Lyan's aura awakened.
For a moment, I forgot how to breathe.
The air around him didn't glow like Ash's fire. It didn't flare or radiate heat. It just… changed. Like the arena's atmosphere had been quietly replaced with something heavier, something that didn't belong under the open sky.
Lyan stood across from me, eyes sharp, posture perfectly set.
Around his practice wooden katana, the air flickered—thin, unstable distortions that made the blade hard to see, like parts of it were being swallowed by darkness in tiny bites. Then a deep, thin blue aura wrapped around it in an uneven blanket, not smooth like a flame or mist, but jagged at the edges—alive in the wrong way.
I couldn't see the sword clearly anymore.
I didn't know what that meant.
I only knew the basic truth.
That was aura.
And I had no idea what kind.
Ash's fire had been obvious. You could look at it and understand it even if you didn't understand how.
But this?
This was something I couldn't name.
And because I couldn't name it, I couldn't predict it.
Lyan's breathing changed.
One slow inhale.
A steady exhale.
Then his feet shifted—and he dashed toward me in a calculating line that cut the sand like a drawn blade.
He was fast.
Faster than before.
So fast that my mind struggled to keep up, and for a fragment of a second, it felt like he was slow—not because he actually was, but because my fear was screaming too loud for my body to move.
My left arm dangled uselessly at my side, numb from shoulder to fingertips. I couldn't feel it. I couldn't command it.
My right hand clenched harder around the sword until my knuckles whitened.
My teeth ground together.
Lyan's voice snapped through the air—furious, not playful anymore.
"I'll end this embarrassing duel properly."
The words weren't even aimed at me.
They were aimed at the arena.
At the seats.
At the VIP room where his father watched.
My lungs burned as I dragged air in and forced it out, trying to push my mind back into that narrow, grey tunnel where everything became simple and sharp.
Just one more time.
Just one more breath.
Just one more—
The world thinned.
Not stopped—never stopped.
It only felt slower because my thoughts accelerated until everything else couldn't keep up. Color bled out of the arena again. Blue sky dulled into grey. The crowd became a smear of shadow. Even sound grew distant, muffled like cloth over ears.
I searched for the lights.
The points I'd seen before.
The openings.
But there were no bright orbs this time.
Nothing clear.
Nothing stable.
All I could see was a faint trail from my own sword—thin, trembling lines that wriggled and broke apart, as if something in front of me kept interrupting the path.
It wasn't just hard to read.
It was like the world refused to give me an answer.
My throat tightened.
My mind tried to force a line anyway, tried to build one out of desperation
But the trail jittered and collapsed, swallowed by that uneven blue around Lyan's blade.
Useless.
I knew it in my bones before the strike even landed.
It was over.
Lyan's katana came in from my right.
A clean slash aimed for my side.
I tried to shift.
Tried to raise my sword.
Tried to do anything—
And then something hit me.
Not the wood.
Not a normal impact.
A force I couldn't see slammed into my body like a hammer made of air.
My feet left the ground.
Sand spun.
My stomach lurched as I was thrown away from the center of the arena.
And then—
CLANK!!
A loud, violent sound—wood striking hard against metal.
Steel resonance sang through the arena like a bell.
The crowd went silent in confusion.
I slammed onto my back.
The sky filled my vision, pale and empty, as if the world had decided not to look down on what happened next.
My breath came out in a harsh cough.
I blinked, trying to make sense of anything.
Then I forced myself to lift my head.
Someone stood between me and Lyan.
Tall.
Elegant.
A drawn sword in hand—real steel, not wood.
Fennec du Vonel.
His blade was held casually, like he'd stepped in to stop a quarrel between children.
And Lyan's practice katana…
…was cut in half.
The broken wood lay in two pieces on the sand, the ends splintered where steel had sheared it cleanly.
Fennec glanced at the fragments with mild disappointment, then looked up at Lyan with a soft, calm smile—surprisingly different from Lyan's harshness.
"Enough," Fennec said, voice light, almost teasing. "Alright, champ. Cool it before you accidentally murder your best friend."
Friend.
The word didn't fit the way Lyan treated me.
And yet Fennec said it like it was obvious.
Like he believed it.
Fennec's smile stayed. His tone remained warm.
"Congratulations," he added, as if they were at a family dinner instead of an arena. "Awakening your aura at your age is impressive."
Lyan stood frozen.
His eyes were wide, fixed on me—on the fact that I was on the ground, thrown like a ragdoll.
Then his expression twisted.
"Fennec!!" he shouted—anger first, sharp and offended. "Why did you—"
His voice broke mid-sentence.
His gaze flicked down and something in him changed fast, like a mask slipping off.
"Trey—!" he shouted, and it didn't sound like mockery. It sounded raw. "Trey! Are you—"
He took a step forward, panic rising. "Help him! Somebody—help him!"
The arena stayed frozen.
Servants looked uncertain. Nobles stared. No one moved until the Vonels decided what "allowed" meant.
Up in the VIP room, Alcatraz du Vonel didn't stand.
He didn't raise a hand.
He didn't shout for it to stop.
He simply watched from his seat as if this was part of the entertainment he'd come for.
That stillness was worse than cruelty.
It was permission.
I swallowed hard and tried to sit up.
My body felt strange. Wrong.
Warm on one side.
Warm in a way that didn't match the cold air.
I looked down.
Half of my body was crimson red.
For a second, my brain refused to accept it. It tried to label it as spilled drink, dyed cloth, anything but what it was.
Then the smell hit me.
Thick.
Metallic.
Blood.
My blood.
The side of my stomach—my clothes, the training leather—was split open. A line of damage I hadn't felt during the impact, because shock had swallowed the pain.
Now the pain crawled in.
Slow at first.
Then sharp.
My breath caught, and my vision wavered.
Fennec's calm expression finally shifted when he saw it.
Just a flicker—eyes narrowing, the warmth dimming.
He moved to me, quick and quiet. For the first time, his friendliness didn't hide the fact that he could be terrifying when serious.
He knelt, one hand hovering near the wound without touching it, like he was measuring what could be done.
"…Damn," he murmured, still soft, but the casualness was gone.
Lyan's face had turned pale.
He stared at the blood like it didn't belong in his world.
"I—no—" he stammered, voice cracking. "I didn't mean—Trey, I didn't—"
He sounded younger all of a sudden.
Not the arrogant noble heir.
Just a boy who had done something irreversible and couldn't understand how fast it happened.
Then his gaze snapped upward, fear flashing behind the panic.
Not fear of me.
Fear of what this meant.
Fear of what his father would think.
Fear of what the city would whisper.
Fear of losing the acknowledgment he'd been chasing.
But the first thing that came out of him wasn't calculation.
It was empathy.
"Stay awake," he pleaded, stepping closer until Fennec's presence stopped him. "Please—Trey, don't close your eyes—"
Fennec didn't look at him. He looked at the wound like it was an equation.
Then he barked an order—sharp enough to slice through the arena's paralysis.
"Medic. Now."
His voice wasn't loud, but it carried authority in a way that made servants jolt into motion.
A few finally ran.
The crowd murmured, frightened and confused, as if reality had slapped them all at once.
I stared at the cut and tried to understand it.
Fennec had intercepted Lyan's strike.
He'd cut the wooden katana in half.
He'd been in front of me.
So why—
Why was I still cut?
My mind replayed the moment in fragments.
The uneven blue aura around the blade.
The way the air flickered like it was swallowing light.
The force that hit me before any wood could.
And then it clicked in a cold, horrifying clarity.
It hadn't cut what it hit.
It cut what it wanted.
The block hadn't been enough—not because Fennec failed, but because whatever Lyan's aura was… it didn't care about the obstacle in front of its target.
It slipped through defense like defense was a suggestion.
Like the strike was hidden in something empty, passing through what stood in its way and reaching me anyway.
Void.
The word came to me uninvited, born from instinct more than knowledge.
A cutting that ignored the world.
My breathing turned shallow. The edges of my vision darkened.
Lyan's voice broke again, frantic and unmasked.
"Trey—Trey, please—!"
I tried to speak.
Tried to tell him to shut up.
Tried to say anything.
But my tongue felt heavy. My throat felt full of sand.
Fennec's hand pressed lightly near my shoulder—not the wound, just grounding me.
"Don't talk," he said, still gentle, like an older brother soothing a mess he'd seen before. "Just breathe."
I tried.
In.
Out.
But the air didn't feel like it was reaching my lungs.
The world tilted.
Faces blurred.
Sounds stretched and snapped.
The last thing I heard clearly was Fennec's voice—no longer casual, no longer friendly, but controlled and sharp as a blade.
"Move."
And then, from above, a voice finally entered the arena.
Alcatraz du Vonel.
Not loud.
Not angry.
Just… interested.
"Interesting."
The word landed like a verdict.
Then everything went black.