The chaos in the Amethyst Arena was a storm with me at its eye. Guards had Viktor Vane in an iron grip, his face a mask of snarling fury as he was dragged away. Medics were carefully placing an unconscious Aria Thorne onto a floating stretcher, their faces grim as they assessed the violent fluctuations of her Aether. And I stood at the center of it all, the cause and the solution, with the full, crushing weight of Sir Kaelen's attention fixed on me.
"You will come with me, Lord Ashworth," the old knight commanded, his voice leaving no room for argument. "Now."
I was escorted not to a holding cell, but to the highest spire of the colosseum's administrative building. The opulence of the waiting chamber, all polished marble and gold filigree, did nothing to soothe the cold knot of dread in my stomach. After a few tense minutes, the doors opened, and I was ushered into the office of Marquis Evander.
The room was surprisingly sparse, dominated by a single, massive desk of blackwood and a large, armored window that offered a panoramic view of the entire capital. And behind that desk sat the man himself.
The moment I stepped inside, I felt it. The air grew thick, heavy, as if the laws of physics had decided to apply a little extra pressure just for me. My own Aether, the powerful, humming river within me, felt sluggish, like it was trying to flow through tar. My draconic senses weren't screaming in fear of an unnatural predator, as they had with Viktor; they were screaming in pure, instinctual terror of an absolute apex predator. This was the presence of an Archon, a being who had begun to impose his own will on the very fabric of reality.
Marquis Evander looked up from the report he was reading. He appeared to be a man in his late forties, with sharp, intelligent features and eyes that held a deep, weary boredom, as if the entire world were a predictable play he had seen a thousand times.
"Lord Lancelot Ashworth," he said, his voice a calm, neutral tenor. "You have caused me a significant headache. You have invaded a sanctioned arena. You have interfered in a duel. You have assaulted a competitor. You have made a mockery of a thousand years of tradition. By all rights, I should have you stripped of your title, disqualified from this tournament, and thrown in a cell for a decade. Convince me why I should not."
He wasn't angry. He was bored. And that was infinitely more terrifying.
I took a breath, the Two-Heart Cadence my only anchor in the crushing weight of his presence. "Because, my lord Marquis," I said, my voice steady, "I was not breaking the rules. I was enforcing the most important one."
"And what rule is that?" he asked, a flicker of interest in his bored eyes.
"That this is a tournament of honor," I replied. "A contest of skill and strength. What Lord Vane did was not a contest. It was a planned, deliberate, and cowardly attempt to cripple a fellow competitor with a forbidden alchemical substance. It was an act of assassination, not competition. My 'interference' did not break the sanctity of the duel; it restored it."
I laid out my case with a calm, cold logic. I spoke of the watcher in the plaza, of my own draconic instincts sensing an unnatural threat, of Rolan's investigation, and of the properties of Mana-Blight. I presented the shard of the crystal that Rolan had acquired, placing it carefully on the polished desk.
The Marquis didn't even look at it. His gaze was fixed on my face, analytical and unnervingly perceptive. He was weighing not just my words, but my conviction, my Aether, my very being.
"You have a unique power, Lord Ashworth," he said after a long silence. "Sir Kaelen's report describes your… calming of Lady Thorne's mana. He calls it a resonance he has never witnessed before. A level of control that is 'profound'." He leaned forward. "This instinct you speak of, this ability to sense a 'wrongness'. How?"
'A dragon's soul,' I thought. 'A secret that would get me dissected on an altar.' "I do not know, my lord Marquis," I lied smoothly. "It is a part of the unique Path I am forging. An instinct I have learned to trust. It warned me that Viktor Vane was a predator hiding in a flock of peacocks. The evidence my men gathered simply confirmed it."
He was silent for another long minute, his fingers drumming a soft, rhythmic pattern on his desk. "Viktor Vane has been questioned," he said finally. "He confessed to the plot, claiming it was a personal grudge over a slight from Lady Thorne. He has been stripped of his title and will be exiled. House Vane has been heavily censured and barred from the tournament for a decade." He paused. "It is a neat, tidy story."
The unspoken words hung in the air: And I don't believe a word of it. He knew, just as I did, that this ran deeper. But he had no proof. He had a tidy story, and for a man responsible for the stability of the capital, a tidy story was a valuable thing.
"You acted correctly, if unconventionally," the Marquis concluded, his voice firm. "You exposed a rot that would have stained the honor of this tournament. For that, you have my gratitude." He stood, the audience over. "But you also broke the rules. Do not ever do it again. You are a competitor, not a vigilante. Let the proper authorities handle such matters from now on. You are dismissed."
As I walked out of that room, the crushing pressure on my Aether lifted. I felt like I had just held my breath for an hour. I had survived. More than that, I had put myself on the radar of one of the most powerful men in the kingdom.
I found my way back to the healing pavilions, a place of quiet and the scent of medicinal herbs. I needed to see her.
Aria was sitting up in a private room, a healer just finishing an examination. She was pale and her Aether was clearly depleted, but she was unharmed. The anger that usually burned in her eyes was gone, replaced by a quiet, haunted confusion. She looked up as I entered, and for the first time, she didn't look at me with hostility, but with a deep, unnerving curiosity.
She dismissed the healer with a wave of her hand. We were alone.
"The Marquis let you go," she stated, her voice a low, rough whisper.
"He's a reasonable man," I replied, pulling up a chair and sitting a few feet from her bed.
We sat in a tense silence for a long moment. She was staring at her own hands, as if she couldn't trust them. "They told me what he used," she said. "Mana-Blight. My own power… it was eating me alive. I've never felt anything like it."
She finally lifted her head, and her green eyes, now clear of their usual fire, locked onto mine. "How?" she asked, the single word filled with a desperate need for an answer. "How did you do that? The healers said my circuits were in a state of catastrophic resonance. They said your Aether didn't fight it. It… calmed it. Like a song. How?"
I looked at her, at this proud, powerful girl who had just had her entire understanding of her own power shattered. This was the moment. The beginning of a real alliance.
"Your power is a wildfire," I said, my voice soft. "Beautiful and strong, but it burns without a rhythm. The poison… it just fed the chaos. My power is different. It's built on a foundation of pure rhythm. A steady, constant beat." I met her gaze. "I didn't heal you, Aria. I just gave your fire a rhythm to dance to. Your own power did the rest."
She stared at me, her mind clearly struggling to grasp the concept. Power, to her, was a thing of force and will. The idea of it having a rhythm, a cadence, was utterly alien.
"A rhythm," she repeated, a whisper of wonder in her voice. She looked at her hands again, then back at me, and for the first time, I saw not a rival, but a student desperate for a teacher. The first wall between us had finally come down.