Roberto remained behind the main clash, watching the battlefield from the rear of the monstrous tide with the calm of someone attending a performance that had exceeded all expectations. Fire flashed across one side of Thorne Territory, water burst and spread across another, and the line of defenders kept shifting, bending, recovering, and striking back against monsters that should have broken them long ago.
Honestly, he was surprised.
This was the only cycle where the world had truly managed to resist him like this. In every other one, things had fallen apart sooner. Sometimes fear broke them first. Sometimes the stronger pieces of the world never aligned in time. Sometimes the pressure was simply too much and the line collapsed before anything interesting could take shape.
But not here.
