The hollow sound isn't my sword finding her ice.
It's flesh meeting metal.
The shockwave dissipates instantly. The freezing temperature shatters and is replaced, in the same second, by the wet, ordinary air of the courtyard. The snow that had been suspended in the air drops to the ground all at once, in a soft, unanimous rush.
Rector Dean is standing exactly between us.
His left hand has wrapped directly around the sharpened edge of Freya's ice scythe. His right palm is pressed flat against the broad side of Eventide.
He isn't bleeding. He isn't even wearing combat gloves. He just caught two execution-class strikes with bare hands.
I can feel it through the contact. He's a Rank A. This is the abyss between a Rank A and two low ranks—a gap that doesn't translate to numbers, only to outcomes.
