The road between the Scorchmark and the breach. Night.She almost made it.That was the thing she would think about later, in the specific way that almost became its own category of weight. Not failure. Not defeat. Something more precise than either.*Almost.*The breach was four hundred meters ahead when the first holy fire arc cut across the tree line.Not from the extraction team.From a different direction entirely.North.She had been tracking the extraction team's movement south of her position. Had been running with that threat mapped and managed.The north had been clear.*Had been.*She felt the Whispering Steel activate before she consciously registered what had happened. The blade's warmth blazing from attended to *urgent* in the space of a single stride.She threw herself left.The holy fire arc passed through the space her body had occupied.Hit a pine tree behind her.The tree did not burn the way ordinary fire burned.It *unmade.*The holy fire's specific quality. Not c
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