Chapter 113: Cracks Beneath Command
It began not with flame, but with stillness.
Maverick was breathing harder now. Not out of fear—but because the fire-wielding Unco user had stopped fighting like a hammer and started fighting like a mirror. No more heat waves launched blindly. No more wild swings lined with smoke. The man had recalibrated. The way he moved wasn’t desperate anymore—it was methodical. Cruel in the way traps are cruel, not because they snap, but because they wait.
Maverick’s coat was gone. His Bastion Blade was planted beside him, vibrating faintly from the last resonance pulse. His skin shone with sweat and soot. The inside of his chest felt raw from heat drawn too deep. And when he moved now—his body asked him why. His Unco still burned behind his ribs, still surged when he clenched his fists, but the man in front of him had begun to box it in. Cut off angles. Shape the space.
He wasn’t just fighting with fire.
He was using terrain.
Maverick charged anyway—because that’s what you do when your blood won’t sit still.
He roared through the clearing, shoulder-first, gauntlet up, his voice a cannon meant to distract, meant to break rhythm. But the fire wielder didn’t brace. He sidestepped half a meter—and Maverick felt the shift in ground beneath him as he passed over something slick.
Ash.
Laced deliberately into the soil. Packed into a curve.
His boots slipped—not fully, but enough.
And that’s when the trap triggered.
From the side—not ahead—came the first burst. A redirected heat pulse, rebounding off half-melted stone from the earlier fight. It caught him across the ribs, hard enough to twist his balance mid-run.