Trumpets screamed and the Colosseum became a living sea, waves of noise crashing from tier to tier as Phil, in the center of the ring, scroll in one hand, megaphone in the other. "LADIES AND GENTS! Your Beginner's Cup Champion—by surrender—TEMPEST!"
A gold-lipped amphora of a trophy—curved handles, laurel-etched—was pressed into Tempest's hands. The crowd roared like it meant joy; Tempest felt only grit between her teeth. Her knuckles were raw. A hairline crack still ran the length of her spear; she tasted copper when she swallowed.
She stared at the cup, at the way it caught sunlight and reflected it back like nothing had been hard.
"Take a bow!" Phil hollered, absolutely vibrating.
Tempest lifted the amphora shoulder-high… and then let it slip from her fingers. It hit the sand with a dull, graceless thud and toppled, rolling to a stop against the white boundary stone. The crowd's roar hiccupped into a collective gasp. A thousand faces tilted. A thousand conversations lit at once.
Tempest turned on her heel and walked off the stage.
Circe was there flawless again, robes mended by magic and hair falling in deliberate waves. She lifted two fingers to her eye and flicked a wink like a coin. "Congratulations, darling," she purred, syrup and needles. "A victory by persistence. How… rustic."
The spear in Tempest's hand twitched. Her feet were already finding the violent step; her shoulders had already squared. One more insult and she'd carve the wink off her face—
Phil's voice cut the wire. "AND NOW—NO TIME TO BREATHE—WE KICK OFF THE ADVANCED CUP! FIRST MATCH: SKULD A WINNER OF THE BEGINNER CUP VERSUS KURAI THE NEWCOMER WHO CHALLENGED THE CHAMP LAST TIME!"
The Colosseum detonated in cheers. The insult hung, harmless, in the air. Circe's smile widened—victory by surrender must have hurt the Amazon's pride. Content with herself, she drifted away on perfume and applause.
Tempest stared after her a heartbeat longer, jaw tight, then shoved down the heat and shouldered into the waiting corridor. Helga clapped her once on the shoulder when she passed—too hard to be gentle, but honest. Zack whooped something about "saving that rage for sparring later." Helios gave a small, fox-sly nod, already turned toward the arena. Kurai was walking out. So was Skuld.
The noise swelled. The air thinned.
Kurai stepped from the shadowed tunnel like a blade unsheathed—straight-backed, silver-black keyblade resting lazy along one shoulder, eyes as cold as a locked door. Darkness loved her; it licked her ankles like tidewater, pooled in the prints her boots left. The crowd's cheer bent around her as if it sensed an edge.
On the opposite side, Skuld came on like sunrise. No jacket as it would be in her way—just the breeze tugging at her hair, a flash of grinning calm that looked too light until you saw what it hid. Her keyblade had already shifted into its claw form and were already glittering on her hands, curved like captured gusts. The air around her was thinner, brighter, ready to move at a thought.
They didn't speak.
They didn't pose.
The gong hit and both moved as if it had given permission they'd been denying themselves from the moment they met.
Skuld vanished in a ribboning dash—Starstep—and reappeared to Kurai's right, claws a silver blur ready to rip Kurai in half. Kurai was already gone, vanished in darkness to only reappear three feet away; the claws dragged sparks off air where she'd been. Kurai answered with a low drawing cut of the Shadow Sovereign, darkness condensed at the edge until it sang. Skuld shifted backward on wind that wasn't there a second before, the blade missing by a breath as she slid on her own Slipstream.
They clashed again a moment later, both choosing close combat instead of circling and using magic.
Skuld's Hurricane Rend broke into five cuts in the space of a heartbeat, each laced with wind that bit beyond the metal. Kurai met them with a technique rather than pure strength. Her keyblade snapped into a tight parries—one, two, three—her free hand cast a spell that flared into Dark Reflect just long enough to drink the last two slashes and spit them back as shadow detonations. Skuld dropped down on one knee beneath the burst, palms kissing sand, letting the slipstream carry her in a rolling motion—crescent wind blades being generated on each rotation.
Kurai jumped, cloak of darkness coalescing under her boots into a Blackened Sky platform. The crescents shrieked past and tore grooves into the stone stage. She hung midair for a heartbeat in impossible balance and then came scything down in a two-handed Abyssal Severance, the keyblade carrying so much condensed darkness that the air rippled.
Skuld wasn't there as she jumped backwards.
A Skywalk platform bloomed midair, too fragile to bear weight for more than a blink, and Skuld rebounded off it into a high angle, her claws lengthening into her daggers, the Phantom Wings. She crossed them in an Aurora Tempest spin, cyclone blades braided with pale radiance, and collided with Kurai's dark strike in a collision that percussed across the barrier dome—light splitting shadow, shadow eating light.
The shockwave drove ripples through the dust. The front ranks of spectators threw up arms against wind. Phil yelled something about "Don't try this at home, kids!" that was devoured by noise.
They broke. Landed. Rushed again.
Kurai's darkness moved to hunt down Skuld as shadow chains appeared to grab the girl. She then slashed, and the stroke ran beyond the keyblade as an Abyssal wave. The shadow chains finally whipped around Skuld's ankles, snapping shut like jaws trapping her in place. Skuld who was unable to dodge had no other choice but to block the attack. As the darkness wave slamed into her keyblade the force of the attack caused her to slide backward as the shock caused her to cough a little blood.
Skuld then lifted her hand and snapped two quick Dawn Shards, a move she had prepared especially for Kurai. By condensing her light into small crystalline shards, she could then throw them in quick succession, creating suppressive volleys that heavily damage dark beings. The first shattered the binding; the second ricocheted, forcing Kurai to tilt her head causing it to miss by a hair's breathe.
Kurai smiled—thin, predatory—and snapped her wrist. Shadow Flares erupted into orbiting wisps around her, slow as falling leaves. "Come collect your due. After all, you've built up so much debt," she murmured to Skuld as the magic spiraled outward, homing in on Skuld.
Skuld met them head-on. She spun her daggers in her hands, charging them with light, and with a sweeping attack, Halo Reversal, a cascading ring of light came into being, a radiant circle that expanded. The first flares hit the first ring and popped into harmless smoke; the second set curved, adapted, and came from above. Skuld stepped onto air and turned the ring vertical, destroying the remain flares and allowing the wave to slam into Kurai who managed to defend at the last mintue.
Kurai cast a Dark Reflect in front of her, allowing it to block most of the light wave and using her keyblade infected the light with her darkness, turning the wave dark before strengthening it. Kurai than flinging the energy back with malicious interest. Skuld saw it too late—took the counter-burst in the shoulder and pinwheeled, boots hardly catching. Kurai wouldn't allow her to create that space, Nightfall Vortex yanking at Skuld's center, pulling her rapidly toward Kurai, who was ready to slash down.
Skuld refused to lose in such a way.
She forced into this situation she invented a defensive move the Prism Storm— she condensed shards of light then using the air currents around her to make them orbit her she managed to create a sphere of light shards. Kurai jumped back and was forced to stop pulling Skuld towards her as she said, "Tch. You're very creative."
"These two look like they've been dying to do this for a long time!" Phil howled, practically on tiptoe. "I don't know what went between those two chicks, but you can feel it in your teeth!"
Kurai's pressure didn't slacken; it condensed. She released her Void Dominion, and it dropped like a curtain. All the light on stage dimmed, and to the audience it looked as if a curtain was placed over the entire stage, blocking them from seeing anything. Edges lengthened. Skuld still surrounded by the Prism Storm, barely glowed as the shards orbited around her. Soon, a massive Dark Firaga blast struck from behind and blew Skuld forward, but before Skuld could react or even think, another soon came. Soon, Skuld found herself bombarded by countless Dark Firaga, and as they exploded upon contact with Skuld's Prism Storm, the concussive force and dark flames still penetrated and reached Skuld.
Skuld luckily surrounded herself with an Aero spell, creating a wind barrier around her, and then cast the Reflect spell. It wasn't much, but it bought her enough time to turn herself into a light orb and instantly move away.
Reappearing Skuld generated a massive burst of light that dissolved Kurai's Void Dominion. She then shifted her Phantom Wings dagger back to its Zephyr Talons claw gauntlets. In hopes of finishing this quickly, she used Tempest Lattice. She generated a massive cage of wind, trapping herself and Kurai. She then covered her feet and Zephyr Talons in cyclones before using Wind Fang Hunt. This was her ultimate flurry; she rushed at Kurai and managed to claw her shoulder before using the wind cage to bounce and attack again. Wind Fang Hunt allowed her to strike an opponent 48 times in seconds without ever touching the ground, so Skuld was only just getting started.
Skuld blurred into motion, claws a storm of silver and green. Forty-eight strikes, each sharper than the last, rained down in a cyclone of pressure. The arena shook under the flurry; the audience could barely follow the streaks of light carving through the darkness.
Kurai's smile didn't falter. At the thirty-second blow, she pivoted, Shadow Sovereign angling in a perfect catch. The keyblade howled with darkness as she absorbed momentum and twisted it, bleeding the kinetic storm into her own magic.
The sand erupted as she answered with Abyssal Breaker—a sweeping counterwave that shredded the wind cage's edge and hurled Skuld across the arena. Skuld twisted midair, wings of light briefly sparking from her back, and landed in a skid, sand spraying in a wide arc.
The crowd roared, stomping in rhythm, a chant beginning to ripple: "SKULD! KURAI! SKULD! KURAI!"
Phil was screaming over them: "Ladies and gents, these two are going to tear the Colosseum apart—ARE YOU SEEIN' THIS?"
Skuld wiped the blood from her lip with the back of her hand, claws dripping light. Kurai straightened, dark energy coursing like smoke down her arms.
Then they charged again.
This time, neither held anything back.
Skuld opened with a Cyclone Drive, a lunging spin that sliced the air into razors, while Kurai met her with Dusk Severance, a downward cleave that split the dust in two. Light and shadow collided midstage, detonating in a burst that lit the arena white and black all at once.
The shockwave rattled the stands, nearly unseating the front rows. Sparks showered the ring.
And when the smoke cleared, both women still stood, blades locked, grins sharp, eyes burning.
The crowd exploded in noise. Both fighters broke off reluctantly, retreating to opposite ends of the stage to catch their breath.