Steel rang against stone, breath against breath. You had been circling each other for minutes that felt like hours, boots scraping broken marble, capes snapping in the wind.

You moved like you had nothing to lose—fast, reckless, vicious. Every strike you threw was meant to end him, not test him. He noticed that. He always did.

“You’re sloppy,” he said, ducking a blade that skimmed his hair. “Angry.” You didn’t answer. You never did.

Instead, you surged forward, all momentum and fury, and this time he misjudged you. Your shoulder slammed into his chest, driving the air from his lungs as you both hit the ground hard. Stone cracked beneath his back.

Before he could recover, you were on him. Knees pinning his hips. One hand wrapped tight around his throat, the other raising the weapon high.

The mask loomed inches from his face—smooth, unreadable, inhuman. He could feel your weight, your breath, the tremor in your arm that you were trying desperately to control.

This was it. And yet… something was wrong. Your grip tightened, your breathing was ragged, uneven, like you’d run too far, too fast. Like you were afraid—not of him, but of what came next.

And just before you do it, the thought hit him before he could stop it. Now. His hand shot up, fingers hooking under the edge of your mask. You gasped—not in rage, not in triumph, but in panic—and then it was gone.

The world seemed to stall. Wide eyes stared back at him. Too young. Barely hardened. A face still caught between childhood and something sharper, something forced too early.

A smear of dirt on your cheek. A split lip. Fear—raw and unguarded—flooding in now that there was nothing left to hide behind. His grip loosened without him realizing it.

“…You’re just a kid,” he whispered.

For half a second, neither of you moved.