It wasn’t ten hours of fighting like mortals, Nadhir or Jinn, no...
It was ten hours of instantaneous combat.
Every second held a million micro-movements.
Every blink of the eye was a full battle in itself.
And it always ended the same.
It was always at the exact same point.
At the end of a ten-hour-long clash.
A singular, perfect stab.
It wasn’t anything flashy.
That was what it was.
Both of them had to lean into it.
They had to risk it without any safety nets.
It was a short moment that announced the transformation of their clash from one microstate to another.
But Cyrus was always first.
Malik was always late by a hair.
And at this level, a single millisecond might as well have been a century.
Every self-burned heart.
He would force himself back into the moment before it.
And every time, the fight built up in the same way.
Clashes so fast the world couldn’t process them.
Fire laced with gold, blinding, dense, and overwhelming.
Wind folded into spears, into barriers, into shields so sharp they could cut Aether itself.
For ten straight hours of combat that never slowed.
And then the tenth-hour mark came.
It always came, Malik’s fraction-long delays catching up to him.
He’d always strike Cyrus’s shoulder in a near-kill.
Cyrus would dodge and strike back—
His staff would change directions mid-attack, a cyclone of hyper-condensed pressure forming at the pivot point.
Malik’s relatively delayed footing would get pushed back a moment.
It was barely any lost time, but...
Cyrus, using the extra space, would stab forward.
A perfect spear of compressed air, held together by five layers of threaded Aether.
It was a simple, straight line.
But it was unavoidable.
Malik couldn’t dodge.
He couldn’t step back in time—Cyrus’s staff was too fast.
He couldn’t duck or sidestep—Cyrus’s staff would still reach him.
He couldn’t anticipate the switch-up, blocking for the stab rather than the slash—Cyrus would just attack his side instead.
The staff would smash into his skull.
Sometimes going straight through and out the back.
Wind pressure would surge in, collapsing his organs in on themselves, vaporizing his blood before it could even hit the ground.
It wasn’t death yet, Cyrus never aimed for that, but it was close.
Every single time, he was forced to kill himself.
And with every death...
He learned as he always did.
He learned how Cyrus’s left foot always planted a half-moment deeper on the third pivot of his clockwise spin.
He learned that Cyrus only drew the staff line when Malik’s weight leaned about sixty-two percent into his right foot.
He learned how the staff required micro-compressions of Aether—around three thousand threads—to hold the stab stable.
He learned how the stab wasn’t a reaction at all but a very calculated lead-up.
A setup that Cyrus knew Malik would fall into because of what he was.
Malik was a predator... a hunter.
A predator always bites, and this one was particularly aggressive.
Malik’s Royal Style changed.
It was ugly, dirty, savage, and improvised.
Instead of dodging perfectly, he started slipping blows, letting strikes skim instead of avoiding them entirely. Instead of overpowering his wind, he started tanking it. He started burying his Spine Splitter inside the turbulence. He started to use the chaotic push-pull of the wind to snap himself around.
His feet didn’t dance like before; they slid, dragged, and dug. Clumsy on purpose.
His golden fire didn’t aim straight or from calculated angles anymore; it whipped wildly, scattering into whips that forced Cyrus to guess which one was after his head.
And most importantly—
He stopped trying to win.
He just focused on not losing.
When the tenth hour came, Cyrus spun.
Malik stepped into it.
The staff grazed his shoulder.
He ducked—not away—but under.
A cyclone of hyper-condensed pressure materialized under Cyrus’s feet, while another formed on his staff, but it was one moment too late.
Malik had finally won the race!
He arrived earlier at the finish line.
Yes, he was a moment before, not after.
...The only way out of the loop.
His entire body twisted, his Spine Splitter held in a reversed grip.
The tip of the burning blade jabbed straight toward Cyrus’s left knee.
Cyrus flinched and jumped away, his wind putting out the fire.
For the first time in ten hours, he recoiled, not at all expecting that attack.
His hyper-pressurized wind collapsed, and the wind exploded sideways in a chaotic burst.
It sent him further back, away from Malik’s follow-up attack that almost took his head.
"—Tch...! Clever guy—"
Malik was already moving, stepping into a future unknown.
His foot slammed down, Devil’s Footsteps reignited, a burning hoofprint splitting the rock.
He arrived before him, and his sword came up, dragging gold flame and molten chains.
Cyrus threw his staff sideways to intercept.
"A predator always bites."
But this time, the predator waited...
And so the prey stabbed nothing.
His Scorpion’s Sting at play.
Cyrus struck behind him, feeling Zephyr’s Kiss pressure.
Again, Malik wasn’t there.
It seemed that instead of using his wind to move him around, he used Cyrus’s own to snap above.
Malik’s entire body warped as he fell.
The tip of Spine Splitter pierced Cyrus’s head.
Though only for a moment, as once his skull began to crack, his staff glowed, Aether flared, and Malik exploded away.
It wasn’t by a gust of wind but Aether.
His feet landed on the ground, and he took a defensive stance, awaiting another invisible strike.
Nothing else hit him.
That seemed to be an extra ability of Cyrus’s Holy Relic, something like his sword recall.
While Malik realized that, Cyrus grunted, stumbling—actually stumbling.