Jane had fought strong opponents before.

  This was not that.

  Strong opponents hit hard and moved fast and you learned their patterns if you survived long enough. The Darkness Incarnate didn't have patterns. It had presence — the kind that pressed down on your chest before it even moved, that made the air feel wrong just by existing in it.

  She dodged the first swing. Barely.

  Fine, she thought, getting her feet under her. Fine.

  She glanced once at the Lady, standing in the distance with that expression she wore when she was watching and waiting and not going to intervene. Jane had known Josephine her entire life. She knew every version of that face.

  This one meant: do it yourself.

  Alright.

  She went in.

  Her daggers found the creature's side and did essentially nothing. Bounced off the darkness like hitting smoke. Her arms rang with the impact. She pulled back, circled, went in again from the other angle. Same result.

  Think.

  She wasn't strong enough to punch through it directly. She was a 5th tier assassin and this thing was built from something older and heavier than anything she'd trained for. Brute force wasn't going to be the answer.

  But she wasn't going to stop.

  The Lady was watching. That was enough.

  Jane kept going.

  She lost track of time somewhere in the middle of it. She stopped thinking about winning and started thinking about not losing — about staying on her feet, staying fast, making the creature work for every hit it landed. When it clipped her and sent her into the ruins of a wall, she got back up. When it clipped her again, she got back up again.

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  At some point she realized her feet were moving differently.

  Not a decision — just her body adjusting, reading the creature's rhythm ahead of itself. She was still getting hit. But she was getting hit less.

  Something had shifted. She didn't have a word for it. It was just — different. Like a door had opened somewhere inside her that she hadn't known was there.

  Her strikes started connecting. Not deeply — not yet — but they weren't bouncing off anymore either. She felt the shift the way you feel a lock giving way. Not dramatic. Just: there. Then not there. Then open.

  The creature lashed out and she read it half a second early and the tendril caught her side instead of her chest, and she went down, and she got back up.

  "I can't fall," she said, out loud, to no one.

  The Lady was still watching.

  Then don't fall.

  That door opened a little wider.

  Her daggers were cutting into the creature now instead of skipping off it. Each strike landing somewhere that mattered. She started pushing it back. Small steps. Ground she had to fight for.

  Still not enough. She could feel that too.

  The creature gathered itself for something final. Jane could feel the weight of it building — that pressure that meant this one will end it.

  Her hands were shaking. Her whole body was shaking.

  She thought about the Lady's face when she'd said "everything will be fine" all those years ago, and the years before that, and every time in between. She thought about what it meant to be the only person who stayed.

  I'm not leaving now either.

  Jane didn't dodge.

  She went straight at it.

  Something broke open inside her — not painfully, just finally, the way a door gives when you've been pushing at it for long enough. The shaking stopped. Her vision sharpened. She could see the creature clearly now, every part of it, every weak point it thought it was hiding.

  Her daggers started glowing. She didn't have time to be surprised about that.

  She tore into it.

  Strike after strike, faster than she'd ever moved, each one landing exactly where it needed to. The creature was wavering. She could see it wavering. Its form was losing cohesion, pulling apart at the edges.

  One more.

  Whatever had been building in her finally broke through completely. She felt it settle — something permanent, something that wasn't going back.

  She drove both daggers into the heart of it.

  The Darkness Incarnate came apart.

  Jane stood in the silence it left behind, breathing hard, her whole body a complaint. The glow on her daggers faded. The creature was gone.

  She turned around.

  She walked back to her Lady, knelt down, and bowed her head.

  "My Lady." Her voice came out quieter than she expected. "I will never leave your side."

  She meant it. She'd always meant it.

  She just hadn't been strong enough to back it up until now.