The Dreamforged Arena pulsed, rippled, then bent. The ground split and shimmered—dark earth becoming obsidian mirrors, rising and falling like shattered glass trees. Mist rolled in, thick and gleaming, muting sound and swallowing shapes.
Kieran hated this version of the arena.
A whisper brushed his ear: not a word, not a voice—just... doubt.
The system voice cut through the fog:
"Umbravale versus Thornmere Institute. Begin."
They had barely registered the name before the world folded in on itself. Five silhouettes flickered ahead—students cloaked in gray and green, their outlines distorting as if light refused to settle.
Talon narrowed his eyes. "They're using illusions already."
"They specialize in them," Selene replied. "Keep your eyes on movement, not shape."
The first strike wasn't fire or blade—it was confusion.
Rei blinked and found himself alone.
Calla turned to her right, only to find Kieran missing.
Talon disappeared into a ripple of fog.
They hadn't been split physically. Just perceptually. The arena itself had become a lie.
---
Kieran inhaled sharply. The fog stung his eyes, but he didn't panic.
He focused.
Then he felt it—faint, like the outline of breath against skin. Something false brushing his mind.
Revelation stirred.
The illusion cracked. Briefly.
He glimpsed the truth beneath—one enemy, center of the formation, manipulating the terrain from the back. A girl with pale skin and eyes too wide. She wasn't moving. Just watching.
"Found you," Kieran whispered.
He moved.
---
Elsewhere, Rei swung at a phantom. His blade passed through nothing. A moment later, he heard Kieran shout—but it sounded distant, wrong, echoing off in a direction that didn't match the voice.
Selene knelt and slammed her hand to the ground. A pulse of light burst out, briefly clearing the fog around her. She caught a glimpse of Calla battling a mirror copy of herself.
"Reset the space!" she called. "Talon—shatter the angles!"
Talon didn't answer.
But then a mirror cracked.
Then another.
Talon was moving silently through the fog, stabbing into the glass roots that held the illusion stable. His senses worked differently—focused, grounded.
He was the first to adapt.
---
Kieran emerged behind the enemy's illusion caster.
She turned too late.
He pressed the memory-glass blade to her neck—no strike, no blood. Just a whisper:
"Drop it."
The illusions shattered like ice beneath light.
The fog evaporated.
Umbravale stood again as a unit.
Rei looked bruised. Calla was bleeding from her knuckles. Selene glowed faintly, drained. Talon stood silent, breathing hard.
And the Thornmere team collapsed—disoriented, broken, not physically defeated, but strategically dismantled.
---
The announcer declared the match:
"Victory to Umbravale."
From above, instructors nodded slowly.
Victor watched, chin resting on one hand.
"Interesting," he said softly. "He's getting closer."
But Kieran didn't hear him.
He stared at the space where the illusion caster had stood.
For a moment—just a moment—he had seen something else behind her.
A throne. Empty. Cracked.
And eyes watching from the dark.
He said nothing.
But the world would remebers