The lunar dust, kicked up by the catastrophic impact of my own hijacked power, hung suspended in the vacuum like a shroud of grey fog. I lay at the epicenter of the crater, the silence of space pressing against my ringing senses. My body was a wreck. The backlash of unmaking my own Divine Edict had ravaged my internal energy networks, burning through my channels like acid, and the physical impact against the moon's crust had shattered bone and pulped muscle.

But I was Divine. And my Divinity was built on the foundation of Objective Truth.

'I am not broken,' I asserted internally. It was not a wish; it was a command issued to my own physiology, enforced by the Grey.

The Grey power within me surged, obedient to my will. Shattered femurs snapped back into alignment with sickening wet crunches that vibrated through my skeleton. Torn muscle fibers reknit, weaving themselves back together with accelerated, supernatural speed. The chaotic, hijacked energy dissipating from my aura—the residue of Envy's corruption—was purged, forced out of my system by the steady, cold hum of my own power.

I stood up, dust cascading from my shoulders.

High above the crater rim, two figures descended, silhouetted against the starry void. Wrath, a mountain of cooling magma and hate, landed first. The impact shook the moon's crust for miles, turning the crater floor beneath its massive feet into a sea of instant glass. Envy floated down behind him, his shadowy robes rippling in a nonexistent wind, his presence a cold void that seemed to drink the starlight, darker than the shadow of the Earth.

"Still functional," Envy observed telepathically, his voice dry, curious, and utterly devoid of concern. "Your resilience is... enviable. Most would have been unmade by their own ambition."

I didn't waste breath on banter. I summoned Valeria. The sword materialized in my grip, not merely as steel, but as a solidified construct of Grey Divinity, humming with the potential to sever concepts, its edge blurring the space around it.

Wrath didn't wait for a signal. It roared, a psychic blast of pure fury that rattled my mental defenses, and charged. For a creature the size of a building, it moved with terrifying speed, crossing the crater floor in a blur of heat and motion. A massive, magma-wreathed fist, hot enough to vaporize stone, aimed directly at my head.

I stepped into the attack. I didn't block; I flowed. Using Sword Sovereignty, I read the trajectory of the force, the vector of the intent. I twisted my body, a micro-adjustment of spatial geometry, letting the fist pass within a millimeter of my nose. The heat seared my skin, instantly healed by my aura. As the behemoth passed, I slashed.

It was a perfect counter-cut, a "Silent Cut" aimed at the back of Wrath's knee, designed to hamstring the colossus and bring it down. My blade bit deep into the magma-flesh, the Grey energy severing the dense muscle and bone.

But there was no resistance. No severing of tendon. No collapse.

Envy, hovering ten meters away, flicked a single, slender finger.

The wound on Wrath's leg didn't just heal; it transferred. A deep, agonizing gash opened spontaneously on my leg, mirroring the exact cut, depth, and location I had intended for Wrath. Pain flared, sharp and immediate, buckling my knee.

'He stole the injury,' I realized, stumbling but keeping my footing through sheer will. 'He envied my health and swapped it for Wrath's damage.'

Wrath spun, its movement impossible, defying inertia. It swept a massive arm out, a backhand that covered the entire width of the crater, a wall of unstoppable kinetic force.

I couldn't dodge this. The radius was too wide, my leg compromised. I couldn't parry it physically; the mass difference was absolute.

"Mythweaver," I commanded, my voice a rough growl. "Edict: Stone Sovereign."

I slammed my hand onto the lunar floor. The grey regolith erupted upwards, not as loose dust, but fusing instantly into a towering, diamond-hard wall of lunar bedrock, reinforced by my Divine will, a shield the size of a skyscraper.

Wrath's arm slammed into the wall. The impact was deafening, a silent vibration that rattled my teeth and threw me backward. The wall shattered, turning to dust instantly, but it absorbed the kinetic force, buying me a fraction of a second.

I used the cover of the dust cloud. I folded space, appearing directly above Envy. If the Scalpel was the problem, I would break the Scalpel. If he stole effects, I would kill him before he could complete the transaction.

I brought my sword down in a vertical arc, a "Silent Cut" powered by everything I had, aimed to bisect the shadowy lord from crown to crotch.

Envy looked up. He didn't dodge. He didn't raise a shield. He simply looked at my sword with that bottomless, covetous hunger in his eyes.

"That sharpness," he whispered, his voice caressing my mind. "I want it."

My blade, mid-swing, suddenly turned dull. The conceptual edge, the thing that allowed it to cut reality, vanished. It became a blunt, heavy metal bar. It bounced harmlessly off Envy's shadow-shield with a pathetic, ringing clang that vibrated up my arms.

Simultaneously, Envy's own hand, wreathed in shadow, lashed out. It was impossibly sharp. He had stolen the concept of my cut and applied it to his own strike.

I twisted violently, abandoning the attack, throwing myself backward through the air. But his fingers grazed my ribs. They shore through my Divine defenses and my flesh like they weren't there, carving three deep, clean lines across my side, exposing bone.

I kicked off his shield, putting distance between us, landing back on the crater floor. I was panting now. My leg was bleeding from my own attack. My side was bleeding from his stolen sharpness. My energy reserves were dipping.

Wrath landed between us, shaking off the dust of my shattered wall, his rage building, the magma in his veins glowing brighter, hotter.

'I can't win a war of attrition,' the thought was cold and clear. 'I damage Wrath, Envy transfers it. I use a technique, Envy steals its properties. I defend, Wrath shatters the defense.'

They were a perfect loop. Wrath provided the infinite pressure, the physical threat that forced me to act, to expend energy. Envy punished every action I took, turning my own strength into a liability, stealing my advantages. It was a closed system of destruction, and I was trapped inside it.

Wrath charged again, a relentless engine of destruction, the ground melting beneath its feet. Envy watched from above, his cold eyes dissecting me, waiting for my next mistake, waiting to see what else he could take.

I needed to break the loop. I couldn't overpower them. I couldn't outsmart Envy's theft directly; his reaction speed was instantaneous. I had to change the variables of the equation. I had to make the system eat itself.

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