Lumina and Skye ran like the cathedral itself was trying to swallow them.

The corridors blurred around them in strips of gold light and old stone. Their footsteps slapped against polished floors, too loud, too fast, echoing up into high arches where saints stared down with frozen pity. Somewhere behind them, the broken confession array still sparked and screamed faintly through the walls.

Skye stumbled once.

Lumina yanked him upright without slowing.

“We need an adult,” she gasped.

Skye’s eyes were wide, his breathing ragged. “A good one or just any?”

“At this point?”

“Any,” Skye agreed.

They rounded the next corner—

and a hand shot out of the shadows.

Lumina yelped.

Skye tried to twist away, cards flashing uselessly between his fingers, but another hand caught his sleeve and dragged them both into a narrow maintenance alcove.

“Quiet,” Marvin hissed.

Lumina froze.

Skye went rigid beside her.

Dawn Prelate Marvin stood in the dim beside them, face pale behind his lenses, one hand raised sharply for silence. His hair was dishevelled. He looked like a man who had recently met God, survived, and found the experience administratively inconvenient.

Outside the alcove, paladins thundered past.

Three.

Then five.

Then more.

Armour clattered. Boots struck stone. One of them barked an order about sealing the lower western corridor. Another shouted that the High Inquisitor had engaged hostiles.

Lumina held her breath until the last of them vanished around the turn.

Only then did Marvin release them.

Skye jerked his arm back at once.

“Don’t grab me.”

“Apologies,” Marvin said quickly. “I was attempting to prevent you from being arrested.”

Lumina stared at him.

“You work here.”

“Yes.”

“That is not comforting.”

“No,” Marvin said. “I imagine it isn’t.”

Skye looked toward the corridor. “Where are the others?”

“Scattered. Improvising badly.” Marvin glanced over his shoulder. “Hughes is in trouble. Maven has him pinned near the west hall. Not physically. Not yet. She likes to savour a competent opponent.”

Skye swallowed. “That is a horrible sentence.”

“It was meant to be.”

Marvin reached into the inner pocket of his robes and pulled out three small metal spheres, each one etched with black-and-silver circuitry.

Lumina took one uncertainly.

“What are these?”

“Stun grenades.”

Skye nearly dropped his.

“You’re giving children grenades?”

“Reluctantly.”

Lumina held hers at arm’s length. “Are they going to explode?”

“Yes.”

She squeaked.

“Not fatally,” Marvin added. “Probably.”

“That does not make me feel better.”

“It shouldn’t. Listen carefully.”

His voice sharpened, and for a moment he sounded less like a frightened priest and more like a scientist forced to explain something quickly before everyone died.

“Maven is vulnerable to electricity. She uses an electric scythe. Which is very irritating of her.” Marvin adjusted his glasses with a shaking hand. “The scythe is external. Her implants are not.”

Lumina blinked. “Implants?”

“Cybernetic reinforcement along the spine, wrists, and lower skull. Pureblood technology. Not mana-based.”

Skye looked horrified. “Why does she have those?”

“To enhance her resistance against mana. Most spells slide off her before they can take hold. She can walk through warding fields that would put ordinary clergy on their knees.”

Lumina looked down at the grenade.

“But electricity hurts them?”

“If the charge gets close enough, it should short-circuit the implants. Briefly.” Marvin’s mouth tightened. “Long enough to stagger her. Perhaps long enough for Hughes to strike.”

Skye stared at him.

“Why are you helping us?”

Marvin went still.

For a second, his eyes flicked past them, toward some memory neither child could see.

Then he said, “I have my reasons.”

“That is what suspicious people say,” Lumina muttered.

“Yes,” Marvin said. “And yet you are out of time.”

A shout echoed in the distance.

Marvin looked toward it sharply.

“I need to make sure the gates unlock when your friends reach them. If they stay sealed, none of you leave this cathedral.”

Lumina clutched the grenade tighter.

Skye glanced at her.

They were suspicious.

Of course they were.

But suspicion was a luxury, and Hughes was in trouble.

Skye nodded once.

“Fine.”

Marvin pointed down the corridor. “Straight ahead. Right at the cracked saint statue.”

He stepped back into the shadows.

“Go.”

So they ran.

The sounds of battle reached them before the hall did.

Electricity shrieked.

Stone cracked.

Something heavy slammed into a wall hard enough to rain dust from the ceiling.

Lumina skidded around the cracked saint statue, Skye close behind her, and together they reached the mouth of the west hall.

Hughes was still standing.

Blood darkened one shoulder. His coat was scorched down one side. Everstill was braced across both hands as he blocked Maven’s scythe, the electric blade screaming against the old weapon in a shower of blue-white sparks.

Maven looked delighted.

Her dark robes swirled around her as she pressed the scythe down, eyes bright with feverish revelation.

“Oh, Old man,” she said. “You are disappointingly hard to educate.”

Hughes shoved her back with a grunt.

“And you’re disappointingly still talking.”

Maven laughed.

Then she turned her head.

She saw the children.

The smile that spread across her face made Skye’s stomach drop.

“Well,” Maven purred. “How thoughtful. Reinforcements in miniature.”

Hughes’s head snapped toward them.

“No. Back!”

Lumina stepped forward anyway, both hands glowing.

Skye lifted his arm.

A golden mechanism of cards and brass light unfolded around his wrist, spinning open like a fan of little doors.

Aurex Arcana.

Lumina’s own light gathered into her palm, rose-pink and warm, shaping itself into a narrow blade with a glowing flower-like guard.

Roselight Blade.

Maven’s eyes gleamed.

“Children are so fragile,” she said softly. “They break very easily.”

Lumina’s face hardened.

“Don’t talk to us like that.”

Maven tilted her head.

“No? How would you prefer it? Gently? Clinically? With a sticker afterward?”

sHE looked between them and Hughes.

Then smiled wider.

“This will be interesting.”

Skye fired first.

A card snapped from Aurex Arcana and burst mid-air into a phantom bird, all bronze feathers and sharp golden eyes. It shrieked once and dived toward Maven’s face.

Maven lifted one hand.

Her mana nullifier flashed grey.

The bird broke apart before it touched her, feathers dissolving into sparks.

“Oh,” Maven said, almost disappointed. “Pretty. Useless, but pretty.”

Lumina charged.

“Lumina, no!” Hughes barked.

She raised Roselight Blade and swung with both hands.

Maven moved like a shadow with a doctorate in cruelty.

The scythe shaft caught Lumina across the middle before the blade landed, knocking her sideways with brutal force. Lumina hit the wall and slid down with a cry, her Roselight Blade flickering.

Skye shouted her name.

Hughes drove himself between Maven and the children so fast his injured shoulder nearly gave out.

“Lumina!” he snapped. “Heal and guard. No fighting.”

Lumina dragged in a shaky breath, one hand pressed to her ribs.

“But—”

“Now.”

The command landed.

Lumina nodded, eyes wet but focused. She pulled her shield up instead, rose-gold light blooming in front of her and Skye like a curved pane of dawn.

Maven sighed.

“How disappointing. I was hoping the small one would continue making poor choices. It was very educational.”

Hughes wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Pick on someone your own size.”

Maven looked him up and down.

“I am.”

Hughes snorted despite himself.

“Stars, you’re annoying.”

“Thank you. I’ve refined it.”

Skye’s hands shook over Aurex Arcana.

He looked at Hughes.

Then at Maven.

Then he fired another card.

This one struck the floor between them and erupted upward in a burst of armoured light.

A monster formed from the glow.

A hulking phantom beast in plated armour, with curved horns, heavy forearms, and a shield grown straight from one shoulder. Its eyes burned with the same gold as Skye’s cards.

It slammed one fist into the floor.

Maven’s eyes widened.

Not with fear.

With fascination.

“Oh, now that is better.”

The armoured monster charged.

Maven met it head-on.

Her electric scythe carved down. The beast raised its plated arm, and the blade struck with a shriek of sparks. For a moment, impossibly, it held.

Hughes saw the opening and moved.

He came in low, Everstill sweeping for Maven’s knees while the monster drove its shield into her upper guard. Maven twisted between them, scythe snapping back, boots scraping over stone as she took the pressure and gave it back.

The fight changed.

No longer Hughes barely holding her off.

Now it was a rhythm.

Hughes struck.

The armoured phantom blocked.

Maven slipped, cut, spun, laughed.

Electricity split the air.

Skye kept firing support cards, each one feeding the phantom’s armour another layer before Maven’s nullifier could chew through it. Lumina crouched behind her shield, one hand glowing against her bruised side, trying to force breath back into her lungs while keeping the barrier raised.

She fumbled with her arcbracer.

“Ray,” she whispered. “Ray, please answer.”

Static.

She tried again.

“Ray, Maven is here. Hughes is fighting her. We need help.”

The signal cracked.

Collapsed.

Nothing.

Lumina’s ears flattened.

“No, no, no…”

She turned the angle of the bracer, searching desperately for a clear line through the cathedral interference.

Only static answered.

Across the hall, Maven drove her scythe into the armoured monster’s shield hard enough to fracture it. Then she looked past Hughes, straight at Lumina.

“Calling for grown-ups?” Maven asked sweetly.

Lumina froze.

Maven’s smile sharpened.

Hughes slammed Everstill into the floor.

“Eyes on me.”

Maven’s gaze drifted lazily back to him.

“Demanding.”

“Experienced.”

He struck.

She caught the blow.

The armoured monster roared beside him and swung again.

Skye fired again.

This card came out thin and bright, spinning so fast it whined.

“Glint Slash!”

The radiant card cut through the air toward Maven’s shoulder, sharp enough to leave a line of light in its wake.

Maven tilted her head.

The card missed by a finger’s width.

Then curved.

It snapped back around like a boomerang, aiming for the back of her neck.

Maven did not even look.

Her nullifier bracer flashed grey.

The card struck the anti-mana field and shattered into harmless sparks behind her.

“Oh,” Maven said. “A returning projectile. Very sweet. Like a threat with separation anxiety.”

Skye’s mouth fell open.

“How did you—”

Maven spun away from the armoured phantom’s next punch, scythe dragging electric light across its chestplate.

“See it coming?” she asked. “Darling, all of you are announcing yourselves with your entire bodies. It’s practically rude not to notice.”

Lumina’s eyes narrowed.

Rose-pink light gathered around her boots.

She vanished in a burst of petals.

Not true teleportation.

A feint.

A graceful spin through her own shield-light, body folding behind Maven in a scatter of glowing blossoms. For one beautiful second, Lumina appeared at Maven’s back, Roselight Blade already rising in a clean upward slash.

Blossom Feint.

Maven smiled.

Her scythe shaft swept backward without her turning fully.

It caught Lumina’s blade mid-swing.

The impact threw rose-light across the corridor.

Lumina gasped as the force rattled through her arms.

Maven finally glanced over her shoulder.

“Better. Still slow.”

She twisted, hooked the scythe shaft against Lumina’s guard, and flung her sideways.

Lumina hit the floor hard and rolled, her shield flickering around her just in time to keep her ribs from taking the worst of it.

“Lumina!” Skye shouted.

“Guard and heal!” Hughes barked.

“I know!” Lumina wheezed, dragging herself behind her shield again. “I am doing both very anxiously!”

Hughes moved before Maven could follow.

Everstill hooked low.

The crook caught around Maven’s waist.

“Crookbend.”

Time folded.

Just around Maven.

The last five seconds of her movement bent backward like a strip of film caught in a broken projector. The scythe swing. The step. The turn. The deflection. All of it tried to drag her back through her own immediate past, forcing her body to repeat the motion she had just made.

For most enemies, it was vicious.

They stumbled into attacks they had already committed to.

Dodged blows that were no longer coming.

Trapped themselves in the echo of their own momentum.

Maven should have reeled.

Instead, her eyes flickered.

Tiny silver lights sparked along the side of her neck, just beneath the skin.

She moved before the loop caught properly.

Not out of it.

Through it.

Her foot landed exactly where the repeated motion would have dragged her anyway. Her scythe adjusted half a second early. Her shoulders rolled with the pull instead of against it, and when the second echo of her own attack snapped into place, she was already waiting for it.

She let the loop carry her into a spin.

Then used the momentum to slash at Hughes.

He barely blocked in time.

The electric blade screamed against Everstill.

Hughes’s grin vanished.

Maven leaned in, eyes bright.

“That was clever.”

Her voice dropped to a pleased purr.

“Do it again.”

Hughes shoved her back, breathing hard.

“That should’ve worked.”

“It did,” Maven said. “Briefly. Then I became uninterested in obeying your little clock trick.”

Skye stared at her.

At the faint glow under her skin.

At the way her eyes kept darting a fraction before every strike.

At the perfect, horrible timing.

His fear sharpened into understanding.

“Hughes.”

Hughes did not look away from Maven.

“What?”

“It’s her implants.”

Maven’s smile thinned.

Skye’s words came faster.

“They’re not just resisting mana. They’re speeding up decision-making in her brain. She isn’t stronger than the loop. She’s reacting before it finishes. We look slow to her.”

Hughes’s eyes narrowed.

Maven sighed.

“Well. That’s disappointing. I was hoping the small fox would stay decorative.”

Skye swallowed, but lifted Aurex Arcana again.

“I’m not decorative.”

“No,” Maven said, scythe humming. “You’re informative. Much worse.”

Hughes stared at Maven.

Then, slowly, a grin spread across his face.

Dangerous.

Maven noticed.

“Oh,” she said. “That expression usually means someone has had a terrible idea.”

“Aye,” Hughes said.

He shifted Everstill in his grip.

“If she’s making us look slow…”

Skye’s eyes widened as he understood.

Hughes’s grin deepened.

“Then we speed ourselves up.”

Lumina looked up from behind her shield, still glowing faintly as she healed the bruise along her side.

“Can you do that?”

Hughes rolled his injured shoulder once.

Blood ran down his sleeve.

“Not comfortably.”

Maven’s scythe crackled brighter.

“How exciting.”

Hughes planted Everstill against the stone.

The air around him began to ripple.

“Kids,” he said, voice low and steady. “When I say move, you move.” 

Skye tightened his grip on Aurex Arcana.

Lumina raised her shield.

Maven lifted her scythe with a delighted little smile.

“Oh, this is going to be educational.”

Hughes bared his teeth.

“For one of us.”