Frightened.
Every knight who had opened even a single Zi ring reacted at once as their hands held the handle and the scabbards of their swords.
That included Edward. His body moved before his thoughts could catch up. A decades worth of experience in the battlefield and training told him that the current situation was dangerous.
Facing Seven was Lythian.
Again, terror was etched plainly across Lythian's face now, his pupils trembling as blue Zi surged instinctively around his wooden sword. The energy clung to it like an unstable flame.
He had been hiding that as per his father's and grandfather's orders, to suppress it until he became an official knight.
Yet, no matter how hard-working he was, no matter how often others called him a prodigy, Lythian was still only a sixteen year old teenager.
In the face of danger, instincts won over his mind.
But, suddenly…
Snowflakes froze mid-fall, each crystal suspended in the air. The knights' breaths lingered as an unmoving mist. Edward's sword, half-drawn, hung still as if pinned in place, its steel hovering a finger's width from the scabbard.
Time itself had slowed down, immeasurably!
Only one person remained untouched.
Seven.
His vision exploded outward, and the world unfolded like a map laid bare before an all-seeing eye.
He could see everything.
From the arc of Edward's unsheathed blade, where it would land, how it would kill him in less than a heartbeat if time resumed back to normal.
From the tension in Lythian's legs, the slight inward tilt of his right knee, an unconscious preparation for a forward lunge, to how Zi coating his sword crackled like fire, how unstable it was.
From the ground beneath his own feet, the uneven snow, like compacted here and loose there, each spot marked instinctively as safe or fatal.
Even the air had structure, like where and when the snowflakes would hit the ground, and how the squirrel watching them from a distance would fall to the ground after attempting to run away out of fear.
Everything.
He could trace the paths of possible movements, branching futures overlapping like translucent threads.
Everything became a puzzle, and every piece was visible.
"Ahahaha…"
Nonetheless, he continued giggling. Frustration or exhilaration, honestly he had no idea which was the reason, perhaps it was a mix of both.
This moment was after all the most fun experience he had ever found himself into, if not the most then at least in top five, like he was playing a game for the first time and has yet to grasp the mechanics so he's having a little hard time.
His mind raced faster and faster, devouring information, connecting outcomes, and calculating perfection.
"This is way too damn fun, but… but…!"
The information was there, and the solutions were perfect, but… his body couldn't follow!
Pain screamed through his muscles as soon as he tried to move a finger. His knees buckled, sending cracks of agony through his bruises, wounded shoulder, and ribs that were on the verge of breaking.
In short, he made no use of the skill's effect to attack because his body could no longer bear the pain.
"...Damn it."
He could only bite his lip, clenching the handle of the sword but it slipped from his fingers, thudding softly into the snow, soundless in the slowed world.
Tears mixed with blood from the corners of his now golden eyes as he stared upward, warmth spreading across his cheeks as something inside his head vibrated, screamed, and threatened to tear his skull apart.
After all, a human brain was never meant to hold this much awareness.
Thud!
He dropped to one knee, then both.
"Damn it all… to hell…!"
Finally, he lost consciousness.
Crackle, clink. Wham!
As he did, the flow of time returned back to normal.
Snowflakes fell down finally, the breathing of knights resumed, and sound slammed back into existence as the squirrel slipped upon jumping and hit the ground.
Seeing Lythian's sword crackling with Zi, Edward managed to redirect his sword from aiming to kill the lord to shielding him from the attack.
Clank!
His steel sword met Lythian's wooden sword, who was thrown backward, stumbling, and collapsing into the snow as his wooden sword was split cleanly in half.
Edward only stared at him, not announcing the winner.
The knights looked at Lythian. Whispers rippled through them, some in awe and some in confusion, though they were almost praises about how Lythian had formed a ring.
But in Lythian's shaken mind, their words were accusations.
"Why did he hide his strength?"
"Is it fun beating those two cadets who were out of his league?"
"So that was why he won his previous two bouts…"
Lythian ran, hurriedly.
His father tried to follow him, but an old man suddenly appeared, Aizen, and stopped his son, or Lythian's father.
"Leave him be. He needed this time to think for himself."
The knights returned their gaze to the young lord Seven on the ground, in judging gazes, asking their minds 'what was that intense pressure radiating out from him earlier' and such.
"My lord!" Iria rushed and began casting healing magic on her lord's body.
That pressure was unheard of to the knights, it was their first time feeling that.
Was it magic? If so, the young lord is disgrace to the blood of Hart. For a lineage of swordsmen, their descendants using magic were nothing but an inconceivable act of heresy— or at least, such thoughts of the knights present.
Iria frowned, biting her upper lip.
Even she herself didn't know what the lord had just performed, but since her time is nearing, revealing the curse two weeks ahead wouldn't hurt much.
"Curse…" Iria muttered. "Nevidea, the embodiment of Envy. Such was the one binding the lord, the hand that denied him walking the path of sword."