"Good," he said softly. "So you’re fast enough to be worth killing."

Neo’s grip tightened around the twin fangs.

There it was.

The smile. The tone. The way the bastard spoke like he had already measured them, priced them, and decided how long this would take. What made it worse was not the threat itself. It was how relaxed he still looked after the spike failed.

Alice turned fully this time, axe raised, shoulders square.

The assassin gave a polite little nod, as if they had finally arrived at the proper part of the conversation.

"Now," he said, dust shifting lazily around his boots, "let’s stop wasting each other’s time."

Neo moved first.

Beast Strength surged through him at once, rough and immediate, a violent tightening in muscle and bone that made the world feel one step slower than it had a second earlier. He crossed the sand in a burst, the nearest fang angling for the man’s throat.

The assassin slid back before the strike arrived.

The ground beneath him loosened and carried him in one smooth drag, a thin wave of sand pulling him out of range while the blade cut through empty air.

Neo clicked his tongue and followed.

Another step. Another cut. Another retreat.

The bastard gave him nothing clean.

A ridge of hardened sand rose from the ground between them just as Neo turned his wrist for the second strike. One fang carved into it and split the wall open, but that heartbeat was enough. The assassin had already shifted again, boots barely leaving tracks as the desert obeyed him.

Alice came from the side.

She did not waste movement. Her axe crashed down where his chest should have been, and the ground exploded under the blow, throwing grit and broken crust into the air. The assassin twisted away and the sand around Alice’s ankles folded at once, trying to drag her lower.

She ripped herself free through force alone.

Neo saw it clearly then.

’He’s buying time.’

That realization irritated him more than the spike had.

This wasn’t someone trying to overwhelm them fast. This wasn’t a brute, not even a show-off. The man wanted the fight stretched. Wanted them moving, adjusting, burning through Soul Essence while he kept distance and let the terrain do half the work.

Neo hated that kind of enemy.

The assassin seemed to read enough from his face to enjoy it.

"You’re quick," he said, stepping over a half-buried stone with insulting ease. "But you rush when you smell blood. That makes you easier to steer."

Neo answered with steel.

The first fang flashed low. The second came from higher up a breath later, the pair meant to force a bad choice.

The assassin did not block either one.

The ground beneath Neo shifted.

A narrow trough opened under his leading foot. Not deep enough to trap him, just enough to break the line of his advance and spoil the angle. The blades still passed close enough to cut cloth, but not flesh.

Alice reached him again before the assassin could turn that into an opening.

Her axe came in flat and brutal, aiming to take the man through the ribs if he stood there or split his knee if he dropped. He answered by pulling a column of sand up between them, compacted so tightly it hit the axe like poor stone. The impact cracked it apart, but again the bastard had gained what he wanted.

Space.

Neo slashed through the fragments and came through the dust with Beast Strength still alive in his limbs. This time one fang finally touched.

A shallow line opened across the assassin’s forearm.

Still, Mourning Venom entered with the cut, and Neo’s mouth hardened with a mean little satisfaction.

The assassin glanced down at the wound and smiled.

"That one I felt."

Alice said nothing. She was already moving again.

Neo went with her. That was the only way to keep this from becoming his pace and his pace alone. Alice pressed from the front, axe heavy enough to break his sand barriers faster than he could comfortably shape them. Neo hunted the sides, searching for the instant where the bastard would have to commit to one direction and give him a real line.

The problem was that every exchange dragged longer than it should have. The assassin never stood where he appeared to stand. Sand slid under him when a normal person would have planted. The dunes broke vision at the wrong moments. Thin lances of compressed grit shot from low angles whenever Alice committed her weight too far. Half-formed limbs rose from the ground only to collapse again, not because they were meant to kill, but because they kept forcing choices.

Left or right.

Forward or back.

Protect the flank or keep the pressure.

Neo was beginning to realize.

The man wasn’t trying to beat them with one great move. He was shaving them down.

Alice must have seen the same thing because when she spoke, her voice came flat and controlled.

"He’s stalling."

A spike rose under Neo’s foot.

He twisted off it and cut downward, splitting the thing before it reached full height. Sand burst around his calf. The assassin used the distraction to slide sideways again, farther toward a stretch of broken ruin where old stone teeth jutted from the dune.

Neo’s irritation climbed another notch.

"You planning to fight," he said, pressing after him, "or just keep running until you die of old age?"

That drew a laugh.

"Running?" the assassin asked. "No. I’m arranging."

Neo hated him more with every second.

Alice cut across the angle and finally forced the man into a poorer piece of ground. Her axe tore through another waist-high wall of compacted sand and nearly reached his shoulder. He leaned back, barely enough, and the edge still clipped him along the side.

A real hit this time.

The smile on his face thinned.

Neo saw the shift and surged in immediately.

Beast Strength roared harder through him as he closed the gap. One fang opened low across the assassin’s side. The second snapped toward the opposite shoulder, meant to complete the pair and place Execution Mark on him before he could slip free.

The desert betrayed the timing again.

Not because the man was faster.

Because the ground itself caved.

Sand dropped under Neo’s trailing foot for the smallest instant, enough to shorten his step, enough to turn the second cut from ideal into near miss. The blade shaved flesh near the shoulder instead of biting properly.

The assassin used that breath to tear away.

Neo swore under his breath.

’Again.’

He had him.

He had him and the desert stole the rest.

The assassin’s blood darkened the cloth at his side now, and the venom was working, Neo could tell that much. The man’s movements had not slowed visibly yet, but the injury existed. Grave Wound would keep it from closing cleanly. A normal fight would have tilted after that.

This one refused to tilt.

Alice came in harder.

Neo saw the decision happen before she made it fully. Her stance changed. Her shoulders dropped. Soul Essence pulled around her in a sharper current.

"Don’t burn too much," he said.

She ignored that.

Valkyries’ Call burst out from her in a pale surge, not bright in some noble way, but fierce, clean, and direct. It rolled through Neo at once. Strength rose. His next breath sharpened. The weight in his limbs changed.

Alice did not waste the buff on hesitation.

She charged.

Her axe struck down through a storm of lifted sand and broke the ground where the assassin had just been. He shifted to the left. She was already there. The backswing came brutal and low, forcing him to jump, and Neo met him mid-adjustment with both blades flashing.

One fang cut the thigh.

The second cut would have opened the same leg higher and ruined it.

A hand of sand erupted from the dune behind the assassin and slapped into Neo’s wrist hard enough to spoil the line. It collapsed right after, as if it had never existed for more than that single interruption.

Neo landed, furious.

Alice stayed on the man another two beats before the ground under her sank almost to the shin. She ripped free by force and swung again, but now the cost had started to show.

Her breathing had changed.

Neo caught it because he was looking for it.

The assassin caught it because this was the whole point.

"You’re the dangerous one," he said to Alice, drifting back while blood darkened the edge of his shirt. "If I let you stay close, you will make this messy."

Alice answered by trying to take his head off.

He escaped again, though not as cleanly. The venom was there now. The wounds were there. He had stopped smiling with the same ease as before.

Neo pressed him the moment Alice’s swing forced the retreat, but that only made the pattern more obvious.

Every time Neo almost reached him, something small broke it.

A slip in the ground.

A low spike.

A burst of grit aimed at the face.

A half-formed body rising just enough to block sight.

Nothing decisive.

Everything annoying.

Everything designed to make each exchange cost them more than it cost him.

Neo understood the fight completely now, and understanding it made him angrier instead of calmer.

The bastard wasn’t stronger where it mattered most.

He was smarter about time.

Alice stepped back once.

For anyone else, it would have meant nothing. Neo saw too much to miss it. The axe hung lower after she reset her grip. The Soul Essence around her had thinned.

He angled closer without taking his eyes off the assassin.

"How low?"

Alice’s reply came flat. "Enough."

The assassin heard it too. His smile returned, smaller now. "There it is," he murmured. "That sounds much better."

Neo’s fingers tightened around the fangs until his knuckles paled.

The sand behind the assassin started lifting.

Shapes.

One shoulder. Then another. A torso rising crooked from the dune. A second forming near the broken ruin. A third farther right, only half-made but solidifying fast under the windless pressure of his will.

Alice drew a sharper breath.

Neo felt the ground shift under his boots again, broader this time, not a trick for one step, but something larger preparing to move.

The assassin spread one hand slightly, blood on his sleeve, smile back in place.

Neo looked at Alice for half a second and saw what he had already known coming.

She was running close to empty.

And the fight, instead of tightening, had just opened wider.