"Anyway, this round is all about—"
"NOW!"
The voice came from nowhere and everywhere at the same time, sharp and sudden, cutting straight through the moment.
Lucas turned toward the sound.
He didn't finish turning.
A streak of yellow light crossed the space between them in less than a heartbeat — there and then not there, a single flash that left no time for anything.
CRASH.
The hemisphere was gone.
Not cracked, just gone. The impact erased it mid-air, fragments bursting outward in every direction, raining down around Lucas's feet in broken pieces before he had fully registered what had happened.
His hands were still curved in the shape of something that no longer existed between them, fingers gripping empty air, the ghost of the weight still there.
He stared at his own hands.
"...What."
The footsteps were already retreating — two figures moving fast through the trees ahead, not stopping, not looking back, already putting distance between themselves and what they'd done.
