The sand of the arena felt colder under Kael's boots than it had for the others. He stepped away from the edge, walking toward the center of the massive amphitheater, the electric blue hum of Grael's restoration catalyst buzzing beneath his skin like trapped lightning. It was a borrowed strength, a dangerous loan that kept his battered muscles from screaming, but it did nothing to silence the roaring anxiety in his chest.
Every eye was on him. He felt the weight of the Valerius name, a legacy of fire that he had failed to inherit, pressing down on his shoulders heavier than any iron bar in the Pit. They weren't looking at a warrior; they were looking at a curiosity: a defect.
"Try not to die in the first ten seconds, 'Mana-less'!" Alaric's voice cut through the hushed anticipation from the stands above. "My father would weep to see what's become of his rival's bloodline."
A ripple of laughter spread through the first-year students. It wasn't malicious from everyone, just dismissive. Kael was the punchline to a joke they had all heard since the Day of Resonance. Kael swallowed hard, the metallic taste of blood still lingering in his throat from the morning's training. He didn't look at the crowd. He didn't look at Mina, whose concerned gaze he could practically feel burning into his back. He locked his eyes on Cyrus.
Cyrus stood ten meters away, lean and predatory, a smug grin twisting his sharp features. He was already channeling. The air around him warped, dust motes swirling in tightening spirals around his wrists.
"Professor Krayn," Cyrus called out, his voice amplified by a subtle wind current, "are we allowed to use full force? I wouldn't want to break the Academy's favorite antique toy."
More laughter. Krayn's expression remained immobile stone. "Begin," was his only command.
Cyrus didn't move his feet; he just flicked his right wrist. There was no visible projectile, just a sudden, high-pitched whistle in the air, like a whip cracking. Kael's instinct, honed by weeks of Grael throwing rocks at him in near-darkness, screamed left.
He threw himself to the side, rolling across the abrasive sand. Where his head had been a fraction of a second before, the sand exploded upward in a neat, diagonal slice, as if cut by an invisible greatsword.
"Fast," Kael thought, scrambling back to his feet. The static noise in his head, his unique perception of mana, was a chaotic screeching.
"Dance, zero!" Cyrus laughed, flicking his left hand, then his right again in rapid succession.
Invisible wind blades tore through the air. Kael dodged the first, ducked under the second, but the third clipped his shoulder. The fabric of his uniform split silently, and a thin line of red bloomed on his skin. Thanks to the blue pill, Kael felt only a dull thud, not the stinging pain. It was a dangerous numbness: he was being cut, and his body wasn't warning him.
"Is that it?" Alaric shouted from the stands, leaning over the railing. "You just going to roll around in the dirt like a dog? Fight back, coward!"
Kael ignored him. He couldn't fight back yet because he couldn't see the attacks. He had to hear them. He forced himself to ignore the visual input of Cyrus's smug face and focus on the displacement of air.
Another whistle: low, aimed at the knees. Kael jumped, tucking his legs, and the wind scythed beneath him. Cyrus was getting annoyed. "Stop moving, you little rat!"
The Wind mage clapped his hands together, then thrust them forward. This time, it wasn't a subtle blade: a concentrated sphere of pressurized air, visible only by the way it distorted the light, rocketed toward Kael's chest. It was too fast to dodge completely. Kael crossed his arms in a tight guard, bracing his stance in the shifting sand.
The impact was like being hit by a charging bull. The wind sphere slammed into his forearms, lifting him off his feet and throwing him backward three meters. He landed hard on his back, the breath knocked out of him despite the pill's energy. The crowd cheered: this was what they expected.
"Stay down, Valerius!" someone yelled.
Kael rouled onto his stomach, spitting sand. His forearms were bruised deep purple, the sleeves shredded. The static noise in his head was deafening now. He looked up, his eyes meeting Cyrus's through the haze of pain and adrenaline.
Cyrus was preparing something bigger. He raised both hands high, the air in the arena beginning to pull toward him, creating a vacuum effect that tugged at Kael's clothes. A miniature tornado was forming above Cyrus's head, debris and sand getting sucked into the growing vortex.
"Let's see you dodge this whole area," Cyrus sneered, his face pale with the effort of channeling so much power.
Kael realized he couldn't dodge because the area of effect would be too wide. And he couldn't defend; that vortex would rip his guard apart. He didn't brace and he didn't retreat. He broke into a sprint, straight at Cyrus, straight into the teeth of the gathering storm.
A gasp went through the crowd. Cyrus's eyes widened in disbelief, but he didn't stop. With a roar of effort, he brought his hands down, unleashing the tornado directly into Kael's path. The roaring wind was deafening, a wall of churning force that should have flayed the skin from Kael's bones.
Kael didn't slow down. He grit his teeth, visualizing the static noise, visualizing the "parasite" of magic in the air. He didn't want to block it; he wanted to shut it off. He threw his right fist forward, not at Cyrus, but directly into the center of the oncoming magical vortex.
Silence.
It didn't happen with a bang: it happened with an erasure. The moment Kael's fist connected with the concentrated mana, the roaring wind didn't just disperse, it ceased to exist. The tornado evaporated instantly into harmless air.
The sudden silence in the arena was heavier than the noise had been. Alaric's laughter died in his throat. Cyrus stood frozen, his hands still outstretched, his mind unable to process why his mana had just vanished.
Kael didn't give him time to process. He carried his momentum forward, crashing into Cyrus before the mage could redraw a single breath of mana. This wasn't an elegant academy duel anymore: this was the Pit.
Kael drove his shoulder into Cyrus's sternum, knocking the wind out of him with a sickening crunch. Cyrus stumbled back, gasping, but Kael slapped his hand aside brutally when he tried to cast a spell. Kael followed with a low kick to the inside of Cyrus's knee, buckling the mage's leg. As Cyrus fell forward, Kael agripped the collar of his uniform and delivered a short, devastating headbutt to the bridge of his nose.
Blood exploded from Cyrus's face. The mage crumpled to the sand, dazed, his connection to the wind completely severed. Kael stood over him, chest heaving, knuckles raw and bloody. The electric hum of the pill was fading, replaced by the encroaching tide of real, agonizing pain.
"Winner: Kael Valerius," Krayn announced into the dead silence.
The words seemed to hang in the air, marking the moment the "zero" had forced the world to listen to his silence.