Evelyn spoke and the plaza changed its mind.
Her wrists crossed. Six sigils lit above her shoulders like a crown that hated attention. Bands of light spun into place.
"Mark One. Bind and burn."
A net of pale threads dropped across the slate and cinched at the effigy's shins while five javelins of spirit-fire screamed in from offset angles. Rem did not rush. He entered when her magic made useful shapes.
The effigy absorbed the first javelin like rain. The second bent. The third detonated against a counter-angle that should not exist. The fourth burned a clean line into its arm. The fifth failed to arrive. A cut existed where it had been on its way to being.
"Noted," Evelyn said, crisp. "It edits."
"Then we write faster," Rem said.
The net tightened. He struck the right shin, not to break, to tilt. The effigy corrected without hurry. Evelyn sketched a spiral and a phalanx of spectral blades erupted from the floor, knee-high teeth. She did not wait to see them work. Her right hand heaved a crescent shield into being that slid into position against Rem's exposed flank and moved with him as he threaded the growing forest of blades.
"Cover on you," she said.
"Copy."
The spear-key carved a rib-high line that would have opened him. The crescent shield sheared it into sparks that were not light. Rem rode the shock, turned shoulders, heel on a seam, and glided past the effigy's left side.
"Blind."
He closed his eyes, moved two left, one forward, dropped. A whisper of subtraction combed his hair. He opened on her next attack.
"Mark Two. Seal."
Three glyphs needled into the seam of the effigy's spear-arm. They did not explode. They nested and clamped, calcifying intention at the elbow. The effigy reacted. That was new. Its head tilted a fraction, interest like a tide. Evelyn punished curiosity. Her hands snapped apart and a chain of light, links barbed with hungry characters, wrapped the forearm and latched. She yanked.
It stumbled one step. Rem sold that step back at a higher price. Two sharp manipulations to the locked elbow, not to break it, to maintain a problem. The effigy pivoted torso without the arm's consent and cut at a ridiculous angle. Evelyn flicked two fingers. A parry-plane slid into the path and bled the force away. Rem guided the return into trash with a palm on the flat.
"Mark Three. Spirits."
Both palms to slate. A shockline spidered under her hands and the plaza answered. Ten pale figures stood up from the floor like reflections refusing to lie down. Not ghosts. Agreements. Each carried a spear tipped with light that disliked the effigy politely. They formed on five quick beats of Evelyn's tongue against her teeth.
Rem matched the pulse. On beat one he entered from off-hand. On beat two he shoved the elbow lock until it argued. On beat three he dropped under an impossible slice and rose inside the arc. On beat four he used the chain as a fulcrum and compressed the shoulder. On beat five he left because the spirits were already there.
They struck. Five front, two sides, three rear. Three tips glanced. Two bit and hissed. The effigy edited the remaining five, erasing the spearheads and letting the shafts clatter like abandoned promises.
"Data," Evelyn said, moving. "Spears degrade on first contact. Change tip geometry."
She snapped. The next wave raised axes the size of old laws. Rem kept hands on joints and feet on seams. The effigy shifted balance to kill the axes before they fell. Evelyn collapsed the chain on its forearm into a ring at the wrist, then blew the ring outward. Intention turned to static for one inhale. Rem filled the inhale with two elbows to the ribs and a knee that cracked something he would name later.
"Mirror."
He froze. The room slid left, then right. The spear-key bit a pillar of petrified wood and made it ring like an offended bell. Evelyn was already stacking the next answer.
"Mark Four. Cold core."
She pulled heat out of a sphere the size of an apple inside the effigy's hip joint. The joint lagged. Axes fell. One bit; two chattered and still left bruises in whatever passed for flesh.
The boss dimmed the plaza by a shade, rebalance in numbers. Blades wilted. Spirits flickered. Evelyn clicked twice. The flicker steadied. A thin line of blood at her lip gleamed, then dried. She did not wipe it.
"On me."
Rem obeyed. She pointed. Seven dull white points burned into the floor. The effigy misliked circles; it misliked this more. It moved to step around. Rem existed where it preferred to go.
Her voice rose an interval. Lines snapped between the seven points into a wireframe heptagram that did not touch the effigy but did make its choices smaller. She lifted her left hand and set a translucent disk above its head. She lifted her right and set a twin at its knees. She clapped.
Disks closed. The effigy raised hands to disagree. Rem jammed the wrist on the count he knew and turned the disagreement into friction.
"Hold."
The disks kissed. The wireframe hummed. The effigy endured compression with silent contempt. Rem saw small debts in its posture come due. Balance swayed. That is expensive.
"Window."
He went through. Not for the head. For the arm. Twist through shoulder. Drop weight into elbow. A grinding update inside the joint. The spear-key dipped. Evelyn flensed a layer off its forearm with a razor-thin sheet of pressure. A sound like file on stone. No blood.
"Heart," Rem said. "Two counts."
"Do not overcommit. Anchor first."
He sold a hard fake at the heart. The effigy bought. It stepped onto the outer line of the heptagram and learned why Evelyn wore a mathematician's smile. The line behaved like a sideways wall. It stumbled. She slammed both palms and the heptagram detonated inward without moving at all.
Balance went briefly, perfectly wrong.
"Finish the arm."
"Finishing."
Three fast motions. Heel on seam. Twist through shoulder. Drop through elbow. Something gave. The spear-key ripped free and skittered, carving three shallow grooves as it went.
No celebration. Evelyn spiked a spear of light through the empty grip and stapled intention to slate. Then she arced a bolt around Rem. It curved perfectly and struck the spine. No explosion. A cathedral breath flowed out of the hole.
The boss froze. The plaza held still like prey.
"Check," she said, dangerous-quiet.
Rem slid to the hip, palm on the surface. Movement inside the body equaled zero for the first time.
"Not yet," he said. "It is calculating."
"Keep it busy. I am preparing a cut that counts."
Heel-toe steps laid a short pattern. Her rings dimmed one shade. Sigils reddened to a color that did not belong to blood. She inhaled, posture of a woman carrying a choir inside her ribs.
"On my count. Three, two—"
The effigy moved.
Not fast. Foundational. It did not reclaim the spear-key. It did not need tools. Its ridgeless head opened down the middle into a lens-mouth. Pressure dropped. Bones reconsidered their size. Evelyn's forming cut sheared away before it finished. The effigy stepped out of the heptagram like leaving a promise.
"Phase two," she said.
Rem was already in the gap no one else saw. He intercepted the line that would have divided her at the waist, caught it on forearms and hip, and sent the remainder into the shield she threw behind him on reflex. Slate cracked in a polite star. Pain flared and stayed. He kept it where it belonged.
The lens-mouth aligned with the space his body occupied. He refused to be there. The cut arrived at nostalgia instead of meat.
Evelyn rolled two planes into place. The first caught the cut at a bad angle and bled it away. The second converted residue into a shove at the knee. The effigy staggered, more insulted than hurt.
"Again."
She obliged with violence no court would credit to a duke's daughter. A line across the ankle. A cone of cold into the off hip. A binding dart into the neck seam. "Mark Five. Stagger." For one blink, posture decohered.
Rem pocketed the blink. Fingers into wrist, torque elbow, drive shoulder. The follow-up split the air and would have opened his chest from clavicle to past tense.
Evelyn rolled a spherical barrier into him like a medicine ball. It wrapped his torso an instant before impact. The strike hurled him. He struck slate and dug a furrow. The barrier prevented him from being in two places. It did not prevent hurt.
He lay for a count he could not afford. He rose with a sound he would not repeat. His left forearm was wrong. He braced it on his thigh and corrected the angle. The world pinholed, then widened. Grip trembled once and steadied. Every breath sparked the ribs he had used as a shield.
"Rem. Can you move."
"Yes." He made it true.
The effigy fanned a palm at Evelyn. The air in front of her wanted to be missing. She stepped into a mirror and let the room move. The cut arrived where she had never intended to be and the echo gave her a step. She spent it on a stack of short bolts into the seam Rem had opened in phase one. They did not explode. They argued with a rule.
The lens-mouth pulsed as it digested.
"Porter," she said, side-voice. "Three more windows and I can place a true cut."
"Make them."
They did, not pretty. She stole heat from one square and slammed it into another. He redirected two kills and paid for both in bone and noise. She set a trip made of rules. He turned a stumble into a shove and a quarter spin. She whispered "Blind" and "Mirror" with breath she did not have to spare. He obeyed without thinking first.
The effigy adapted. It always did. It ate a spirit spear and turned the shaft to sawdust. It stepped into the exact distance between Evelyn's reach and Rem's angle and stood, quiet contempt complete.
She overreached.
A sigil thin as a hair opened her palm. Blood beaded and vanished as the line drank. She hurled it like a knife at the seam in the head. It landed. It bit. The hairline widened a future.
The effigy disagreed.
It struck. Not a swing. A cancel. The space where Rem stood became an invoice stamped paid. The slab of force hit him full. There was no time to move. He put his forearms up and named no god at all.
It should have killed him. It almost did.
It did not, because Evelyn shoved a barrier into the absence the strike created and let it hold her shape for one second. The first crime broke there. The remainder took him. He flew, skipped across slate, and stopped because the world was kind. Copper filled his mouth. He exhaled it and failed. He stood anyway.
Evelyn was already between him and correction. Her hands spun. A shield arrived one beat late and still in time. The effigy tested it and pronounced it provisional.
Rem reached her line. He did not touch her. He looked at the boss and performed the audit.
"Apologies," he said, no shame in it. "I am still a pile of meat with no mana. Just a strong body. It is not enough here."
"Incorrect," she said, tracking the lens-mouth. "It was enough for phase two and to survive the first invoice. That is more than most."
"Low bar."
"Rising."
The effigy raised its hand. The plaza groaned like a ship thinking about breaking. Evelyn slid back two paces and flicked a prism that split the next cut into three kinder harms. Rem took two on shoulder and hip, placing pain where he could carry it. He stepped into the third like a doorframe with opinions and kept it off her.
They edged behind a rib of petrified wood. It provided no cover, only a lie. Rem leaned because he had to. His breath argued. Evelyn's palm settled between his shoulders for one heartbeat, cold and exact.
"You are right," she said, calm but not gentle. "You have a strong body. How much pain can you handle, speaking."
The effigy angled past their lie of cover. Rem measured the distance to his next mistake. "Why. Do not tell me you have some stupid idea."
"Yes," she said, the corner of her mouth tilting at necessity. "I will infuse my mana into you. Kickstart your sleeping core. Your mana veins are closed. Forcing flow will be like driving a river through stone. It will be really painful. You could die. I am confident in my skill."
"Your confidence inspires."
"Your refusal to stop moving inspires more."
He rolled his left shoulder. Something popped and complained. Grip faltered, steadied. "Fine. We die anyway if we stay honest. Do it."
"Not honest," she said. "Correct."
"Same outcome. Different audit."
"Language later."
She stepped behind him. Cold hands spread along the muscle that had always done the work without expecting a hymn. Power rested against his skin, not entering yet, a surgeon's fingers before the cut. The lens-mouth turned toward them with patient inevitability. The dungeon's heart dragged a breath through stone and taught the slate a new tremble.
"When this starts," she said near his shoulder, steady, "your body will tell you to stop. Do not. I will be mapping new routes while breaking old ones. If you flinch, you will tear."
"Define flinch."
"Anything less than trust."
He fixed on the effigy and kept his breathing square. "Understood. Do it."
Evelyn inhaled, set her palms flat on his back, and spoke the first syllable of a spell meant to turn stone to river inside a man built to resist both.
The effigy took a step that said it had solved their cover and their courage.