, the Sentinel froze.
Half a second was all Jinhsi needed.
Golden lightning breath surged forward and slammed into the dragon's body.
The impact became the catalyst. Jinhsi's Temporal Mandate, the weakest of the three until this moment, erupted with new strength. The final piece locked into place.
Triple Resonance achieved.