David evaded.Stepped left. Ducked. Moved backward again. Reading the trajectory of each strike just before it fully committed, placing himself in the spaces between the attacks rather than attempting to manage the attacks themselves.The pattern repeated.Attack. Evasion. Attack. Evasion.And with each exchange, the attacker was getting faster.Noticeably faster—not the incremental improvement of someone warming up or finding their rhythm, but the exponential acceleration of someone whose technique was feeding on itself, using each motion to generate more energy for the next motion in a cycle that was building toward something unsustainable but that had not reached that point yet.Naomi was watching.She could not look away—could not redirect her attention to anything else happening in the room because what was happening between David and this man had become the only thing that mattered. She had seen David fight. Had watched him handle Oscar and Alice with the kind of efficiency that

The silence that followed David's question was not empty.It was filled—densely filled—with the specific quality of tension that belongs to moments when someone has just said something that fundamentally alters the terms of a confrontation, when the power dynamic that everyone present believed they understood has just revealed itself to be something different from what it appeared to be.The Lord Supreme was staring at David.At the man who should have been kneeling—who should have been crushed into the floor, whose body should have been compressed by gravitational force so overwhelming that resistance was not a category that existed, was not an option that the human nervous system could even consider attempting.At the man who was standing.Still standing.In holes. Knee-deep holes where the floor had disintegrated around his legs under pressure that should have turned bone into powder and flesh into something unrecognizable. But standing nonetheless—upright, relaxed, his posture car

David said nothing at first.He just stood there—hands broken, chest damaged, blood still occasionally appearing at the corners of his mouth when he breathed in ways that disturbed whatever internal injury had been inflicted. Standing in the middle of a building that had been systematically destroyed by the forces that had been released inside it, surrounded by bodies and debris and the accumulated evidence of an evening that had escalated far beyond what anyone present had anticipated.And he was smiling.Not triumphantly. Not with the aggressive satisfaction of someone who has just proven a point they needed to prove. Just—quietly. The small, private smile of someone who has just confirmed something they suspected and who finds the confirmation mildly satisfying."Point of correction," David said finally.His voice was still quiet—still affected by the damage, still carrying the strain of someone whose body is working harder than usual just to produce sound. But clear enough. Focuse

The three men looked at each other.Just looked—standing in the positions they had taken up when they had been ordered to evacuate, their eyes moving from one face to another in the specific, silent communication of people who need to confirm something without speaking it aloud, who need to verify that everyone present is thinking the same impossible thing.Their lord had not come out.David had come out.Walking. Injured, clearly—moving carefully, showing visible signs of damage—but walking. Alive. Capable of independent motion. Still functioning.Their lord had not.The building behind David was silent. Empty. Showing no signs of anyone else preparing to emerge. Just the quiet, damaged structure with its cracked walls and shattered windows and the accumulated evidence of violence that had exceeded what the space was designed to contain.The conclusion arrived simultaneously in all three minds.The Lord Supreme was dead.It was not possible.And yet—The evidence was standing in fron

Dr. Silver felt the words land.Felt the specific, uncomfortable awareness of someone whose carefully maintained pretense has just been exposed—not cruelly, not with intent to humiliate, but with the straightforward observation of someone who has noticed a contradiction between what was said and what was done.She had kept the pictures.All of them—the awkward university photos from years ago, the ones she had complained about at the time, the ones where she had said David looked strange or the lighting was bad or the composition was off. The ones she had claimed to be deleting immediately after taking them because they were not worth keeping.She had kept them.And now David knew."Why are you using that to mock me?" she said.Her voice carried genuine discomfort—not anger, not defensiveness, but the specific embarrassment of someone whose private actions have been revealed and who is now being confronted with the gap between what they said they would do and what they actually did."