Elisa had never believed a battlefield could be reduced to such chaos. The carefully laid plans, the coordinated maneuvers, everything that had been thought out beforehand had shattered the moment Maggie had charged forward, halberd first, consumed by a rage greater than reason. The crash of her blows and the brutality of her assaults had forced every soldier, every squad leader, to improvise in the shadow of her carnage.

Elisa saw it clearly. She saw how order became disorder, how tactics turned into instinct. And yet, she did not resent Maggie. On the contrary: the violence of that woman, born of a pain Elisa dared only to imagine, opened breaches no strategy could ever calculate. But it came with a price: the lines were stretching thin, and someone had to stitch them back together.

So she moved.

The whispers of the Wooden Mask had found their way into nearly every ear—bending wills, forcing knees to the ground—but not hers. She felt their pressure against her inner barrier, like endless rain on glass too thick to crack. It knocked, it pressed, it seeped into the fissures, but it never broke through. Her mind held firm, cold, and clear. That clarity was her surest weapon, the one thing nothing could twist.

And in that clarity, her lead bullets became sentences.

She advanced, her breath measured, her gaze sharp. Her hands knew the ritual by heart: seize a bullet, load, aim, press, and watch death fly. No magic, no sacred fire, no chant. Just metal, trajectory, and impact. In this theater where shadows and roots seemed untouchable, her projectiles found flesh with clinical precision. Each shot rang out like a hammer striking an unseen chain.

She spotted a shadow, tall and twisted, descending upon a group of trembling soldiers. She raised her arm, aimed without flinching. The bullet fired, struck, and the shadow burst into a black spray. The soldiers straightened, startled to still be alive. Elisa didn't pause to savor it. She reloaded, fired again, shattering a root that had snaked toward the legs of a squad leader.

Around her, the field vibrated like a cage rattled by a giant beast. Maggie struck, screamed, and forced the Mask to retreat, but in doing so she drew a tide of enemies to herself. Elisa, meanwhile, moved along the margins, cutting through that tide like a needle through cloth. Each shot wasn't only about its power—it was about what it gave to others: a breath regained, a step won, a stolen moment from despair.

She also noticed Tonar, still standing despite claws and invisible blades. He lacked Maggie's ferocity or her own precision, but he had that solid stubbornness that kept the lines from breaking. Elisa met his eyes for a fleeting second: a silent exchange, both of them understanding that without saying a word, they were holding the field together, each in their own way.

But the whispers swelled, as if the Mask felt resistance building despite the chaos. Familiar voices, foreign voices, all swirled through the air like poison. Some soldiers collapsed to their knees, sobbing, their weapons sinking into the mud. Others struck out blindly, lost in hallucinations no one could dispel. Elisa clenched her teeth. She couldn't save everyone, but she could ensure the line didn't collapse completely.

So she positioned herself. Between Maggie and the others. Between the heart of rage and the soldiers who risked being consumed by its wake. She kept firing, again and again, her fingers numbed by repetition, but each bullet found its role. She knew she wouldn't kill the Mask. She knew she wouldn't even scratch its essence. But she could shatter its appendages, cut its claws, lessen the pressure around Maggie and Tonar, giving them the chance to strike harder.

Every gunshot rang as a reminder.

A reminder that reason still had a place amid madness.

A reminder that lead could be sharper than living wood.

A reminder that Elisa wasn't there to stand idle, but to carve her part into the battle.

And in her mind, a single vow: as long as her bullets lasted, as long as a single drop of breath remained in her lungs, the Mask would not advance a step further.

———

Elisa had always known her power was never a stable gift. Psychokinesis, to her, was not an exact science, nor a finished discipline. It was a shifting field, an inner mist she brushed with her fingertips, like deep water she had never dared to dive into. But here, in the heart of carnage, under the suffocating weight of the Wooden Mask, she felt that water boil and call out to her.

Her lead bullets were not mere projectiles. In her hands, they became vectors, extensions of her will. Each time she took one, laid it in her palm, she felt its weight resonate far beyond the metal—it was as if she grasped the raw possibility of rewriting a moment of battle. She inhaled, let her mind skim over the surface of the bullet. And when she fired, it wasn't just a mechanical shot—it was a thread binding her intent to the trajectory.

The first target was a goblin, its eyes glazed, drowned by the Mask's influence. Its jaw snapped like a broken puppet, its claws flailing without reason. Elisa aimed at the temple. The bullet left her hand soundlessly, as if the world had been sucked into a single silent pulse. The impact burst its skull into a spray of dark matter, and the creature crumpled without a cry.

No time to savor: already two lizardmen lunged at her. Their scales glistened with sickly dampness, their crude weapons clashing in a primitive rhythm. Elisa raised her hand, fired twice in swift succession. The first hit the sternum of the nearest, halting its rush; the second pierced the jaw hinge of the other. The black wood crawling under their skin exploded into strands, and their bodies collapsed, undone.

Each shot sharpened her art. She wasn't just aiming for vital points by instinct or training anymore—she was beginning to sense, almost divine, where the Mask's essence burrowed into its puppets. Veins of shadow pulsed in their flesh, invisible to most, but perceptible to her. Her eyes saw the target, but her psychokinesis revealed the flaws, like glowing weak spots she could strike to unravel the marionettes.

She inhaled deeply. A third wave came: a human, once a soldier, now hollow-eyed beneath an empty sky. He still wore his uniform, but his gestures were those of a doll. Weapon raised, he advanced without hesitation. Elisa felt a pang, fleeting compassion, but she turned it into cold calculation. One bullet, loaded. She stretched out her arm, let her mind skim the metal. The shot flew—not to the heart, but to the shoulder joint, where the shadow filaments coiled. The puppet's arm detached, the weapon clattered, and the man collapsed—not destroyed, but disarmed.

"That's it…" she thought. Not to kill, but to cut the strings.

Her precision sharpened with each breath. She no longer only calculated angle or speed; she bent the air around her shots, stretched it like an invisible cord to correct deviations. Her psychokinesis, until now silent, was finding its voice. She felt her bullets whistle like needles guided by her will, never lost, never erratic. The humanoid creatures—goblins, lizardmen, corrupted humans—fell one after the other, with chilling regularity.

But the Mask did not stay passive. Seeing its puppets cut down by the dozen, it intensified its assault. The whispers turned to roars, sending waves of illusions to disturb her aim. Elisa saw, for an instant, her mother appear in the haze, hand outstretched, lips trembling. She blinked, breath faltered. The bullet in her hand quivered, hesitant. But she raised her arm, emptied her mind, and fired. The illusion shattered like glass, dispersed by the path of lead.

A cold smile touched her lips. She had just realized that even hallucinations could be broken like obstacles, if she aimed her intent at the right place.

She continued, methodical.

A goblin leapt from above—her bullet caught it midair, tearing half its face apart.

A lizardman tried to encircle her—she shot its legs, breaking its balance, then finished it with a second impact.

Three human puppets rushed forward, their broken cries echoing like rattles. Three shots, three impacts. Three clean falls.

And with every kill, Elisa felt a deeper vibration. As though behind her gesture, a tide of power waited for her to dare sink deeper. Psychokinesis was no longer a whisper but a rising wind, offering sharper trajectories, deadlier impacts. She could almost control the speed of her projectiles after they left her hand, guiding them with invisible threads.

She tried.

One bullet fired, aimed at a goblin—but at the last instant, she thought to bend the path. The bullet obeyed, swerved like a falcon midflight, and pierced the neck of a lizardman closing from the flank. Elisa inhaled, heart racing. She had crossed a threshold. She was no longer just firing: she was commanding.

The attackers fell, and the human soldiers, watching the cold efficiency of her shots, found courage again. Where the whispers crushed wills, her bullets gave back breath. She became a fixed point, an anchor. A lone silhouette in the heart of chaos, her hands sculpting the battlefield one bullet at a time.

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