Kamrusepa, despite Ptolema's error, still panics at the unexpected escalation. She casts the Time-Decelerating Arcana,and despite her lack of specialization, quickly proves why Chronomancers are the most feared combat discipline in the Remaining World. Her form blurs and, moving at several times normal speed, circles the periphery of the area, getting away from the smoke.

Seth, panicking with his inability to raise a proper barrier, rips off a chunk of the building and creates a crude, physical one with the Object-Manipulating Arcana. He shouts something to try and get Kamrusepa to calm down, and for a moment she seems to hesitate, holding up her rifle and shouting back, demanding he and Ptolema stand down.

But before anything can come of it, Theodoros, apparently misunderstanding the situation or else trying to retaliate for the death of his father, uses the Matter-Liquefying Arcana to turn the air over her head into freezing liquid, sending it raining down over Kamrusepa and obfuscating her view of the area in front of the building. She curses in Rhunbardic, using some manner of force incantation to repulse the downpour on her barrier, while quickly retreating away from the cold, staying close to ground level and falling back to the edge of the bioenclosure.

Liquid has a way of moving in unplanned ways, however, so it doesn't stay near Kamrusepa; it flows over in the direction of Ran, still in the process of trying to tend to Utsushikome. She shouts in alarm, not having seen the origin, her flesh burned by the razor cold. She grabs Su and leaps into the air, pushing it away with a violent blast of the simple Wind-Striking Arcana.

But Ezekiel, just now recovering and getting to his feet, misinterprets this as attack. He fires his gun (badly) at Ran, causing her to scream. Utsushikome, eyes going wide even as she fights back pain, starts to wince out the words to the Entropy-Denying Arcana, conjuring a barrier to shield the two of them.

Kamrusepa, moving at a terrible speed, has already skirted around the arena to attack Theodoros from behind. But Seth gets in between them, using tremendous eris on a massive blast from the Flame-Summoning Arcana,hoping to stop her by any means he can, and fires his pistol over and over at the highest setting possible.

Kamrusepa doesn't stop in her advance, however, summoning a razor of condensed matter in front of her with the Air-Compressing Arcana, aiming to quickly disarm the three of them - possibly literally. But Ptolema, assuming her intent is lethal, goes in for a bolder attack, trying to break her barrier with her own resistances.

But something else goes wrong. Seth uses the Voice-Carrying Arcana to speak with incredible volume, still hoping to calm the situation. But he bungles the math in his haste, and instead creates a terrible, piercing wall of noise, throwing everyone off what they were doing at once.

That's when tragedy strikes.