(meanwhile)Here's Shenhe!

Arlecchino pressed her bare back against the rough volcanic stone and forced her breathing into absolute silence. Shallow cuts across her shoulders and the upper curve of her spine still welled thin lines of red; the calamity’s earlier strikes had been glancing but precise enough to mark her. The black-and-red lingerie hung in torn scraps, useless for anything except reminding her how little protection she currently wore. Dust and dried sweat clung to her skin. She had put distance between herself and the collapsed cave, yet it was not enough.

Only a few meters away, on the far side of the low stone outcrop, Shenhe moved.

The white-haired woman advanced with unnatural quiet for something that radiated so much raw killing intent. Her head turned in slow, methodical arcs. Pale eyes scanned every shadow, every crack, every possible place a body could conceal itself. She had lost the direct trail among the broken ridges and now hunted by instinct and residual scent alone. The absence of her usual restraints made the air around her feel heavier, colder, wrong—as if the land itself recoiled from whatever had been unchained.

Arlecchino remained motionless.

She could win a straight fight against this one. The Knave’s mind ran the calculation automatically: reach, weapon speed, the predictable openings in an opponent who favored overwhelming force. In open terrain, one-on-one, the odds favored her. But the sky above was not empty.

A white crane circled in wide, patient loops.

Cloud Retainer’s gaze swept the ridges with the same cold precision as her disciple’s. The moment steel or blood-red constructs flared in earnest, the adeptus would drop. And once the crane joined the calamity, the window for a clean kill or a clean escape would close to nothing. Arlecchino had not survived this long by underestimating coordinated threats.

A loose pebble shifted under her bare foot.

The sound was tiny.

Both women froze.

Shenhe’s head turned a fraction toward the wall. Her nostrils flared. The calamity took one slow step closer to the outcrop, polearm angled low, body coiled for the explosive first strike that would end the hunt.

The crane’s shadow passed overhead once, twice.

The polearm head punched through the stone less than a hand’s breadth from Arlecchino’s face.

The clean, freezing blade stopped close enough that she saw her own reflection warped across its surface—pale skin, red crossed eyes, and an expression she almost never allowed: contorted, stressed, openly frustrated. The usual blank mask had cracked under the pressure of being hunted.

Shenhe ripped the weapon sideways.

The wall exploded outward in a spray of volcanic rock and dust. Arlecchino was already moving, bare feet finding purchase as she launched herself away from the outcrop at full speed. A crude cryo clone formed in her wake and swung from the flank with murderous intent. The copy’s face was nothing like her usual controlled blankness; it wore a wide, exhilarated psychopath’s grin, the expression of something that had finally been allowed to kill and was savoring the moment. Arlecchino twisted, scythe flashing, and shattered the clone into glittering shards of ice before it could complete the strike.

She had no time to breathe.

A screaming windblade dropped from the sky. Cloud Retainer’s projectile carved a massive cleft through the ground where the Knave had stood a fraction of a second earlier, the stone glowing molten at the edges from pure force. Every attack was lethal. No disabling shots. No attempts to capture. Only the clear intent to end her.

The white crane folded its wings and dove.

Arlecchino looked up into the oncoming adeptus and made the only remaining calculation that favored survival. Crimson energy flared. The air tore open in a vertical rift of dark red light—the boundary of the Crimson Moon’s plane. She seized both Shenhe and Cloud Retainer in the pull of the domain shift, dragging the calamity and the crane through with her in a single violent motion.

The volcanic ridge vanished.

For a heartbeat the three of them hung in the blood-red expanse of the Knave’s domain. Arlecchino did not waste the advantage. Binding constructs of the same dark-red material locked around both pursuers long enough to freeze them in place—not permanently, only for the seconds she needed. Then she released the domain as abruptly as she had summoned it, using the exit rift to fling herself clear.

She reappeared already sprinting and vanished into the next deep ravine before either Shenhe or Cloud Retainer could fully break free of the residual bindings.

Arlecchino’s bare feet skidded across loose volcanic gravel as she aborted the sprint at the last possible instant.

A dense lattice of near-invisible hydro lines—thin as piano wire and sharp enough to shear flesh to the bone—hung across the mouth of the ravine at every height and angle. Yelan had anticipated the escape route and prepared the box with professional thoroughness. One more step and the Knave would have been carved apart mid-stride.

She did not take that step.

Dark-red wings erupted from her back in a violent flare of energy. The sudden upward surge carried her clear of the waiting wires just as the first of them sliced through the empty air where her throat and thighs had been. Yelan’s trap closed on nothing.

Arlecchino climbed hard and fast, putting vertical distance between herself and the three pursuers while Cloud Retainer was still shaking off the residual bindings of the Crimson Moon plane. Within seconds she was only a shrinking silhouette against the late-afternoon sky, then a distant speck, then gone beyond the next range of broken ridges.

Silence settled over the ravine.

Shenhe stood with her polearm still in hand, restraints gone, the last traces of killing intent slowly bleeding out of the air around her. Cloud Retainer landed beside her in human form, elegant features tight with cold displeasure. Yelan walked forward from the shadows where she had waited, the last of the hydro wires dissolving into mist around her fingers.

The three women came together without speaking.

There was nothing to say. The prey had slipped the net for good. The brief, shared look that passed between them carried only silent, collective disdain—for the Harbinger who had escaped, for the timing that had failed them, and for the simple fact that the woman who had taken their Traveler would not die on this mountain today.