The battlefield remained fractured where his crescent strike had torn through it.
Sections of reinforced branch continued to fall through the rain in heavy fragments, vanishing into the chaos below. The layered network Elenara had built was no longer dense. It had gaps now. Open lines. Exposed angles.
Kaedor stood in the cleared space he had carved, vitality still surging through him. His breathing had deepened, shoulders rising and falling with visible strain, yet the pressure radiating from him had not diminished. If anything, it felt harsher, less restrained.
Elenara landed on a surviving extension of wood, balanced above him.
She did not withdraw.
She did not rebuild what he had destroyed.
Instead, she widened the field.
The response did not begin above the surface.
It began below.
Deep beneath the castle, the root system shifted. Not a single branch. Not a single pillar. The entire network.
The terrain ceased to be stable.
