Heat climbed the bones of his shins; steam shouldered up from the pool and curled hard around his calves, warm enough to sting. It smelled like wet lime and vinegar under old stone, sharp, caustic, clean in a way that didn’t belong here. The fog kinked. It didn’t just thin; it kinked, like fabric snagging on a nail, and pulled back in a rough ring.

He almost laughed the air out of himself. A tight, startled sound punched his teeth. [colour=536dfe]“It worked,”[/colour] he told the glass grit pricking his palm, told the staff buzzing against his shoulder. [colour=536dfe]“It actually…”[/colour]

Silver cut the world in half.

A circle of motion where the mist had been, the scythe’s arc precise enough to make geometry jealous, and then the caster came apart as silently as he’d arrived. No speech. No curse. Just a body becoming water, sliding away between the carved faces and their endless tears. It was so clean it felt indecent, like a secret performed in public.

Aramis’ grin held a moment longer than it should have, then softened and tilted. He let it go. His draft had made a hole. Her steel had ended the fight. Those were different truths that lived beside each other without arguing.

The ring of clarity widened another pace on the back of the last bubbles. With it came everything his fog had been keeping from him: the medic half-kneeling, one hand sunk into the ruff of her dog to hold him back as bright ribbons spun off her forearm and hip; the armored rifleman dropping to one knee beside her, visor dead, real eyes bright and human and worried; the dwarf standing like a broken anvil, soaked, armor in tatters, chest heaving, still ready to swing at anything that dared breathe wrong.

He looked down at himself, sleeves damp to the elbow, lenses beaded with condensation, hands uncut. The steam hissed around his boots like a creature pleased with itself. The reaction ran well. The push was right. The secondary destabilization? Partial, at best. He replayed the chain without meaning to: hydration heat was adequate; expansion front reached maybe ten feet; but without a lattice to carry it, the effect broke on the first obstruction and eddied uselessly at the edges. The sorrow carrier still hung in the far air like smoke that refused to be a fire.

[colour=536dfe]“Not enough,”[/colour] he said softly, no self-reproach in it, just measurement. He could feel the numbers waiting for paper: less acetate next time; swap the primer for something wetter; stitch a mana frame through the vapor so it doesn’t lose cohesion when it meets resistance.

A movement dragged his attention back outward, the scythe-bearer straightening from a brief, private flinch, pale around the mouth as she rinsed the blood from her face. He looked away on purpose, gave her the grace of not seeing it, and wiped his own lenses with the heel of his wrist. When he looked again, the rifleman was already laying out bandage, the medic’s jaw set hard against the edges of pain she didn’t have a spare hand to acknowledge. The dog pressed close, torn between orders and instinct.

Aramis planted the butt of his staff and let it hum until the tremor left his fingers. Pride and relief came in the same breath, and in the next breath the scale of the room put its hand on his shoulder and nudged: you helped; they bled. Both were true.

He stepped once into the cleaner air his concoction had bought and let himself have the smallest smile, crooked, careful. [colour=536dfe]“Good start. Next time, we will do it properly.”[/colour]

He angled the staff across his body, the old student’s posture settling over him, eyes moving, mind already drafting margins. Phase support, not centerpiece. Keep the path open, keep the people breathing, give the blades and bullets a lane. The new passage yawned ahead, mist tugging from its throat like the breath of a sleeping beast.

Aramis tightened his grip, glanced once toward the scythe’s last glint, once toward the pair at the waterline, and found the center of himself again.

[colour=536dfe]“Stronger.”[/colour] he said, more about himself than anything else, pitched to no one and to all of them at once.