The choice presented itself, tearing him apart—Maggie, trembling and saved, or Alka, motionless and provocative. The mission or the truth. For a suspended instant, the two weights oscillated in the balance of his soul.

Then, he turned towards Maggie. Towards Elisa. Towards Zirel and Julius, their faces tense with urgency.

"We're leaving," he growled, his voice hoarse with contained frustration.

It was the right decision. The decision of a soldier. But Alka was still smiling, as if she had hoped for the other.

They turned around, Zirel and Julius flanking the staggering Maggie, Elisa and Dylan acting as rearguard. They had covered barely ten meters when Alka's voice shot out, clear and sharp as glass.

"You always flee the inevitable, Dylan. Like your father."

The word "father" acted as a detonator. A black, repressed rage exploded behind Dylan's eyes. Reason evaporated. There was only this contemptuous silhouette and the visceral need to silence her.

"NO!" Elisa screamed, guessing his intention a second too late.

Dylan had already pivoted on his heel, his sword drawn in a metallic whistle. He charged, blinded by a fury he no longer controlled. The blade descended, aiming for Alka's neck with perfect murderous intent.

Alka didn't move. She didn't even raise a hand. Her eyes, suddenly, became pits of obsidian, absorbing the torchlight. An invisible halo of energy emanated from her, and Dylan felt a cold, crushing presence invade his mind, like steel flowing into his synapses.

In an instant.

His body no longer obeyed him. His muscles froze, the blade immobilized a few centimeters from Alka's skin. He was a statue of flesh and rage, imprisoned behind his own eyes. A puppet.

"This is better," she murmured. Then her gaze fell upon the retreating group. "Now, let's show them what happens to a dog that bites its master's hand."

The presence in his mind twisted, ordering him to turn. His limbs responded, jerky, as if pulled by strings. His sword rose, pointed no longer at Alka, but at Zirel's back.

"Dylan, no!" Julius yelled, turning and seeing the deadly glint in his pupil's eyes.

But the blade was already in motion, guided by a foreign will.

Suddenly, Dylan stopped dead. His arms stiffened, trembling violently, as if fighting an invisible force. His knuckles whitened on the sword's hilt.

Elisa, a few meters away, had both hands stretched towards him, her eyes shut in extreme concentration. Bluish veins seemed to pulse at her temples. She gasped, each word an effort.

"I... am... holding... you..."

She was using her psychokinesis not to push him away, but to hold his body, muscle by muscle, in direct opposition to Alka's mental control. It was a tenuous bridge established between them, a channel of pure will.

"Release him!" she screamed, addressing Alka.

Alka's smile widened, cruel. "You think you can tear him from me, little witch? His mind belongs to me."

The pressure in Dylan's skull became unbearable. Two titanic forces fought for control of his being. On one side, Alka's icy claw twisting his will. On the other, Elisa's telekinetic grip, warm and desperate, nailing him in place to prevent him from harming.

He groaned, an animal sound of pure suffering. Tears of blood streamed from his nostrils.

Elisa took a step forward, buckling under the strain. Sweat drenched her face.

"He belongs... to no one!"

She let out a cry, and a palpable psychic shockwave surged forth, not at Dylan, but directly at the link binding Alka to him. There was a soundless crack in the immaterial world.

Alka's control wavered. Just for a fraction of a second.

It was enough.

In that infinitesimal breach, Dylan's own will, compressed and humiliated, rebelled. He regained control of his hand, and with a sharp gesture, he opened his fingers.

The sword clattered on the rocky ground.

Alka took a step back, a fleeting glimmer of surprise in her obsidian eyes. The duel had become triangular, and she had just lost her hold.

Elisa and she now faced each other, Dylan's trembling body kneeling between them, defeated and panting. The low rumble still rose from the ground, but now it was covered by the electric silence of their confrontation.

The air crackled. The fight for Maggie was over.

The battle for Dylan's soul had just begun, and it now involved only two women, two powers, two irreconcilable wills.

The silence broke in a mental scream.

Elisa gave her no time to regain her footing. A vortex of psychic energy slammed into Alka, an invisible storm made of pure will. The stones at their feet lifted, vibrating, and the air thickened until it was hard to breathe. Alka raised her hand, a mental shield materializing around her in a flash of violet energy. The two forces clashed in a deafening silence, a cyclone twisting reality without a sound.

"You are but a child playing with forces you don't understand!" Alka growled, her voice distorted by the effort.

"I'm making you understand he's not your toy!" Elisa retorted through clenched teeth, a trickle of blood flowing from her ear.

During this duel of titans, Dylan got to his feet. His mind was bruised, still bleeding from the violent intrusion, but his body responded to an instinct older and deeper than any mental control: Julius's training.

Be a shadow. Be the wind. Be the death one doesn't see coming.

He melted into the shifting darkness created by the psychic lights, his sword forgotten. His daggers were more discreet, more deadly. He took a breath, and the world slowed.

When he lunged, it wasn't a charge, but an apparition. A series of white flashes erupting from the obscurity. His blades traced luminous arcs, impossible for a normal eye to follow, aiming for tendons, arteries, weak points in her armor.

Alka, though Awakened and trained, was divided. Part of her mind fought fiercely against Elisa's crushing pressure. The other tried to track the storm that Dylan had become.

She dodged the first strike, a thrust that should have pierced her throat, with a minimal head movement. She parried the second with her own dagger, the metallic clash shrill. But she didn't see the third. Dylan's blade pierced the flesh of her left arm, swift as lightning, and withdrew just as fast, leaving a bright red gash.

She cried out, more in surprise than pain.

"You wretch!" she hissed, attempting to project a burst of mental energy to repel him.

But Elisa, sensing the opening, redoubled her efforts. Alka's shield wavered, and the burst dissipated before reaching Dylan. He used the chance to strike again. A low kick that nearly shattered her knee, followed by a deep gash to her thigh as she stumbled.

He danced around her, a predator using the psychic storm as cover. He couldn't linger, not even to deliver a killing blow. Each contact was a fraction of a second, each wound a message: I am here, and you cannot have me.

Alka, for the first time, lost her composure. Her mental defense against Elisa was weakening, distracted by the blinding fury of this luminous wasp harassing her. She parried, dodged, but her movements were losing precision. Another blade found its mark, slashing her side, another grazing her cheek.

She was no longer the mistress of the game. She was caught between a psychic hammer and an anvil of flesh and steel.

Gasping, blood staining her clothes, she looked at Dylan with a gaze where fury contended with a form of grudging respect.

"You've become a monster, you," she breathed, before turning her full attention back to Elisa, one last effort to break the psychic assault.

The ground began to tremble, not from an earthquake, but from the raw force Alka was unleashing to survive. The air vibrated, saturated with unleashed spiritual energy, and the blue light of the shattered gem on the ground pulsed suddenly—like a heart refusing to die.

Elisa took a step back, arms still outstretched, her aura flickering between transparency and brilliance. Her mind was at its breaking point.

Dylan, meanwhile, was barely breathing. His blood pounded in his temples, heavy, each pulse echoing in the stigmata. The smell of metal, blood, and dust saturated the night.

Alka slowly straightened up, her injured leg dragging slightly behind her. A new, almost supernatural light surrounded her—an ancient, icy anger.

"You understand nothing…" she said, and her voice vibrated in the air like a double echo, a whisper superimposed over a deep tone.

She raised her injured hand, and the blood flowing from it rose into the air, suspended, before beginning to spin around her. The red drops transformed into luminous spheres, fragments of raw energy.

"You play at destroying what you cannot even name. This war is not yours, Dylan. It never was."

Elisa, trembling but still standing, growled:

"Then why condemn us to it?!"

Alka smiled faintly. "Because you already bear its mark."

And suddenly, everything exploded.

A psychic shockwave swept through the clearing. The ground split beneath their feet. Julius, further away, yelled an order, but his voice was lost in the tumult. Zirel barely had time to shield Maggie behind a collapsed section of wood.

Elisa was thrown backward, hitting a stone wall. The impact knocked the wind from her—but she held fast, her eyes locked on Dylan.

He alone remained standing, swaying.

Alka, despite her wounds, still advanced. Her silhouette wavered in the blue light, half-human, half-specter.

"You think I betrayed you?" she said, her voice doubled. "No. I chose you. Because you alone can bear what they wish to bring forth."

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