"Enough games."
"Hah... hah... hah..."
Aim dragged air into his lungs. His knees were still trembling from the moment — three seconds ago — when he had very nearly died. But even so, his hand didn't go to his own body first. It reached back, over his shoulder, and checked the girl slung across his back.
Warm. Breathing. Still there.
Okay. Okay. She's fine.
Across the hallway, the man in black lowered Flaure to the floor with the care of someone setting down glass. Then his eyes lifted — and narrowed — at the young man on the other end.
"Lady Flaure," he said. "Permit me to deal with that."
He drew his sword.
Aim's face drained another full shade. But then — instead of leveling the blade — the man knelt and laid it flat against the marble. When he rose, only the scabbard remained in his hand.
"W-wait!? What are you doing, Claude...?"
"Don't tell me you're going to beat him with a scabbard, u-uhm..."
Flaure was trying to slow her words down. To sound calmer. More composed. More... divine.
"...I-isn't that a bit much? He doesn't look like such a terrible person. At least let him set the girl down first. If — if you really must fight, then leave the uninvolved out of it—"
"I don't take orders in words, my lady."
...
Flaure went quiet.
The sentence hung in the air like something else entirely.
Like a test.
A test for the all-powerful goddess.
"U-uhm!"
Flaure forced a crooked smile onto her face and slid herself sideways — directly into Claude's path.
"W-wait wait wait, s-so, uhmm — you know we can talk, right??"
"Right?? The three of us can just talk! They don't seem like bad people — just listen to them first—"
"Move."
One word. Absolute. An order — from the mouth of a man who was supposed to be under her command.
"No—"
Claude cut her off. His palm met the shoulder of The Goddess, and he pushed — and she went down. Easily. Like a doll tipped off a shelf.
And then—
Fwoh.
His body pierced through the wind.
Fast. Far too fast. Even Aim — Aim with the artifact, Aim whose legs could match three galloping horses — couldn't follow him. Before the thought had even finished forming, Claude was already inside his guard.
And in that split second, Aim didn't raise a defense.
He threw the unconscious girl off his back and out of the danger zone instead.
"Oh you've got to be— too late—!"
He tried. He genuinely tried, with the entire sum of his close-combat arsenal — which was nothing. He raised one arm in front of himself. It looked exactly as pathetic as it sounds.
The scabbard came down on that arm.
Snap.
One strike. One lazy, almost disinterested strike from Claude — and Aim's forearm folded the wrong way.
Bone tore through skin. White shards. Red spray. The pain arrived half a second late and tears burst out of him before any scream could — his blood scattering across the marble in a wide fan.
There was nothing he could do but brace the ruined arm with his other hand, propping it up beneath the scabbard, clinging to the thin, guttering hope that the next blow wouldn't land anywhere that mattered.
Flaure gasped — both hands flying up to cover her mouth. The sheer wrongness of it. The sheer red of it, right there in front of her.
...Her legs... were shaking...?
Claude held his stance in the middle of it all, balanced on a single hand — the hand pressing the scabbard down onto Aim's broken arm. Not finishing him. Just pressing. His weight poured through the lacquered wood like a slow hydraulic press.
Aim shoved back. His good arm screamed. The broken one screamed louder. The scabbard ground against the fracture, and every millimeter it sank sent white static across his vision. He wedged a knee beneath himself. Pushed. Gained a centimeter. Lost two. This wasn't a fight anymore — it was arithmetic. His strength versus Claude's patience. And the numbers were not on his side.
This is bad. Keep this up and the blood loss alone will finish me... and my right arm's already giving out—
And while he was still mid-thought, Claude's gloved fist rose — and dropped toward his face.
Dead. Dead dead dead— wait!?
Gloved. GLOVED — a catalyst!
In that knife's-edge instant—
Blink. Blink.
Aim's lens lit up once more.
I get it now!
"Surrender now and I might still— hng?!"
Aim's coat snapped upward, flaring across Claude's face and blinding him — then pulled, hauling him off his center of balance — and following right behind it came a pebble. One tiny piece of gravel from the catalyst, fired with pinpoint precision.
"I get it now... those light-thread— they're the future! The future of every magic!"
Claude, caught by both, flipped backward through the air. Against a normal man, an attack of that caliber would already have drawn blood.
But not against the strongest man of the Orenthel Reign.
Claude righted himself mid-fall and landed. Gracefully. Insultingly gracefully.
"You... little..." Claude bit down on the words.
"Hey."
"You going easy on me, Claude?"
A smirk tugged at Claude's lip.
"Nope~"
"U-uhmm! That's enough! Both of you—" Flaure squeezed her voice in between them.
Claude slid her the corner of a glance.
"I told you. I don't take orders in words, my lady."
Then his head tilted back toward Aim — and the expression on his face was, of all things... enjoyment.
"...Like testing something," Aim murmured.
Claude moved.
But not for a killing blow. He didn't come at Aim at all — he ran around him. A black blur orbiting a boy. Once. Twice. Faster. Tighter. Until the air itself gave up trying to keep track of him. Dust lifted off the marble in slow spirals; the pressure dropped; and within three breaths a wall of screaming wind stood in a full circle around Aim — a storm, with him pinned at its dead-calm center.
Tch— at that speed, there's no defending against anything!
The circle cinched inward.
Bad bad bad bad—!
Aim blinked hard.
Thread. Thread! GIVE ME THE THREAD!
His lens flickered awake — and what appeared on it was not a glowing thread of warning. Not a future. Not anything.
It was blank. Empty of any light at all.
Huh—?!
"Screw it — if he's running circles, spraying wildly has to clip him eventually!"
Aim's catalyst spat gravel.
One shot. Two. Three.
Light-lines bloomed across his lens, projecting each pebble's arc ahead of it — clean, bright, and completely useless. The lines traced his own shots.
Not Claude's movement. Not Claude at all.
Tch... too much to hope for. It doesn't work on the purely physical!
Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.
The storm wall crept closer. Aim turned with it, tracking a shadow he could no longer separate from the wind itself. His coat whipped at his jaw. Grit stung his cheeks and forced his eyes into slits. The circle that had been ten paces wide was eight now — then six — the sound climbing from a howl into a shriek, and buried somewhere inside that shriek: footsteps. Light. Unhurried. Amused. Claude wasn't closing in because he needed to.
He was closing in the way a cat does.
Until — in one single sliver of a second—
Claude's body was airborne. Above him. Leg cocked, heel aimed square at Aim's neck.
"Shit—!"
I won't make it— not like this!
And inside that sliver of a second:
"—Hup!" A girl's voice rang out.
Claude's boot landed — on the flat of a long rapier.
"Sol!"
"Yeah, obviously! A little help?! I can't hold this!" shouted the girl who had, apparently, only just finished being unconscious.
Aim's grin split wide before he could stop it. His right-hand catalyst flared, threading fire down the length of the rapier — fully intending to flash-roast the man balancing on top of it. But—
A soldier of that caliber noticed in time. Claude sprang off the blade a heartbeat before it ignited, flipping clean out of range.
"Impressive."
"But not enough."
He sank low into his stance again — the stance that meant he was about to become one with the storm he was going to make.
"—Please, stop! Let's just talk, everyone!"
"I said I don't take orders in words!"
Claude ran. Speed the eye could barely register. And once again a colossal wall of wind rose up and wrapped itself around the two youths.
Aim and Isolde snapped back-to-back — her sword lit up with flame, his catalyst readied.
"How did you manage to pick a fight with that thing?!"
"I didn't do shit! Lady Vine said come here, and it just started swinging!"
"We can't beat him, you idiot! Do something!"
The wind wall constricted again, tighter and tighter — and this time, there was no miracle wake-up card left in the deck.
"Hey. Sol." Aim spoke while his catalyst puppeteered his own sleeve, cinching it into a crude splint around the wreckage of his left arm.
"What."
"I've got a stupid idea."
The wall closed in another pace.
"That guy is weirdly protective of her majesty — and she doesn't actually seem to mind us. If we aim an attack at her, his composure shatters. Guaranteed."
"Are you insane?! You're gambling on fighting a god—!"
Claude's eyes flicked sideways. His whole frame coiled, an instant from leaping.
"Ah, screw it — go, do it! THROW—!"
Isolde hurled Aim's entire body past Claude.
Claude's gaze tracked the arc. Slowly. Almost lazily.
That's right — the guy's a monster on the ground, but midair belongs to every human equally!
Aim fired an ice shard — and in the same breath, steered his catalyst to send his coat streaking straight toward Flaure.
Claude's head turned to follow it — and every last gram of intent to strike the green-haired girl in front of him simply... evaporated.
He planted a foot on Isolde's scabbard, using it as a springboard, and launched himself after the coat — fully, absolutely committed to intercepting it.
...
But her majesty—
She stood perfectly still. Not a single step. Not even a flinch. Only her eyes, blown wide...
As if...
she didn't ███████
Claude ran with everything in him. He would make it. He would make it. His hand stretched out ahead of him, arms opening to wrap around the girl — but—
The coat scooped Flaure off her feet — and reeled her straight into Aim's waiting arms.
"S-Sorry, your majesty! I can explain!"
"YOU—!" Claude's roar tore down the length of the hallway.
The ice shard arrived.
Not fatal. Nowhere close. But enough to stagger Claude mid-stride — enough to knock him down and buy a few precious seconds.
"You—!"
"Idiot move, Aim."
"Yup, Sol~"
"U-um..."
Her majesty, bundled in his arms, produced a very small, very frail voice.
"You two... what do you want with me...?"
Aim's face went stiff. His lips started to tremble.
"L-Lady... Lady Vine told us to bring the girl behind the mirror, and, uh—"
"Y-yes..." Isolde offered, helpfully.
"...Vine?"
The moment the name Vine left his mouth, her majesty's entire bearing changed — a pressure settling over her, sudden and airless.
"O-okay..." Her body was shaking.
"J-just do it—"
Before anyone could do anything at all, Claude was already lunging — a black streak, hand outstretched to tear Flaure back.
"Lady Flaure—!"
Aim had no free hands left. Isolde was still fogged from her long stretch of unconsciousness — a beat too slow to guard.
CLANG.
A lady with purple hair cut into the space between them, her katana catching the longsword dead-on.
"—Here!"
Flaure ripped a shard of mirror-glass from her necklace and breathed a spell across it — violet light unfolding from its surface.
The glass broke open. Aim and Flaure went through first. Isolde followed on pure reflex, wearing the face of someone with a great many questions.
The tension of the locked blades drained away.
Both fighters pulled apart.
"Evelyn...!" Claude growled the name at the woman standing before him.