The moonlight turned the training grounds into a world of silver and grey.

  Elma watched the single droplet of water hovering between her and Sable. It was a mundane thing, yet in this world, it was the key to unlocking her future arsenal.

  "How do I save the configurations?" Elma asked, her voice steady despite the adrenaline.

  Sable tilted her hand, guiding the orb toward Elma’s open palm.

  "Try it," she commanded.

  Elma frowned, watching the liquid sphere settle an inch above her skin.

  "Wouldn't water be a waste of space? If the Lattice memory is finite, why spend it on something so... simple?"

  "Simplicity is its strength," Sable replied.

  "It requires negligible memory and offers infinite utility. Now, touch it."

  Elma hesitated a moment, fingers hovering, then reached out.

  "Scan it with your Lattice," Sable ordered.

  "Yes, but how?"

  Sable went silent, the mask tilting slightly, as if weighing her words.

  “It might be tricky, given the unique… nature of your Lattice.”

  Her neck straightened. “Do you remember the glowing lines beneath your skin from our first visit?”

  Elma’s mind flashed back to that moment, the day she was stripped of her autonomy by that green eyed entity. She remembered the cold, clinical sensation of the luminous veins weaving through her limbs.

  “I remember,” Elma said through gritted teeth.

  “Find that sensation,” Sable instructed.

  “The web beneath your skin. Extend it. Let the threads map the droplet.

  Feel its shape. Its tension."

  Elma closed her eyes, pulling her consciousness inward to the cold, dormant architecture in her body. She could still feel them now.

  It’s mine, she told herself, the thought a razor-wire decree. This body, this power—mine.

  Her small arms began to glow with a faint, sickly emerald light. She felt the Lattice slither beneath her skin like a nest of awakened vipers.

  With a twitch of her will, she guided the threads toward the droplet.

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  When she opened her eyes, the water orb was no longer clear; fine, green veins were pulse-mapping the liquid.

  Two seconds of intense, bioluminescent data-transfer later, the veins retracted.

  "Did I do it?" Elma asked, her voice tight.

  "Why don't you try?" Sable replied, her voice unreadable.

  Elma kept the original droplet hovering above one palm and extended her other hand. She focused on the "snakes" again, but they felt different now—weighted.

  They carried the blueprint. She pushed the Lattice threads into the empty space above her palm, and like a ghost manifesting into flesh, a second droplet was carved out of her Aegis.

  Her heart raced. For the first time since her death, the "handicap" she felt against Fenric—the feeling of being a blunt instrument in a world of magic—was gone.

  She didn't stop at creation. She shaped the manifested droplet into a sharp, elongated cone.

  She fed kinetic energy into its core, spinning it at an extreme velocity until it hummed with a high-pitched whine. It began to glow, the surface tension reinforced by her Aegis.

  She released it.

  The water-drill blurred through the air, striking a nearby boulder with a wet crack.

  It didn't splash; it bored through the stone like a high-pressure industrial cutter, leaving a clean, smoking hole in the rock.

  A shaky, almost silent laugh escaped Elma’s lips. She looked at Sable and snapped her fingers. Six more droplets manifested in a jagged halo around her.

  They began to spin, six miniature turbines of death whistling in the night air.

  Then, she expanded her field.

  "Curtains down," she whispered, enveloping Sable in her "Null-Zone."

  She pointed the six shimmering projectiles directly at the cat-masked woman’s throat.

  "What would you do in this situation?" Elma asked, a sharp, predator’s grin pulling at her small face.

  Sable didn't answer. She stood encased in the silence of the Null-Zone.

  Elma watched her with clinical intensity. She could feel the void where the two Aegis met; if Sable tried to flare her Aegis to swat Elma's control over the drills, Elma would feel the ripple and fire instantly.

  Without her field, Sable was just a woman with one arm. She was at Elma’s mercy.

  The hole began to shrink.

  What? Elma’s eyes widened. The woman seemed to pull every scrap of her presence inward.

  Sable began to walk.

  "Is that all you can do?" Elma snapped. The panic was a cold needle in her chest. She stopped the drills from spinning—if she killed Sable, the cult might slit Elma’s throat in her sleep… or worse.

  She launched the water orbs at Sable as a warning, a high-velocity barrage designed to pin her down.

  The woman became a black blur.

  She slipped between the projectiles with an agility that defied human biology. It was as if her muscles were firing with the force of pistons. Before Elma could even track the movement, Sable flickered.

  Thump.

  A blunt finger flicked Elma squarely on the forehead. The force was minor, but the precision was absolute. Elma hit the dirt, her eyes watering from the sudden, stinging pain.

  "How!?" Elma yelled, clutching her head. "You shouldn't have been able to use your field!"

  "No matter how powerful an Innate Ability is, or an Aegis, it cannot operate beneath another resonant's Lattice," Sable said, her voice a calm, instructional rasp. " Your Null-Zone negates the Aegis in the air between us. It cannot erase the Aegis inside my bone and marrow."

  Sable stood over her, the moonlight catching the ceramic curve of her mask.

  "The best counter against a superior field is to stop fighting for dominance in the sky," Sable continued. "You use your Aegis for the one thing your opponent cannot reach: Your body. Internal Reinforcement."

  "That is a lesson for another day," Sable finished. "Come. You have to get back before the patrol cycles."

  Elma sat in the dirt, rubbing the red spot on her forehead. That speed... It wasn't just fast; it was efficient. She had forced a master to stop playing with "Resonance" and start fighting like a veteran. She had lost, but she had narrowed the playing field.

  As she followed Sable to the green veins circling beneath the grass, her mind drifted back to the dinner hall. Tomorrow, she would begin the hunt for the truth about Fenric.