Chapter 274: THE TEAM FALLS

The angel reached Alex with both transfers incomplete.

Raven’s F3 halfway through the process — the channel between F3 and Alex open but the transfer incomplete, Raven’s double‑bladed scythe destabilizing in her hand as the Fragment began to yield.

Jessica’s F6 barely started — Entropy at the threshold between Jessica’s channel and Alex’s, not yet fully crossed.

The angel placed its hand on Alex’s chest and threw him backward.

Not with the full momentum of the fight’s first strike — calibrated. The angel didn’t want Alex unconscious yet. It wanted Alex interrupted.

Both transfers collapsed.

F3 returning to Raven. F6 returning to Jessica.

Alex on the forest floor with the interruption of two simultaneous transfers resonating in the channels of the five Fragments he already had — the specific pain of something that started and was stopped, different from combat pain.

[Alex HP: 381,200 → 298,400]

---

The angel without the channel to the Gods’ plane — Grim had interrupted it — but without needing it for what it did now.

The reestablishment channel active, the time needed to reconnect to the Gods’ plane counting.

Meanwhile: the angel with its physical capabilities and access to the ordinary spiritual plane the repressor had by nature, without the full authorization but still unreadable to Alex’s Soul Sight.

The angel oriented toward the bearers.

Raven first — the Harvester’s Hand, F3, the Fragment that had been the greatest obstacle after Seraph’s F2 scythe.

The angel reached Raven.

---

Raven with F3 active — her crimson eyes, the double‑bladed scythe, Army of Bones reconstituted to forty‑two units. All that remained after the fight.

The angel struck.

Not the full fist — the back of its hand, the same calibrated strike it had used earlier in the fight when the goal was to move without spending the momentum it needed for other targets.

Raven took the strike to her right shoulder — the same shoulder as the first calibrated impact of the fight, the bone already with the accumulated damage from that first strike.

The bone gave way.

[Raven HP: 84,200 → 31,600]

Raven against the nearest tree. F3 sustained — her crimson eyes not going out, the scythe still in her hand — but her right arm without the function needed to hold the scythe correctly, the active Fragment’s weight resting on her left arm.

The angel continued toward Jessica.

Jessica, who had oriented F6 toward the angel from a distance, Entropy seeking the degraded wing’s edge as the repressor approached.

The angel pulsed — not the full Gods’ plane pulse, the lesser pulse it could execute without active authorization. The concentrated type it had learned during the fight.

The pulse reached Jessica.

[Jessica HP: 71,900 → 14,200]

Jessica to the ground. F6 interrupted on impact, Entropy collapsing at the contact point between F6’s channel and the angel’s pulse. Entropy’s black eyes flickering — the Fragment mode sustained but at the limit of what her body could sustain with fourteen thousand HP.

The angel continued.

Emily — who had been with Purifying Light in passive healing since falling to the ground from the previous maximum pulse — without Purifying Light active in offensive mode, without the ability to physically block the unreadable‑level repressor.

The angel passed her by.

Not because Emily wasn’t a target — because Emily without Purifying Light in a mode that could directly interfere with the repressor wasn’t a priority at this moment.

It continued toward Kira.

---

Kira on the north flank with her bow and Predator’s Sense — which had mapped every angel movement throughout the fight, which had calculated trajectories and communicated to the team in real time for forty minutes of continuous combat.

The angel reached her before Predator’s Sense finished reading the approach trajectory.

Not because Kira didn’t read it — because the repressor’s speed reduced the time between reading and arrival to less than the human body needed to react even though the mind knew exactly what was coming.

The strike to her side.

[Kira HP: 195,000 → 87,300]

Kira to the ground — her bow released, Predator’s Sense still active in the passive state that never fully turned off, her eyes open looking at the forest sky above the fallen trunks.

Standing in twenty seconds.

Her body responding to twenty years of island training that made getting up after a hit as automatic as breathing.

Twenty seconds.

In twenty seconds the angel had reached Maya.

---

Maya with Akari in true form — the nine tails active, the guardian spirit’s golden eyes on the repressor, the Eastern Island terrain knowledge Maya had built over weeks.

Terrain knowledge didn’t work against something that could ignore terrain.

Akari tried to interpose — the nine tails closing the space between the angel and Maya.

The angel swept with its arm. Not its wounded arm — its left one, which didn’t have the deep wound from Seraph’s third cut.

Three of Akari’s tails broken in the sweep — the guardian spirit making the sound it made when taking direct damage, a sound Maya recognized from previous fights and that produced something more immediate than any tactical analysis.

The angel passed Akari’s remaining six tails with the same continuous movement and reached Maya.

Not the calibrated strike it had used against Raven and Kira.

The angel’s hand on Maya’s shoulder — holding her, applying the exact pressure for her body to give way without the projected momentum that would have sent Maya among the trees.

Maya fell to the ground without speed.

[Maya HP: 142,000 → 62,400]

Akari in true form over Maya — the remaining six tails creating a barrier between Maya’s body and any next strike, her golden eyes on the repressor with the attention of something that couldn’t win the fight but wasn’t going to move.

The angel evaluated Akari.

A second.

It passed by.

---

Grim in the clearing — eighty centimeters, crimson flames at their usual level after the transformation had collapsed when he redirected the energy to the overlap point.

The core without the four Fragments amplifying it — without the original Harvester’s scythe, without the amplified state’s neutrality. Grim as Grim.

But the Grim who had spent months being exactly this alongside the team.

**"Master."** Grim’s voice to Alex. **"The angel’s channel is reestablishing."**

Alex on the forest floor processing the interruption of two transfers and the ninety thousand accumulated damage from the fight.

"How long?"

**"Two minutes. Less if the angel can concentrate on reestablishment without distractions."**

The angel orienting toward the fallen team — not toward Alex yet, toward the bearers. Evaluating their state.

Seraph at zero HP, on the ground, not getting up.

Raven with thirty‑one thousand, F3 active, her right arm nonfunctional.

Jessica with fourteen thousand, F6 at its limit.

Kira getting up.

Maya with Akari covering her.

Emily on the ground with Purifying Light in passive healing in the radius of what she could reach without moving.

And Raven.

Raven who stood up.

Not slowly — with her right arm nonfunctional, with thirty‑one thousand HP, with F3 active and the scythe in her left hand because her right could no longer hold it. Raven stood up with the posture of someone who was going to do what needed to be done regardless of whether her body had the resources to do it.

She activated F3 at maximum.

[F3 — The Harvester’s Hand — full mode — active]

Her crimson eyes. The double‑bladed scythe in her left hand. Army of Bones reconstituted from what remained available — forty‑two units, the last the forest’s spiritual plane had accessible to F3 after the fight.

Forty‑two.

A barrier.

Not an attack — a skeleton barrier between the angel and the fallen girls. Raven at the barrier’s front, the scythe held in the hand that could hold it, the forty‑two skeletons closing the space between the repressor and Emily and Kira and Maya and Seraph.

"You’re not passing," said Raven.

The angel looked at her.

It evaluated the barrier.

It evaluated Raven.

And attacked.

---

The first strike on the barrier disintegrated twelve skeletons.

The twelve densest at the front — built from the bones of the Eastern Island’s most resistant creatures, the ones Raven had placed at the highest density point. Twelve in one strike.

Thirty remaining.

Raven didn’t step back.

The second strike reached the barrier’s right flank — ten skeletons.

Twenty remaining.

Grim took his place beside Raven.

Not with the original Harvester’s scythe — without it. With what Grim had without the four Fragments amplifying: the original Harvester’s core, the plane between life and death as territory, and eighty centimeters of presence that the angel recognized even without amplification.

The repressor stopped.

Not from fear.

Two seconds of pause.

The channel’s reestablishment time to the Gods’ plane counting.

Grim using those two seconds:

**"Master."** His crimson flames looking at Alex behind them. **"Now."**

Alex on the forest floor.

The five points of light on his chest — low, with the fight’s accumulated damage in the channels, with the interruption of the two transfers still resonating.

Looking at Raven.

Raven with the scythe in her left hand and her right arm nonfunctional and thirty‑one thousand HP and the forty‑two skeletons between the angel and the fallen girls.

And Raven’s right hand on her stomach.

The gesture the team had seen for months. That Kira had filed away. That Emily had noticed. That Grim had known before Threshold Port. That Raven had said aloud on the rock in front of the Silent Threshold.

Alex saw the hand.

And F7’s channel opened on its own.

Not by conscious decision — by the most concrete reason in existence arriving at the Fragment’s channel, responding to concrete reasons before the mind asked it to respond.

---

The angel pushed Grim aside.

Not with the clash between planes — with direct physical force, the repressor calculating that moving the core laterally was more efficient than a frontal clash.

Grim gave way three meters.

The angel reached Raven’s barrier — the twenty remaining skeletons. The next pulse.

And Alex stood up.

---

Not slowly. Not with his body recovered — his body still carried ninety thousand accumulated damage and his right wrist at seventy percent function and his ribs still with the impact from the fight’s first strike present.

He stood up because F7 was fully open.

And F7 with the most concrete reason activating it wasn’t the exploratory F7 of the seventh space — it was F7 with direction.

Alex’s left hand extended toward the angel.

The spiritual plane of the space between Alex and the angel changed — not gradually, like during the transfer in the seventh space. All at once, like when F7 had altered the black stone walls in the Threshold.

A barrier.

Not of matter. Not of ordinary spiritual energy. A barrier of altered reality — F7 changing the state of the space between Alex and the angel from traversable space to space with the property of being untraversable.

The angel’s pulse reached the barrier.

And stopped.

Not absorbed. Not deflected. Stopped — the Gods’ plane pulse finding a space where the Gods’ plane rules didn’t apply because F7 had altered that specific space’s rules.

The angel looked at the barrier.

Looked at Alex.

Alex with the expression that wasn’t the seventh space’s trance nor the frenzy that came after — it was the expression of someone completely present, completely aware, who had just done something they didn’t know they could do and knew exactly why they had done it.

Alex’s eyes on the angel’s eyes.

Without high‑corruption crimson.

Without the trance’s smile.

Only Alex.

The angel and Alex looking at each other through the altered‑reality barrier.

Neither moving.