Mahkir hit the boss's flank first, claws raking deep gouges across something that gave under the strike without properly bleeding, and for one clean, bright moment, it actually worked.
The boss staggered, weight shifting back off the leg Mahkir had torn into. Kalsar's Kithren used the opening to drive another bite in, runes flaring bright enough to throw shadows across the chamber walls, tearing loose another visible piece of the thing without dropping it.
Mahkir pulled back half a step, flame already gathering at the corners of his jaw.
"Flame Breath!"
The fire tore across the boss's exposed side, intense and unrelenting, and the violet mass recoiled properly this time, not just rocking back but visibly thinning where the flame touched, streams of light coming apart before pulling themselves back into shape.
"Now!" Maren's voice, from somewhere behind them, and Axel was already moving, four arms hardening as he crossed the distance, the skin along them taking on a dull grey sheen.
"Iron Hands!"
Axel slammed into the boss's side at a dead run, another chunk of it giving way under the impact, and where Kalsar's Kithren had been trading damage and Mahkir had been cutting in with claws and fire both, Axel simply held, planted himself against the boss's next strike and took it on hardened forearms that didn't crack.
For a handful of seconds, all four of them found the same rhythm at once, Kalsar's Kithren biting where it could, every strike landing harder than its size alone accounted for, Mahkir circling fast, cutting in wherever an opening showed, Axel planted directly in the boss's path, forcing it to spend effort just getting past him.
The boss gave ground for the first time, forced back a full step and then another, and something wild and hopeful rose up through Ant watching it happen.
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It didn't last.
Kalsar's Kithren took a hit it should have dodged, strength thinner now than it had been a minute ago, the runes flaring on borrowed reserves that weren't really there anymore. It stayed on its feet. But the half-second it spent recovering was all the boss needed to find its rhythm again, and the pressure started building back the other way.
Mahkir alone wasn't going to hold that gap. Ant could see it even without wanting to: Mahkir was landing real damage every time he found an opening, but he was Level 5 against something Appraisal hadn't been able to put a level to, nothing back from it but a warning about its defence, and speed and cleverness only closed so much of that distance.
"Quad Strike!"
Axel surged forward, all four arms moving in a blur of overlapping hits, and for a moment it looked like enough, the boss actually giving ground under the combined force of the blows.
Then it turned.
One arm swept wide, catching Axel mid-strike, and the force behind it sent him off his feet entirely, his whole body leaving the ground in a spinning arc before slamming into the far wall hard enough that the stone cracked around the impact.
He didn't get up.
"Axel!" Maren was already moving, sprinting across the chamber floor toward him. Ant's ears rang with the impact, the rest of the fight narrowing down to a single point somewhere past his own heartbeat.
Mahkir was still cutting in wherever he could, but he was small against something that had just thrown a Kithren three times his size across the room without visible effort. Kalsar's Kithren was standing but barely, runes dimming, breath ragged. Axel was down, unmoving, Maren dropping to her knees beside him with both hands already searching for signs of life.
Ant didn't decide anything.
His hand was already moving toward the place inside himself where the skill sat, the one he hadn't tested since the warning had settled into him back in the passage.
Attribute Sharing.
His legs buckled for half a second before catching, the floor no longer quite where he expected it. For half a heartbeat everything doubled: his own heartbeat and something else's layered underneath it, his own limbs and something faster, stronger, running through the same frame. Then his own strength simply wasn't the limit anymore, his body answering like it had always had this much to give.
Mahkir's head snapped toward him, amber ears flat back against his skull.
What are you doing.
"Helping," Ant said, and the word came out steadier than he had any right to feel, his legs answering with more than they'd ever had before, his hand closing around Soul Render's grip with strength that wasn't his.
He moved before either of them could argue about it.