The slope looked ruined.

Craters. Cut snow. Black scuffs where heat had touched the ground. Golden ash drifting in little swirls where something had died and blown away.

They kept fighting anyway.

The Nyxes didn't slow. They came out of the trees in waves that didn't learn mercy. Some looked almost human. Some had long arms with flat blades. Some carried shield-shapes grown from their forearms. One ran like a deer on spring legs and didn't slip once.

Everyone was tired now. You could see it in small things - the half-second late block, the breath taken too long, the way hands shook after a parry.

Raizen felt it too. His lungs burned. His shoulders ached. But his feet were still honest, and his blades were still where they needed to be.

A Nyx cut for a miner's spine. Raizen dashed, crossed its chest, and was gone before the ash fell. Another came high. Raizen hit a trunk, changed angle in the air, and crossed it twice before landing. It tried to copy the movement. Copying was slower than deciding. It died.

On the right, Arashi stood in the pocket and made the green light speak. His pistols hummed. He shot the simple ones where it mattered. He banked a charge off a short ramp Ichiro lifted and stuck a shot under a plate. The next recoil bit his wrist. He grinned through it. He couldn't help it.

Keahi's flames seemed dimmer. She just held space.

Hikari? Her usual self. For now. Calm eyes, steady breath… Her staff met a blade with a clean click, then a thin ray snapped from the tip and drew a line where an elbow should have been. When the big ones crowded, she called down a small scatter of spears. Six. Seven. Not the storm from before. Just enough to pin two bodies to the snow. The spears melted back to air. She was already gone, saving someone else.

Lynea skated through the mess. Violet rings on her ankles spun and carried her where boots would have stumbled. She guarded Hikari's blind spots and looked annoyed at fear.

For a while, it worked. Barely.

Then it didn't.

Heavier Nyxes joined. Thicker plates. More limbs

A long-armed one cut from Raizen's blind side. He felt the air shift. Hikari's staff hit it out of the line. He finished it, nodded once without looking, and kept moving.

Rune hit from above like a thrown spear. White cloak. Wingsuit unfurled. Two-blade spear flashing. He cut a Nyx down the middle and skidded into a roll that sent powder wide like surf. He popped to his feet with too much energy for the air at this altitude.

He went straight at the biggest shape he could find - the four-armed thing with those almost-wings. It lifted two arms to block and swung the other two. Rune spun, split the difference, and got inside the guard.

It should've been a clean finish. It wasn't.

The Nyx twisted in a way joints shouldn't. One wing-arm scythed behind its own back and came for Rune's head. He didn't see it.

Raizen did.

He dashed and hit Rune hard in the ribs, hitting him out of the arc. The arm cut air. Snow puffed. Rune stumbled three steps. Raizen grabbed him by the harness and hauled him upright.

"You're good this time."

Division Two fought like they trained: together, clean, practiced. Shields locked. Fans flared. Weapons flung sparks. It was good work. But this wasn't a duel. The attacks came from bad angles and didn't care about rules. The second-years' shape bent and split. They adjusted, fast, but the line frayed each time something slipped through.

Keita's fans split two simple Nyxes and bought a breath. Oren's shield took a strike that would have broken ribs and threw it back with a push that felt like a wall learning to punch.

It still wasn't enough.

The slope itself felt… tired. Cracks ran through a drift and held together by habit. A cornice up high shed a careless sheet of snow without committing.

Arashi's shots turned narrow and cruel. No tricks. No ricochets. Just stops. Still, the glow crawled up the grips into his bones.

Esen slipped. Ichiro built the step too early, then too late, then just right. Esen slammed a ring to reset the world and hissed through his teeth. Blood had bled through Hikari's tape. He laughed anyway. That was his way. "Still hilarious" he lied.

Rune killed two more and then stepped back, chest heaving, eyes too bright. He looked over the mess, watched the stronger ones step out of the trees, and said the quiet part out loud. "They're getting stronger" he muttered. "Like it's… testing us."

No one argued.

Another shove. Another save. Another inch bought with breath. The math got worse anyway.

Raizen looked up.

Past the fight. Past the trees. Past the edges of what felt possible. The peak wore a cracked crown of rock and cornice. On the shoulder below it, a boulder sat where time had dropped it - big as a small room, half-buried, old.

He could see the line.

If that stone moved, the slope would break loose all the way down. It would be loud. It would be terrible. It would kill anything that didn't run. It might be the only way anyone here lived.

He thought of Alteea's voice. He thought of Kori's rules. He thought of the Rust Room. He thought of Hikari's hand gripping a med wrap with too much calm for this world. He thought of how tired everyone was.

He made the choice anyway.

"Hikari!" he called.

She turned, staff up, eyes clear even now. "What?"

"Run."

"What are you-"

"Just trust me. Please."

Something in his face made her stop arguing. She nodded once. "Okay."

He caught Keahi's eye. She read the line in his look like a map. Her jaw flexed. She didn't like it. She nodded anyway. "Go."

Rune stared. "You can't be serious."

"I am" Raizen said. "Hold them for thirty seconds."

"Thirty?" Keahi repeated, a little dry.

"Twenty" he corrected, and that made her grin. "Fine."

He took one breath and felt it all - the pain, the cold, the ache.

Then he started running.

A Nyx cut for him. He dashed past, a bright gold streak, and cut it apart without looking. Another lunged from the right. He didn't change course. He used a trunk to boost himself, went up, and kicked. Snow fell in a thin sheet behind him.

Raizen hit the middle slope. The air got sharper at once. The boulder sat above, half buried, arrogant. He remembered the way Eon felt when you let it run. He remembered what happened the first night in the geode. He remembered that you didn't have to be gentle.

He drew both blades and let the gold climb. Not a flare. Not a halo. A pressure that sunk into metal and came back out heavier and bright. His skin prickled. The hair at his neck lifted. The snow at his feet hissed and recoiled.

He cut his last dash short and planted hard, about ten meters from the stone.

He set his feet. He drew the blades back. He pulled Eon into the steel the way you pull air into lungs - deep, full, past safe.

The edges went white-gold. The world around them dimmed by comparison.

"Raizen - don't you dare" Alteea hissed through the static. For once, clear. He didn't answer.

He ran the last strides and threw himself forward like a man jumping into a river. The dash took him. The air cracked. The snow he crossed flattened a finger deep and then leapt up behind him in a white tail.

He hit the boulder.

For a heartbeat, nothing.

Then the stone lit inside.

Gold veins flashed through it like lightning trapped in rock. Cracks shot out from the point of impact. The sound didn't ring. It punched. The boulder swelled and came apart - not in chunks, but in a blast, as if the strike had planted Eon in the heart and told it to bloom.

The shoulder above shivered. The cornice tore itself free. A slab the size of a house slid, paused, and then went. Snow roared. The sound rolled down the slope like a wall.

"Run!!" Raizen shouted.

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