The levee was about to break.

You could hear it in the cracking of shields, the death rattles of soldiers, the sinister groaning of the human structure disintegrating under the pressure. The circle tightened, becoming a trap rather than a bulwark. The stench of despair, acrid and metallic, mingled with that of blood and black sap.

Elisa, her face streaming with sweat and taut with effort, felt the breaking point arrive. Her lead pellets were now just desperate patches, quick fixes on a hull that was shattering. She became something else. The "scalpel" became a hand.

A first puppet, a massive lizardman, charged a group of soldiers. Instead of a clean shot, an invisible force, like a giant palm, plucked it from the air with staggering brutality. She didn't push it. She seized it. And she squeezed. Scales cracked, bones snapped with a wet sound. The body was reduced to a shapeless ball of flesh and thrown like a projectile into the enemy ranks, crushing two goblins with a soft thud.

That was the first act.

A stunned silence, even amidst the Mask's whispers, fell over the battlefield. All eyes, human and monstrous, turned to the young woman. Her expression was no longer one of concentration, but of contained fury, a nervous impatience. She panted, her trembling fingers splayed as if kneading the very air.

The Wooden Mask slowly turned its wooden face toward her. For the first time, there was a tangible glimmer of interest in its empty sockets.

The storm changed its target. The puppets rushed at her, no longer to distract, but to annihilate.

It was a mistake.

Elisa did not take a step back. She opened her arms. Her power unfurled no longer like a thread to stitch the fabric of the battle, but like a fan of invisible blades. She no longer aimed. She *swept*. Entire groups of puppets were mowed down, their legs snapped clean off, their bodies thrown backward as if by a silent explosion. She created spaces, bubbles of void in the living tide. The Mask's influence, that constant psychic pressure, wavered locally, like a flame in the wind.

But it was disorderly, nervous. Sometimes, she was surgically precise, unscrewing an enemy's head from twenty meters away. Other times, she was primitively cruel, tearing the limbs from a puppet one by one in a fit of frustrated rage, like a colicky child dismembering a doll. You could feel she was losing patience, that the source of her power was being channeled by raw emotions.

"Tonar!" she screamed, her voice strangled by the effort.

The warrior understood. He reorganized the defense into a horseshoe, protecting her rear and flanks as she transformed into a living artillery platform. Maggie, seeing the space being created, caught her breath and got back to her feet, her halberd tracing protective circles around the spot where Elisa stood.

And then, Elisa attempted the unthinkable.

Her attention fixed on the Wooden Mask, still impassive on its throne of roots. She reached out a hand, and her telekinetic will, usually so swift and light, became a titanic vise closing around it. She sought to grasp it, to crush it, to tear that dead wood from its pedestal.

Nothing.

It was like trying to grasp water or smoke. Her power, capable of pulverizing flesh and bone, slid over the Mask without any purchase. The creature did not move, but a silent sneer, more unbearable than a scream, spread through everyone's mind. It was an absolute denial. An insulting invulnerability.

Elisa's frustration reached its peak. A hoarse cry escaped her. She redirected her impotent fury onto the battlefield, redoubling her violence, scattering the crowds with a force that made the ground tremble, but it was like striking the waves to stop the ocean. The wooden heart continued to beat, unperturbed.

It was then that Maggie, in a flash of lucidity born from the camaraderie of combat, understood what Elisa did not see.

"Elisa! Not him!" she roared, parrying a blow. "The roots!"

The young woman started. Her gaze feverish, she looked down at the ground. The roots. They pulsed, conduits of energy and will connecting the Mask to its army. They were its nervous system, its anchor.

Changing targets, her fury finally found a purchase.

She drove her fingers into the void, and under the earth, the roots twisted. She didn't break them, she tore them out. Shreds of living wood, thick as an arm, erupted from the soil in sprays of earth and black sap. The battlefield became a workshop of vegetable torture. The puppets, deprived of their link, suddenly became hesitant, their movements losing that deadly synchronicity.

The Mask, for the first time, moved. A slight shudder, a tremor in its body of shadows and wood. The mental sneer fell silent. The shockwave was tangible. Elisa had found a vulnerable spot.

---

The roots were screaming.

Not with a sound the human ear could grasp, but with a frequency so deep it vibrated in the bones. The earth itself seemed to moan under their spasms. The trunks of nearby trees split, branches exploded like dry bones, and the puppet bodies fell one after another, still animated by convulsive tremors, severed from their guiding strings.

Elisa breathed with difficulty. Every movement of her hand pulled a little more at her mind, as if her own brain was tearing from the inside to fuel this monstrous power.

But she didn't stop. She couldn't.

It was the first time she felt the surface of what she carried within her—and it was terrifying.

Around her, the soldiers regained their footing. Tonar shouted orders, his voice hoarse, trying to reform the line. Maggie, her halberd dripping with sap and blood, advanced through the twitching carcasses, a gleam of pure rage in her eyes.

But Elisa, she heard nothing more.

The whole world had narrowed to one sensation: the pulsation.

A rhythmic wave under the soil.

A beat, like a heart, but older, colder.

The Wooden Mask had risen.

Its body, long and segmented, detached from the root-throne with a crack of bark. It no longer had a human form—just a silhouette made of intertwined fibers and faces, screaming in silence. Each step caused sickly vegetation to bloom around it, stems and mushrooms growing at a visible rate, exhaling dark spores.

The roots that Elisa tore out regrew instantly, as if the ground itself refused to release its master.

"You think the earth will obey you?"

The Mask's voice was not a sound, but an intrusive, alien thought.

It insinuated itself into Elisa's mind like a needle.

"You pull on my nerves, little human… but I already have you in my veins."

Elisa gritted her teeth. Her forehead was bleeding, a thin red line flowing between her eyebrows. Her psychokinesis ran wild again, no longer to tear out, but to *force*. She bent the air around her, an invisible compressor. Gravity itself seemed to contort under the pressure. Roots burst by the dozens, creatures disintegrated before they could even approach.

But with each use, her own body cramped further. Her muscles trembled, her eyes now bled.

She was burning her mind like a candle lit at both ends.

Tonar tried to reach her.

"Elisa! Stop, you're going to—"

He never finished his sentence. An uncontrolled wave of energy pushed him backward, as if she had slapped him across the battlefield.

Maggie swore.

"Hell… she's losing herself!"

And indeed, Elisa no longer saw the familiar faces. Only blurred silhouettes in a vibrating world, a canvas of pure energy. Her power expanded, widened beyond herself, brushing against the consciousnesses around her. She perceived the beating of hearts, the movements of air, the resonance of the wood, the quivering of the roots.

It was a symphony.

And she was the conductor.

The Mask attempted a counter: the roots coiled around a section of terrain, lifting an entire slab of earth which it hurled at her like a mountain's fist.

She didn't move.

A simple flick of her wrist—and it all exploded before it could touch her.

But the Mask was not deterred.

Faces began to bloom on its torso: humans, elves, goblins, all frozen in expressions of fear or pain. Among them, Elisa thought she recognized a familiar silhouette—a young girl, perhaps Maggie, perhaps herself, impossible to tell.

Doubt insinuated itself.

And it was enough to crack her concentration.

Thus, the Mask struck.

A root, faster than lightning, shot up from under her feet and coiled around her leg, dragging her brutally to the ground. The impact knocked the wind out of her.

Instantly, the remaining puppets converged.

She tried to get up, but her head spun. The ground vibrated, her power scattered, leaking through all the cracks in her mind.

Maggie screamed her name.

Tonar charged, his sword dripping, smashing everything in his path.

They reached her just in time, covering her weakened body, forming a human bulwark around her.

The Mask, however, still advanced, majestic and calm, like a vegetative god reborn amidst the ruins.

Elisa, on her knees, breathing short, raised a trembling hand.

She whispered:

"I'm not finished…"

And this time, it was no longer psychokinesis alone.

Something else opened within her—a second consciousness, an intuition that did not belong to this world.

The stones around her rose, slowly turning like satellites.

The air vibrated with a new intensity.

And when she opened her eyes, they shone with a deep blue light.

Maggie felt a shiver run through her.

Tonar took a step back, his hand on his weapon.

What they saw was no longer the young woman they knew, but an immense thing, a spirit being born in a human shell.

The Mask halted.

For the first time, it seemed uncertain.

Then, slowly, almost respectfully, it lowered its head.

The levee had given way.

But not the one on the front line.

The one inside Elisa's world.

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