Yanwei didn't strike.
Not yet.
Instead, he stood there—smiling again.
That damn smile.
Like he had already won and was just taking his time enjoying the scenery.
His gaze lowered to her blade, then returned to her face.
"You wield it well," he said, voice low and smooth.
Too smooth.
"Cold. Precise. Like a surgeon's touch."
He took a slow breath—loud enough to hear in the stillness.
"But that's the problem, isn't it?"
He tilted his head again, just slightly.
Like a man looking at a rare painting—then pointing out the flaw in the brushwork.
"You mistake stillness for control."
His words were light.
But they struck like frostbite—quiet, spreading, irreversible.
"That sword… that aura… it's not calm."
He circled again—one step at a time. Not to threaten, not to close the gap.
But to frame her.
"It's restraint," he said.
Not a question.
A sentence.
"It's not that you don't feel."
His voice dipped lower.
Sharper.
"It's that you can't afford to."
Velurya didn't move.
But something shifted behind her gaze—small, unreadable.
Like a thread drawn taut.
"You sealed your storm in ice and called it elegance," Yanwei said.
"Tell me… how long until it cracks?"
He paused there. Let the silence stretch.
"Is that what your second talent is? Suppression disguised as serenity?"
He stepped closer.
Close enough for words to pierce before steel ever could.
"Or is it just cowardice… refined into art?"
Still no answer.
So he leaned in—just a fraction.
And whispered it like a lover's insult:
"You built a sword to keep the world out… but it looks an awful lot like a cage."
That broke the stillness.
Not with movement.
But with weight.
The kind of silence that came not from peace, but from something ancient holding its breath before it chose to shatter.
Yanwei's smirk softened—into something close to sincerity.
But not quite.
"You want to impress me, Velurya?"
His voice was a breath above a whisper now.
"Break your sword."
Her hand twitched.
The faintest motion. But it said enough.
He grinned again, this time with full teeth.
"That's what I thought."
Velurya didn't blink.
Didn't flinch.
She simply stood—still wrapped in that impossible calm.
Then she spoke.
Cool. Clear. Cutting.
"Didn't I warn you?" she murmured.
Her voice was quieter than before—but colder now. Like frost forming on steel.
"You can't wound me with words."
Her grip on the sword didn't shift.
She didn't posture. Didn't raise her voice.
"You're not clever enough to make me bleed from the mouth."
A heartbeat passed.
Then—
She moved.
No warning.
No build-up.
Just steel.
Her body snapped forward, clean as a drawn arrow.
A single stabbing thrust—not wild, not emotional.
Surgical. Efficient. Brutal.
The kind of strike meant to end something—not prolong it.
The sword shimmered mid-lunge, catching moonlight in a blade of deathly grace as it drove for Yanwei's heart.
To the eye, it was a simple stab.
Direct. Clean. No wasted motion.
But to Yanwei—
It was a death sentence wrapped in silence.
The moment Velurya lunged, the cold deepened.
Not wind. Not weather.
Pressure.
Invisible and absolute.
It wrapped around his chest like coiled iron, sinking deep into the lungs—
or whatever was left of them that still remembered how to breathe.
His body tensed—reflex, instinct, training.
But none of it mattered.
Because there was no opening.
Her thrust wasn't fast. It wasn't brutal.
It was precise.
Too precise.
Every angle accounted for.
Every path of retreat sealed before the blade even moved.
The kind of strike that didn't challenge his defense—
It erased the very idea of one.
He tried to shift his weight—
but found his own stance compromised by her pressure.
Not broken, no—anchored.
It was like the cold had seeped into his joints.
Slowing. Sinking.
Claiming.
And the worst part?
She hadn't even changed expression.
This wasn't fury.
This wasn't passion.
It was discipline turned blade.
The sword surged forward, hungerless but absolute—
and for a single flicker of a second, Yanwei saw it:
She didn't want to kill him.
Not yet.
She wanted to show him.
That the moment he chose to speak instead of strike—
he'd already lost.
She stabbed.
And he stepped into it.
No hesitation.
No panic.
Just decision.
His left hand snapped up—bare against steel.
Her blade met flesh—
and bit.
A crack rang out.
Not from the sword, but from his hand.
Ice spread instantly, veins turning white, fingers stiffening mid-motion.
His palm crystallized around the blade's edge, skin tearing as the cold set in.
By the time he locked it in place, his entire hand was no longer a hand—
but a jagged, frozen mass of blood, bone, and frost.
The grass beneath his feet curled inward.
Frost bloomed across the soil, spiderwebbing through the earth.
The air shivered.
He didn't flinch.
Didn't even look at the damage.
Instead, his gaze lifted.
Black.
Bottomless.
Abyssal.
"Trust me, Velurya," he said, voice deep and smooth, yet empty of all warmth.
"I am absolute."
Then he moved.
Not fast—
but precise.
His body turned, not away from her blade, but around it.
Using the very wound as leverage.
His right arm slipped through the folds of his cloak—clean, exact—
and a blade flashed.
Straight for her shoulder.
Velurya's body reacted. Her instincts obeyed.
She tilted just enough to avoid the worst—
but not enough.
Steel kissed skin.
A thin line bloomed red across her shoulder.
By the time her feet landed and her blade pulled free, he had already let go.
His left hand cracked—
flesh splitting along the frozen fractures.
Fingers hung uselessly, blood dripping in steady rhythm against the dirt.
Still—he did not wince.
No grunt.
No grimace.
Not even a glance.
The silence stretched.
Not victorious.
Not tense.
Just… controlled.
And that was what made it terrifying.
It wasn't a good trade.
Not by any logic.
A nearly destroyed hand for a graze?
It was a terrible start to any battle.
But that was never the point.
He hadn't made the move to win.
He made it to teach her something.
To press a truth into her bones.
That he would break himself—willingly, rationally—
if it meant unbalancing her.
He wasn't wild.
He wasn't out of control.
He had simply calculated that this would shake her more than any clever insult.
And it had.
She hadn't flinched at threats.
Hadn't blinked at mockery.
But this—
This told her something else.
That pain meant nothing to him.
That he would burn his body to place a single cut on her.
And worse—
That it was working.
Velurya stood across from him, blood trailing down her arm, blade still steady.
But her eyes had changed.
Not wide.
Not scared.
Just… focused.
Sharper. Deeper.
The kind of stare that recognized what she was dealing with now.
Not a brawler.
Not a brute.
But something colder.
A mind willing to destroy its body for advantage.
And that—finally—
made her take him seriously.