Matte isn't breathing right.
Too fast. Too shallow. His chest jerks instead of rising, Essence residue still flickering across his skin in uneven pulses, like something inside him doesn't know how to shut off. Violet drops beside him immediately, one hand at his neck, the other braced against the rubble to keep herself upright.
"He's alive," she says.
I already know.
Because the Lieutenant hasn't finished the job.
The dust settles enough for me to see it standing across the ruined street, posture no longer pristine but still controlled. Void bleeds from its limbs in faint, unstable currents, dissipating and reforming as it reins itself back in. It's tired. Not weak. Just no longer wasting motion.
That's worse.
I step forward and force my breathing steady, pulling energy into alignment the way the Interlogue demands. No shortcuts. No instinct. Shape, compress, apply. Every movement costs time.
The Lieutenant moves first.
It closes the distance in a blink, faster than its condition should allow. I redirect flow outward and harden it into a barrier just long enough to deflect the strike off-line. The impact still throws me backward, boots skidding across broken stone as pressure slams through my arms.
Violet hits it from the side before it can follow up.
She doesn't hesitate. She never does. She crashes into its flank with reinforced force and drives it into the remains of a collapsed wall, blades flashing as she goes for joints, balance points, anything that forces it to react instead of advance.
It reacts.
The Lieutenant catches her wrist mid-strike and twists hard. I hear bone protest. Violet snarls and drives a knee into its torso, forcing it to release her just as I surge forward and destabilize the Void it's gathering, overloading the flow so it disperses instead of forming cleanly.
The backlash hits both of us.
Pain lances up my shoulders and down my spine as the energy snaps back, uncontrolled. I grit my teeth and stay on my feet.
This isn't about trading damage.
This is about space.
The Lieutenant shifts immediately. It stops pressing straight through us and starts circling, herding us away from Matte's unconscious form with small, precise movements. Every step it takes is calculated. Every feint is meant to make us overcommit.
Violet adjusts faster than I expect, keeping herself between it and Matte, forcing close engagement where its reach is limited. I stay just outside that range, disrupting its timing whenever it tries to break away, forcing it to choose between advancing or defending.
It chooses violence.
Void condenses around its arm and it hurls the force like a blunt projectile. I tear the flow sideways at the last second, letting it scrape past instead of hit cleanly, and answer with a compressed surge aimed at its legs. Not to stop it. Just to slow it.
Violet capitalizes immediately, slamming into its torso and driving it back another step.
Another building gives way behind it.
The Lieutenant retaliates without pause, backhanding Violet across the street and following through with a kick that sends her skidding through debris. She rolls, comes up, and re-enters before I can even call out.
Good.
I push more energy into alignment, ignoring the warning ache spreading through my arms. My reserves are still deep, but the Interlogue's constraints make every adjustment heavier than it should be. I can't afford mistakes. I can't afford wasted output.
The Lieutenant tests me next.
It vanishes and reappears inside my range, Void-coated fist already in motion. I force reinforcement into place too late to block cleanly. The impact shatters the structure of my barrier and sends me crashing into the ground, breath exploding out of my lungs.
Before it can finish the sequence, Violet slams into it again, shoulder-first, driving both of them across the street. She doesn't let it breathe. She hits and hits and hits, not trying to break through, just trying to keep its focus locked on her.
I force myself upright, lungs burning, vision swimming for half a second before I stabilize it.
Celest's presence behind us flickers.
I feel it when it goes.
Whatever she had left burns out completely, leaving nothing but the weight of her injuries and the sound of her breathing. We're on our own now.
The Lieutenant feels it too.
It presses harder.
We clash again, energy and Void tearing chunks out of the battlefield with every exchange. I disrupt. Violet pressures. The Lieutenant counters. Over and over. No decisive blows, just attrition. Every second drags us closer to a breaking point.
I risk a glance back.
Matte hasn't moved.
The Lieutenant notices.
That's when it commits.
It feints Violet, slips past my next interference, and launches itself straight toward Matte, Void already compressing for a single, lethal strike. There's no time to think. No time to measure.
I burn power.
Everything I have ready, everything I was holding in reserve, I force into one violent surge and hurl it straight into its back. The impact throws it off course and slams it into the ruins of a building that finally collapses under the strain.
The silence afterward is brief.
Too brief.
The rubble shifts.
Void stirs beneath it.
Violet limps back to my side, blood running freely now, blades still up. We don't say anything. We don't need to.
We can hold it.
For now.
But as the Lieutenant pulls itself free and turns back toward us, posture looser, breathing heavier, still unmistakably stronger, I understand the truth of it with cold clarity.
If Matte doesn't wake up soon…
There won't be enough of us left to stop what comes next.