He didn’t aim a single strike. Instead, he threw his arms wide, and the air itself fractured. A massive, distributed wave of localized, high-velocity wind currents exploded outward from his position, sweeping across the entire plaza in a violent, swirling carpet of chaos.

It was a masterpiece of area denial, a chaotic, unpredictable web of microtornados and sudden pressure drops designed to strip an opponent of their most vital asset: their footing.

VREEEEEEE!

The sound of the wind was a high-pitched, agonizing shriek that tore at the ears.

For Aurelia, struggling to rise from her crater, the wind was a nightmare. Every time she tried to stabilize her heavy, bruised limbs, a sudden gust would catch her, tilting her world and forcing her to fight just to stay upright.

For Iris, the turbulence was a dizzying, nauseating blur that made her head spin and her wounds weep fresh blood.

But Rex... Rex was a different matter entirely.

As the winds lashed against him, attempting to buffet his massive frame and throw him off balance, he simply leaned into the chaos. He didn’t fight the wind; he anchored himself to the very core of the world.

Using his gravity manipulation to create a "gravitational anchor," he turned himself into a living mountain. The winds that were tossing the sisters like autumn leaves merely brushed against him, unable to move a single inch of his colossal, blood-stained mass.

To Rex, the turbulence was nothing more than a light breeze against a fortress.

"Is this the best the heavens can send?!" Rex bellowed, a dark, mocking laugh tearing from his throat as he stood unshaken amidst the howling gale. "HAHAHAHA!"

Iris, clutching her side as the wind threatened to sweep her off her feet, looked up through the swirling dust. Her face was a mask of exhaustion and desperation, her hair whipping wildly around her face.

"Veylor!" she screamed, her voice nearly lost in the roaring tempest. "Get higher! You’re catching us in the crossfire!"

"It’s making it impossible to move!"

She struggled to plant her feet, her boots sliding across the vibrating stone as the wind tried to rip her away from the earth.

High above, Veylor’s expression was one of intense, focused concentration. He could see the carnage below the blood, the broken bodies, and the terrifying silhouette of Rex.

He adjusted his stance in the air, his cape snapping like a whip in the gale.

"Sorry!" Veylor called back, his voice projecting with unnatural clarity through the howling wind.

He began to ascend, his aura flaring as he pushed his altitude higher to clear the turbulence he had created. "Trying! Just... hold on a little longer!"

Rex stood amidst the swirling, chaotic winds, a dark monolith of absolute stillness. He didn’t look like a man under siege; he looked like a predator watching a new, captivating insect enter his web.

His eyes, bloodshot and glowing with a terrifying, gravitational hunger, drifted upward, tracking the shimmering silhouette of Veylor in the sky.

’The wind caller,’ Rex thought, a slow, predatory grin spreading across his face. ’The stabilizer...’

’The one who provides the breath to their dying embers.’

He analyzed the tactical shift instantly. Veylor was playing the perfect support role, maintaining distance, providing area denial, and complicating the battlefield to prevent Rex from focusing a singular, lethal kill on either Aurelia or Iris.

It was a sophisticated, high-level maneuver. But in Rex’s eyes, Veylor wasn’t a savior; he was a variable that needed to be crushed.

"Veylor! Don’t just watch!" Iris screamed from the ground, her voice cracking with a mixture of fury and pure, unadulterated terror.

She was coughing up flecks of blood, her hand pressed hard against her shattered ribs. "He’s not like the others! He’s not just a brute! He’s... he’s a god of the earth!"

"RUN! Get out of his range before he locks onto you!"

Veylor looked down, seeing the desperation in Iris’s eyes, a look he had never seen on her composed, stoic face. It sent a chill through his soul.

"I’m not leaving you, Iris!" he shouted back, his voice booming through the gale. "Just hold on! I’ll bring the sky down on him!"

"You don’t understand!" Iris shrieked, her voice breaking into a sob of warning. "He’s been waiting for you! BE CAREFUL!"

Rex’s laughter was a low, guttural rumble that seemed to come from the very bowels of the earth. "Careful? Why should a god be careful of a breeze?"

He didn’t lunge. He didn’t even move his feet. He simply raised his right hand, his fingers curling as if he were grasping an invisible throat in the sky.

"GRAVITY WELL: HEAVEN’S COLLAPSE!"

Rex didn’t aim for a strike; he aimed for the space itself. He projected a concentrated, violent surge of gravitational force directly toward Veylor’s position, thirty meters above the carnage.

VREEEEEEEEEEE!

The air didn’t just ripple; it imploded. The localized gravity at Veylor’s altitude didn’t just increase; it skyrocketed to ten times the standard Earth constant in a single, brutal heartbeat.

For a normal fighter on the ground, ten times gravity would have turned their bones to powder and flattened them into the dirt instantly. But Veylor was a master of the Wind Affinity.

His very essence was built on defying weight and constantly manipulating his relationship with gravity to achieve flight.

"GAAAAAAH!" Veylor let out a strangled cry as the invisible hammer slammed into him.

The sky seemed to fall. His flight, working, which had been a graceful, buoyant dance, suddenly became a desperate, violent struggle for survival.

He was fighting a war against the very fundamental laws of the universe. The air around him groaned as his wind aura fought to push back against the crushing, invisible weight.

CRACKLE... HSSSS!

The sound of his mana straining was like the sound of a ship’s hull groaning under the pressure of the deep ocean.

Six seconds.

That was all the time the universe gave him. For six agonizing seconds, Veylor’s energy burned with a blinding, desperate intensity, his entire body vibrating as he fought to keep from being slammed into the earth like a fallen star.

But the reserve requirements were astronomical. The cost of defying ten times the world’s weight was a drain that even his vast reserves could barely withstand.

"HAA... HAA... HAAAA!"

His aura flickered. The shimmering blue light around him began to stutter, the sheer exhaustion of the effort visible in the way his hands trembled. He was reaching the breaking point.

The "Earth Bound" dragged down the "Sky Born."

Rex watched the descent with the patience of a spider. He saw the moment the wind caller’s strength faltered, and he saw the moment the predator’s prey lost its ability to fly.

"The sky is falling, little bird," Rex whispered, his eyes gleaming with a sadistic light.

As Veylor’s flight stabilized into a desperate, wobbling hover, Rex lowered his hand, his muscles coiling like massive, iron springs. The era of support was over.

The era of direct, catastrophic confrontation had begun.

"COME DOWN AND DIE!" Rex roared, launching himself upward like a projectile of pure destruction.

The world seemed to slow down as Rex ascended. He was no longer a man; he was a kinetic missile of dark, crushing mass, a black streak of gravitational fury tearing through the atmosphere toward Veylor.

WHOOOOOOOM!

Veylor, hovering at the precipice of total energy exhaustion, felt the sheer terror of the approaching titan. His lungs burned, his vision was blurring, and the crushing weight of Rex’s gravity was still tugging at his very soul.

He looked down and saw Iris broken, bleeding, and screaming his name with a desperation that pierced his heart.

"Don’t you dare... don’t you dare leave us like this!" her voice echoed in his mind.

Something inside Veylor snapped. It wasn’t the snap of breaking but the snap of a dam bursting.

Suddenly, a roaring, incandescent need to be the hero she deserved eclipsed her fear of death. A surge of pure, unadulterated willpower flooded his veins, igniting his mana core like a supernova.

"You think... you can just drag me down?!" Veylor roared, his voice shedding its politeness and taking on a divine, commanding edge. "I AM THE WIND! AND THE WIND... NEVER STAYS STILL!"

FSSSHHHHHHHHHH!

As Rex reached the apex of his jump, his fist cocked back for a world-ending blow, Veylor didn’t dodge.

He didn’t retreat. He expanded.

He unleashed a massive, omnidirectional burst of high-pressure wind: "AERO DISRUPTION: THE GREAT CLEANSING!"

BOOOOOOOM!

The shockwave was so intense it created a vacuum in its wake. The swirling, dark gravitational aura surrounding Rex, the very magic that made him so dangerous, was caught in the violent, spiraling currents and literally stripped away.

The dark energy was shredded, torn into microscopic particles by the sheer friction of the wind, leaving Rex momentarily naked, his magical armor blown away like tattered rags.

Rex’s eyes widened. For the first time, his momentum was disrupted.

"WHAT?!"

"Watch closely, Iris!" Veylor shouted, his eyes glowing with a blinding, cyan brilliance.

He began to move, not just flying but dancing through the air with a speed that defied physics. "Because this is how a savior looks!"

He dived straight at the stunned Rex, initiating a relentless, high-speed aerial assault.

"STRIKE ONE: ZEPHYR’S LANCE!"

Veylor spun his body into a tight, aerodynamic drill, his mana condensing into a razor-sharp point at his feet.

SHING!

He struck Rex’s shoulder, the wind pressure acting like a physical blade that sliced through skin and muscle.

SPLASH!

A spray of dark, heavy blood erupted as the wind carved a shallow trench into Rex’s massive deltoid.

"Too slow!" Veylor yelled, pivoting in midair with a violent flick of his wrist. "STRIKE TWO: THE TWISTER’S WHIP!"