The Silver Lady watched.
She did not stand above the palace so much as within it, her presence folded into the latticework of mirrors and water-veined stone. Light bent subtly around her, never touching directly, never lingering long enough to reflect her whole.
She had learned, long ago, that haste ruined precision.
Below, the battle continued to tear itself apart.
Mirror Wardens poured in from the palace's inner galleries, their silver armor catching the fractured glow of the ceiling pools. They moved in disciplined arcs, formations blooming and collapsing in practiced symmetry. Every step was calculated. Every strike mirrored the last.
And every one of them failed.
Ji Ming was already airborne again.
Heaven-Stride carried him upward in a violent spiral, boots never fully touching the ground. Pillars cracked beneath his landings. His sabers sang as they cut, resonance trailing behind each arc like afterimages burned into the air.
He landed hard near the western colonnade, pain flaring white-hot through his ribs.
He did not slow.
Below him, Sol moved.
Not backward. Never backward.
She shifted, turned, redirected… Lotus Mirror Hand catching incoming force and folding it away with devastating grace. Blows unraveled mid-strike. Mirrorcraft collapsed as if it had forgotten how to hold itself together.
Silver Thread Needles flashed from her sleeves in sharp, precise bursts. They struck joints, pressure points, qi channels. Not lethal… but final.
Her breathing had changed.
Just slightly.
The Silver Lady's eyes narrowed.
Sol healed even as she fought, warmth flaring briefly beneath her palms, closing wounds almost as quickly as they opened. But the timing was no longer perfect. Healing arrived a fraction late. The smallest hitch between action and recovery.
A missed step in a shared rhythm.
Ji Ming felt it immediately.
The resonance tugged sharp against his chest, a sudden unevenness that made his next breath burn.
"Sol," he called, landing beside her in a spray of shattered mirror shards.
"I'm still here," she replied.
Her voice held. Her eyes did not.
For an instant, the edges of her vision blurred, the palace smearing into light and motion. She steadied herself, fingers brushing the cool marble, then straightened.
The Silver Lady noted it all.
Good.
Kang Ya Zhen tore through a pair of Wardens near the central dais, vermilion sigils detonating with surgical precision. Each burst shattered reflective planes, turning the palace itself against its own design. She moved like a blade through silk, elegant and unforgiving.
But even she was tiring.
Her sleeves were nearly empty. Her breath came sharp between strikes. A thin line of blood traced her jaw where a mirror shard had grazed too close.
Three flames.
All burning hard. All burning fast.
The Emperor stood behind the Silver Lady, hands clasped, expression tight with restrained fury. His gaze flicked between the battlefield and Sol, impatience simmering beneath his control.
"They will not last," he said.
"No," the Silver Lady agreed softly. "But they have not yet broken."
Her attention remained fixed on Sol.
The Lotus heir shifted again, redirecting a mirror lance that should have pierced her shoulder. She caught it, twisted, sent it spiraling into a pillar where it shattered into harmless dust.
The effort cost her.
Her hand trembled… just once.
There.
The Silver Lady inhaled.
The palace answered.
Mirrors unfolded along the walls, water rising in thin, perfect planes. Not flooding. Not attacking.
Listening.
Pressure pressed inward, subtle and invasive, searching for the harmonic signature threaded through Sol's qi. The resonance flared instinctively in response, bright and defiant.
Too bright.
Sol staggered.
Only for a breath.
Ji Ming felt it like a knife driven straight through his chest.
"Sol!"
"I'm fine," she said quickly, even as warmth trickled from her nose, dark against pale skin. She wiped it away with the back of her sleeve. "Keep moving."
The Silver Lady smiled.
Measured. Controlled.
She had found it.
Not Sol's strength. Not her skill.
Her root.
The place where divinity brushed humanity and had never quite decided which one it preferred.
The Silver Lady lifted her hand.
Qi condensed in her grasp, silvery and crystalline, refined beyond ordinary cultivation. It hummed softly, not with hunger, but with intent. This was not a weapon of rage.
It was correction.
The blade formed slowly.
Perfectly.
Ji Ming turned just as she stepped forward.
"Sol!"
Too late.
The blade was released.
Not thrown.
Not rushed.
It did not arc.
It went straight.
Straight through Sol's defenses. Straight through the resonance as if it were glass. Straight into the heart of her divine root.
The world went silent.
Sol felt cold first.
Not pain. Absence.
Breath vanished from her lungs. Qi collapsed inward, meridians screaming as they fractured, light snuffed out mid-flow. Her legs gave way beneath her.
She fell.
Ji Ming felt it instantly.
The resonance tore through him raw and unfiltered, a shockwave that stripped sound from the world. His vision narrowed. The palace dimmed.
"No."
He caught her as she hit the marble, her weight suddenly wrong. Too heavy. Too light. Her pulse fluttered under his fingers, then faltered.
Something in him broke open.
Not rage.
Refusal.
He laid her down with a care that bordered on reverence.
Then he stood.