He didn't announce the next vow. It simply arrived, a quiet decision the room made while no one was looking. "Distance is treacherous."

The floor didn't shift or crack. Its intent did. The clean, reliable squares where my feet liked to land suddenly developed tiny, malicious personalities. The obvious approach lines acquired potholes that only a committed decision could feel. The very space between us became unreliable, seeming to stretch or shrink by an inch whenever I committed my weight.

The Archduke moved the way good clocks move—once, and correctly. He slid into the middle distance and fed misdirection into the miasma with a flick of his thumb. A veil dropped from above like a set of closing curtains. An after-blade of solidified miasma drifted into place behind my right shoulder, as patient as gossip. He then launched a straight, sensible cut for the place my head would be if I did what habit and bad posture wanted.

Soul Resonance is for copying, not for lectures. I stole the one-beat redirect he had just used on his own veil and ran it through my ankle. My step didn't 'save' me; it simply already wasn't there. The blade hummed through the space where my skull could have been and met a hastily woven sheet of Aegir water instead. The steel liked the water; it slid down its surface and sulked in a puddle on the floor.

"Better," Valeria said, a pleased note in her hum. "Don't be where stories would put you."

My Harmony kept my spine sensible. The Grey put two paper-thin, boringly reliable seams under the balls of my feet so that my starts belonged to me, not to the treacherous floor. I sent a palm-wide air blade into a veil—a clean edge with no mana fringe for the smoke to eat—and felt it cut straight for once. I sent a kinetic trip at his mid-shin; the Archduke flattened it with nothing but a shift in his posture. Of course he did.

He drew a small circle in the air with two fingers, and the circle hit me as heat with impeccable manners. The hair on my forearm crisped. I turned it with a miniature, silent shield and felt the miasma appreciate the effort, trying to be helpful by filing into my shield's edge and weighting it down. Fine. I cut the spell poor and let the excess weight fall into a square of floor I wasn't renting.

He stepped in. A short cut, a half-step, a small change of angle. His blade rang on Valeria's guard and made her bones hum all the way to my palm.

"Do not enjoy that," she said between her teeth.

"I'm not," I said. I wasn't. Red Hunger, his passive, cloying Gift, slid its warm little hand into mine and tried to steer me toward a juicy, satisfying follow-up. My Harmony politely told it to go bother someone else. The roof wanted me to be either too close, where he could grapple, or too far, where his vows could stretch. I stayed in the ugly, annoying range in between—close enough to be honest, far enough not to be owned.

He reached for my balance with a quick sleeve-check of trained weight, just as a pressure pulse rolled at my ankle. I cheated with Grey—a seam a hand's breadth to the side—and let the pulse march harmlessly past a foot of empty air. He saw it. He filed the note away in whatever mental book minds like his keep open all day.

Then he spoke again, the words almost too soft to hear over the hum of the tower. The vow snapped into place like a twig breaking in a quiet forest. "No cut shall finish."

Every follow-through I attempted immediately snagged on nothing, like a coat catching on a door you didn't see. I started to push back, to force a cut to its conclusion.

Julius's voice came from the edge of the roof, a memory, flat and clean: 'Smaller.'

He was right. Finishes are a flavor, an optional dessert. I went bland. I abandoned any thought of a beautiful, arcing cut. My offense became a series of short, nasty, practical questions. Deny-start—the pressure you put on the half-second before someone begins. Ghost bind—not a lock, just two edges keeping each other busy with no promises. Short thrust—only as long as it had to be to count as a question. Reset. Again. Again. Again. The miasma tried to congratulate me on my new, ugly style with a last-second hook; I stopped writing endings and it forgot what to grab. The Archduke didn't sigh, but the roof kind of did.

He answered with ordinary magic used extraordinarily well: a tight sound pop that tried to miscount my step, a line of slick glass across the floor where I might want to slide, three ash motes that would be an annoying distraction if I let them. I shaped the wind to shepherd the ash into his next veil. I didn't bother with the glass because I wasn't using that line. I let the sound pop try to miscount me and counted my own breath instead.

We collided again, and he finally gave me a present: pain.

It was a direct consequence of his vows. "Distance is treacherous" made me misjudge my backstep by a single, fatal inch. "No cut shall finish" made my parry feel sluggish, catching on the air. It was all he needed. His blade slid past my defense and came down hard on my shoulder. Valeria's bone-shell flared into existence and shattered with a sound like breaking glass. A clean, hot line of pain seared its way from my collarbone to my bicep.

"That's it," she said, her voice a furious hiss. "I'm charging him for damages."

"Later," I breathed, because his next cut was already there.

I understood his Gifts now. Red Hunger, the passive aura, a constant, warm invitation to be proud, to overcommit, to celebrate a victory before the fight was over. And Crimson Vow, the active, terrifying power to speak a law into existence. He wasn't just faster than me in the way a sprinter is faster. He was faster than me in the way a good habit is faster—no wasted lines, nothing gets stuck, and the start happens on its own because he never owed the end a single thought.

I threw one big spell on purpose, just to watch it fail. A Lightning Net—tight, heavy, woven with good intent—crashed into his veils and broke into a shower of useless, glittering hairs. The miasma ate the smell of my pride and seemed to want seconds.

"Stop feeding it," I told myself. I went back to the things that work and don't clap.

The Archduke took two steps, and every veil on the roof adjusted its position like a crowd taking its cue. He raised his blade in a modest, unassuming guard. His chin dipped the smallest amount. It took me a breath to realize what he was doing. He wasn't trying to beat me with speed or tricks anymore. He was cutting my options down to one, and then making that one option incredibly expensive.

My sword was a screwdriver, and the house was on fire. It was useful, but it was not the tool I needed to win.

"Then be a different tool," Julius's voice echoed in my memory.

I changed what I was doing, and the Archduke noticed before I had even finished changing. He pushed a veil into my off-hand lane the instant my fingers thought about calling more water, and then punished my half-formed push with a plain, simple cut that would have separated two of my fingers from my hand if Valeria hadn't shouted in my mind and made me lift early.

"Stop finishing," Julius said again in my memory. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.

I did. I threw away the last, romantic, lingering feeling that my sword art should be the star of a day like this. The blade stayed, bright and present. But it was no longer in charge.

"Good boy," Valeria muttered. "I mean that in a dignified, terrifying way."

The Archduke moved his hand a tiny degree. I knew the next vow was coming the way you know that thunder is going to land right on top of your street. "All courage will shake."

Not fear. Judgment. The tiny, internal push that says commit now wobbled like a table with a bad leg. My own Harmony brought a folded napkin for that leg and moved on. The shake didn't stop. But it mattered less.

We ran another minute that felt like a week. He did more with less. I did just enough with my tools. He was winning. That was… fine. A problem you can describe is one you can fix. Right now, I just needed a bigger engine.

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