Two didn't strike.
She unraveled.
Not in the way an enemy charges, not with fire or blade or scream, but with quiet precision. With the silent cruelty of inevitability. As if every spell Sylva conjured was a tapestry she casually tugged loose at the seams, thread by thread, until all that remained was fray and memory.
No flare of deflection. No counterspell sigils. No obvious technique. Just… the unmaking.
It was elegance sharpened to a point. Controlled, clean, and entirely unnatural.
Sylva's hands danced through the air, her lips whispering ancient syllables. A burst of roots coiled at her fingertips, hungry, precise.
And then—
Ash.
The roots scattered before it reached the world.
A wind glyph surged next, fast, invisible, coiling like a serpent around her target. But before it struck—
It reversed.
Spun backward in an instant, like a memory recalled instead of lived. The momentum collapsed inward, stealing breath from Sylva's lungs.
She planted her feet, forcing mana into a barrier, an old one, reliable, constructed to resist.
But even that shimmer—so familiar, so steady—flickered. Glitched. Fizzled.
As if it had never been meant to exist in the first place.
Sylva gasped, her breath sharp and thin, the world tilting just slightly.
This wasn't counter-magic.
It wasn't resistance.
It was a kind of magic that didn't oppose yours, but denied your timeline entirely.
Her heart pounded against her chest, frantic, disoriented. Magic was her rhythm. Her second language. Her gravity. And now, it was all upside down.
"This is… impossible," she whispered, the words torn from her, not spoken.
From across the fractured battlefield, shimmers, shattered mirrors, came another voice. Steady. Certain.
Lira.
"She's not canceling you," Lira called out, her tone cutting through the haze like her mirrorblade.
"She's rewinding your weave."
Sylva's breath caught. The implications hit her like a slap.
"Rewinding?" She thought.
She looked again at Two, silent, unnerving. Her face blank, as if painted on wet porcelain. Her movements too fluid, too efficient. Her hair fluttering, as if it has no care for the battle it's facing.
Not reacting to magic, reacting to its origin.
Sylva's fingers clenched reflexively.
And then—
A decision.
She dropped to one knee, her cloak of vines fluttering around her in the heated wind, not in pain, not in fear, but with deliberate control.
Not surrender.
But strategy.
Her hand pressed to the dirt, and the glyphs etched along her forearm flared to life, gentle lines of pale gold threading through skin like veins of light on Lanz.They weren't just designs.
They were history.
"No spell this time," she murmured, her voice like steel behind velvet.
"Just memory."
This was not improvisation. This was recall. This was reaching into the chronicle of her own power and rewriting its ending.
It wasn't the first part of Tactical Glyphwork the world respected.
But it was the part it feared.
She didn't call on fresh mana. Didn't shape a new construct.
Instead, she reached back, into the archive of her battle rhythm. Every flick of the wrist. Every twist of her fingers. Every subtle gesture she'd ever made was catalogued in those glyphs. Stored, encoded, waiting.
She didn't cast a spell.
She triggered an echo.
The weave didn't shimmer. It didn't light up with fire or crack with thunder.
It simply was, already born, already lived, now just resurfacing.
The earth beneath Two detonated in a sudden concussive force, not summoned, but remembered. A spell from moments ago, now played again like a song she knew by heart.
The dirt erupted. Dust and pressure burst skyward.
Two lifted off her feet, not dramatically, but unnaturally, like the universe momentarily forgot she was grounded, and then crashed back to earth with a hard thud, Sylva's cloak flaring as she hit the ground.
For the first time, her perfectly unblinking gaze, blinked.
Just once.
A fracture in the void.
"You…" she breathed, and her voice sounded almost human, thin, touched by surprise.
"Pre-recorded… magic…"
Sylva stood slowly, rising like a storm regaining shape.
The light in her eyes no longer shimmered, it burned.
Blood touched the corner of her mouth. She wiped it away with the back of her hand like it was beneath her notice. Her smile wasn't wide.
But it was sharp.
"I don't cast spells anymore," she said, voice low and measured. "I set traps…"
"For time."
The battlefield fell still.
Even the air seemed unsure if it should move.
A silence more charged than thunder passed between them. Not hesitation.
Just calibration.
And then—
Two moved.
Just slightly.
Her grip changed, subtle, but decisive. Her stance, once loose, was now locked. A line drawn. A statement made.
She tilted her head, expression as blank as always, but her voice, this time, wasn't empty.
It was intrigued.
"Is that so?"
She adjusted again. Red cords gleamed under the broken sky, sleek, like something that remembered being alive.
"Then let's test the full sync."
End of Chapter 21.