Rain tore sideways across the harbour, needles of water driven by wind.
Ben tried to attempt a run away as the other two were busy rumbling around.
He slipped once, caught himself on a rusted railing, boots splashing through puddles that reflected lightning like broken mirrors.
Behind him, the dock kept becoming worse as the weather went against their mood.
A flicker of intent snapped through the storm. The Jester's head turned, just a fraction. His eye had locked on Ben.
Knives flew. They didn't arc in a perfect motion. They arrived skipping through rain with surgical hatred.
Ben felt the pressure before the pain and a wall of water snapped up, folding inward like a clenched fist.
Steel hit liquid and stopped dead and suspended. Harriet stepped between Ben and the rain of blades and defended him. His coat was plastered to his frame in wet, eyes glowing like gems in the thunder.
"Run straighter," Harriet said calmly. "Don't run zigzag like a dying philosophy."
Ben didn't argue.
The Jester clicked his tongue. "You are sheltering him? Nice, this storm might not allow you to."
"I am the one in advantage right now." Harriet replied. "You see? Storm, open water, bad footing. You have chosen the wrong stage."
Wind coiled tighter around the Jester's limbs. "Affinity doesn't decide outcomes."
"No," Harriet said. "But it decides who pays less for mistakes."
They clashed as another thunder grudged between them.
Harriet shaped mass and momentum, while Jester carved vectors through air, blades of pressure snapping like invisible guillotines. Harriet deflected, redirected, bled efficiency.
All movements fed his aura, water responding faster and sharper as if the storm itself recognized who had the authority.
Ben glanced back once. Harriet hadn't retreated a step. The Jester slid backward suddenly, boots skidding, then vanished in a lateral burst.
Harriet's eyes flicked down.
The puddle formed in the distance. It was ordinary at first. Shallow and rain-fed.
Harriet pressed his palm toward it. The world of that "Jester" tilted suddenly.
The puddle deepened not physically, but conceptually.
Its surface darkened, swallowing reflections. The floor beneath the Jester softened as geometry loosened like wet paper. Mass forgot how to measure itself.
The Jester fell somewhere dark, unknown, in the puddle....
A deep distance unraveled beneath Jester's feet. The shallow water became endless descent, depth replacing direction, gravity turning into a suggestion.
Rocks flickered past memories of seabeds, abstract layers of pressure and mass that didn't exist anywhere but there.
Harriet held his hand steady, but couldn't. He felt the water filling up in his organs bursting, he was unable to breath but nor to die. His body was slowly paralyzing on its own.
He noticed, his body was slowly fracturing like the mirror. From the fractures, bright light was mounting above.
"Depth is meaning...." he said quietly in realization. "....and meaning doesn't end."
In simple words, it was like keep falling into the deep until reaching the core of something huge, compressed with immense mass and energy.
For several moments, the Jester panicked.
Wind flared wildly smashing against nothing, momentum dissolving into irrelevance. His body twisted, falling sideways through concepts rather than space.
The magic Harriet used strained—this wasn't drowning. This was erasure through infinity. Then the Jester laughed.
A small device snapped between his fingers. It wasn't teleportation. It was worse. A forced anchor.
Wind compressed into a singular, screaming spike, pure kinetic insistence—driven against the concept of "depth" itself. The puddle convulsed, space snapping back with a violent recoil.
Water exploded upward as the Jester was thrown free, skidding across the dock, coughing blood. Harriet staggered breathing heavily.
".…You almost had me," the Jester admitted, rising slowly. "That wasn't any ordinary water magic."
Harriet straightened, rain pouring off him like a crown. "Not only magic, that was a temporarily bestowed partial authority."
They split apart again, distance reclaimed, storm raging between them.
Behind Harriet, Ben kept running.
Ahead of him, the Jester smiled less painted now, more honest and the harbour braced itself for what came next.
Rain shredded the space between them.
The Jester closed in first very fast, joints moved like they had been loosened and rewired. His attacks weren't wild; they were economical, cruelly efficient.
Knuckles, elbows, heel strikes, all threaded with wind pressure that turned every near-miss into a wound.
Harriet barely kept up. Forearm up and a crack sound came. Shoulder twisted as air hovered past his ear. He countered with a feint, letting his left side sag, water aura thinning deliberately a classic bait.
The Jester surged in then didn't fall for it. His knee snapped upward instead, driven by compressed wind.
Harriet's breath exploded out of him as the knee buried itself into his stomach. Pain folded inward. He was lifted off his feet by the force.
Before gravity could finish the act, Harriet reacted impatiently.
Water surged under him not from the ground but from the rain itself. He stepped on falling droplets.
Each raindrop hardened for a fraction of a second, just enough to stand on it with balance.
Step. Step. Step.
He ran down from the heaven, inverted logic blending under pressure and will.
Aura flared bright blue, violent and precise.
He came down like a meteor. A flying punch wrapped in spiraling water pressure, mass multiplied unnaturally. The Jester met it head-on.
Their fists collided. The sound was a detonation. Wind and water tore outward, rain blasted sideways, nearby containers blew as shockwaves rolled through steel.
Both men were thrown back. Boots carving long scars across the dock.
Harriet pressed, forcing distance away from Ben, water lashing, shaping, hardening into whips and spears.
The Jester danced through it. Speed bordered on obscene, every step snapping air like overstressed glass. He laughed once before slipping inside Harriet's guard again.
Harriet reached blindly and grabbed a harpoon. He ripped it from a sail mount, muscles screaming, aura reinforcing the shaft. Without hesitation, he drove it forward with everything he had.
It pierced the Jester's chest. Harriet then realised. The resistance was wrong.
The body wobbled then burst into a spray of water and air.
A bubble clone!?
Harriet's eyes widened.
"Ben—!" he shouted looking back.
He saw the Jester standing behind Ben, one arm wrapped casually around his shoulders, a knife resting gently against his throat.
Close enough to feel the pulse, enough to hear the rain hit skin.
Ben frowned in confusion. "Harriet?" he called out,. "Why did you two suddenly stop—" Having no idea Jester was behind him.
The Jester smiled terrifyingly calm.
The knife slowly moved. A clean line was drawn. Ben felt the would after two seconds.
Red bloomed instantly, washed thin by rain.
Ben's sentence never finished and his body stiffened, then sagged forward as the Jester released him. He hit the dock with a dull, meaningless sound.
Harriet screamed for Ben and rushed.
The Jester didn't wait. He pivoted, sprinted, and dove cleanly into the sea. The wind broke his fall impact and then waves swallowed him whole. The storm closed over the spot like nothing had happened.
Harriet dropped to his knees beside Ben, hands shaking as he turned him over. The eyes were open.
Rain kept falling into them, as if trying uselessly to wash the moment away.
"No—no, no, no.…" Harriet whispered, water magic flaring wildly, desperately, stupidly, as if it could undo time itself.
It couldn't.
Ben Shaw was already gone.
The harbour stormed on, indifferent and Harriet knelt there drenched, staring at a world that had just proven how mercilessly fast it could end.
....
Yes.... Uh.... What was left now....?
Oh yes, the funeral!
Afternoon light settled gently over Nayga, clean and indifferent, as if the sky itself had decided not to remember. White clouds drifted lazily above the Shaw estate.
Birds sang in their own melodies. Leaves moved with polite wind. Ben Shaw was being lowered into the ground.
People filled the garden. The relatives in dark coats, business partners standing stiff and uncomfortable, friends who looked like they hadn't slept. Some cried openly and sobbed.
Others stared too hard at the casket, as if waiting for it to disagree with reality. Liam Shaw stood closest.
He hadn't cried. His face was carved into something firm and hollow, hands clasped behind his back like a man attending a meeting he could never leave early. Guards stood at a distance, heads lowered.
However,
Harriet wasn't near them. He stood under a tree at the far edge of the estate, half-hidden by shadow and leaves. His coat hung loose. His eyes were fixed somewhere beyond the funeral, beyond Nayga, beyond anything that could give him an clear answer.
Useless
The word repeated without sound.
Albert approached quietly, hands in his pockets, steps careful not to draw attention. He didn't say anything at first. He just stood beside Harriet, sharing the silence.
After a while, Albert spoke. "You did everything right."
Harriet didn't answer and looked away hiding his upset face.
"You protected him, buddy." Albert continued. "You fought someone who could have blown the whole city. That doesn't—"
"I was faster," Harriet said flatly. " Better positioned. I had the chances, the harbour, the affinity advantage."
His teeth gritted. "And I still let him die."
It was first time in Tom's life, witnessing Harriet like this.... Upset....
He exhaled. "That is not how—"
Harriet raised a hand, stopping him. He wasn't angry. Just tired. "I know. I know how it sounds. That doesn't stop it from feeling true. Do you have any point to prove I am not useless? I failed again!"
They watched as the casket disappeared fully, soil beginning to cover polished wood. Someone sobbed loudly. Liam didn't twitch, just stared.
Harriet's voice dropped. "Do you know Wind Magic?"
Albert blinked. "What?"
"Wind." Harriet repeated. "Do you know how to use it? Learn it? Anything."
Albert shook his head slowly. "No. I don't even know where I could start. I barely understand all the bizarre stuffs I do have."
Harriet nodded, as if confirming something he already knew. "Figures."
Albert glanced at him. "You are not thinking straight, dummy."
"I know," Harriet said. A brittle smile tugged at his lips. "That's the problem. I keep thinking anyway."
They stood there as the ceremony continued. The wind stirred the leaves overhead, gentle, harmless. Nothing like the one that had cut Ben down.
Harriet watched the people grieving and felt strangely separate from all of it, like he was standing on the wrong side of glass.
Albert didn't push. He just stayed. Sometimes, that was all there was to do.