--- A few kiloters away from Ukai ---
Kenzo didn’t like fog.
Not because it scared him or anything. Fog was just... Annoying. It made every step feel like a guess, and he hated guessing when he was used to threaten soone until they confessed.
He walked forward anyway, boots crunching softly over the barren, cracked soil. The ground looked like it hadn’t seen real water in years, even though rain poured over Ukai, a few kiloters away. Out here, the wet fog felt like the only water around.
Atman led the way through the thick haze, hands tucked in his cloak, posture relaxed like they were taking a peaceful evening stroll instead of walking toward a duel that could level a building.
Kenzo squinted. "Are we there yet?"
Atman’s voice drifted back, calm and mildly amused. "Not yet."
Kenzo huffed and kept walking. The fog rolled around them in slow waves, natural and cold, beading on his eyelashes. He could barely see ten steps ahead, which only made him more aware of the sheer stupidity of the situation.
"You sure this is a good place?" Kenzo asked. "Because all I see is fog and depressed dirt."
"We’re still not there yet..." Atman repeated.
They walked for another minute. Maybe two. Ti didn’t feel normal in fog. The sun already set, and Kenzo kept adjusting his grip on the handle of his hamr, the weight almost comforting.
Atman finally slowed down.
Kenzo’s eyes narrowed, trying to find the reason. There were none. No landmark. No tree. No rock. Just the sa cracked ground and the sa wall of pale fog.
Yet Atman stopped completely.
Kenzo looked around again, irritated. "This is it? This is your special little place?"
Atman breathed in once, slow and satisfied, like he tasted the air. "Yeah, this should be about right."
Kenzo stared at him. "About right for what? Getting lost?"
Atman didn’t answer. He simply turned toward Kenzo, and his tired-professor look vanished. His stance widened just slightly, shoulders settling.
Kenzo felt it instantly.
This wasn’t the grumpy man with dark circles who fell asleep while holding ten kiloters of fog.
This was really Atman.
Kenzo’s grin spread before he could stop it. "There you are."
Atman’s mouth curved too. "There you are, as well."
Kenzo swung his hamr once, just to feel the air move, and the fog rippled from the force like a curtain in wind.
"So" he said, "can we finally do it?"
Atman lifted both hands.
Dark-blue smoke coiled out of his sleeves like living ink, thick and smooth, spreading in slow spirals at first, then faster, way faster than before.
Atman spoke cheerfully. "Don’t hold back."
Kenzo didn’t waste breath answering.
The first step cracked the earth under his boot, not from raw weight, but from force packed into his body like compressed tal. Eon flooded through his muscles, reinforcing bone, tendon, skin. He didn’t glow or spark like you’d see in others. He simply beca heavier in a way that wasn’t only physical.
Then Kenzo launched forward and swung.
The hamr smashed through the fog like a guillotine.
Atman’s smoke t it head-on.
A thick tendril rose from the ground, wide as a tree trunk, and wrapped around the hamr’s head mid-swing. The impact didn’t stop Kenzo’s montum, it redirected it, dragging the weapon sideways so the blow carved a shallow trench into the cracked earth instead of splitting Atman.
Kenzo planted his foot, rotated his shoulder, and yanked.
The smoke resisted like rope soaked in oil. Flexible, but strong.
Kenzo grinned wider. "Oh, you’ve been practicing."
Atman’s answer was a shrug that turned into an attack.
The tendril snapped upward, trying to sling Kenzo off balance, but Kenzo let it. He stepped into the pull, used the smoke like a moving platform, and ran up it.
Literally ran.
Atman’s eyes widened for half a second, then he laughed.
"Still insane."
Kenzo sprinted along the tendril as if it was solid ground, boots pounding on smoke that shouldn’t have held him. He reached the top and jumped.
For a heartbeat, he vanished.
Then the hamr ca down from above like a falling star.
Atman reacted without thinking. His smoke split into dozens of thinner strands, snapping upward like hands, trying to catch the hamr mid-drop. The shock of the collision vibrated through the air and made the fog burst outward in a ring.
Kenzo barely landed on one foot, then slamd the hamr sideways to break free.
Kenzo’s muscles tightened with the pressure, but his reinforcent held. He poured more Eon inward, thickening his body from the inside until it felt like his bones were made of stone, and then he forced the hamr through the smoke anyway.
Even thick ropes snap at one point.
Atman’s smile turned sharper.
He flicked his wrist, and the smoke that had been shattered didn’t dissipate. It reassembled in midair, swirling into shapes with frightening speed. A blade ford, long and curved. Then another. Then a third. Not tal blades, but smoke compressed so tightly it looked solid, edges shimring faintly blue.
They launched at Kenzo like thrown spears.
The hamr struck the first blade and shattered it into a burst of dark-blue fragnts. The second clipped his shoulder, and the impact felt like being hit by a truck. The only reaction Kenzo gave was a grunt.
The third ca for his legs.
Kenzo jumped, spun his hamr under him, and used it like a pivot. His body rotated in midair, and the weapon swept through the fog in a wide arc. The smoke blade broke, and the sheer force made the fog peel away for a second, revealing Atman’s silhouette ten ters ahead.
Atman’s cloak moved slightly, and from beneath it, more smoke erged - not just tendrils now, but a whole web. Threads extended outward, connected to nothing visible, as if Atman tied the air itself into dark lines.
Kenzo felt it an instant later.
Pressure.
The fog around Kenzo thickened, not natural anymore. It pressed against his skin, tried to slow his movent, tried to make every step heavier.
Atman was turning the space into a trap.
Kenzo’s grin didn’t fade. "So that’s your plan?"
He bent his knees and pushed forward anyway.
The pressure fought him.
Kenzo broke through it like a boulder through water.
Atman’s eyes narrowed. He raised one hand higher, and the threads snapped downward.
The ground under Kenzo cracked in a straight line, like the earth itself got lashed. Smoke surged up from the split like a wave, trying to swallow Kenzo’s legs and pin him.
Kenzo jumped again, but Atman anticipated it. A thick tendril rose in front of him like a wall, then curved overhead like a jaw closing.
Kenzo hit the smoke wall midair, planted a foot on it, and ran sideways along it, using Atman’s own construct as a ramp to flank him.
Atman’s laugh was quieter now.
Even more smoke moved. Tendrils rose like pillars. Bridges ford and collapsed. Threads snapped and rewove. The fog beca a three-dinsional battlefield, a shifting maze of platforms and restraints, and Atman controlled it like it was part of his body.
Kenzo responded with pure violence and precision.
Every swing of his hamr created small waves that ripped through the fog in visible pulses. Every step cracked the earth. He wasn’t just strong. Every pivot was reinforced so hard that his body moved like a weapon itself.
They clashed in short bursts.
Kenzo surged forward, Atman redirected. Atman tried trapping, Kenzo broke free. Atman tried to bind the hamr, Kenzo used the binding as leverage.
It was flashy, but it wasn’t ssy.
It felt like watching two geniuses argue in the only language they both respected.
Then Atman changed the rhythm.
The fog around them suddenly pulled inward, as if the world inhaled.
Atman lifted both hands, and every thread he had woven snapped tight at once. Smoke compressed into thick bands, swirling around Kenzo like coils around prey. They didn’t just wrap his arms or legs. They wrapped the space around him, closing angles, blocking movent.
Kenzo’s boots scraped hard against the earth as he resisted.
Atman stepped forward, calm in the center of his own storm. His Chasmis glead. "You can’t solve everything by hitting it!"
Kenzo bared his teeth. "Watch ."
He slamd his foot down.
Eon surged through his body in one brutal pulse. The smoke coils shuddered. Kenzo lifted the hamr with both hands and wrenched.
The coils snapped.
Not all at once, but enough.
Kenzo exploded forward through the opening, and Atman reacted with sothing new.
He created a tendril thicker than any before, not a rope or a blade, but a massive column that rose from the ground and curved into a full arc above them, like the spine of so giant creature. More columns ford in an instant, connecting, shaping into a hollow structure that surrounded them.
A do of smoke.
Kenzo’s eyes widened. "You’re making an arena inside the arena."
Atman smiled. "Now you’re getting it."
The do tightened, the fog inside swirling faster, turning into a contained storm. It made everything louder - the wind, the breath, the impact of footsteps. It made the fight feel closer, more intense, like there was nowhere to run.
Kenzo loved it.
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