The anger burning in Maggie was no longer a timid flame; it was a wildfire, devouring everything in its path. The Wood Mask's sly strike—the attempt to rip her memory away, to drown her in its whispers—had awakened beneath the ashes something older and darker: the house, the flickering television, the stench of death, the cold knife in the hands of a child. That image returned now, sharpened and compressed, and she understood with dreadful clarity that survival was no longer enough. She wanted to tear. She wanted the Mask to know, in bark and marrow, what it meant to face a rage born from the most intimate deprivation.

The halberd vibrated in her hands like an extension of her bones. She no longer sought to sing to soothe spirits, nor to invoke a field to sustain her: she was violence incarnate, the memory of a gesture repeated a thousand times, a movement that had never been allowed to fade. Around her, the battlefield seemed to blur and vanish, as though the only thing that mattered was the massive silhouette of the Mask, the dark cavity where roots pulsed, the bark that mocked the light.

She charged.

Each step swallowed mud like a promise. Soldiers regrouped around her as if they were shadows trailing behind a banner; some still staggered under the weight of the whispers, others howled as they hacked down puppets. But Maggie didn't see them. Her gaze was locked on the central strangeness: that cone of wood and shadow standing there, imperious. The roots writhed, ready to lash—but hesitated, as if they sensed they would be facing not prey, but a force that would strike back.

The first contact was brutal. A black filament darted toward her, brushing her, seeking to seep into her skull. Maggie screamed—not in pain but in defiance—and in that scream she found the old reflex: strike first, think later. Her halberd cleaved the air, shattering the filament into a spray of shadowed fragments. The shockwave nearly cracked her ribs; she felt the burn of black sap splatter across her arm. Her skin prickled, as if plunged into caustic water. She grimaced, planted her feet, and turned pain into leverage.

The Mask did not immediately respond with brute force. Its movement was first an observation, slow, as if the intelligence within sought to understand where human resistance might reveal something unexpected. Then it adapted. A tide of shadows poured across the square, forms neither beast nor wood but something between, animated by the will to preserve their master. They tried to hem her in, to stop her reaching the central bark. Maggie carved through the first wave, her halberd singing, but for every form cut down, two more replaced it. This was a war of attrition.

She thought of the little girl on the bench, her legs trembling that night. She thought of the hand that tore her from the television, the belt snapping in threat. That memory was no longer only a wound; it was a doctrine. She struck again, searching for the fracture point. Each blow was not aimed merely at bark-flesh: it aimed at the structure that allowed the Mask to bind its chains. She had understood, brutally, that a system could be crippled by striking its joints.

A low roar rose from the square when she hit a main root. The halberd made the sap vibrate beneath the bark, and the root contracted like an injured muscle. But the cost was immediate: a searing pain tore through her arms, as though the entire world sought to punish her audacity. She staggered, but her fingers never let go of the shaft. A man collapsed beside her, cut down by an invisible blade, and suddenly the taste of blood filled her mouth. She spat, spat again, and kept going.

In the deepest pit of that fight, Maggie did not feel fatigue in the ordinary sense: fatigue existed, yes—every muscle screamed its revolt, every breath was a victory against weariness seeping from her very bones—but she had learned to draw from other reserves. Memory. Habit. Instinct. There were gestures etched into her flesh like tattoos; she summoned them back like an army of ghosts. She could no longer rely on a stigma to carry her; she had to be the stigma.

She saw Tonar, just for a moment—upright, battering the air to break free of shadow's grip. He was an anchor: he lifted his head, groaned, but remained standing, and that vision was enough to keep her standing. She saw him like a broken mirror, each shard reflecting a shared past of losses and decisions. Her fury was no longer solely personal; it had become collective. She no longer fought just for the child she had been, but for the shoulders upon which resistance rested.

The Mask changed tactics. Its filaments ceased to be mere vines and became instruments of illusion. Voices became images—parents, beloved faces, betrayals—rising before her, flickering like specters. Her mother's face, and the stench of that room, appeared; a hand extended, accusing. The first invitation to surrender was insidious: "You could be the child again, seeking warmth. Give up." Maggie felt her heart waver: the promise of endless rest, the temptation to drop the blade. She shook her head, as one swats a clinging fly, and struck back. Steel sank into the darkness; when she wrenched it free, the bark dripped black.

The battle became a violent conversation. Each strike from the Mask called forth a countermove from Maggie. When illusions rose, she slammed her halberd into the ground, sending a sharp wave to tear the spectral matter; when the soil twisted to topple her, she used the weapon as a lever, breaking points of support. Sometimes she felt the essence lean into fury, vibrating like an animal ready to pounce; in those moments, she drove her blade forward with the will of a child who had nothing left to lose.

Then came the moment where all seemed to tilt: a monstrous root, thick as a trunk, shot from the ground and coiled around her leg. The movement was lightning-fast, the pull so violent she thought she heard her bones groan. The world became a vise, the mud a shroud. Her first reflex was to scream, an animal cry that cracked the air. Then came method. She drove the halberd's tip into the root's joint, found the angle, levered—felt the fiber split with a sick crack. The black receded. She tore her leg free, crashed down hard, and rose again, panting, her mouth filled with the taste of iron.

Little by little, the struggle found another rhythm. Neither she nor the Mask could claim a decisive advantage. Each wound inflicted upon the creature was palliative, each parry left a scar. But Maggie didn't care: her goal was not total annihilation—she knew she was too small for that—but to prove resistance was possible, to prove one could strike a system that claimed to devour everything. She wanted the Mask to remember her name, to feel her wrath, to understand that beneath human skin remained a will ready to snap its strings.

Another illusion blocked her path—this time, the ruined house appeared whole: the bench, the television, the stench. The little girl stood before her, trembling, and the drunken man bent with his belt. Maggie felt her breath tighten, thin as a rope stretched taut. Her fingers clenched around the shaft with newfound force. She stooped, gathered momentum, and in a movement no longer merely technical but ritual, she drove the halberd through the vision—destroying the scene from within. The images shattered like glass. Maggie screamed, almost in relief, and rose again, her face aflame.

The Mask faltered.

It was a tiny victory, inadequate against the vastness of the thing that ruled them. But for Maggie, it proved her memories were not chains; they could be weapons.

She had no time to celebrate. The filaments returned, harsher, eager to learn from her movements. But Maggie was learning too. Her breathing steadied, her rhythm grew measured; she adjusted her steps, repositioned her stance, chose carefully where to burn her strength. The world narrowed into a tunnel where only her halberd, the bark, and the pulse of a heart refusing to be a puppet remained.

When she struck again, the blade did more than cut: it spoke. In the gurgle of torn fibers, it pronounced a mute oath. She would fight to exhaustion, to the slow erosion of her enemy, until the memory of the child was no longer a wound but an anchor. She did not want merely to survive; she wanted survival to mean something.

And then, amid the chaotic din, the howls, the mud and splintered bark, Maggie felt something cold give way. The Mask recoiled as if from a sudden gust, hissing a fury that almost sounded like fear. She stepped forward, halberd low, ready to drive the blade into the bark's flesh.

She was no longer the six-year-old girl. She was the woman carved by the world—scarred, rough, determined. Her hands, still stained with sap and blood, tightened on the weapon's shaft. And she advanced, without calculation, as if each step erased a fragment of the past that no longer had the right to command her life.

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