The roof breathed. It wasn't the wind. It was a slow, heavy exhalation from the stone itself. Threads of a dark, oily miasma rose from the floor and lay themselves along the places my body liked to move, like a cat curling on the exact chair you were about to take. The sky above wasn't a sky at all, just a pale, glass ceiling pretending, its edges running into the tower's brass ribs.

He stood in the middle of it all, a man in a red coat with working pockets and a sword that had seen hard days. There were no medals on his chest, no theater in his stance. He was the kind of man you only notice when something important is already over.

"Arthur Nightingale," he said, as if checking a name off a list.

"Archduke," I answered.

The first wave of his attack came without a gesture. A dark veil of miasma slid in from my left, thin as smoke but heavy with intent. If I had stepped through it like a person who believed in coincidence, my knee would have met a shape it did not want to meet. A second veil drew a straight line past my ribs, at the exact height I habitually kept my elbow. A narrow blade of solidified miasma hung in the air to my right, drifting an inch closer every time I even thought about shifting my weight that way.

Fine. We could be honest about it. Lucent Harmony set itself in my bones: a quiet breathe-in, a quieter breathe-out; hands with no opinions; a heartbeat that didn't grab for drama. A warmth slid across the roof a beat later—Red Hunger, his passive Gift, a sweet little push that wanted my next success to feel important enough to earn a second, reckless swing. Harmony let the feeling pass, the way a closed window lets music go by.

"Rude air," Valeria said from my forearm, her voice bright and offended. "It's sitting in our chair."

'Proceed,' Erebus murmured.

I tested the medium with my own magic first. A short arc of lightning—no flourish, just a clean cut of force—kissed a veil and broke into a shower of tired sparks that sank and died. A flick of pressure at ankle height rolled under the narrow, drifting blade; the miasma drank the push and kept coming. I learned that fire only seemed to char the edges of a veil, making it stronger. The miasma loved heat the way gossip loves a party.

"Water," I said aloud, and pinched a thin sheet of it out of the air, Aegir-clean and a palm's width. I dropped it into the nearest veil. The veil sagged, lost interest, and behaved like a piece of wet cloth. Good. Water worked. A second sheet of it weighed down the drifting blade; its lazy, predatory drift slowed. The Archduke watched the changes like a mechanic listening to a stubborn engine: head tilted, unimpressed, and already planning the next fix.

His first cut came so ordinary I almost missed the point. There was no speed trick, no explosive noise, just a straight, simple line that did not intend to miss. Valeria turned, tasted the intent, and I stepped off the line at the last possible breath. The steel hummed past my ear, honest and deeply annoyed. His second cut was already arriving where I would have been if I had forced the parry. I hadn't. I let the edge pass and answered with a ghost bind that never settled. He ignored it and pricked low with a small piece of truth aimed at the top of my front boot. I moved before committing to any follow-up, and the truth spent itself on stone. He knew every bad habit my body kept in its pockets. And he kept his own very, very far away from me.

I slid in for a test of my own—a Grey seam under my lead foot, a tiny Lightning Step living only in the ankle, and Valeria's point aimed for a place where dull people keep their vital organs.

A veil of miasma rolled into my lane. The Archduke flexed his off-hand. The veil changed its mind and surged, a sudden, hungry wave. He meant to kill my line of attack after I had already trusted it.

Soul Resonance. I brushed his trick—copy, don't steal, one beat only. I took the little push that turned a veil into a wave and ran it through my own point. My line of attack kinked the same way his veil had, just for that breath. I skimmed under the surge and took a tiny graze off his sleeve where the red cloth met his gauntlet. There was no flourish. No second bite. I smothered the afterglow of satisfaction that Red Hunger tried to offer before it could even learn how to purr, and slid back out while a part of my body droned, take another, come on, that felt good.

His mouth almost smiled. Not at the pain, which was nonexistent. At the method. He stepped in, his presence filling the space, and said, almost conversationally: "No breath shall steady."

It felt like the roof had put a cold finger on my throat. Not choking me. Just introducing a stutter. My exhale, the foundation of my six-count, wanted to trip over itself. Harmony kept my hands from shaking; that was the only reason I didn't hand him a free exchange on a silver platter.

He pressed through the wobble in my rhythm with a little three-piece attack: a high feint to make my eyes go up, a true cut that wanted to meet a late parry, and a sleeve-check that tried to tip my pelvis a single, critical hair so that my next step would roll me into a waiting veil.

I took the first two clean with short, ugly answers that had no poetry in them. I let the sleeve-check hit a hastily formed bone-shell from Valeria. The thin armor of light flexed, cracked, and shattered.

"Rude," she said crisply. "He owes me flowers."

The Archduke did not owe us anything. He rotated his wrist, and the surrounding miasma thickened near my elbows and my ankles, not dense enough to trap me, just enough to tax any meaningful correction I tried to make. Smart. Mean. Calm.

I made a quiet stone lip rise from the floor to spoil one of his preferred lanes. I laid a finger-width air hook, an Aegir trick, into the nearest veil to tow it into the path of his next step. He didn't take that step. He took the one that made my clever hook catch nothing but my own pride. Every clean answer I had, he had seen before. He wasted nothing. My sword work, which I had just spent an eternity refining, felt like a very nice screwdriver someone was insisting on using to paint a house.

Fine. Sword, you're a tool, not a religion. Let's try being adults about this.

He lifted his chin a fraction. "Edges arrive late."

It landed like a smirk inside the air. I began a cut; the world casually delayed it by a hair's breadth. Not much. But it was enough to feed anyone who hunts in the half-second after an attack has been made. I didn't push against it. Pushing just hands your opponent the receipt they want. I went smaller: guard held close, blade moving only when I decided nothing, my footwork deliberately boring. I copied a single timing nudge from his own posture with Soul Resonance, turned it on my wrist for the one beat I needed, and my next tiny nick arrived on time.

He tilted his head, acknowledging the adjustment, and sent a low miasma blade for the back of my calf after I had apparently finished moving. It bit empty space. I had already made that step earlier than the room thought I would, by moving with no finish at all. We were trading magic now the way professionals pass tools. He snapped a kinetic jab from his off-hand at my knee while his sword ate a parry; I brushed it aside with a mean little sound crack that pinched his timing and bounced off his red coat without leaving a scuff.

He was better. That much was clear. My breath kept trying to wobble; his didn't. My edge kept wanting to arrive with a story; his only arrived with bills. I felt the weight of the Gates far above—a cold, distant ridge you only see on clear days. Not a call. Just an address. I was not there. Not yet.

The Archduke slid one foot half a shoe-width forward. The miasma followed him like a pack of well-trained dogs. He wanted to see if I would try to finish something, to make a grand, heroic statement.

I didn't. I put my sword exactly where it needed to be to not die, and I let everything else wait its turn. His eyes warmed by half a degree. Not with kindness. With interest.

We breathed wrong together for another minute—mine wobbly by his policy, his steady by long practice—and then he let the vow on my breath go with a simple shrug of his will. The wobble stayed in the walls. It wasn't welcome near me anymore.

I didn't grin. I would need the teeth for later.

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