The rust dust floating in the air of the Bell Tower no longer appeared as mere filth to Elian Laurent. Through the lens of his newly awakened Null Perspective, those red particles were thousands of data points mapping airflow, thermal pressure, and—most importantly—the light distortion created by Lyra Vance.
"Stop staring at me with those disgusting eyes, low-life," Lyra's voice trembled between rage and contempt.
The Upper Sector girl stood tall despite her left shoulder being soaked in shimmering silver blood. She no longer tried to hide completely. Instead of vanishing, the air around Lyra began to ripple violently, creating three identical projections of herself—three white-haired girls with drawn silver daggers, circling Elian in lethal synchronicity.
Elian gasped for air, every breath felt like swallowing iron thorns. His ribs, shattered from the previous thug's strike, seemed to be digging holes into his lungs. His left shoulder was numb, hanging uselessly like a scrapped engine chassis. Yet, beneath the crushing physical agony, his brain was now the conductor of a cold mathematical symphony.
"Advanced Refraction Axiom," Elian muttered, his voice hoarse from the red fluid still seeping from his nose. "You're manipulating the air's refractive index to create mirror images. Very elegant. Very... Upper Sector."
"Elegance is something bio-mass like you will never understand," Lyra hissed. All three projections lunged simultaneously.
Elian couldn't rely on speed. His legs were shaking, and his blood circulation was chaotic. He had only one weapon: precision.
As the first dagger aimed for his throat, Elian didn't dodge backward. Instead, he stepped forward, tilting his head exactly two millimeters to the left—a manually executed Coordinate Mismatch. Lyra's dagger swept through empty air, a paper-thin distance from the skin of Elian's neck.
"You missed a variable, Princess," Elian whispered.
Lyra spun, counter-attacking with a roundhouse kick. Elian tried to parry with his right arm, but Lyra's kinetic force far surpassed his wrecked body.
BOOM!
Elian was hurled back, slamming into a pile of sharp old gears. Blinding pain exploded in his back, filling his vision with white static. He lay in the rust dust, coughing up blood that now stained his stolen grey cloak.
"It's over," Lyra stepped closer, her three shadows merging back into a single, tangible figure. She stood over Elian, pointing her silver dagger at his heart. "You are nothing more than a small error in Aethelgard's system that should have been deleted long ago. Your existence is illogical. You suffer without purpose."
Up on the crane balcony, Caelus watched the scene while boredly spinning his silver coin. "Oi, Elian! Careful, don't rip her expensive clothes! That's Sector 2 synthetic silk—very unhygienic if it gets stained with low-caste blood!"
Caelus then glanced toward the tower entrance, which was beginning to crack under the pressure of the Inquisitor squad. "And for you, Silver Girl, I suggest ending this drama quickly. The probability of that door holding is down to zero-point-something percent."
Lyra ignored Caelus. Her focus was solely on Elian. She raised her dagger high, channeling the remnants of her Axiom energy to ensure this strike would incinerate Elian's neural network. "Die in nothingness, Rat."
Elian didn't close his eyes. Instead, a thin, arrogant, and painful smile crept across his blood-stained lips.
"You were right about one thing, Lyra. I am illogical," Elian coughed, his breath coming in ragged gasps. "But you forgot... I'm a mechanic. And mechanics know one thing about overheating engines: they always have a safety valve."
Lyra frowned. "What?"
"Look down at your feet," Elian murmured.
Lyra's gray eyes instinctively flicked to the floor. There, amidst the thick rust dust, was a strange geometric pattern. Elian hadn't just been kicking dust earlier; he had used his feet and his iron pipe to draw a physical Axiom Grid on the Bell Tower floor.
That wasn't all. Behind Lyra, a main steam pipe that Elian had previously breached was now emitting steam at a very specific frequency.
"From the start, I wasn't fighting you physically," Elian forced himself into a sitting position, despite the horrific sound of bone grinding in his shoulder. "I was adjusting the optical focus of this room. The steam, the rust dust, and the heat from Bloodhound's kinetic energy... they've created a natural convex lens."
Lyra tried to move, but she realized her energy was being drained in a bizarre fashion. All the light she had bent for her refraction technique was now trapped in a feedback loop Elian had created through the dust and steam.
"Every time you use your Axiom, you only strengthen my trap," Elian raised his right hand, pointing his index finger at the energy node in Lyra's chest. "Now, if you press that dagger just one inch further, the steam pressure behind you will explode and refract your entire energy back into your own heart. It's called a Constant Collapse."
Lyra froze. Her dagger trembled in front of Elian's chest. Cold sweat trickled down her temple. She looked into Elian's eyes—those dark, lightless glowing pupils—and she realized he wasn't bluffing. This boy had performed a checkmate calculation in the middle of lethal pain.
"Checkmate... Princess," Elian whispered, followed by a raspy laugh that ended in a cough of blood.
Lyra's face flushed red—a mixture of humiliation, rage, and a deep sense of shame for being intellectually defeated by someone she considered "organic waste." She withdrew her dagger, though her haughtiness remained intact. "This isn't a victory, Rat. It's merely a technical glitch."
BOOOOOOM!!!
The main doors of the Bell Tower were blasted to pieces. Inquisitor troops in pristine white uniforms stormed in, wielding silver staves that emitted blinding blue gravity light.
"Time to go!" Caelus leapt down from the balcony, landing between Elian and Lyra. He grabbed Elian's cloak collar with one hand. "Silver Girl, if you want to live, the air duct behind that bell is the only exit not guarded by those white dogs!"
Lyra looked at Elian one last time—a gaze that now held a seed of dangerous caution and curiosity. Without a word, she turned and vanished into the air duct with a lingering ripple of light.
"Us too, Workshop Boy! Our odds of surviving the front door are absolute zero, but the sewer down here? Well, the smell might kill you first!" Caelus dragged Elian toward a drainage hole hidden beneath the wreckage of gears.
Elian caught a glimpse of the Bell Tower, now flooded with Inquisitor light. He tightly gripped the hard bread Aria had given him in his pocket. The pain in his body remained, but his mind was now clear.
"Miya... I'm coming," Elian murmured before losing consciousness...
The darkness of the sewer swallowed them whole.
Outside, The Bloodhound began to move his fingers beneath the mound of the bell, while in the distance, Aria still sat cross-legged on the cable bridge, humming softly to the rhythm of the destruction that had only just begun.