Zumthor crossed the floor in a burst of feral speed, claws low and eager. Chase met him head-on. Their first exchange cracked across the court in a burst of violent motion. Chase's fist came high. Jagger's claws came lower. Both missed their ideal targets by margins thin enough to feel unreal. Chase rolled with the angle and whipped an elbow down. Zumthor slipped under it and raked up for the throat. Chase leaned just far enough away and answered with a hook that cut across the space beside Jagger's head.

Jagger ducked. The air slapped across his hair.

His claws scored Chase's side in a shallow line, enough to draw more blood.

Then Jace entered.

Her kick came from the blind angle again, precise and brutal, aimed not for flesh but structure, driving toward the planted leg that supported Jagger's burst. Zumthor twisted just in time to avoid a full break, but the impact still clipped him hard enough to wreck the rhythm of the attack.

'Left!' Jagger shouted.

'No, high line, then pivot!' Ophilia cut in over him.

Zumthor roared.

The two voices collided in ugly chaos as the fight resumed.

For a few short, violent seconds, Zumthor held the line.

He was faster than Jagger had any right to be. More vicious. More willing to trade flesh for position. He slipped past Chase's jab and carved shallow furrows across the man's shoulder. He twisted beneath Jace's spinning heel and clipped her thigh with a black-edged slash. He moved like a feral thing wearing human coordination badly but effectively, and for those first moments, it worked.

Then the siblings stopped playing.

The shift between them was subtle, almost invisible. No command. No signal. Just a tiny change in the way they moved around each other.

The fight ended there.

Everything after that was a beatdown.

Jace cut inward. Chase stepped out and around. Their timing is locked in. Chase drove a straight punch high enough to force Zumthor to guard. The moment the guard rose, Jace's kick smashed into the exposed ribs. The impact bent him. Chase's elbow found him on the way down. Jace swept the leg before he could stabilize. He hit the mat on one hand, tried to spin through it, and Chase's knee hammered into his shoulder, driving him flat.

He forced himself back up anyway.

Jace's heel snapped under the jaw.

His head jerked back.

Chase buried a fist in his stomach before the pain from the kick had even fully landed.

Air fled his lungs.

'Block right!' Jagger shouted.

'No, left, she's baiting the opening!' Ophilia cut in.

"Shut up!" Zumthor roared.

He rose snarling, claws slashing wildly, but every line was already read. Jace deflected one wrist aside. Chase smashed the other forearm with a chopping strike that numbed the arm from elbow to fingertip. Jace stepped in and drove a palm into his chest to break his balance rather than his bones. Chase's shin crashed into his outer thigh a second later.

His leg buckled.

He slashed anyway.

Jace was already gone.

Chase was already there.

A hook. A cross. A shoulder check that drove him into Jace's waiting knee. He stumbled and tried to recover, but the siblings gave him nothing. No air. No pause. No chance to become dangerous again. They flowed around him with the cold efficiency of practiced hunters finishing a threat, one forcing the mistake, the other cashing it in before the body could recover.

The court boomed with each impact.

Jagger felt all of it.

The sting of split skin. The deep ache of bruising. The rattling force through bone and tendon. The helpless fury of being forced to watch while another thing used his body and still lost with it.

Zumthor kept forcing the vessel up, but every time he found his feet, Chase or Jace tore the structure right back apart.

In the end, he landed one more glancing rake across Chase's forearm.

Then Jace turned his wrist.

Chase drove a fist into the floating ribs.

Jace kicked the back of the knee.

Chase smashed him across the face.

Blood sprayed.

Jagger's body hit the mat and stayed there.

Bruised. Bleeding. Battered. One eye is swelling shut. Blood running from the nose and lip. The black claws still formed over the fingers, but were trembling now instead of flexing.

Inside, silence held for a breath.

Then Ophilia snapped.

'Enough.'

No one answered immediately.

That made her colder.

'The three of us tearing at one another while trained hunters outside adapt around us is intolerable. If they start noticing the difference in movement, speech, and intent between us, this vessel will become a laboratory toy before sunrise. We need him functional, and he cannot be functional while his own mind is a battlefield.'

Zumthor growled. 'I was doing fine until you both kept distracting me.'

'You were being dismantled,' Ophilia said flatly.

Jagger pushed through the pain. 'Then what do we do?'

Zumthor answered first, rough and unwilling. 'The girl manages space. The boy commits harder. He is easier to bait.'

Ophilia picked up immediately. 'The girl punishes imbalance. The boy punishes hesitation. The shield woman has not moved yet. The pale one has. He is waiting for timing, not force.'

Jagger frowned. 'So?'

'So observe,' Ophilia said.

Zumthor grunted. 'And when the moment comes, hit hard enough to matter.'

It was not trust.

It was not peace.

But it was the closest thing to cooperation any of them had managed.

Outside, Adriana's voice cut sharply across the court.

"That's enough. Jace. Chase. Back."

The siblings stepped away at once.

Chase rolled his shoulder, breathing harder now but still grinning. Jace's expression stayed flat and controlled, though her eyes lingered on Jagger's body for an extra second before she turned away.

"You both did well," Adriana said.

Regeneration had already begun its quiet work.

The pain sharpened before it softened. Bruises tightened under the skin. Split flesh crawled toward repair. Blood still clung warm to his mouth and chin, but the body was already pulling itself back together beneath the damage.

Control returned in fragments.

First, the fingers.

Then the jaw.

Then the full brutal weight of his own body.

Jagger dragged in a breath and forced himself onto one elbow. Pain shot through him, but it was his pain again.

His own.

He pushed harder and rose to one knee.

Chase blinked. "Seriously?"

Jace's eyes narrowed.

Jagger wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand and lifted his head.

"I'm not done."