The first strike connects with such force that gravity around us seems to multiply by ten in a single millisecond. The impact reverberates through my arms and climbs my spine.

For a fraction of a second, impossibly slow, I see the shaft of Freya’s scythe bow under the pressure against Eventide.

My knees crack, absorbing the shock. My weapon is lighter, faster—but Freya is a Reef. Her inertia is a tide of concrete to me.

The kinetic energy of the collision detonates and throws us backward at the same time.

I was already expecting the recoil.

The advantage of having nearly died a thousand times in another life is that my body knows the physics of pain before the pain arrives.

I sink Eventide into the stone of the plaza, tearing a trench of sparks to brake my slide—and then, using the black blade as leverage, I slingshot myself back into a furious dash.

To my surprise, Freya didn’t pull back to recover.

She had the same idea. Her scythe planted, her body pivoting around it, and now she’s coming at me from the other direction.

We collide again at the center of the plaza.

Brute force won’t win this. I pour every drop of OXI I can spare into agility instead. Acceleration to balance the crushing weight on her side.

I attack on an upward arc.

The Glacial Scythe descends like a guillotine, aimed at my collarbone. Eventide meets it halfway.

Instead of blocking and absorbing, I re-level the angle of my wrist. Her ice blade screams as it slides along the full length of my sword, losing the target. The massive scythe slams into the ground beside me with the force of a small meteor, opening a crater of ice and stone.

I take the moment her weapon is anchored. Pivot to the opposite side. Cut in an arc aimed at her exposed ribs.

But her eyes track my shoulder. Freya rotates her wrist and redirects the long golden shaft of the scythe in time to catch my strike.

Clang.

The fight changes.

The blind fury of the first fifteen seconds is gone. What follows isn’t an exchange of killing blows anymore. It’s a synchronized, lethal dance. In the three clashes that follow, I read her, and she reads me.

The cold political seriousness on the Valkyrie’s face begins to melt. A small, almost invisible smile starts pulling at the corner of her lips.

I feel like it isn’t joy. It isn’t sadism. It’s belonging. The brutal relief of a prodigy who has finally found someone she doesn’t need to hold back against. Someone she can be herself with.

I’m starting to understand the rhythm of her breathing. She’s started predicting where my supporting foot will land—or, at least, where I’m letting her predict it.

Wake up, Freya.

I think it as the impact of our weapons paints explosions of shadow and ice across the air between us.

Wake up, the real Valkyrie. Don’t make the same mistakes you made before. Don’t surrender to the gilded cage that Rector Dean built for you.

I can feel the questions and the indecisions piling up in her with every exchange, until she finally jumps back. Pulls distance between us.

"Why, Dryden?" Her voice is sharp now, edged with disappointment. "Why aren’t you taking me seriously?"

I don’t answer. I just keep my eyes locked on hers. Holding the connection we built through the fight.

"If that’s how it is, don’t blame me for what happens next."

Her energy detonates.

Her eyes go cold. Reflecting the waning crescent of her own blade.

She doesn’t shout.

She doesn’t gloat.

She breathes a single word into the freezing air.

"Permafrost..."

The world stops.

As if time itself froze. The temperature drops a clean twenty degrees Celsius in the space of one heartbeat. The breath leaves my lungs and crystallizes in front of me before I can pull it back in. The plaza floor under my boots glazes over with a thin film of frost.

Wings of fine ice unfold from her back. Translucent. Splintered along their edges with the same waning-moon curve as the blade.

Her entire right hand and wrist fuse with the weapon, sealing into it as if she were wearing a glove of crystalline ice.

She’s coming with everything. She knows I haven’t been giving her everything.

If that’s what she wants—let me show her.

I just need her to understand me.

"Memory of Lightwaves," I whisper.

My energy detonates. My hair and the cape of the Horizon armor billow upward in the surge. My eyes glow gold, the color of a fallen angel, and a thin gold smoke begins to curl off my eyes and dissolve into the wind.

"A thousand lives taken. A thousand lives that bear witness to my sword. A thousand lives that walk with me through the valley of shadow and death."

The whisper leaves my mouth, but somehow the chant doesn’t belong to me. It comes out from somewhere I don’t fully control.

Something shifted when I hit Rank D. Something is different now.

Is it because I unlocked Consume?

More memories arrive. Memories from a place I’ve never been. A life that wasn’t mine.

"Codex Art Number One — Hope."

I raise Eventide above my head. Feet two shoulders apart, lateral stance.

My OXI starts to burn like I’m dying.

[OXI: 1,802/2,500]

...1,652

...1,574

...1,421

...1,331

In less than three seconds.

Freya is already moving. I can feel that this is going to be her decisive strike. Her body almost a blur, accelerating across the gap.

"Sands!" she screams.

I execute my movement.

I feel time slow. I feel her heart beating across the distance. I feel my fingertips throb. I feel the echo of the wind being pushed aside by Freya’s body, shaping itself into a contrail behind her.

I don’t move my feet.

Just a quick, descending diagonal cut with my sword.

A hollow sound, low and wrong, reaches the air at the same instant.

The plaza audience holds its breath.