The charge did not slow.
The Donso kept advancing.
Not in disorder.
Not in panic.
They moved in a clean, almost unreal rhythm, as if the entire plain was breathing with them.
The ground trembled beneath their steps. Not chaos. Not retreat. A cadence.
Each stride pushed the night farther back.
Each spear found a fracture.
Each shout was not fear, but a reminder.
The Shadows gave way.
Not violently. Not all at once.
But they retreated. Slowly. Reluctantly.
They still tried to reform, but their regeneration no longer carried the same certainty.
Their cores lingered too long in the open.
Their essences cracked, unstable.
Where earlier they had reformed instantly, now they hesitated.
Half a second too long.
On a battlefield, half a second was an eternity.
Diala felt the momentum.
That rare moment—
dangerous, intoxicating—
when an army stopped surviving… and began imposing its will.
Her gazelle totem surged behind her, immense and translucent, carving golden arcs through the air. It was no mere projection. It was real. An extension of her breath.
She struck without hesitation.
Not blindly.
She read the fractures before they fully opened.
To her right, Arbi pierced an entire cluster of Shadows in a single circular sweep, his spear tracing a perfect trajectory.
To her left, a line of Donso advanced in flawless synchronization, their steps locked to the same heartbeat.
Then—
something slipped out of rhythm.
Not an attack.
Not a Shadow.
A dissonance.
Diala's next step felt slightly heavier.
Not enough to make her stumble.
Enough for her to notice.
Her totem hesitated.
A fraction of a breath.
The earth beneath her feet responded with a delay—subtle, almost invisible.
But real.
Diala snapped her head up.
The cold fell.
Not a natural cold.
Not from wind or night.
A cold born from the air itself.
As if the plain had stopped daring to breathe.
The Donso felt it too.
Not consciously—not yet.
But shoulders stiffened.
Grips tightened.
Instincts stirred.
Ahead of them, the Shadows stopped retreating.
They did not charge.
They did not freeze.
They… waited.
Then the night split open.
On the northern ridge, four figures appeared.
They did not emerge.
They glided.
Without sound.
Without dust.
Without weight.
They cast no shadows.
As if the night refused to grant them one.
With every movement, the air changed texture—denser, unstable, like the surface of water about to shatter.
Diala felt her chest tighten.
These were not reinforcements.
They were not pack leaders.
They were something else.
The first advanced straight ahead.
His body was crossed by fractured Purple lines, jagged and uneven, like a shattered blade that still cut space itself.
Zorak. The Broken Edge.
Around him, Nyama twisted, unable to hold a stable form.
To his right walked a massive figure, slow and solemn.
At the center of his chest pulsed a Purple core, steady and cold, like the heart of a dead world.
Mahar. The Silent Judgment.
Farther off, thin as a needle, moved a figure with unstable contours.
His line-eyes slid over the Donso, reading their intentions before they were even born.
Sesha. The Silent March.
And finally came the last.
Or rather… what remained of him.
His form was blurred.
His Purple flowed backward, rising toward the sky instead of falling to the ground.
Behind him, the land itself seemed… erased.
Nar'so. The Traceless.
The totems took a step back.
Not from fear.
From instinct.
The Donso did the same, despite themselves.
These beings were not a unit.
They were a doctrine.
"Hold the line!" Diala shouted. "Do not break!"
But before the order could fully spread—
another presence descended upon the plain.
Slower.
Deeper.
Unbearable.
Behind the four figures, a taller shadow detached itself from the night.
Each step slightly warped the lines of the landscape, as if the world hesitated to remain coherent around it.
Purple fissures pulsed across its body, beating out of sync with the surrounding Nyama.
A shattered mask floated before its face.
The Inverted Hunter.
It did not speak at first.
Reality spoke for it.
Then its voice fell—
cold, weightless—
like a thought forcing itself upon the world.
"They found a counter-vibration.
They stole a beat from us."
Mahar inclined his head slightly.
"Their Nyama burns fast.
They will exhaust themselves."
The Hunter did not move.
"That plan… was insufficient."
Silence.
"They learned how to vibrate our essences.
How to slow our return."
Its head turned slightly toward the plain.
"Nar'so."
The Traceless moved.
And the world tilted.
Diala felt the change before she saw it.
The air grew heavy.
The ground lost confidence.
Nyama… hesitated.
Around Nar'so, the Shadows gained coherence. Their forms stabilized abruptly.
Their regeneration accelerated—but differently.
Drier.
Colder.
Less alive.
Then Nar'so raised his hand.
And the Purple Tempest was born.
These were not projectiles.
Not waves.
They were arcs of dissonance.
Curved Purple blades tore through the air, tracing impossible trajectories, bending and folding back on themselves, as if space itself refused to resist them.
They did not whistle.
They erased.
An entire circle of dust was pulled into a suffocating silence.
The Donso line collapsed.
Not in defeat.
In erasure.
More than ten hunters were torn from the battlefield in an instant, flung out of rhythm like leaves swept away by an unseen inferno.
Their totems shattered.
A buffalo disintegrated.
A leopard fragmented.
A hawk was swallowed by crimson.
"Captain!" Arbi shouted. "His Nyama—!"
"I know," Diala cut in.
She leapt.
Her golden gazelle surged behind her, blazing.
But the Purple wave struck her before she could reach Nar'so.
She was hurled backward, sliding several meters, the breath torn from her lungs.
Around her, the Donso retreated.
Not from cowardice.
Because their instincts screamed an unbearable truth:
This is not an enemy.
It is an absence that chose to walk.
On the Terrace of Roots, Sirani clenched her teeth.
Her squad held JARA—at any cost.
The lines of the Root Network trembled beneath their feet.
"He's forcing dissonance…" she muttered.
"Hold," she said immediately. "Again."
Inside the Grand Tree's command chamber, the rings of the Nyama sphere spun in reverse.
Kani Sira's hawks—many of them—swept across the battlefield, fragmenting vision, struggling to track the impossible trajectories of the crimson arcs.
"Nyama refuses to enter that zone," she whispered.
"JARA is neutralized on that front," Nana said tensely.
The Faama placed his hand on the ground.
"This is Dark Nyama.
Not a power.
But embraced dissonance."
On the plain, Diala rose.
Her totem reformed behind her, denser, brighter.
She planted her feet.
"DONSO! WE DO NOT FALL BACK!"
Nar'so turned toward her.
The Purple tempest swelled.
Gazelle against Void.
Harmony against Dissonance.
The duel had begun.
And the Mandé… held its breath.