He steadied, grin crooked, eyes wild. "Rank X without a frame. You’re going to burn yourself out."
"Then I’ll burn out after you," she said, and blitzed.
She ripped him across the field with a flurry that sounded like a row of detonations going off in a straight line. The final hit launched him skyward. Lucy chased, heel flipping over her head in a brutal axe kick that sent him crashing back down, a plume of dust and rock blooming.
She landed hard, shoulders heaving, black fire coughing ash.
Karl lay in the crater, chest rising and falling fast.
Then his hands pressed to the dirt.
The white-gold veins along his body sank into the ground and came up again in a grid. Light lines snapped into a lattice over the battlefield—thin, perfect, merciless.
He stood inside his web.
"Playtime’s over," he said, voice flat. "Anchor Field."
Lucy’s flame flared to meet it—and flickered. The lattice wasn’t just pressure. It was rule. Every motion she made dragged weight, every jump asked permission, every breath paid a tax. Her fire ate at it, but the lines grew back as fast as she burned them.
Karl moved.
He didn’t blur this time. He walked. Fast.
His first punch drove through her guard and hammered her sternum. Her back bowed; breath left her in a soundless grunt. His second caught her jaw, turning her head. His third sank to the body, and the world sparked white behind her eyes.
She bit down, planted her feet, and answered—a hook that made his ear ring, an elbow that split his eyebrow. He took both, stepped through them, and collided with her like a battering ram.
The lattice tightened.
Her flame thinned.
She forced it wider, stole another breath of power from that humming edge—and paid for it. Something behind her heart burned wrong. Her knees almost dipped. She refused to let them.
Karl saw the stutter.
He went for it.
His palm rose, two fingers extended, and the air between them went clean and surgical. He tapped her chest once.
Everything inside her jolted.
Her flame went out for a blink.
That was all he needed.
He hit her like a falling building.
The first blow smashed across her cheekbone; the second slammed the same spot; the third hit the rib he’d cracked earlier; the fourth hammered her stomach; the fifth came from above, forearm dropping across her back and driving her to one knee.
She tried to rise. The lattice dragged her down.
Karl’s hand hooked into her jacket and flung her high. He leaped after, knee driving into her midair and folding her around it. She crashed, skidding through dirt and stone, leaving a long dark smear.
She pushed her palms into the ground and lifted her head. Blood ran from her nose and split lip. She grinned anyway—thin, stubborn, mean.
"Still... not enough," she rasped.
Karl’s breath came hard now, chest shining with sweat and blood. He looked at her like a craftsman looks at a blade he respects. "You’re past SSS," he said. "You really did it."
He raised his hand.
The lattice brightened to a blinding white.
Lucy stood.
She dragged the last of her flame up from wherever she kept it, packed it around her fists, and sprinted.
They met in the center—her punch and his palm.
For a heartbeat, nothing moved.
Then the world did.
Light stormed outward in a perfect ring. Dirt lifted and hung. Sound died. And in that quiet, the black fire started to unravel, thread by thread, the silver lines snapping as the white lattice folded over it like a closing book.
Lucy’s eyes widened a fraction.
Karl’s did not.
"Sleep," he said.
The palm strike slid past her fist and set on her sternum. The force didn’t throw her. It flattened her aura, pressed it closed, and her body followed.
She hit the ground on her back.
The lattice faded.
The dust fell.
Lucy tried to get up. Her arms shook, elbows locking, then slipping. She made it to one knee, swayed, and her eyes rolled half-closed. The black fire guttered, then winked out.
She pitched forward and caught herself on trembling hands. Her breath came in short, hard pulls. She looked up at Karl through a mess of hair and blood and smiled like a dare.
"Go ahead," she whispered. "Gloat."
Karl stepped closer. The grin was gone. He was breathing, too—deep, steady, masking how much she’d taken out of him.
"No," he said. "You earned better than that."
He looked down at her—at the cracked ground, at the fist marks and scorch scars and the stubbornness that wouldn’t die.
"You’re the first one here to touch that ceiling," he added, almost to himself. "He won’t be far behind."
Lucy tried to spit a laugh and coughed instead. "Told you... you weren’t worth him."
Karl’s mouth twitched. "Maybe not. But I am worth this."
He turned his head, gaze cutting past the ruined field to the line of hunters watching in shocked silence.
"Don’t get in my way," he said, voice carrying. "I’m not done."
He looked back at Lucy, the white-gold veins dimming on his skin as his full release eased.
"Rest," he said softly. "When you wake up, be stronger."
Her eyes slipped closed despite herself.
The wind moved again. The world’s noise crept back in—the crackle of dead grass, the far-off crack of a failing wall, a single, shaky cheer that didn’t know if it should exist.
Karl rolled his shoulders, blood dripping from his chin, and turned toward the next gate forming on the horizon.
"Lucian," he murmured, smiling to no one. "Hurry up."
"You don’t have to look for me anymore."