The air thickened with pressure the moment Kael and Leiya crossed the ridge. Beyond the rocky outcrop, the valley stretched wide—burnt grass, fractured stone, and thick black mist curling low over the earth. The stench of rot clung to the wind.
Kael crouched beside a twisted pine tree, eyes narrowing as his senses flared. "They're here."
Leiya stepped beside him, light and quiet, her hand resting on the hilt of her twin daggers. "I feel them too. Dozens… maybe more."
The moment snapped.
From the fog, Varnok shrieked and burst forth—twisted quadrupeds with snapping jaws and pulsing sacs of violet Essence stitched into their bodies. Behind them came thicker shapes, humanoid and hunched, their eyes glowing with hunger.
"Dregspawn and Striders," Kael muttered. "But they're not holding back."
"Then neither should we." Leiya flashed him a grin. "Ready to dance?"
Kael didn't answer. He stepped forward and activated.
The ground shuddered as Maelstorm Overburn roared to life—his body erupting with crackling Lightning, swirling Storm winds, and pulsing Flame. Sparks burst across his limbs, and his eyes lit like twin storm flares. Then he vanished.
Kael shot forward in a blink, appearing in the center of the swarm. Before the nearest Varnok could react, he slammed his fists down—Thunderflare Surge exploded out from his body in a dome of fire and wind-charged lightning. Varnok screeched as their bodies were launched into the air, Essence shields flaring and breaking under the concussive blast.
Leiya followed behind in a blink of light. A single spin sent crystalline ice shards spiraling outward from her dagger, piercing the eyes of an incoming beast mid-lunge. She ducked under its collapsing body and hurled a flashburst of Light Essence into the fog—blinding a wave of snarling Striders just before they collided with Kael's flank.
"Left!" she called.
Kael spun, whirling with arms extended. Stormfire Whip Spiral lashed out, a blazing arc of lightning-flame that sliced through three enemies at once. The whip snapped with raw heat and electricity, scorching the grass and sending the rest stumbling. Those not killed outright staggered, limbs jerking from disrupted Essence flow.
"They're adapting!" Leiya called, flipping backward and blasting a charging Varnok with a focused cone of ice. The creature froze mid-stride, then shattered under Kael's knee as he shot past in a lightning burst.
"I'll break the back line," Kael shouted, already accelerating. He blinked through the fray like a living thunderbolt, dashing between enemies too slow to track him. Then he slammed into the largest Varnok at the rear—a hunchbacked brute with iron-like hide and molten sacs growing along its spine.
Thunderflare Surge detonated point-blank, the area igniting in a chain of electric firebursts. The brute howled, flailing as Kael climbed up its body like a storm-bladed wraith. His fist pulled back, flame curling around his elbow like a comet tail—
—and struck the base of its skull.
A thunderclap rolled down the hill as the Varnok collapsed.
Meanwhile, Leiya twisted through the horde like light given form. Her movements were fluid, impossibly fast, her daggers dancing with bursts of searing Light and edge-freezing Ice. She blinded one, froze the next, then flared her aura to draw attention just long enough for Kael to leap back into her orbit.
"Spiral—twelve o'clock!" she shouted.
Kael didn't hesitate. The two whirled in opposite directions, him forming the Stormfire Whip Spiral, her trailing shards of ice and streaks of sunlight in her wake. The combined arc of their strikes intersected in a sweeping X that ignited the field in a blaze of fire, lightning, and refracted crystal light.
Half the remaining swarm burned or scattered.
The two regrouped back-to-back, surrounded by twitching bodies and distant growls in the mist.
Kael's voice was low, calm despite the storm pulsing around him. "One more push."
Leiya grinned, breathing heavy. "After that, I'm making you buy lunch."
Kael gave a small nod. "Deal."
They moved as one.
Kael blitzed forward into a final group, fists tearing through bone and Essence with brutal precision. Flames whipped from his arms, electrified wind rippling behind him like wings. He grabbed a snarling Varnok by the throat and threw it into its kin before vaporizing them all with a descending blow charged with fire and thunder.
Leiya flanked him, slipping through staggered foes and crippling them with pinpoint precision. Her magic wove light and ice like a silken snare—slowing, disorienting, trapping. Each movement matched Kael's own, a rhythm born not of planning but instinct.
In less than a minute, the last Varnok collapsed into the grass with a hiss and a sputtering Essence burst. Silence followed, broken only by the crackle of lingering flames and the distant whisper of wind.
Kael stood, chest rising and falling, surrounded by scorched earth and ash. Leiya brushed a smear of blood from her cheek and exhaled.
"Well…" she said, smiling despite the chaos, "that went better than expected."
Kael let the last of the storm fade from his limbs. "We're getting faster."
"No," she corrected. "You're getting terrifying."
He didn't argue. The battlefield spoke for itself.