Kyon's First Person Point Of View.

  Elijah wasn’t hesitating.

  "Enough of this!" he muttered, his voice low but crackling with frustration.

  Before I could blink, he snapped the leg off a nearby stool, splinters flying in every direction. He flipped the wooden shard in his grip, holding it like a dagger—pointed, lethal, crude. The intent was clear. He was going for the heart.

  And Conrad knew it.

  Elijah surged forward, his speed blistering. The stake became a blur in his hands, stabbing and slashing in rapid succession. It wasn’t just wild aggression—his movements were precise, controlled, each thrust aiming for a vital spot. But Conrad moved sharper.

  A flick of his wrist. A twist of his body. Every stab met only air.

  Elijah was fast.

  Conrad was faster.

  The fight became a blur of motion. Elijah lunged, the wooden stake carving the air in ruthless arcs. Conrad’s hands moved in tandem—parrying, redirecting, making sure the stake never found purchase. But the problem wasn’t just Elijah.

  Harvey and Lawrence hadn’t let up.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw them repositioning, cutting off Conrad’s escape routes. Every step back led him into another kill zone. Harvey’s leg shot forward in a snap kick. Lawrence feinted a jab before pivoting, aiming for an opening.

  Conrad reacted instantly.

  He grabbed a nearby settee, wrenched it up with impossible ease, and swung. The heavy furniture became a battering ram, smashing into Harvey’s shield with a thunderous crack. Half of the settee shattered on impact, wooden fragments spraying across the penthouse floor.

  The other half?

  Conrad hurled it at Elijah.

  Elijah twisted mid-step, his agility keeping him just ahead of the debris. It crashed into the marble flooring behind him, splinters scattering like shrapnel. But he didn’t stop moving. The stake flickered in his hand, a relentless blur of jabs aimed at Conrad’s heart.

  A wooden stake wasn’t a knife.

  It lacked the finesse, the versatility. It couldn’t cut, couldn’t slash. It could only stab. And that meant Elijah’s attacks were predictable. Deadly, but linear. Conrad played into that predictability.

  He didn’t just dodge—he led Elijah’s attacks. A half-step here, a feint there. Always keeping the stake a fraction of an inch from its target but never letting it land.

  And yet, Conrad wasn’t attacking.

  He couldn’t.

  Not with Harvey and Lawrence still in the fray. Not with their Flux shields crackling, ready to deflect anything he threw at them. If he committed to striking Elijah, even for an instant, Harvey or Lawrence would capitalize. They’d land a blow. And a single hit from them meant death.

  So what did he do?

  He adapted.

  He blurred backward, his movements smooth as liquid, retreating toward the wall Elijah had smashed him into earlier.

  And then, suddenly—he stopped.

  For the first time, he reached into the wall.

  I barely had time to process what I was seeing before Conrad’s fingers clenched—and he tore something free.

  A steel rod.

  The penthouse was reinforced concrete, laced with rebar—hidden structural bars embedded deep within the walls. The kind meant to keep a building upright even under intense stress. Conrad had found one.

  And now, he had a weapon.

  With a single motion, he snapped the rod in half.

  The jagged metal edges gleamed under the dim lights. Heavy. Blunt. But not useless.

  Harvey, Lawrence, and Elijah didn’t pause. They attacked in unison, converging in a three-pronged assault.

  Conrad spun.

  The steel rod whistled through the air. He lashed out, the sheer momentum behind his strikes forcing Harvey and Lawrence back—not enough to hurt them, not with their Flux barriers, but enough to disrupt their rhythm.

  Elijah was undeterred. He sidestepped a sweeping strike, diving under it, the wooden stake still clutched in his fist. He was close now. Too close. A single, well-placed thrust—

  But Conrad’s grip shifted.

  He dropped low, pivoting on his heel. The steel rod in his hand slammed into the floor, not as an attack, but as an anchor. A sudden, sharp movement that stopped his momentum for a split second—long enough for him to redirect.

  Before Elijah could react, Conrad was already inside his guard.

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  A palm strike to the wrist. A flick of the elbow. The wooden stake went spinning from Elijah’s grasp, clattering uselessly across the penthouse floor.

  Elijah didn’t flinch.

  He adapted just as fast.

  His knee shot up, a brutal Muay Thai strike aimed for Conrad’s ribs. At the same time, Harvey lunged from the side, his Flux-charged fist blazing toward Conrad’s head.

  Conrad dropped.

  A sudden, fluid motion—ducking beneath the knee, slipping under the punch. He planted his hand against the floor and kicked out, a low sweep aimed at Elijah’s planted foot. It barely missed. Elijah hopped back, but the movement disrupted his balance, forcing him to reset.

  Harvey came in again, relentless, his strikes a barrage of speed and precision. Lawrence followed suit, cutting off Conrad’s angles. The pressure was mounting.

  Conrad still hadn’t been hit.

  But for how long?

  He couldn’t rely on brute force.

  Not when any direct attack would just rebound off their shields.

  So he made a choice.

  He adjusted his grip on the steel rod. Instead of swinging it like a club, he flipped it, wielding it like a lever.

  The next time Harvey attacked, Conrad didn’t dodge.

  Instead—he used the rod to redirect Harvey’s own momentum.

  A parry, but not a block. A precise shift in angle, making Harvey’s punch go wide—right into Lawrence’s path.

  Lawrence barely managed to twist away, avoiding a direct hit, but the brief moment of disorder gave Conrad a fraction of an opening.

  It wasn’t enough to win.

  But it was enough to move.

  With a single burst of speed, Conrad launched himself across the penthouse, distancing himself from the trio. The steel rod in his grip was still intact, though slightly bent from the sheer force he had been using.

  His eyes flickered across the room.

  The penthouse was starting to fall apart. The shattered settee. The cracked walls. The broken furniture strewn across the floor.

  The steel rod sang through the air, a deadly whisper of force and speed.

  Conrad wielded it like a sword, but not with the rigid brutality of a man swinging a club—this was fencing. Fluid. Precise. Each movement calculated, each strike meant to probe, to pressure, to control.

  Harvey and Lawrence barely had a chance to react before he lunged.

  Elijah met him first.

  The wooden stake came up fast, a makeshift dagger in desperate hands. Elijah moved to intercept, to deflect—

  Crack.

  The moment the steel rod connected, part of the stake splintered.

  Elijah gritted his teeth. He twisted his wrist, changing the angle of his grip, adapting—but Conrad was already moving, a blur of speed and sharp angles.

  A thrust to the shoulder blade.

  Elijah barely dodged, shifting his body at the last second. The rod whistled past him.

  A thrust to the thigh.

  He jumped back, skimming just out of range.

  A thrust to the neck.

  The wooden stake shot up in a desperate parry. Crack. Another sliver of it broke off.

  A thrust to the forehead.

  Elijah jerked sideways, the rod slicing past his temple.

  A thrust to the knees.

  He tried to leap clear, but Conrad was too fast. The strike clipped his shin, sending a ripple of pain through his leg.

  A thrust to the eyes.

  Elijah barely had time to blink before he twisted his head out of the way.

  I had never fenced in my life. I had never even watched a proper match before. But Conrad—Conrad was water.

  It wasn’t just the speed. It wasn’t just the power. It was control.

  A blunt weapon like a steel rod shouldn’t have had the precision of a rapier, but Conrad wielded it with an unnatural grace, pressing Elijah onto the defensive, forcing him to backpedal. And yet, it wasn’t Elijah he was truly targeting.

  He was drawing Harvey and Lawrence in.

  They didn’t have a choice.

  With Elijah trapped in retreat, they were forced to close the distance, to abandon their patience and engage directly. Exactly what Conrad wanted.

  Harvey surged forward, his Arkamon-coated forearms crackling with reddish-golden lightning. His fists shot out, blurs of momentum aimed at Conrad’s ribs. Lawrence flanked from the other side, his own Flux-charged limbs ready to intercept.

  They were coordinated. They were skilled.

  But Conrad—

  Conrad switched styles.

  One second, he was fencing. The next—he was swinging.

  The steel rod came around like a baseball bat, a sudden shift from precision to brute force.

  The air itself shuddered from the impact.

  Harvey barely had time to block before the rod slammed into his shield. A shockwave erupted, sending a harsh ripple of force through the penthouse floor. The barrier held, absorbing the brunt of the strike—but it wasn’t perfect. The deflection wasn’t clean. Harvey’s stance wavered for a fraction of a second.

  A fraction of a second was too long.

  Conrad pressed the attack.

  He swung again—not wildly, not with reckless aggression, but with perfect control. Each strike was a tactical choice, a cutting arc of motion designed to disrupt, to force an opening.

  Right. Left. Downward.

  Harvey’s defenses barely held. The sheer weight of the rod kept forcing him to shift, to adjust.

  Lawrence reacted fast.

  He jumped, twisting mid-air, his leg snapping out in a triple-kick. Three strikes in rapid succession, each one meant to stagger Conrad back.

  But Conrad adjusted again.

  He didn’t block with brute force. He used the edge of the steel rod.

  The first kick glanced off. The second redirected. The third barely grazed him.

  It was frustrating to watch. Harvey and Lawrence had the power. They had the Flux to absorb blows. They should have been overwhelming him.

  And yet they couldn’t touch him.

  Conrad wasn’t just avoiding damage. He was controlling the fight.

  Elijah tried again. He slipped through the chaos, weaving low, shifting his head off the center line like a boxer avoiding jabs. The broken wooden stake was still in his grasp—shorter now, but still deadly. He lunged—

  But Conrad was ready.

  The steel rod changed again.

  No longer a bat. No longer a rapier.

  Now, it was a longsword.

  Conrad pivoted, spinning the rod around his back in a seamless arc. The weight distribution shifted, the force behind his strikes multiplied.

  It was terrifying to watch.

  Every motion had intent. Every step had purpose.

  A swipe at Elijah’s ribs—he barely dodged.

  A swipe at Elijah’s opposite side—he jumped back, just in time.

  A downward cleave—he raised the stake in a desperate block—

  Crack.

  The force alone nearly wrenched it from his grip.

  Elijah was too slow.

  A single, razor-thin swipe—just a graze, really—split the skin on his cheek. A shallow wound, nothing that wouldn’t heal within seconds. But it wasn’t about the injury.

  It was about what it meant.

  Conrad had landed the first clean hit.

  Harvey and Lawrence both saw it. Their expressions hardened, their movements turned sharper. They weren’t going to let that happen again.

  But Conrad knew that, too.

  He moved before they could react.

  The rod blurred again, transitioning seamlessly between techniques. A bat. A sword. A lever. A shield.

  Everything at once. Nothing at all.

  He put his entire body into the motion, weight and torque combining into something almost unstoppable. The steel blurred right, left, downward, each strike more vicious than the last.

  They weren’t just defending anymore.

  They were being forced back.

  Lawrence was the first to shift tactics. His legs had better reach than his arms. He jumped, twisting his body to deliver another kick—

  Conrad anticipated it.

  This time, he didn’t block.

  He caught the momentum, his footwork shifting, leading Lawrence’s force away from him instead of against him.

  Lawrence landed wrong. His balance shifted.

  Harvey tried to capitalize on the moment, but Conrad was already one step ahead. He didn’t fight them individually. He fought them all at once.

  Elijah lunged—

  Conrad twisted.

  Harvey swung—

  Conrad ducked.

  Lawrence recovered—

  Conrad was already moving.

  It was a dance, but it was his dance.

  I could barely keep up.

  None of them had landed a hit. Not one.