The mirrored loose camp was silent. Too silent.
A stillness clung to the air, thick and unbroken, like the breath of something unseen holding its patience in the dark. The ground, a warped reflection of the world above, faintly shimmered with an eerie light, its surface cracked and frozen beneath the cold glow of the distant, fractured moon.
Celia stood at the edge of the makeshift camp fire’s reach, her posture rigid, controlled. She didn’t move, didn’t blink. The only sign of awareness was the slow, calm exhale that left her lips.
Her deep blue irises flickered, reflecting the distorted embers.
There.
She saw them.
Even if no normal eye could perceive them, she did. Eagle Gaze peeled back the veil, cutting through the haze, the distance, the unseen. Two figures, standing just beyond the fire’s shifting glow, bodies wrapped in the warping mirage of the mirrored world.
Jess stood beside her. She hadn’t noticed them yet. Not with her eyes. But she felt them. That unnatural silence. The way the air held its breath, thick with something unseen, wrong.
A shift in reality. A flicker... subtle, almost imperceptible. And then...
Flick!...
Like the universe exhaling, setting itself right.
Two figures materialized.
The campfire’s glow twisted, bending around their forms as they stepped fully into the world.
One, tall. Broad shoulders. Dark blue eyes, sharp and weathered. Thick black hair, wild, unkempt, with a coarse beard that made him seem like a caveman. A wild one.. hungry. unshaken. Guoly.
The other, shorter. But height didn’t measure her presence. Dark green eyes, alive with something unreadable. Her long green hair tied back, framing a face that held a knowing, wide smile. Hela.
"You saw us, didn’t you?"
Hela’s voice carried through the quiet, smooth, laced with something playful.
Celia didn’t answer.
Her gaze remained steady. The sea in the dead of night.
Then, finally, she spoke.
"When was this planned?"
Hela’s smile didn’t fade. If anything, it curled wider. "Oh, who knows… Call it a blessing from the gods," she mused, tilting her head slightly. "One that let us find our target early."
"Dumbass," Celia muttered.
The smile thinned. Not gone. Just… quieter. "I think," Hela said, her voice dipping lower, "you aren’t in the right position to say that."
A sound.
Shhhk.
The whisper of shifting metal.
Both Hela and Guoly activated their Exoskeleton Bio Armor in perfect tandem.
The transformation wasn’t slow. It wasn’t gradual.
It was instantaneous.
A liquid-metal spread, creeping over their bodies in a rapid flood of organic mesh, twisting into armor, into weight, into something more. Plates of shifting black steel, pulsing with an internal, almost living glow, wrapped around them, locking into place like sentient machinery. Their forms grew heavier, defined.
Celia’s fingers curled around the hilt of her frost Imbued blade.
A pulse. A low, creeping hum as icy blue veins slithered across its surface, the edge coated in a frost so absolute, the air itself recoiled from its presence.
Her gaze flicked to Jess. Already prepared.
The greatsword in Jess’s grip burned... a deep, smoldering glow licking its edges, flames curling and snapping in the still air, hungry, alive.
Celia exhaled. "Be careful." A quiet murmur. "They’re in their Second Evolution."
Jess nodded. Silent. Her grip tightened.
Hela smirked.
"You’ve got sharp eyes, huh?" Her head tilted slightly. "How about I take them..."
The words never finished.
She vanished.
No blur. No shift. No transition.
Just gone.
Celia moved.
Her blade snapped up..
Clang!
Steel met steel.
Sparks erupted as the two weapons locked, grinding together in a screech of metal.
Hela appeared just behind her.
Her curved blade pressed hard against Celia’s frost weapon, the edges grinding in a slow, intentional force. A thick, oozing liquid dripped from its surface.. greenish-black, clinging to the steel like something alive.
Poison.
A creeping, corrosive rot.
Celia’s arms tensed. She didn’t give it time to settle.
Her frost spread, an instantaneous reaction. Ice webbed from the point of contact, crawling up Hela’s blade, freezing the poisonous liquid in place before it could reach her weapon’s hilt.
Hela’s smirk didn’t fade. If anything, it widened.
"Clever."
And then,
A sudden force.
Blur.
From the left Jess reacted.
Her greatsword twisted, snapping up... But then..
A foot met steel.
BOOM!
The mirrored world trembled beneath the impact. The air itself warped from the sheer magnitude of the attack like a force of a tidal wave crashing against unyielding steel.
Jess’s armored boots dug into the frozen loose camp ground, grinding against the slick surface as she skidded back, flames crackling around her form. The embers licked at the frost beneath her, but the heat met an opposing force.. something more fluid, yet just as absolute.
Water.
Not ordinary water.
A liquid that bent reality, that dragged time and space with it, that moved with the weight of something beyond the physical. It curled around Guoly, warping in and out of existence, distorting the mirrored world as if the very laws of space and time struggled to contain it....
Null Water.. Just like her Flames
Jess’s gaze snapped up.
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Guoly stood there, unmoved. His dark blue eyes met hers... calm, measured. Unshaken.
"That isn’t your fight, little girl."
He vanished.
Not a blur. Not a shift.
Just gone.
But in that moment.. A ripple.
Behind her.
A whisper of displaced air.
Fwoosh!
Guoly swung his greatsword with a blinding speed that defied time..
Water pooled along its length, distorting the world in its wake, bending light, bending reality. A downward slash, fast, absolute.
It was going to hit Jess at any split broken seconds from now... But she didn’t flinch.. didn’t hitch... She only smiled... Jess only smiled.
In that moment, her body burst into embers as Guoly great sword carved through nothing. Only air and flames.
It was then the battle unfolded in fragments of motion.
...
Clang!
Celia and Hela... a clash of corruptive frost and venomous void.
Celia’s movements were measured, precise. Sharp. Her blade wove through the air in perfect arcs, each strike backed by an absolute, creeping frost that sought to consume, to corrupt.
Hela moved like a darkness. No, less than a shadow. A flicker. Her form bent, her very presence twisting in and out of existence, slipping through the smallest gaps, striking from angles that shouldn’t have existed.
Clang!
Their blades locked.
Celia stepped back... a fraction of a second before Hela’s strike could cut through where she had just been.
A brief misstep.
Hela’s stance shifted, the slightest loss of balance.
A mistake. An opening..
Celia moved.
Her armored leg swung.. a blur of motion, an unstoppable force.
The impact was solid.
Bam!
Hela’s head jerked back, her body snapping with the force of the blow.
Then.. Celia’s fist came next.
Cold cascaded through her arm, creeping frost surging up her knuckles, crystallizing in an instant.
A single strike.
A deafening crack.
Hela’s form launched backward, her body skidding across the frost-filled mirrored ground, ice spreading in her wake.
As she just stared silently.. Her smile widening ever so slightly...
In the meantime Jess and Guoly.. a battle of pressure, of power.
Jess’s greatsword carved through the air, a relentless onslaught of flame and fury.
Guoly met every strike.
His water moved before she did, countering before her flames could fully ignite.
He was slowing her. Pressing her back.
But Jess didn’t falter.
Boom!
The ground ruptured where she had just been... Guoly’s blade crashing down with the weight of an unstoppable force.
But she had already moved.
A blur of embers.
Her greatsword thrust forward, fast. Precise.
The blade pierced through Guoly.
Or at least, it should have.
Jess’s expression didn’t change. But her grip tightened.
Her greatsword had gone straight through him.
Like cutting through water.
No wound. No resistance.
Nothing.
He just stood there.
Unmoving.
Immune.
A cold realization settled in her gut.
Her flames didn’t work.
Her attacks... did nothing.
Jess’s instantly wanted to step back.. But then..
Dong!
The world slowed.
Time itself bent around her.
And Guoly had already closed the distance.
His greatsword swung.
A clean hit.
The blade met her armor.
A sickening, tearing screech as steel met steel.. sinking in deeper.
The Exoskeleton Bio Armor split.
The greatsword carved into her side, a deep, vicious gash.. almost severing her in half. Blood instantly gushed out.
Molten red pooled at her feet, staining the mirrored ground.
Time suddenly snapped back.
The moment caught up.
Jess vanished.
Her body erupted in flames.. reappearing a short distance away.
Guoly didn’t even turn.
As if he had barely noticed if something or someone like her existed...
Seeing this, Jess exhaled.
Then she smiled.
A slow, deliberate curve of her lips.
Flames roared to life around her.
Not just flames. Something more.
The wound at her side.. already began sealing.
The fire in her veins burned hotter.
Licking at the edges of her armor.
Coiling around her fingers.
Then, slowly, intentionally, she pointed her greatsword at Guoly.
"…Again."
For a moment there was nothing but a silent beat.
Like a skip in time.
Then...
Their figures blurred.
A final, resounding CLANG!.