The shallow water of Lynara’s flood was at his face level — the flood she had been building since the first second of the fight, the thin layer of water covering the arena stone now present everywhere within the arena’s perimeter.

He tried to push up.

His arms produced the push.

Lynara pressed both palms to the floor beside his position.

She pulled the flood.

All of it — every unit of water on the arena floor, the entire flood that had been building since the fight began, all drawn simultaneously toward the two points where her palms were pressed to the stone beside Dravos’s position.

The Tidal Collapse at full scale.

The entire flood imploding toward two points directly beside a fighter who was already on the floor.

The water rushed from all directions across the arena surface toward Lynara’s palm positions — the thin layer becoming a fast-moving convergence, the water arriving from every point on the flooded arena simultaneously and collapsing into the implosion points at the pressure of the entire flood’s momentum.

Dravos was between the two implosion points.

The collapsed flood arrived at both points from opposite sides — the force of the entire arena’s water hitting the two implosion positions simultaneously and the pressure between them directed inward from both sides toward the space Dravos occupied between them.

He pressed his palms flat to the floor as the flood arrived.

The water hit him from both sides.

He stayed flat — the impact of the Tidal Collapse at full scale arriving from left and right simultaneously, the force not lifting him or pushing him in one direction but compressing him from both sides, the pressure real and significant.

He tried to deploy a phantom limb.

Lynara’s palms were on the floor.

She felt the limb deploy through the force landscape.

She collapsed the remaining water at the deployment point — a smaller implosion, just the water that had remained after the main collapse, aimed at the phantom limb’s connection point.

The limb retracted.

Dravos lay on the flooded arena floor.

Both hands pressed to the stone.

The flood reduced — most of it spent in the full-scale collapse, the remaining water shallow even by the flood’s standards, the arena floor wet but no longer covered in the consistent shallow layer that had been the fight’s primary tracking medium.

He tried to stand.

One arm came up.

The floor under it was wet — the remaining water present, Lynara’s palms still in contact with it, the force landscape still readable even at reduced flood level.

She felt the arm’s position.

She formed a water construct around his rising arm — not a jet, not an implosion, a wrap, the remaining water gathering around his forearm as it rose from the floor, the construct closing around the arm and pulling it back down toward the stone.

His arm pressed back to the floor.

He tried the other arm.

She wrapped it.

Both arms back on the floor.

He pressed.

A phantom limb from below — the upward approach, deploying a limb downward through the floor was impossible since the limbs were extensions of his body not physical things, but deploying a limb at the floor’s surface level and angling it under Lynara’s construct reach was technically available.

He tried it.

The limb angled low — coming from his torso at the lowest angle it could deploy, traveling across the flooded floor surface toward Lynara’s position.

The ripple.

The floor was still flooded enough — barely, the reduced water present in a thin film across the stone — to show the ripple of the low-angle limb traveling through it.

Lynara read it.

She fired the last significant water jet her reserves could produce — the floor’s remaining water gathering into the jet, the stream aimed at the ripple’s origin.

The jet hit the low-angle phantom limb at its deployment point.

Dravos felt it — the force at the connection point, the jet arriving at the junction between his body and the invisible construct at the specific angle the low-angle deployment had required.

He retracted it.

He lay on the flooded floor.

Both arms wrapped by water constructs that Lynara’s depleted reserves were maintaining through the thin remaining flood.

No phantom limbs deployed.

The referee moved.

He crossed the floor — carefully, the wet stone requiring attention — and arrived at Dravos’s position. He assessed the wrapped arms, the prone position, the absence of deployed phantom limbs. He asked.

Dravos looked at the wet floor beneath his face.

At the thin remaining film of water that Lynara’s ability was still maintaining across the stone — reduced but present, the tracking medium still active even at the reserves’ late stage.

At the arms the water constructs were holding down.

He tried one more phantom limb — the last attempt, the force landscape Lynara was reading from the floor making the deployment immediately visible to her.

She read it before it reached her.

She collapsed the remaining water at the deployment point.

The limb retracted.

He exhaled.

Nodded.

The referee raised a hand.

The Solmara sections gave Lynara everything — the full release of a support base watching their fighter find the phantom limb positions through the water’s ripple, develop the dome for above-water tracking, lose the dome and shift to floor-contact force landscape reading, and end the fight with the full-flood Tidal Collapse compressing from both sides simultaneously.

The Virex sections gave Dravos their full acknowledgment — the sound of people watching their fighter force three separate tracking technique shifts in a single fight, find the dome gap through the simultaneous jet firing, and lose to a fighter who had adapted to every position change the fight produced.

"Lynara of Solmara Institute," the announcer said. "She couldn’t see the phantom limbs. She made the water see them for her." He paused. "Ripples on the floor. Displacement in the dome. Force patterns through palm contact. Three different tracking methods — and when she had the full flood available — she collapsed it all at once from both sides."

Another pause.

"Your winner — Lynara of Solmara Institute."