The bridge heaved under their feet.

Stone that had stood for centuries groaned like bone under strain, fissures spiderwebbing between the flagstones. From those fractures, veins of wet, pulsing meat pushed through, knotting and unknotting like something alive beneath the masonry. They flexed with each tremor, gripping at the stone as if to pull it apart. Every vibration travelled up through Chloe's boots, into her calves, into the pit of her stomach.

The wraith moved when she did.

It slipped into her guard with the same angle, the same timing, every step a reflection.

Blade met blade, phase-edge meeting phase-edge, each impact sending a faint, ghostly vibration up her arms — the kind that said Tenso had connected with something living. The hollow grin on its face was her own. Even the tilt of its shoulders, the twitch before a feint — all hers. Every strike landed with the cold intimacy of self-harm, like she was carving pieces from herself no matter which hand held the weapon.

She tried to break the rhythm — a sudden drop-step, a reverse grip — but the wraith slid into the same position instantly, like fighting a memory that had learned to hate her.

Across the bridge, Liz's puppet shambled upright.

It had been a meat pile a moment ago. Now it was a man-shape only in the loosest sense — legs fused masses of thigh and intestine, skin translucent and stitched from the inside so that its organs sat on the outside, swaying like trophies. Its butcher's-apron torso was slick with fluid, chest cavity half-exposed. The face was a melted approximation of hers, eyes too far apart, one cheek missing entirely so that teeth and twitching muscle shone wet in the mist. It had no mind. No precision. Just rage. It howled and drooled like a rabid animal, each shriek vibrating the bridge's stone with inhuman bass.

Liz threw her will at it — a hard, slicing push meant to crumple its ribs — and felt her power vanish into nothing. The creature didn't flinch. No flicker of thought, no thread of awareness to grip. Her psychic reach slid off it like water over glass.

Liz's breath was ragged, halo flickering. "It's just meat, Chloe. I can't touch it!"

"Then hit it harder!" Chloe barked back, Tenso's phase-edge slicing for the wraith's throat.

The thing charged. Liz ripped a chunk of stone from the bridge with a thought and hurled it into the creature's sternum. The impact made a sound like a mallet striking raw meat, jolting it back half a step but it stayed upright, toes curling into the stone for purchase.

It lunged again, swinging a fused limb the size of a sledgehammer. Liz ducked and yanked free a length of wrought-iron railing. She flung it like a spear; it punched through the puppet's shoulder, tearing the flesh wide. Thick ropes of intestine spilled free, writhing across its torso — and then slid back inside, the wound sealing shut in moments.

Around them, Prague was a muffled nightmare.

The other fights were out of sight, hidden by walls of flesh and the mist rolling in from the river, but they bled into Chloe's hearing — the grind of stone, the scream of metal, the wordless howls of things that had once been human. Somewhere far off, a voice cried out and was cut short. Another blow struck the bridge from below, sending a shudder through the meat-veins and jolting her balance.

The mist caught the light in strange ways. Sometimes it was just vapour. Sometimes it seemed thick with shadows that were almost faces, turning toward her before they melted back into nothing. She could taste the air — copper and rot, as if the Vltava had drowned a thousand corpses and was only now giving them up.

The wraith pressed in, forcing her back toward one of the statues lining the bridge. The thing's eyes were empty, but its grin widened, an unspoken promise. Chloe ducked under its next swing, sliding her blade low in a sweeping cut for its ankle. The wraith mirrored the motion in perfect sync, its sword flashing down toward her own legs. Steel met steel in a ringing scrape that bit into the stone, and the recoil knocked both their feet out from under them. They hit the deck at the same instant, rolled, and came up in mirrored stances — blades raised, breath misting in unison.

Liz ripped another plinth from the balustrade and flung it — heavier this time — then unleashed a storm of debris: jagged stone, shorn lengths of meat-vein, anything she could send whipping through the air fast enough to tear and splinter.

The puppet crashed through the barrage, each blow slowing it for only a heartbeat before it regained momentum.

The bridge buckled again, harder this time, meat-veins writhing in visible agitation. The statues along the balustrade shifted in the mist, joints cracking as if they were loosening themselves from centuries of stillness. Far off, muffled but close enough to feel in her teeth, something heavy struck stone.

Chloe tightened her grip. The wraith mirrored her. And then they both moved — one to kill, one to survive — as the bridge groaned beneath their feet.

***

The wraith never blinked.

Every motion Chloe made, it echoed — stance for stance, breath for breath, her own body thrown back at her.

It was like fighting inside a mirror that didn't know it was glass.

She feinted left, driving Tenso low before snapping the blade upward toward the wraith's ribs. The mirror's sword followed hers in the exact same arc, edges meeting point-for-point. Sparks jumped between them, skittering into the cracks underfoot.

She broke away, breathing hard. Her mind kept insisting she could trick it. Change tempo, reverse the grip, lead with the off-hand — anything to break its timing. She tried them all in a rush. The wraith met every one.

"You're not me," she muttered under her breath. "You're not me."

It grinned back with her own mouth.

The bridge shifted under them. The meat-veins swelling through the stone tightened and flexed like tendons. One vein split, spraying warm fluid across the stones. Mist curled low, swallowing the edges of her vision until the world narrowed to her, the wraith, and the pulse of the bridge under their feet.

Chloe stepped in hard, blade angling low for the wraith's ankle. The mirror-copy moved at the exact same instant, its sword catching hers and locking edge-to-edge. The contact bound them together, each pressing for advantage — neither giving an inch.

The steel sang between them. She could see her own tension in its face, the teeth clenched, the eyes fixed.

"Let go," she hissed.

The wraith didn't.

The pressure became a choke as each tried to lever the blade higher, twisting for the kill. Chloe angled her grip, slipping the phase-edge across the back of her neck, using her shoulder to press. The wraith mirrored the move exactly. Pain flared as the blade bit into her collarbone and grazed the side of her throat.

The harder she pulled, the harder it did. Her lungs began to burn.

With a snarl, she spun into the sword, loosening the grip just long enough to duck out and break free. The wraith staggered a step — exactly the same as she had — before recovering and spinning the blade back into guard.

Chloe rolled her shoulders, forcing air back into them. Her hands were slick with sweat.

From somewhere to her right, a thunderous crack rang out. She risked a glance — and saw Liz slam her puppet into one of the bridge's statues with enough force to break the figure in half. The impact shook through the bridge deck, rattling the meat-veins and spraying fragments into the mist.

The wraith lunged for the opening, its sickle catching a gleam of pale light as it came down. Chloe caught the blade with hers, twisted, and the weapons locked again.

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She shoved hard. The wraith shoved back.

A hairline crack split the stone beneath them, and something wet and pale pushed through — another vein, twitching, knotting itself into the stone. The bridge tilted half a degree, just enough to make her footing uncertain. The wraith didn't slip.

"Fine," Chloe said under her breath. "You want perfect?"

She shifted into the stance her father had taught her before she ever touched a kusarigama. Low, balanced, hands open. The wraith followed.

She didn't attack.

The wraith didn't either.

They circled in the mist, two identical predators, each waiting for the other to break the stalemate. The air between them was tight with tension, the steady pulse of the bridge under their feet like a drumbeat counting down to something neither could see.

Then the pulse shifted. The beat quickened. The bridge's groan became a living sound — not just stress and stone, but breath.

The wraith's head twitched at the sound.

Chloe moved.

Her blade looped wide, catching the edge of a meat-vein instead of her opponent, slicing deep. The vein spasmed, spraying dark fluid into the mist. The bridge shuddered violently enough to throw both her and the wraith off balance.

It wasn't much — but it was the first moment they'd been out of sync.

She didn't waste it.

***

The puppet came on like a landslide. Its legs were wrong — fused and lumpy, wrapped in intestine, moving in lurching bursts that carried its bulk faster than it had any right to. Its head lolled from the force of its own momentum, melted lips peeling back to bare teeth on one side. Every step left wet smears across the stone, slick with whatever passed for its blood.

Liz didn't waste breath trying to hit it with her mind. She'd already felt the dead zone it carried with it, a psychic void that swallowed her reach like quicksand. No thoughts to hook into. No soul to push against. Just meat.

It swung one fused limb the size of a sledgehammer. She sidestepped, yanking herself out of range with a burst of telekinesis against the bridge deck. The limb slammed into the stone where she'd been standing, the impact splintering it and sending meat-veins squirming into the gap.

She ripped a statue loose with her mind. The carved figure of a saint wrenched from its plinth, granite screaming as it tore free. She swung it like a hammer, smashing it into the puppet's chest with all the force she could muster.

The impact threw it back three steps. Ribs snapped under the blow — and then bulged back into place with an awful wetness.

"Stay down," she muttered, teeth clenched.

It didn't.

The puppet roared, the sound low enough to make her vision vibrate. It charged, arms wide. Liz whipped the statue back for another swing — but the puppet caught it this time, fingers sinking into the stone until cracks raced up its length. With a jerk, it tore the statue in half and flung the pieces into the mist. One of them struck the bridge hard enough to send a fresh shiver through its surface.

Liz retreated, feet slipping on the slick meat-veined stone. She caught a chunk of railing in her telekinetic grip, snapping it free and sending it hurtling toward the puppet's head. It ducked with unnatural speed.

"You're learning," she breathed.

It leapt — not graceful, but fast — and nearly bowled her over. She thrust both hands forward, not to push it away, but to hook her will into the bridge itself. The stone under the puppet buckled and split, dropping its bulk half a metre into a fresh crater. Before it could climb out, she drove the edges inward, crushing it between slabs of ancient stone.

It screamed.

Not in pain. In fury.

The slabs burst apart as the puppet forced itself up, shoulder joint hanging loose, one arm dangling bonelessly. It didn't matter. It just kept coming, mouth hanging open, strings of saliva whipping from its teeth.

Somewhere beneath the ruin of its features, she saw the ghost of her own smile — and for a moment, the revulsion hit harder than the fear.

Liz's halo guttered in the mist, her breath coming hard. She grabbed another statue, then another — one in each hand — and slammed them together with the puppet's head between them. The crack was wet and deep, spraying her in hot fluid. She let the halves drop, hoping the twitching heap at her feet was the end of it.

It wasn't.

The puppet's hands found the bridge deck and pushed.

Liz staggered back, hurling every loose fragment of stone she could find at it, each impact jarring her teeth with the force. It rose inch by inch, face caved in but still wearing her features.

From somewhere behind her, Chloe called her name — sharp, urgent. Liz didn't dare look. The thing wearing her face had locked eyes on her, and the next lunge would be the one that closed the distance for good.

Her fingers curled. The air between them thrummed as every loose object on the bridge began to rise — broken masonry, twisted railings, even hunks of meat-vein torn from the deck. They orbited her in a slow, vicious ring.

The puppet stepped forward. Liz sent the storm in.

***

The bridge shuddered like something alive. Every pulse of the meat-veins was stronger now, pushing against the stone, cracking it open in places to reveal the slick red cords beneath. The mist rose higher, swallowing the balustrades, swallowing the city beyond.

Liz's storm of debris tore through the air, slamming into the puppet from every angle. Each impact jolted the bridge under Chloe's boots, the vibrations travelling up her legs. She pressed her advantage against the wraith, Tenso slicing in swift, precise arcs — but the constant tremors forced her footwork off by fractions, and that was all the wraith needed to keep the duel even.

Its weapon was a reflection of hers. Same curve, same faint shimmer in the blade as it phased, threatening to slip through matter and cut what lay beneath. Every time their swords met, Chloe felt the hollow, ghostly jolt of steel that wasn't entirely there.

Then the bridge lurched.

Not just a tremor this time — a tilt. The far side dropped half a metre, meat-veins bulging to keep the span from collapsing entirely. Chloe's balance wavered. She stepped back and almost ran straight into Liz.

The storm broke. The puppet burst through the debris like a train through snow, its head a caved-in ruin but still fixed on Liz. At the same instant, the wraith closed in on Chloe's flank, Tenso raised high in perfect imitation.

They were about to be cut down from both sides.

Liz saw the arc of the wraith's blade a heartbeat before it fell. "Chloe—!"

Chloe didn't answer. She stepped into Liz's space, looping an arm around her waist, and yanked her sideways just as the mirrored Tenso came down. The blade bit into the bridge where Liz's neck had been, slipping through stone as if it were cloth, and a wet spray erupted from a severed vein below.

The puppet roared and swung low, aiming to take Chloe's legs. Liz reacted without thinking — a telekinetic shove that slammed the bulk of it into the balustrade hard enough to crack the ancient stone. The railing didn't break, but the impact bought Chloe a step's worth of space.

They backed into each other, pivoting so their enemies were kept apart. Chloe's eyes flicked to the puppet, then back to Liz. "Yours ignores you?"

"Completely." Liz's chest was heaving. "Yours?"

"Copies me."

The understanding clicked between them without another word.

Chloe bared her teeth. "Trade partners."

Liz's mouth curved in something between a grin and a snarl. "On three."

The wraith paced at the edge of Chloe's reach, blade ready. The puppet dragged itself from the balustrade, jaw hanging open, meat-veins coiling under its skin like ropes under canvas. Both moved in at once, like predators sensing the last drop of stamina in their prey.

They moved as one — Chloe darting toward the puppet, Tenso cutting for its knees, Liz turning her telekinesis on the wraith. For an instant, both enemies hesitated, their programmed rhythms breaking under the sudden change.

The bridge's pulse quickened, a deep, steady thud under their feet. Somewhere below, the river began to roar. Mist churned upward in heavy, rolling coils, and Chloe could feel — more than hear — something vast shifting in the water.

It wasn't over.

It was getting worse.

***

The change was immediate.

Liz's telekinetic shove slammed into the wraith with the force of a battering ram. It staggered back three full paces, its blade dipping for the first time since the fight began. Against her, it had no resistance — no void in its mind to swallow her reach. She drove the advantage, yanking chunks of broken stone into the air and hurling them one after another, each blow cracking against its mirrored armour and forcing it farther away.

Chloe met the puppet head-on. Tenso slid through the slick layers of its fused flesh, the phase-edge bypassing its crude armour to bite deep into muscle. The thing shrieked, a bubbling roar that spat hot saliva into her face, but it didn't copy her movements. It reacted — clumsy, powerful, telegraphed. She ducked under a wide swing, the blade humming as she cut through one of its rope-thick meat-veins. It stumbled.

For the first time since the bridge had started shaking, they had space to breathe.

The meat-veins beneath the stone thrashed like a net trying to tighten around them. One snapped upward, barbed with jagged bone, spearing between Chloe and the puppet. She rolled aside, the vein's tip scraping the bridge where she'd been standing.

"Don't let them reset!" Liz's voice came sharp over the chaos.

The wraith tried to circle toward Chloe again. Liz hurled a ripped-up railing post into its knee, the metal bending with the impact, and it buckled just enough for her to send another psychic shove to keep it in her sights. She could feel the drain — her halo flickering, muscles shaking — but she refused to let it close.

Chloe drove into the puppet, carving at its joints with relentless precision, denying it even a heartbeat to steady its bulk. The phase of Tenso let her shear through tendon and bone even when the outer flesh tried to knit itself back together. Each cut slowed it. Each cut made it louder, more frantic.

Then the bridge gave another deep groan, this one followed by the sound of stone collapsing into water.

A section fifty metres away vanished into the mist with a thunderous splash. Spray shot up like a geyser, instantly swallowed by the fog.

The thud came again — deeper this time, a sound felt more in the chest than in the ears. The meat-veins all around them pulsed in unison, and the mist ahead swelled as if something enormous were pushing through from below.

Liz's eyes flicked toward the movement in the fog. "Tell me that's not—"

"It is," Chloe cut in, never taking her gaze off the puppet.

A shape began to rise through the vapour — vast, indistinct, but the sheer size of it made the bridge feel suddenly small. The air grew heavier, thick with the smell of rot and river-mud, and beneath it, something older.

The puppet lunged. The wraith broke Liz's latest shove and closed a step.

The pulse under the bridge became a heartbeat. Not theirs.

Chloe's grip on Tenso tightened. Liz's storm of debris lifted again. Neither of them spoke, because they both knew what was coming.

"Stay on your feet," Chloe muttered, not sure if she meant Liz or herself.

And then, from within the mist below, Belphegor moved.

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