The lynx came low — a different approach, the adaptation of a predator that had learned from two exchanges that high attacks were met with evasion. Low was the angle this target hadn't defended. Qi-enhanced animals learned fast. The intelligence wasn't human but it was sufficient.

  Wei adjusted, but it was too late. The fraction of a second between anticipation and reaction — and in that fraction came the lynx's claw.

  The paw caught him across the shoulder, diagonal and deep.

  I heard the sound from eight meters. Tearing fabric and something wetter — skin separating under force. It arrived with the clarity of someone whose perception was designed for detail and was currently producing nausea.

  Blood came immediately, red, hot and vivid.

  Wei let out a scream — short but loud. One syllable. His body had been breached and pain was a surprise, always a surprise, even with training, the first pain in a fight always makes you flinch.

  Then silence as his jaw closed, teeth together, was numbing. He stopped screaming through sheer willpower alone.

  And he didn't step back.

  That was the thing with him — he didn't retreat. Not anymore. His left arm hung at his side, stricken and bleeding from shoulder to elbow, but his right arm came up with qi concentrated in the palm, bright, even brighter than before. The brightness of emergency, of a body that was hurt and responding by pushing harder.

  The lynx turned and closed the distance with regained confidence. It came low again, the strike aimed at his midsection.

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  Wei met it with his right palm forward — a qi-pulse, again it was raw and unfiltered discharged. A fourteen-year-old whose left shoulder was open and whose right hand was everything.

  The strike hit the lynx square in its center.

  The animal staggered. A real stagger — physical disruption. A qi-strike powered by pain and the fuel that only desperation provided.

  The lynx shook. Its qi-lines flickered — visible disruption. For two seconds, maybe three, the animal's enhancement wavered.

  Wei pressed forward. Another strike with his right hand. The same hand. The same arm. He channeled everything he had, expensive and unsustainable, going with it because it was the only option. he had no choice but to go all in.

  "Stay back," he said. Through his teeth. To me. Without looking.

  The lynx retreated two steps, three, its posture shifting from predatory to uncertain — a territorial animal encountering something it couldn't categorize: a bleeding boy whose qi was too bright.

  I stood eight meters away, my mouth full of blood, crescents from my fingernails cut into my palms, my feet planted and rooted, preventing myself from moving by making my body heavy.

  Wei looked at me.

  One glance. From across the clearing. Through the blood and the sweat and the torn sleeve. His eyes met mine and in his eyes, there was one word: No.

  Communicated in the frequency that existed between us — the channel built by proximity and silence.

  I can do this.

  I reigned myself in and stayed.

  The cost of staying was the blood on my tongue and the crescents in my palms. Not-acting as the hardest thing I could do, which was weird, because two years ago — and centuries before that — it was my default, my only reaction.

  But that was before I got involved in the rescue of a village with a boy that was to stubborn to leave me alone.

  The lynx steadied. Its qi-lines re-established. It hadn't retreated far enough. It was still here. Still in the fight.

  Wei's left arm was dripping, not critical yet but accumulating.

  He breathed and set his stance, right arm up, left arm held close.

  The lynx gathered. Muscles bunching under qi-lit fur.

  Wei breathed out. Slow. Ready.