Time stretched.
The ballista turned inch by inch, the silence spell choking every gear click and bolt groan.
Cain's palms stayed firm on the weapon, his fingers guiding its arc like a ritual.
The mechanism fought back — uncared for and jammed with the grit of long-dead concrete.
He just breathed, focused — then as it neared alignment, he whispered the a spell.
"Clairvoyance."
The mounted scope glowed almost imperceptibly.
The spell bloomed across his lenses like ink dropped in water — a sudden clarity replacing the ruin-soaked haze.
For three to five seconds, reality extended far beyond its mechanical limits.
Every speck of motion in the distant battlefield sharpened.
Every flicker of heat, every limb in motion — his to read.
The night tried to hide it all, cloaking the cityscape in the pitch of a moonless blackout.
But Cain's thermal overlay burned through the veil.
Midi, the flame-wielding giant, was a beacon of violent light. His every step sent molten heat into the crumbling ruins.
Dilim, in contrast, spread a creeping frost that coated the shattered rebar and rusted girders in brittle sheen.
Between them was Ragta — already faltering, his complexion pale, and his movement was forcefully sluggish.
He was almost dry of both prana and stamina.
And in the middle of it all — the lionare.
A third the size of the giants, but not once overwhelmed, not even once cornered.
Cain zoomed in further, breath caught as he studied the motions.
Gauntlets and greaves was all that the lion wore — no blade, no armor beyond the basics.
Yet attacks from all directions met the same end — deflection, redirection, and neutralization.
His style wasn't savage or showy — it wasn't dance, nor was it made of brute force.
It was something else.
Like a dam built by ancient engineers — silent, unmoving, and precise.
It didn't need to explode, it simply held — then released, only when the moment demanded it.
'That kind of discipline... it wasn't just taught. It was forged by hard work and motivation.'
He adjusted the scope on the ballista with trembling precision.
Because if he was going to pull the trigger on that — he needed to be damn sure it would land.
No second shot — not with a lionare, nor with those giants.
The ballista aligned — one hairline adjustment away from release, but Cain waited, eyes locked through the scope, his breath shallow.
Below, the battle carved across the ruins like some ancient, looping war dance.
The shattered bones of skyscrapers that collapsed centuries ago — framing it like rusted tombstones.
Concrete dust clouded the night.
Yet through the thermal and clairvoyant overlay, Cain saw everything in haunting clarity.
The three giants moved like a choreographed tide.
Ragta lashed his whip forward in a violent arc, each strike crackling with delayed shockwaves.
But the lion didn't dodge — he brushed it aside with his palm.
The energy dispersed before contact, sliding off his body like a repelled field.
Cain's eyes widened.
'That wasn't standard deflection. That was Gravity Primal Ki.'
An element so rare in Fracturion that even major groups didn't have a martial arts catalogue about.
'A rare internal force. And more importantly… it explained the anomaly.'
That was why Ragta's vampirism engravements hadn't worked. They couldn't even touch the lionare's essence.
Dilim and Midi, however, were another story. The lion parried their blows with gear-based precision.
Gauntlet against blades. Greave against cleaver.
Cain could feel the weight behind each clash — the ground cracked beneath them from sheer impact.
They were exchanging a hundred blows every thirty seconds — and no one seemed to plan on slowing down anytime soon.
Cain's heart pounded with the rhythm.
It was a war of attrition now, and the giants were losing it one breath at a time.
Dilim's frost was starting to dull. Midi's flames flickered with strain.
'If I sent an enchantment right at this moment and the lion gets it... This might be over.'
Cain knew — he couldn't afford to gamble.
Stacking three enchantments.
Cain grit his teeth as the cost surged through him — magicules drained fast, each Swiftness layer twice as greedy as the last.
But it was necessary, the bolt couldn't just be fast — it had to be untouchable.
"May this instrument bless my fortune."
Cain flattened his emotions — not wanting the lionare to feel targeted, he would slip the shot like it was instinct.
Letting go of aim as a thought — and became the movement itself.
The reinforced shaft, loaded into the rusted ballista cradle, vanished the moment he pulled the trigger.
It tore through the dead air, silent as a cicada in the deep cold of midnight, hiding its scream until the crack of dawn.
'Mach two. That was the speed.'
Distance — it was over a kilometer and a half away.
The glowing crimson bolt would take two seconds to arrive.
Cain tracked the heat trail faintly on his scope, watching as it streaked toward chaos.
The reason he'd chosen the explosive wasn't flair — it was insurance.
The giants were unknown variables. He didn't know if their bones were iron, nor if their flesh could tank direct hits.
But he wasn't about to bet his life on their hearts.
He'd aimed through a narrow angle of collapsed ruins — eight buildings stood between him and the fray.
Steel-bent bones of skyscrapers, half-toppled, their shadows cutting like scars across the battlefield.
He'd calculated every possible deviation.
Factored in wind slicing through broken windows.
Accounted for stone trembling loose from decades of erosion.
The bolt passed through them all, its path narrowed by math, instinct, and a will to win.
What's more — the angle was so obscured.
None of the combatants could see it.
Ragta's whip lashed the sky. Midi roared flames into Dilim's frost.
And the lionare — still fluid, and still precise while remaining at the center of the storm.
They couldn't know.
Cain's bolt came from outside their rhythm, from a direction no one was watching.
No battle instinct is suppose to react to it — that was his plan.
Who would react first? Who would fall?
Cain didn't know.
He just watched and waited to see whose body dropped first — under the weight of his decision.