Chaos swallowed the coliseum in seconds.
What had once been a controlled battlefield turned into a broken landscape of cracked stone, rising dust, and roaring beasts. The summoned creatures poured in like a living tide — horned, scaled, clawed things with eyes too bright and movements too fast, crashing into barriers, knocking over contestants, forcing royal knights into immediate action. The crowd fled from the lower stands while mages raised emergency shields above the viewing platforms, blue and gold layers of protection forming just in time as debris flew upward. The judges shouted orders that were instantly drowned out by noise, and the rules of the tournament collapsed under the weight of survival.
Eira stood frozen for half a second, not from fear, but from the overwhelming pull of mana in the air. It was wrong. Not wild, not natural — twisted, aggressive, stitched together by force rather than harmony. The source was obvious. The mysterious fighter stood at the center of it all, his expression empty, his hands trembling as he struggled to control what he had unleashed.
Ark was still on his knees behind Eira, barely conscious. The other girl had already been knocked aside by the shockwave of the summoning, crawling desperately toward the edge of the arena. Knights rushed in, blades and spells flashing, but the beasts were too many and too fast, their bodies absorbing magic and tearing through steel alike.
A massive creature lunged toward Eira, jaws wide, its breath hot and foul. He moved on instinct, blocking the strike with his sword and rolling beneath its body as it crashed into the stone behind him. His heart pounded, not with fear, but with something sharper — recognition. This was the same feeling as before. The same pressure he had felt in the dungeon, in the forest, when the world turned cold around him.
A sudden chill rippled through the air.
It began subtly, like a breeze brushing across heated skin, then grew into a wave of cold that rolled outward from Eira in a widening circle. Dust settled. Heat vanished. The sand beneath his feet turned pale as frost spread across the arena floor.
Then something answered him.
A sharp, crystalline sound cut through the noise — not a roar, but a call. The space above Eira shimmered, warped by sudden freezing air, and the snow dragon emerged like a vision carved from winter itself. Its scales gleamed white with pale blue veins of light running beneath them, its wings translucent and edged with frost. Its eyes locked onto Eira instantly, not with the gaze of a wild beast, but with recognition.
It descended in a controlled spiral and landed beside him, the impact sending a wave of icy air across the battlefield.
The dragon let out a sound that felt like both a warning and a promise.
The beasts hesitated.
For the first time since the chaos began, the summoned creatures slowed, their movements faltering as the temperature dropped and their mana reacted violently against the dragon's presence. Frost crept up their limbs, stiffening joints, dulling senses. Knights took advantage of the opening, regrouping, forming lines, pushing back with renewed force.
Eira didn't command the dragon.
He didn't need to.
They moved together.
The dragon surged forward, breath crystallizing into a cone of freezing air that swept across a cluster of beasts, locking them in place as Eira cut through them with precise, controlled strikes. Where his blade passed, frost followed, sealing wounds, slowing regeneration, preventing the creatures from reforming.
Around them, the tide of battle shifted.
The mysterious fighter staggered back, his summoning collapsing as his mana faltered, panic finally cracking through his blank expression. Royal knights closed in on him from all sides, binding spells forming in the air.
But he was not finished.
With a desperate cry, he poured the last of his power into one final surge, sending a massive beast crashing toward the stands — not aiming for fighters, but for the civilians still trying to escape.
Eira moved before anyone could shout.
The dragon lifted with him, wings beating once, carrying him upward in a rush of cold air. Eira raised his sword, feeling the familiar weight and warmth of power within it — not heat, not fire, but a steady, endless cold.
He struck.
The blade didn't cut.
It erased.
The beast froze mid-motion, its body turning white, then cracking apart into harmless shards of ice that shattered across the air and vanished before they touched the ground.
Silence followed.
Not complete silence — the sound of distant shouting, the crackle of fading magic, the heavy breathing of exhausted fighters — but the overwhelming chaos was gone.
The threat had ended.
The snow dragon landed beside Eira again, lowering its head slightly, as if in acknowledgment, before fading back into light and cold, vanishing into the mana around him.
Only then did Eira feel his legs weaken.
Only then did the weight of what had happened settle in.
The tournament was over.
The truth was no longer hidden.
And whatever story this world was trying to tell, Eira was no longer just a character inside it — he had become part of its turning point.