The floor shifted beneath his feet.
The light dimmed to a pulsing red hue, as if the walls had veins and something inside them was stirring awake. Nikolai didn't wait. The moment the Architect snapped his fingers, he moved.
He launched forward with a burst of speed, his black claws dragging sparks off the steel tiles as he spun low and went for the ribs.
The Architect twisted just enough to evade — one motion, practised and clean. His white coat snapped behind him like a surgeon's cape, long tails following his pivot as he retaliated with a smooth, open-handed strike aimed directly at Nikolai's exposed neck.
Nikolai barely slipped under it.
It wasn't power he felt.
It was precision.
The Architect's fingers sliced the air like scalpels, every motion deliberate. He didn't waste energy. He didn't posture. Each strike came with the cold efficiency of a man who had taken apart a thousand bodies and stopped counting after the first hundred.
