The knife block shuddered in the air, and then exploded.
Blades spun outward like shrapnel, whistling through the kitchen like hornets. Kali ducked behind the shattered island, the marble countertop sparking as a blade ricocheted off its edge. One knife embedded itself in the wall inches from his face.
Priene wasn't so lucky.
A paring knife caught her in the her organic arm as she dove behind a couch fragment, tearing into flesh. She grunted but didn't scream, yanking it free with gritted teeth and flinging it aside, blood streaking her leg.
"Keep her distracted!" Kali shouted.
"Wasn't planning on seducing her," Priene snapped, popping up just long enough to fire two rounds. One struck the wall. The other pinged off a mid-air shimmer, a psychic shield. Elira barely flinched, her eyes glowing brighter now, veins crawling with that same violet fire.
The floor cracked beneath her bare feet as she lifted into the air, hovering a meter above ground.
She raised her arms and the entire dining table groaned, then launched it toward Kali's position.
He sprinted out from cover just in time, the slab of steel and glass smashing the island apart. Shards rained across the kitchen. A chair hurtled at his head. He ducked and fired, twice. The shots cracked loud, but the girl caught both bullets mid-air with a flick of her hand, freezing them in place like insects in amber.
Then she sent them back.
Kali twisted mid-air, barely dodging as one grazed his shoulder, punching into the cabinet behind him.
His arm went numb.
Priene rushed her.
Blood streamed down her thigh, her steps uneven but fueled by rage. She let off three quick shots as she closed the gap, two aimed at Elira's center mass, the third for her leg.
Elira caught Priene mid-lunge with a savage telekinetic grip, suspending her in the air like a marionette. Her limbs jerked against invisible strings, joints locking as the force curled her body in unnatural arcs. One of her mechanical arms groaned under the pressure, servo-motors whining in protest as Elira's psychic grip began to fold it inward like paper under flame.
Kali surged forward, every nerve screaming, hand outstretched, not to strike, but to infect. He reached for the well of Grief within himself, that deep, black flood of loss and failure and betrayal that festered beneath his bones. He intended to pour it into her, an emotional malware, a payload of sorrow laced through the Ninefold Thought.
But she saw him.
With a flick of her fingers, he was pinned mid-stride. His back slammed into the far wall with crushing force. Air left his lungs in a single guttural exhale, and something in his shoulder gave way with a pop. The pressure on his chest was immense, like a slab of concrete resting just beneath his collarbone. His arms trembled, and his fingers twitched against the pistol still clenched in his right hand.
Across the room, Priene writhed in agony. Her body bent at cruel angles, like she was being twisted by an unseen god. Her mechanized limbs sparked, the internal gyros spasming under stress. One of her knees popped, and her breath caught in a scream she didn't have the strength to release.
Kali's heart thudded painfully. A memory stirred, his mother's last breath in a collapsing building, the sound of rain against a dark night, the daedalus aflame. He summoned that agony, that unbearable weight, and poured it into the bullet as he raised his pistol with the last ounce of strength his battered body could provide.
He pulled the trigger. The kinetic round ripped through the air, sorrow incarnate. Elira had dropped her shield when she seized control, her focus divided between pain and power. The bullet hit her chest, and the impact wasn't just physical, it was existential. She convulsed as if struck by a ghost.
She dropped them both.
Kali crumpled to the floor, vision flickering. His breath rasped through cracked ribs. Across from him, Priene hit the ground like a felled tree, her limbs twitching. But Elira still stood, hunched and shaking, her eyes burning with rage and something older, fear. She turned back to them, trembling hand rising again.
But before she could summon another thought—
Priene raised her head. Her voice rang like thunder. "Enough."
The word wasn't just sound. It stuck. The fabric of the air folded in on itself as the syllable took hold.
Kali felt it instantly, the Vow. A cognitive pressure not of this world exploded outward from Priene, washing over the room like divine ordinance. Elira's next movement froze mid-gesture. The rising couch paused mid-air, hovering in a quivering, hesitant stasis.
The lights flickered.
Time slowed. Something ancient echoed behind Priene's voice, as if generations of her ancestors had spoken in unison. Her eyes had gone pitch-black, swallowing all light. She was no longer just flesh and tech, she was consequence.
And Kali realized, in that moment, with absolute clarity: she had broken through the cognition blockade. Priene had reached second-order cognition.
Before, her Vows had been personal, bindings that etched themselves only into her flesh and spirit. But now?
Now they could bind others.
"I move only of my own design," Priene intoned. Her voice didn't echo in the room. It echoed in being. Each word fell with the weight of truth, sigilic, undeniable. She rose to her feet, blood crusting at her temple, and lifted her machete with reverence, like a priest claiming a relic.
Elira screamed.
It wasn't rage, it was defiance, desperation, and power too wild for one mind to hold. A telekinetic gale exploded outward. Every object in the room rose violently into the air. Couches, tables, shards of glass and broken floorboards, all caught in a swirling cyclone of fury. The very walls seemed to pulse as if rejecting reality's new rules. Paint peeled, tiles cracked, and the ceiling trembled with strain.
Someone else stumbled into the room in crawl, fighting against the wind. Someone Kali recognized as Annie, his neighbor. "Sister!" She screamed. "You have to stop."
The revelation shook him. Sister? He would admit that they some semblance but he had never dreamed that the good-natured Annie was a daughter of the governor. Was she aware of her father's crime? Was that why she protested, as penance.
The air grew thicker, tangible with force. It tasted like static and ozone.
Elira turned to her sister, shaking her head, eyes red in tears. "I can't." Then, she thrust her hand forward, ready to hurl the entire maelstrom of destruction toward Priene in a single, apocalyptic surge.
Priene spoke again. "Falter."
The word hit like a seismic shock.
Elira stopped. Mid-motion. Her body seized, eyes widening. The cyclone of furniture froze, hovering in suspension, trembling at the edge of momentum.
Kali watched, breath caught in his throat.
Priene moved. She stepped forward, not fast, but inevitable. Each movement was silent, yet thundered in his bones. She crossed the room in the space between heartbeats, her form cutting through the still air like a blade through water.
And then—
She struck.
The machete swept through the air with brutal grace, its edge glinting with finality. It met flesh and bone with the clarity of judgment.
Elira's head separated from her body before she could finish the breath that held her next scream.
The cyclone collapsed. Furniture and debris crashed down in a chaotic chorus, thudding into floor and walls as gravity reclaimed them. The room was suddenly still, no more pressure, no more howling force. Just the sound of their breathing, ragged and uncertain.
Kali stared. Not at Elira, at Priene.
She stood over the body, shoulders rising and falling, machete still gripped tight, blood trailing from its edge. Her eyes had returned to normal.
"What about this one?" Priene asked, her voice low but steady as she gestured toward Annie who knelt beside her sister's headless corpse, trembling. Her sobs came in sharp, broken bursts, her hands clutching lifeless fingers, her face streaked with snot and tears and horror.
Kali stood frozen. His heartbeat had yet to slow, but the silence now pressed louder than the violence that preceded it. He stared at Annie, no longer a witness, but a survivor. A casualty. A mirror.
"Leave her," he said finally, voice hoarse. Their deal was to kill the governor and his enforcers. Even knowing Elira had likely been raised in the shadow of her father's corruption, it changed nothing. Their grief was not manufactured.
Annie looked up then, eyes wet and wide and red-rimmed. Not with fury, not with hatred. Just hurt.
"Kali," she called, barely louder than a whisper. Her voice cracked like glass under pressure. "Why did you do this?" Her gaze shifted to Elira's broken body. "She didn't deserve this."
And just like that, all the justification, all the logic he had weaponized to survive, buckled.
He could say your father murdered innocents. He could say Elira tried to kill us. He could say the world needed this.
But the words wouldn't come. Not because they weren't true, but because they didn't matter here, not to her. Not now.
He met Annie's eyes a moment longer, then looked away.
"Let's go," he said quietly to Priene, already walking toward the exit.
And like that, he left her.
He heard her sob again as they crossed the threshold, and it carved something hollow into him. That question, why did you do this? It echoed louder than the gunfire that had come before. He wondered how long it would haunt him.
Maybe forever. Or maybe just until the next war.