The moment after the Lieutenant revealed its true power didn't come with a pause or a breath. It came with motion.
Brutal. Immediate.
Its body surged forward with a speed that made the air scream as it closed the distance between us, and I met it head-on without hesitation. Voidscar flashed as I drove the blade toward its core, Essence surging through my limbs to reinforce bone and muscle. The clash rang out like metal striking stone as the dagger bit and drank in the Null riding the surface of its attack exactly as it was designed to. The familiar pull grounded me for half a second as the absorption worked.
Then something slipped through.
Not force. Not pain.
Something colder.
When its counterstrike landed against my forearm, it didn't tear flesh or shatter bone. It simply pressed. For a heartbeat, I felt nothing at all. No impact. No resistance. Just absence, followed by a creeping cold that crawled inward from the point of contact. My arm went numb before my mind could register danger.
I twisted away instinctively, flooding Essence into the limb to counteract whatever had touched me. I expected the familiar response—the tightening of fibers, the return of strength.
Instead, the flow stuttered.
Essence met resistance where there should have been none. Turbulence rippled through my channels as the skin along my forearm darkened visibly, veins turning black beneath the surface as if something had burned them from the inside out.
I struck again. Harder.
Triangular constructs formed and shattered against the Lieutenant's guard as I pressed the attack, refusing to let that moment define the exchange. But with every movement, I felt it—a subtle delay in my arm, a fraction of hesitation that hadn't been there before. When another blow glanced off the same limb, the cold deepened, spreading like rot beneath the skin.
Not consuming it.
Staining it.
My fingers tingled as sensation faded in and out, and when I forced more Essence through the damage, it didn't heal. It isolated.
Pressure wrapped around the corrupted area just to keep it functional, the effort spiking my strain instantly and sending a sharp lance of pain through my chest as my body protested the cost.
The Lieutenant didn't slow. It didn't acknowledge the effect it was having.
It simply continued.
Blows came in heavy, efficient arcs that forced me to block and pivot instead of advancing. As we traded strikes, understanding crept in not through thought, but through failure. Through the way my movements grew subtly less precise each time the blackened area absorbed another hit.
Voidscar still drank Null cleanly.
But the deeper force beneath it slipped through unchanged.
Precursor-VOID.
It didn't erase. It corroded.
When I tried to overcompensate—flooding the limb, forcing it back into alignment—the pain exploded inward, sharp and visceral, as if my body were rejecting my own power. Essence held the corruption in check, but it couldn't purge it. The limb became unstable, instinctively repelling both Null and Void while demanding constant attention just to remain attached to me.
Another exchange drove me back several steps, my boot skidding across blood-slick stone as the Lieutenant's weight bore down on me. Its strength was unrelenting. When I countered with a heavy Essence-laced strike, the recoil nearly dropped me to one knee as the corrupted limb lagged behind my intent.
The disconnect was terrifying in its subtlety.
I wasn't losing strength.
I was losing coherence.
Pieces of my body no longer responded as a unified whole. With every breath I took, Essence burned faster just to maintain baseline functionality. The blackened veins crept further along my arm like ink spreading through water, my fingers curling reflexively as sensation flickered.
I kept moving.
Kept attacking.
Pyramids formed and detonated against the Lieutenant's guard as I shifted angles and used the terrain to buy fractions of space. But it was relentless, driving me backward with sheer presence. Every blocked strike sent tremors through my frame as the corrosive force gnawed at my Essence from the inside.
When it finally landed another clean hit to my shoulder, the effect compounded instantly.
Skin darkened in a spreading patch. The same cold numbness took hold, my arm sagging for a split second before I caught it. Panic flared hot and sharp as I realized the damage wasn't localized.
It was cumulative.
Each contact layered corruption over containment.
There was no simple fix. No surge of power that would reset the damage without catastrophic consequences.
The realization settled into me with sickening clarity as I staggered back and narrowly avoided a killing blow that would have taken my head clean off. This wasn't a wound I could fight through and heal later. It wasn't something time or rest would undo.
Essence wasn't repairing it.
It was imprisoning it.
Locking the corruption in place and burning itself away to keep the damage from spreading. If my output dropped for even a moment, the limb would fail entirely—not severed, not destroyed, but useless. Dead weight attached to me by force of will alone.
That truth changed the shape of the fight.
I could feel the clock now.
Not ticking down to death.
But to depletion.
To the moment when maintaining my own body would cost more than I could afford while still fighting.
I ducked another strike and retaliated with a desperate counter that glanced off the Lieutenant's chest with little effect. I wasn't being overwhelmed in skill or power.
I was being worn down in a way that had nothing to do with victory or defeat.
The corruption spread silently. Patiently. Indifferent to my intent.
I planted my feet and forced my breathing steady despite the burning in my chest and the deadened weight of my arm. The blackened skin pulsed faintly as Essence strained to contain it.
The truth settled in with cold certainty.
I could still win this fight.
But every second I stayed in it like this, I would lose something I would never get back.
For the first time since stepping into this duel, I wasn't calculating how to kill the thing in front of me.
I was calculating how much of myself I was willing to sacrifice before the cost became irreversible.