The sting came late. First was the rush—the hiss of the shards, the weight of her bat swinging through the fog, the desperate need to move. Then the burn followed, sharp and searing, carving lines across her arms, her hip, the side of her thigh. Shallow, not gutting, but enough to make her stumble.

Her breath hitched, and she went down to a knee with a splash, knuckles whitening on the bat’s handle. Blood curled into the water in ribbons, thin but steady, tugged away by the slow current.

Roscoe’s bark thundered behind her, low and frantic, his paws slapping hard against the stone as he tried to push past her side. She flung out an arm, catching his scruff even as the cuts screamed with the motion.

[color=#697DFF]“No—stay back, boy. I’ve got it. I’ve got it—”[/color] The lie tasted coppery as blood in her mouth.

She sucked in a ragged breath, dragging her sleeve across her brow as if that could wipe away more than sweat. Her chest rose and fell too quick, too shallow, but she ground her teeth against the panic clawing at her ribs. She’d seen worse. She’d patched worse.

Still—God, it hurt. And for a split second she felt stupid, reckless. Charging a caster head-on with a bat—what the hell was she thinking? Marcus’s voice flickered in her skull like an echo: “Don’t you ever run blind into fire, Evie. You’re no good to anyone dead.”

Her throat tightened. She forced it down.

Locke’s HUD-lit silhouette cut through the mist, and she caught the sound of his rifle barking somewhere to her flank. Yumi’s blade had already torn the mage apart, and the mist itself seemed to recoil. Evie exhaled, slow, ragged, forcing her boots under her again.

She hissed as she straightened, shifting her grip on the bat, trying to ignore the hot slickness of blood down her side.

[color=#697DFF]“Not my brightest play…”[/color] she muttered to no one in particular, her voice hoarse.[color=#697DFF]"We all good? Regroup and move forward?"[/color] She called out to the others in the mist.