C-ST had calculated the shot perfectly.
She gave Wyatt no time to react.
The heavy rifle barked.
Wyatt tried to dodge right on instinct, but there was nowhere to go on the narrow fuselage. The explosive round clipped the outer edge of his left shoulder, ripping his shoulder plate free and throwing him off the plane.
He dropped—then a Windgod fighter surged up from below like a shark breaching, rolling in a tight half-circle until it was directly above the Marshmallow.
C-ST snapped her rifle up to fire—then realized she’d emptied the magazine.
Wyatt didn’t waste the gift.
Two pistols away, two-dimensional blade in hand, he launched himself off the Windgod fighter and came down in a hard, descending chop.
C-ST abandoned the rifle and drew a blade of her own from her back.
Wyatt had predicted a dozen possible responses.
He hadn’t predicted she would block head-on.
Clang!
She actually stopped the strike.
For half a second, Wyatt’s mind went blank.
A two-dimensional blade was supposed to cut anything.
He’d never encountered a weapon that could hold it.
Then he saw it—the edge in her hand wasn’t ordinary.
It was another two-dimensional blade.
And he recognized it.
Efa’s blade.
He had used it once, briefly, when he saved the Old Man.
C-ST didn’t hesitate after the block. She shifted her weight, retreated half a step, and lifted her edge in a tight arc toward Wyatt’s ribs.
Wyatt caught it on his blade, drove the pommel toward her face, missed as she slipped aside, and swung again—
Steel screamed.
The fuselage shuddered under their feet.
Wind tore at them like claws.
***
Inside the cabin, Linneya had been sick from the earlier spinning and turbulence. She curled up in Starling’s arms, trembling, eyes half-lidded.
Above them, the roof thundered with impacts—thuds and bangs that made no sense from inside a cramped plane.
Then a half-transparent spike punched through the steel overhead, stabbing down—so close it almost hit Starling’s head.
Starling screamed and yanked Linneya into the corner.
A two-dimensional blade carved a slit in the fuselage. Air howled in, carrying the harsh metallic clang of weapons colliding.
Eisen rushed over.
“This isn’t safe!” he shouted. “They’re fighting on top. Move to the front cabin!”
Starling shepherded Linneya forward. Eisen stayed between them and the torn roof, guiding them into the front compartment.
The plane had dropped to 5,000 meters.
Below were icebergs of every size, floating like broken teeth.
Ahead rose a sheer ice wall, cliff-like, stabbing up from the sea. It stretched left and right until it disappeared into weather.
“That’s the Aurora Plateau!” Dorian shouted, pointing through the front window. “We’re almost there!”
“Is there anything we can do for Wyatt?” Starling asked, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
“We can’t,” Eisen said, glancing at the Tower Clan fighters circling them—circling, but not firing. “Even they can’t.”
***
Blin had said it more than once: in a cold-weapon duel, victory and defeat were decided in an instant. Any fight that lasted longer than ten seconds was the stuff of legend.
This one didn’t end in ten seconds.
It didn’t end in a minute.
By the time the Marshmallow reached the Aurora Plateau, the battle on its back was still raging.
Wyatt fought with everything he had. And the longer it went, the colder his logic became.
At first, he’d wanted to kill her.
Then he’d tried to force her off the plane.
Then he’d started looking for a chance to drag her down with him.
And now, a thought he hated rose into clarity:
He might lose.
This C-ST was stronger than the one he’d fought before. Her use of the two-dimensional blade was smooth, almost seamless—moves chained without gaps. Her smaller body handled wind drag and balance loss better than his did.
Wyatt, in contrast, was constantly on the verge of slipping. He judged he would be terminated soon—or simply fall.
Neither outcome was acceptable.
He hesitated for a heartbeat.
Then he decided to gamble.
When C-ST lunged with another straight thrust, Wyatt didn’t evade.
He stepped in and chopped down with everything he had.
Szzzt—
C-ST tilted her head just enough to dodge the cut.
Her blade drove through Wyatt’s torso instead, sparks spitting in a bright arc.
But Wyatt’s left hand clamped around her sword arm.
At the same time, his right-hand blade flashed toward her neck.
There was no room to evade—
Yet because they were too close, C-ST caught his wrist before the edge landed.
Her arm was half his thickness, but her strength matched him.
Wyatt released her sword arm in an instant and seized her throat instead.
He tried to wrench her head off.
He couldn’t.
Her neck was harder than he’d expected—or his own damaged chassis had robbed him of force. Either way, it wouldn’t work.
C-ST’s throat clicked under the pressure, and she still looked at him with mockery.
Wyatt changed tactics. He tried to lift her and throw her off the plane.
But her boot-talons were anchored deep. When he pulled, he tore up the plane’s steel skin along with her.
A seam split open.
C-ST rose—half lifted, half ripped free—and she understood his intent.
She released her blade’s grip, opened her palm toward Wyatt’s face, and an iris-like mechanism spun apart to reveal a gun barrel.
Wyatt had seen this trick before.
He twisted his head aside just in time.
A hot white energy bolt skimmed past his optics.
In the same moment, Wyatt used every last ounce of strength and hurled C-ST into open air.
Boom!
The bolt struck an engine mounted on the wing.
***
The Marshmallow jolted violently, tipping sideways. It almost rolled.
Dorian shouted, “We lost the engine!”
“There’s another one, right?” Starling cried.
“It was damaged above the clouds,” Dorian yelled back. “We’ve been running on one this whole time!”
“Then what do we do?”
“We might be able to glide,” Eisen said, forcing himself steady. “How far to the coordinate?”
Dorian checked the nav and went pale.
“Thirty-six kilometers,” he said. “We can’t glide that far.”
***
“You all okay?”
The sudden message on the common channel hit Eisen and Dorian like a shot of adrenaline.
“We’re fine,” Eisen replied immediately. “What about you?”
“I’m not great,” Wyatt answered. “But the enemy is dealt with.”
The two-dimensional blade through his chest had done more damage than he’d predicted.
Eighty percent of his systems were throwing faults. His awareness kept stuttering, locking up for fractions of a second. The magnetic locks in his feet had failed.
He could only lie flat and cling to a bent sheet of metal with one hand, barely holding on.
“What happened to you?” Eisen demanded. “Get inside—now. I’ll open the hatch!”
“I…”
Wyatt got out one syllable—then went silent.
“Lord Wyatt?” Dorian called, panic rising.
No response.
Wyatt was offline.
“Ah—Wyatt fell!” Starling screamed from the window.
Eisen lunged to look.
For an instant, he saw Wyatt’s body—impaled through the chest—dropping in free fall toward the white wilderness below. Several Phantom fighters tried to help, circling, searching for a way to catch him.
There wasn’t one.
They watched Wyatt shrink, become a speck, and finally vanish between the glaciers.