Serah attacked first.
Not with technique — with everything she had.
Her primordial aura expanded at the moment of impact and the entire chamber shook.
Lira didn't retreat.
She absorbed the blow with a blood magic field she materialized at the last second — not a solid shield, something more like a fluid, the kind that yields and recovers instead of resisting.
Serah tore through it anyway.
Lira stepped back two paces.
The first two steps she'd taken back since emerging from the darkness.
She looked at them.
"Good," she said.
---
Serah didn't answer.
She launched primordial ice — not the speed lance she'd used in training with Kai, but something broader.
A wave.
Lira flew to the ceiling.
The ice hit the back wall and coated it completely — the catacomb stone vanishing under a layer of white that wasn't normal ice.
It was denser.
More still.
The kind that doesn't melt at room temperature but waits.
Lira, from the ceiling, looked down at her.
