The morning of the Round of Thirty-Two was cold and sharp, the festive, almost chaotic energy of the preliminaries replaced by the quiet, predatory focus of a true hunt. The herd had been thinned. Of the two hundred-plus competitors who had started, less than sixty-four remained. Every fighter left was, at minimum, a competent Artisan with a proven victory to their name. There were no more easy matches, no more simple tests of strength. This was where the real tournament began.
My mind, however, was a battlefield split in two. One front was here, in the Sunstone Arena, where I was scheduled to face my next opponent. The other was a mile away, in the Amethyst Arena, where a girl with fire in her veins was walking into a trap she couldn't see. Rolan's grim report from the night before had been a stone in my gut. Viktor Vane. Mana-Blight. A lead-lined box. The plot was in motion, and the clock was ticking. I had to win my own match, and I had to do it quickly.
My opponent was a man named Boros, a brawler from the Southern coast renowned for his sheer physical strength. He was built like a bull, his arms thick with muscle that strained the seams of his leather armor, his aura a blunt, powerful instrument. He carried no weapon but the heavy, spiked cestus on each fist. The crowd roared as he entered the ring, hungry for a spectacle of brute force, a welcome change from the strange, technical display of my first match. They wanted to see the "Western Wolf" finally get into a real fight.
'I don't have time for a spectacle,' I thought, my gaze flickering toward the high archway that led back toward the main complex. Every minute I spent in this arena was a minute Aria was closer to ruin.
The proctor's signal dropped. Boros, as expected, came at me like an avalanche. He didn't bother with finesse, instead opting for a series of heavy, hammering blows, each one infused with the full, brute force of his Artisan-level power. The sand kicked up around his feet as he charged, a picture of overwhelming aggression, his spiked fists aimed to pulp me into the ground.
In my duel with Elias, I had used my Path for defense, to prove a point about control. Now, I needed to prove a point about lethality.
I met his charge. As his first haymaker came whistling toward my head, I flowed with the Two-Heart Cadence, ducking under the blow with a liquid grace that made his powerful attack look clumsy and slow. But instead of creating distance, I stayed inside his guard, too close for him to bring his immense strength to bear.
He grunted in surprise, a sound like a startled bear, and tried to bring his arms around to crush me in a hug that would surely snap my spine. He was a wall of muscle, but I was a river of energy. I flowed around his clumsy grab, my feet a silent dance on the sand, my hands never once rising to block.
The crowd murmured, confused. They had expected a clash of titans, the sound of fists on flesh. Instead, they were watching a bull trying to catch a phantom in its own pen.
"Fight me, you coward!" Boros roared, his face turning a deep, furious red. "Stop running!"
"I am," I replied, my voice a calm, quiet counterpoint to his fury. My own heart was a steady, powerful rhythm, a stark contrast to his ragged, angry breathing.
He swung again and again, a furious barrage of attacks that whistled through the air. Each blow carried enough force to shatter stone, but each blow met only empty air. It was a dance. His attacks were the storm, and I was the leaf, never resisting, simply moving with the currents. I could feel the crudeness of his power, the wasted energy in every swing. He was fighting with rage, a blunt instrument against my scalpel. He was predictable.
He finally made his mistake, the one every enraged brawler makes. He abandoned his last shred of technique for one final, all-or-nothing haymaker, a wild, arcing blow that left his entire right side exposed.
This was the moment. The opening. My entire body moved as one, a single, unified motion guided by the cadence. I didn't evade. I attacked.
I didn't aim for his chest or his head. I aimed for the single point where his entire attack originated: his elbow. My hand, glowing with the sharp, focused blue light of a Rhythmic Infusion, shot forward. It wasn't a punch. It was a spearhead, a single point of focused, resonant power.
Thump-THUMP.
The pulse of my infusion was perfect, a concentrated, resonant wave of pure force. My fingers struck the joint. The sound was a sickening, wet CRACK that was audible even over the low hum of the crowd.
Boros's roar of aggression turned into a scream of pure agony. His arm hung limp and useless at his side, the bone clearly broken, bent at an unnatural angle. He stared at me, his eyes wide with a mixture of pain and utter disbelief. I had broken his arm without seeming to use any force at all, with a touch that was almost gentle.
He collapsed to one knee, cradling the ruined limb. The match was over.
The proctor, his face pale, rushed forward and declared my victory. A wave of shocked, hesitant applause rippled through the stands, quickly growing into a roar of stunned appreciation. It had been less than a minute. They had come to see a brawl and had instead witnessed an execution. I had made my statement.
I gave my defeated opponent a respectful, apologetic nod, then turned and strode out of the arena without a backward glance. The whispers of the crowd followed me—no longer of the 'Western Brawler', but of something new, something fast and terrifyingly precise.
I broke into a run the moment I was out of sight, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm that had nothing to do with the cadence. Rolan and Seraphina were waiting, their faces pale with anxiety.
"Aria's match," I said, my voice tight. "It's starting now."
We rushed through the labyrinthine corridors of the colosseum, pushing through the thick, jostling crowds. The roar from the Amethyst Arena was already audible, a wave of sound that spoke of a battle underway. My gut tightened. I hoped I wasn't already too late.
We burst out into the stands of the Amethyst Arena just as a massive fireball erupted from the center of the ring, slamming into a shimmering shield of energy. The crowd roared its approval.
Down on the sand, Aria Thorne was a whirlwind of elemental fury. Her red hair was a banner of fire as she unleashed a relentless barrage of spells. Across from her, Viktor Vane was a study in cruel patience. He had abandoned his usual brawling style, instead using a series of high-level defensive artifacts—a shield amulet, kinetic barrier rings—to simply weather the storm. He wasn't trying to win. He was just waiting, his face a mask of bored indifference.
"He's letting her burn herself out," Seraphina whispered, her knuckles white as she gripped the railing.
"Worse," I murmured, my eyes narrowed, my draconic senses pushed to their absolute limit, filtering out the roar of the crowd, the heat of the flames, focusing on that one, single point of wrongness. "He's waiting for the right moment to strike."
Aria, frustrated by his passive defense, began to push her power to its limits. The air around her grew hotter, crackling with uncontrolled arcs of lightning. She was gathering her energy for a decisive, overwhelming attack, a final spell to shatter his defenses.
And then I saw it.
It was a tiny, almost imperceptible movement. Viktor, under the cover of adjusting his gauntlet as if bored, pressed his thumb down on a small, dark crystal embedded in the leather. It was so subtle, so meaningless, that no one else in the entire arena would have noticed. Not the proctor, not the crowd, not even a Grandmaster like Sir Kaelen who was observing from the judge's box.
But I was looking for it. And my senses, honed by the dragon's primal instincts, saw what was invisible to others: a puff of near-invisible dust, the color of a shadow, released into the air. It was instantly consumed by the updraft from Aria's own heat, drawn toward her like a moth to a flame.
'It's done,' I thought, my blood turning to ice.
Aria roared, unleashing her ultimate attack—a massive, swirling vortex of fire and lightning, a spell of incredible power and equally incredible instability.
But the moment the spell left her hands, it faltered. The brilliant colors of orange and white turned a sickly, bruised purple. The roaring vortex collapsed in on itself, not with a bang, but with a horrifying, silent implosion, as if reality itself was being devoured.
The energy, corrupted and turned malignant by the Mana-Blight, reversed its course. It didn't just dissipate; it slammed back into its caster with a vengeance.
Aria screamed. It was not a roar of effort, but a sound of pure, soul-shattering agony as her own magic turned on her. She collapsed to her knees, her body wreathed in her own malevolent, purple flames, her mana circuits burning her from the inside out.
The war had begun.