Elowen closed her eyes and kept breathing. The tree answered again. The canopy folded over her like a cloak.
From the edge of her hearing came the sound of birds she had never seen and wind in leaves that had never grown in any field on that world.
These were not illusions, and Lilith's reflections could not catch them. They were memories the arena held—of life that had once moved through it when it was a branch of something greater.
Elowen borrowed them, not as weapons but as weight. Weight is steady. Weight is real. Weight makes lies slide off.
The first line of the army struck and vanished into the roots. The second line cut upward and split, their blades grazing bark and sparking light.
The third line kicked off the mirror-sky and dove. They met a branch that should not have fit where it fit, a branch that curved through five angles at once and still held its shape.
The branch broke against it like waves breaking on a cliff.
