The metal shrieked. It was the sound of ultimate structural failure, raw and agonizing, as the pressure that I channeled snapped the base of the second radio tower.
The world lurched sideways.
The tower didn't fall cleanly; it buckled inward toward the pathway, dragging its cables like severed arteries. I instantly released my grip, throwing myself backward into the chaos.
I hit the circular pathway, not landing on my feet, but skidding in a controlled slide across the slick planks, narrowly avoiding a segment of the platform that splintered and plunged into the sea below.
"The Colonel's ghost won't save you, boy!"
Ramsey bellowed, his voice rising above the roar of the collapsing metal. He didn't look up at the destruction. He was still locked in a fierce, destructive brawl with Maro about twenty feet away on the sea floor, but his focus was entirely on me.
One of the assassins, the last one on the main structure, scrambled down the tilting tower and tried to leap to the collapsing platform. He misjudged the distance, hitting the edge of a floating stone shard. He vanished with a choked cry.
The final assassin, who had been climbing the third tower, recognized the futility of the high ground, and so in a feat of pure athleticism he swung off one of the severed wires and then made a clean, practiced dive into the deep water surrounding the arena, seeking to escape or flank from below.
The arena was now an unstable constellation of floating debris. The central hole where Rist dangled was beginning to stretch, the stone cracking away from the mooring point of the chains.
My target was Rist. I sprinted across the nearest unbroken fragment of the platform, the gash in my side protesting violently. The Law of Action was a burning coal in my gut, forcing my body to override the pain.
"Rist! Hold on!" I yelled.
"Don't touch me!" Rist screamed back, his voice thick with pain and hatred.
"You think a shared memory makes you my savior? You're just a low-life puppet the General is using to shame me!"
I ignored him and reached the central ring. The chains binding Rist's ankles were groaning, the metal links visibly stressed.
Ramsey, seeing my intent, broke contact with Maro. He moved with a horrifying, unnatural grace across the unstable seafloor. He didn't run; he used powerful, measured strides, the water parting around him as if he were wading through air.
"He is mine, boy," Ramsey said, his voice calm, yet radiating pure, focused malice.
"The price of the Colonel's conscience must be paid with his life. You can't stop the inevitable."
Maro used the opportunity of Ramsey's turn to throw himself forward, a move Maro executed well with an annoyed sigh at that. He grappled Ramsey's neck, channeling his own, clearly greater, mastery of the Law of Action into a move of pure, gravitational torque.
"He is not yours, General!"
Maro roared, his face tight with effort.
"You want the boy? You take me first!" Maro, still latched to his neck, swung his body and ended up in the perfect setup to execute a devastating cutter suplex.
Ramsey didn't even look down, eyes still locked onto me. In midair just before the impact, he drove his fist straight down. It was not a punch, but a concentrated kinetic burst—a high-level application of the Law of Action, focused on instant nullification of mass. Maro was thrown backward through the now knee-deep water, skidding into the churning silt cloud, coughing violently.
Ramsey stepped onto the floating platform without hesitation, the stone barely dipping under his weight. The sheer authority in his movements was terrifying.
He rushed me.
I couldn't run. I was pinned between the general and the collapsing center. I had to pay the cost of this final action.
I channeled every fiber of my being, every drop of the adrenaline-fueled will I inherited from Rist's traumatic memory, into my hands. This was not a move for speed, or balance, or strength. This was the Law of Action applied to destruction.
I didn't aim for Ramsey. I aimed for the center of the platform beneath the chain's anchor.
Ramsey was a blur, his fist pulled back for a blow that would shatter my skull.
"You're just a child playing hero!" Ramsey snarled.
"And you're a monster who orders the slaughter of children!" I screamed back, using the colonel's rage as fuel.
The general's fist was inches from my face. At that same moment, my two hands slammed down onto the stone, focused on the central anchor point.
The Law connected. The low-fragment hex ring on my finger discharged completely, cracking under the strain. The energy, combined with the instability of the two collapsed towers, finally overloaded the arena's core stability.
The ground did not crack; it exploded!
The entire central ring where Rist was chained shattered outward in a violent, upward burst of pulverized stone and water pressure. Rist's chains, no longer anchored to a solid base, snapped free and whipped upwards, sending him tumbling into the chaos.
Ramsey's lethal punch missed, striking only the air above the space where I had been. The force of the missed punch and then the platform's complete failure was so immense it ripped the air from my lungs. I was no longer on solid ground; I was launched sideways by the blast wave.
The last thing I saw was Ramsey's eyes—not angry, but surprised, his form momentarily unstable as he fought the physics of the crumbling arena.
Then I was flying, tumbling through the darkness, the roar of the collapsing arena deafening.
I hit the water hard, flung many yards away from the arena, sinking immediately into the deep, turbulent sea. The water was not clear; it was thick with the black, noxious silt of the seafloor, turning the world into a disorienting, suffocating cage.
I gasped, swallowing a mouthful of the bitter water. The pain in my side screamed, and the focus of the Law of Action dissolved completely, leaving me only with the primal, panicked urge to surface.
But I wasn't alone. As I struggled, a heavy, familiar weight slammed into me from the side, followed by the frantic, thrashing struggle of a man who couldn't orient himself. Rist.
He was still shackled and sinking fast, his flailing hands locked onto my throat in the murky darkness. I couldn't see him, but I felt the desperate, terrified grip. He wasn't trying to kill me; he was just drowning and needed purchase.
Suddenly, the cold, suffocating blackness was pierced by a surge of pure, searing clarity. I wasn't feeling my own pain anymore. I was feeling his overwhelming terror of being trapped, his debt of salvation, and his frantic desire to break the surface.
Our panicked wills, submerged in the chaos, fused.
I lost the ability to tell where my mind ended and the Colonel's began. And in the fusion, a new, cold clarity emerged—
The fight wasn't over. It had just moved to the one place Ramsey couldn't follow easily.