The walk to the combat zone felt longer than it actually was. With each step, the roar of the crowd intensified. She could see the arena now—a massive circular platform surrounded by transparent magical barriers. The sand within it was pristine white, unmarked by previous battles.
Celina was already there, waiting at the opposite end of the platform. Her uniform was immaculate—fitted perfectly, not a hair out of place. But Amanda could see the tension in her shoulders, the way her jaw clenched. She was angry. Good.
Amanda stepped into the arena, and the noise reached a fever pitch.
The two of them stood across from each other, separated by thirty feet of open sand. Amanda could feel the weight of thousands of eyes on her. Cameras captured every angle. This wasn't just a school match anymore—this was being broadcast, recorded, analyzed. The pressure of it pressed down on her shoulders like a physical thing.
But she pushed it aside.
Amanda locked eyes with Celina and spoke, loud enough to carry across the arena. "You lost the moment you walked into that dressing room today. But I'll let you lose it again out here, so everyone can see it."
Celina's face twisted with rage. "You don't tell me what to do, you pathetic commoner," she spat, her voice shrill with fury. "I'll make you regret ever—"
The refereea stern faced instructor with a white band around his arm stepped forward, positioning himself between them. He held up a hand, silencing them both.
"Fighters," he called out, his voice calm and authoritative. "Are you both ready?"
Amanda nodded sharply. Celina, still seething, did the same.
"Then let the match begin!"
The moment the words left the referee's mouth, the air changed.
Celina moved first, her hands already weaving through the intricate gestures required for earth magic. The ground beneath Amanda's feet rippled, then cracked. Massive pillars of stone erupted from the arena floor, shooting upward like jagged spears aimed directly at Amanda's body.
Amanda didn't hesitate. She dove to the side, feeling the whisper of stone scrape past her arm as she rolled across the platform. The pillars crashed through the space she'd occupied mere milliseconds before so close she could taste the dust.
But she was already moving.
The moment her feet touched solid ground again, Amanda drew on her fire magic. Heat bloomed in her chest a familiar, welcoming warmth that spread through her limbs. She could feel the mana coursing through her veins, eager to be released. She'd been preparing for moments like this since she entered the academy.
She threw her hand forward, and a lance of pure flame erupted from her palm.
It was beautiful and terrible at the same time and a ribbon of orange and crimson that screamed across the arena, leaving the air shimmering in its wake. The projectile was moving impossibly fast, faster than anything Celina should have been able to dodge.
But Celina had been born into privilege and with that came resources. She'd studied magic under the best tutors money could buy.
She thrust her hands down and a thick, perfectly formed U-shaped wall of clay erupted from the ground. The fire lance hit it with tremendous force, the impact sending vibrations through the stone. The wall cracked but held. Then, as Amanda watched, Celina reinforced it with another layer and this time it was solid rock, dense and very hard to penetrable.
She's playing defense, Amanda realized that She knows she can't match me in direct power, so she's building walls.
It was a good strategy. Stupid but smart in the short term. It meant Amanda couldn't knock her out of the arena and couldn't end this with a single powerful attack. It meant this fight would strech a lot.
Amanda cursed under her breath. But she didn't let the frustration take root. Instead, she used the information, and began analyzing what she needed to do next.
She closed her eyes for just a moment and concentrating on herself. Around her, the crowd was going mad but she pushed the noise away. There was only her and Celina.
When she opened her eyes again, she'd made her decision.
Amanda called out across the distance between them, letting a smirk play at the edges of her lips. "Looks like someone just barely managed to scrape b Must be scary, fighting someone you know you can't actually defeat."
She saw Celina's shoulders go rigid.
The effect was immediate and dramatic. All pretense of strategy crumbled. Celina screamed a wordless sound of pure rage and charged forward, her hands already moving through the gestures for her next spell.
Boulders. Dozens of them, each the size of a car, ripped from the ground around her and hurtled toward Amanda from every possible angle. It was a uncontrolled attack powerful but wild, the magic of someone whose anger had completely overwhelmed her strategy.
Amanda stood still for a moment, letting Celina come.
Then she moved.
She flowed between the attacks like smoke. A boulder passed on her left, close enough that she felt the displaced air on her skin. Another screamed past her right ear. She backflipped, twisted mid-air, landed and rolled beneath a third. The crowd was screaming, sensing the shift in the battle. Celina's attacks were getting faster, more desperate, but they were also increasingly sloppy.
Amanda could see it in the patterns, could predict them half a second before they came. It was as if Celina was trying everything.
And then the attacks began to slow, Just slightly.
Celina's breathing was getting heavy. Sweat beaded on her forehead. Even for someone trained in magic, this kind of rapid-fire assault was exhausting. Her reserves of mana were depleting faster than her pride would allow her to admit.
The moment Amanda sensed the shift, she moved.
She burst forward in a sprint, closing the distance between them with blinding speed. Celina tried to throw one last boulder, but Amanda was already inside its trajectory. She wove through the remnants of stone and earth, getting closer and closer, until there was nothing between them but charged air.
Amanda skid to a halt directly in front of Celina and drew deep, pulling mana from her core—from the very foundation of her being. Heat erupted across her skin. She could feel her hair whipping around her face as the magical energy concentrated around her.
"Solar Flare!" Amanda screamed, thrusting her hands upward.
An explosion of pure, brilliant light detonated across the entire arena.
It was very bright and white so intense that it turned the world into a colorless void. Every student in the stand gasped and tried to shield their eyes. The monitors broadcasting the match flickered and glitched, struggling to compensate for the sudden illumination.
Celina's scream was almost lost in the chaos.
Amanda could hear it though the scream of confusion and fear as Celina found herself unable to see, unable to predict what was coming next. The girl stood there, completely vulnerable, her hands raised defensively but useless against an enemy she couldn't perceive.
Amanda didn't waste a moment.
She drew on her magic again, pulling from deeper reservoirs of power that she rarely accessed. Mana flowed through her like a second circulatory system, hot and wild and barely contained.
"Crimson Rain!" she roared.
The sky above the arena darkened. Clouds that hadn't been there moments before rolled in, thick and ominous and then it began to rain.
Except it wasn't rain.
Each droplet was the size of a marble and burning hot—tiny fireballs that fell like hail. They struck Celina with relentless fury, and the she shrieked with each impact. Her skin blistered. Blood welled up from a hundred tiny burns. The smell of charred flesh filled the air, acrid and nauseating.
Celina tried to shield herself, tried to counter with her own magic, but she was panicking. Her moves were desperate and disorganized. Without her sight and without her strategy, she was just another student scrambling to survive.
Amanda pressed her advantage.
She propelled herself forward using the same rocks that were still suspended in the air from earlier attacks, launching herself toward Celina. The moment she was close enough, she began to strike.
Her first punch came from the right. Celina's head snapped sideways, and blood sprayed from her mouth. A second punch followed, this one to the girl's ribs, driving the air from her lungs. Amanda moved with terrible efficiency, each strike calculated and precise. There was no rage in her movements just cold brutality.
Left hook. Celina's jaw shattered against her knuckles.
Right cross. More teeth scattered across the destroyed platform..
Upper cut. The girl's head snapped back with sickening force.
Each punch landed harder than the last, and with each one, Amanda felt Celina getting slower, weaker. The girl's defenses crumbled. She couldn't see properly. She could barely stand. Blood flowed from her nose, her mouth, her ears. Her uniform was torn and singed. Her body was mangled mess of burns.
By the time Amanda stopped, Celina was barely conscious. The girl swayed on her feet, only her will keeping her upright. Her breathing came in wet, ragged gasps.
The crowd had fallen eerily silent, as if shocked by the violence they'd just witnessed.
Amanda, breathing heavily, stepped back to reassess. Celina was finished. One more attack—something powerful and this would be over.
Amanda raised her hand, feeling the familiar heat gathering in her palm. The air around her began to shimmer and distort. This would be the finishing move. Something to demonstrate the gap in their power levels. Something that would echo through the academy for years to come.
"Crimson Hurricane!" Amanda commanded, her voice ringing with the weight of her power.
The temperature in the arena spiked. The very air seemed to catch fire. A vortex of crimson flames erupted into being, tall as a building, impossibly wide, rotating with the force of a natural disaster. It was beautiful and terrible. It was—
Amanda never got to see the finish.
Something wrapped around her legs.
Iron as Chains erupted from the ground, coiling around her calves and ankles . Before Amanda could even process what was happening, the chains yanked her feet out from under her. She crashed to the ground hard, the air exploding from her lungs.
The crimson hurricane dissipated, its power scattering harmlessly into the distance.
Amanda stared up at the arena ceiling in shock, struggling to breathe. Her legs burned where the iron chains held them, cutting off circulation. She tried to move, but the chains held firm. Behind them, she sensed magic—powerful magic, being channeled through those iron restraints.
What the hell was—
Celina walked into Amanda's field of vision.
Celina walked. Not stumbled, but Walked.
The girl's face was a ruin of bruises and blood, her eye nearly swollen shut, her uniform barely holding together. But she was was Conscious and functional when she should have been immobilized.
"Looks like we have some talking to do," Celina said, her voice hoarse but steady. She smiled—a grotesque expression given her battered face and Amanda realized the awful truth.
Celina had been faking. Or not faking, exactly, but... holding back. Conserving something. Saving some reserve of power and magic for this exact moment.
The crowd held its breath, sensing that something momentous was about to happen. The spectators leaned forward, cameras zoomed in, and the entire academy watched in stunned silence as Celina stood over Amanda, chains binding the champion of their year to the ground.
The match was no longer what any of them had expected.
It had just begun.