The Price of Survival
Inside Victor's head, Diana spoke - soft but clear. Her words stayed there, hanging without sound.
"That is why you cannot fight the way you used to - back when you had nothing to lose… and no one waiting for you out there."
A weight pressed into Victor's ribs. The phrase stayed there.
A haze settled over the scene, as if the fight had slipped into another world. His eyes shifted slowly, finding Alibaba once more.
A hush sat heavy in the hollow where the necromancer held his ground - still as a needle in windless cloth. Upward stretched his bone-white hands, knuckles taut, fingers like cracked spears pointing skyward. Around him swirled cold magic, sharp and spinning, biting at the dark. Light bled through cracks, thin and ghost-blue, icing over every ridge and edge. Silence broke just before the surge - he waited, breath gone, as power snapped tight.
Victor could feel it.
"…Yeah."
His grip tightened around the scythe.
