Silas existed in the deeper shadows, his Sense Fade active, his Speed Enhancement primed, waiting for a perfect moment.

He'd learned lessons during months of combat, during Trial matches and survival operations and desperate fights against odds that should have killed him.

Big illusions are spectacles, he'd concluded. Grand misdirections that make people gasp and applaud. But tactically? Wasteful. Obvious.

It was better to make minute changes. Subtle alterations to sensory input. Make yourself appear one step further than your actual position. Make tiny scents register differently. Make sound originate from a wrong direction.

Compound small lies into a grander perceptual confusion rather than trying to sell one large falsehood.

So when the acid woman—tracking multiple targets, her enlarged cheeks bulging with prepared attack—focused on his last known position, Silas was already elsewhere.

She spat. Fast-moving acid vomit launched at speed that should have caught him.

It landed.

The acid woman smiled—victory, a confirmation of the hit.

Until she realized it hadn't.

Her strike found one of the Covenant specialists—the quiet one lurking behind the others, easy to overlook, already deep into the weave of a large-scale technique. Power had been pooling around him, swelling toward an area-devastating release that would have wiped out several of them in a single breath.

Silas's Sense Fade had made her see him there. Had convinced her perception that the shadow she was targeting contained the forgettable Initiate rather than her own ally.

A minute change.A simple misdirection. A lethal result.

The male specialist's concentration shattered as acid dissolved his face, his prepared technique collapsing, his scream gurgling through corroded throat.

And Silas—actually positioned behind him, close enough to smell burned flesh—drove his dagger cleanly through the specialist's exposed throat.

The man collapsed, his large-scale attack neutralized before execution, his death quick and efficient.

Silas faded back into shadows immediately, his Sense Fade already making people forget they'd seen anything, his Speed Enhancement carrying him to new position before retaliation could target his actual location.

Two down, he counted. Five Covenant specialists remaining. Plus four Crownhold operatives who've decided we're temporarily allies. Plus us.

Odds improving. Still terrible. But improving.

The acid woman realized what had happened—her expression shifting from triumph to fury as she understood she'd been manipulated into killing her own ally.

She turned, searching for Silas, her cheeks bulging with fresh corrosive payload.

But Silas was gone. Forgotten. Invisible not through absence but through systematic removal from perception.

And somewhere in the medical bay's corpse-strewn chaos, he was already positioning for next strike.

-----

The battle continued.

It had no decisive engagement nor clean resolution. Just grinding, desperate combat where exhaustion accumulated and mistakes killed.

Bright fought Galan with calculated precision, his spatial foresight showing him probability trees where most branches ended in mutual injury or death. The Covenant assassin's Elasticity core made killing strikes nearly impossible—every time Bright landed what should have been fatal blow, Galan's flesh deformed, absorbed, survived.

I need to overwhelm his reactive defense, Bright calculated. Attack faster than he can consciously activate elasticity. Multiple simultaneous strikes. Exhaust his ability to respond.

Easier planned than executed.

In raw strength, they were evenly matched. Galan was a mid-initiate, his second core mirroring Bright's own—an enhancement threaded through muscle and bone. No clear advantage lay there, no comforting gap to exploit. On that front, they stood on equal ground, trading power for power with nothing to separate them but skill and intent.

Bessia and Kora maintained suppression fire against the acid woman, forcing her to dodge, preventing her from targeting Estovia directly. But arrows and throwing knives were limited resources—Bessia's quiver was half-empty, Kora's bandolier depleting.

We are going to run out of ammunition before she runs out of acid, Bessia realized grimly. Eventually she'll get a clean shot. Eventually we'll die protecting someone who might die anyway.

Bessia wasn't in the right headspace. She was still a fledgling, thrown into combat against initiates, and resentment was inevitable—resentment toward the fight, toward the situation, toward whatever cruel chain of events had dragged her here. It simmered beneath her focus, a bitter edge born from knowing she was outmatched and forced to bleed for circumstances she hadn't chosen.

Duncan and Mara held their ground against the sword wielder, their tag-team coordination keeping them alive but costing energy they couldn't afford to spend indefinitely.

Duncan's Bone Guard was cracking faster than it could regenerate. Mara's enhanced reflexes were slowing as exhaustion accumulated.

We're fighting a defensive battle, Duncan understood.Trying to survive until some miracle. But survival costs resources. And we're running out.

The Crownhold operatives engaged remaining Covenant specialists with professional efficiency—they were not allies, exactly, but temporary partners against a common threat. Their coordination with Bright's group was minimal, but their presence shifted the mathematics from impossible to merely terrible.

And Silas—flickering through shadows, striking from unexpected angles, killing when opportunities presented—was single-handedly preventing the Covenant from coordinating their numbers into an overwhelming assault.

Two down already, the Covenant specialists realized. *And we can't find the one killing us. Can't predict his attacks. Can't defend against what we can't perceive.*

The battle ground on.

Seconds bleeding into minutes.

Injuries accumulating.

Resources depleting.

And somewhere above, dawn was approaching—artificial light preparing to rise over Vester's ruins.

Just need to survive until greylight, Bright thought, his blade clashing against Galan's curved weapon. Until reinforcements arrive. Until something changes the equation.

But greylight felt impossibly distant.

And the Covenant specialists were good—trained, coordinated, experienced in exactly this kind of desperate close-quarters combat.

The mathematics said someone would die before greylight.

Multiple someones, probably.

The only question was whose names would be added to Clear Light's Eve's casualty list.

And whether Estovia Armand would be among them.

The medical bay—place of healing sustained its label as a killing ground—witnessing violence that would determine whether principles could survive contact with overwhelming power.

Or whether power simply ground principles into dust.

The answer was still being written.

In blood.

In exhaustion.

In desperate choices made by people too young to die but too committed to surrender.

Clear Light's Eve.

When every healing became wounding.

And every survival cost something irreplaceable.

The battle continued.

And nobody knew how it would end.

Except badly.

For someone.

Probably everyone.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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