We reached Blair's position.
The heat inside her kill zone was intense, uncomfortable in ways that went beyond temperature. The air itself seemed to vibrate with energy, and my skin felt tight in that specific way skin feels when it's receiving more infrared radiation than it's designed to handle.
Charles moved on Blair's flank, his programmed sequences recalibrated for jungle combat. Dante's nullification fields created dead zones where magical attacks simply stopped existing. Hikaru's phantom cuts opened things up from angles that shouldn't have been possible.
The swarm pulled back.
Not a retreat. They weren't running. But the dive attacks stopped coming in waves, and the coordinated strikes lost their edge. The creatures had changed their behavior, transitioned from raw aggression to something that looked more like calculation, more like thought.
