Mankhaura gritted his teeth, his jaw tight as his once-proud domain shrank around him. What had once been a seamless web of control—a fortress of rock, stone, and will—was unraveling.
The perfect equilibrium he had sculpted with painstaking precision was no more. The invisible tide of Thutmose's will pressed down like a suffocating wave, reshaping the terrain with terrifying ease. The arena—the ground that should have answered to Mankhaura alone—was betraying him.
His floating boulders trembled in the air, their smooth orbit disrupted as if they, too, were unsure of who they now belonged to. Once honed to lethal perfection, his stone spears wavered under the pressure of Thutmose's superior domain. It wasn't just being pushed—it was being devoured.
He had no choice.
If the ground would no longer serve him, then he would rise above it.
