Prince Vesperion Umbra leaned forward.
Every noble present went rigid, as though caught mid-breath by an unseen hand. Silk ceased to rustle. Jewels no longer clinked. Even the faint murmur of the coliseum beyond seemed to recede.
Velora's breath caught painfully in her chest. No one blinked. No one dared speak.
Below them, in the heart of the arena, Astra stood alone beneath a sky fractured by light and shadow. What he was attempting now was no mere spell, no reckless flourish of youth. It was something else entirely—something that made even those who had brushed against divinity feel suddenly, acutely mortal.
Even the Bishops watched in stunned silence.
This was a gamble. Astra's gamble.
His voice rang out across the coliseum—clear, steady, unyielding. It carried not just sound, but intent, each syllable etched with purpose so sharp it made the air tremble. The vast crowd inhaled as one, instinctively sensing that whatever came next would not be undone.
"Shadows of Night…"
Vesperion felt it then—deep in his chest, beneath bone and blood. The pull. Not crude force. Not mana brute-forced into obedience. This was will. Astra had found it.
Will did not command shadows. It convinced them. It gave them reason to serve. The higher the affinity, the deeper the resonance—but when will was involved, shadows ceased to be borrowed tools. They became an extension of the self.
At last, Vesperion thought grimly. He has learned to put himself into his mana.
Yet that revelation alone was not what unsettled him.
No—what made his pulse slow, what made something ancient stir in his lineage, was that the shadows were… wrong. Subtly. Dangerously so.
They were charged with something foreign. A mana type so minute, so delicately threaded through the shadows, that most—no, nearly all—would never notice it. Rank meant nothing here. Power meant nothing.
Only comprehension mattered. Only affinity. And in the realm of shadow, Vesperion Umbra stood at the pinnacle. He bore Umbra's godhood in his blood. He held the rights to it, the inheritance of shadow itself. If there was anyone alive who could feel the difference—
—it was him.
Those shadows were not merely responding. They were becoming something else.
Is this his trump card? Or something even he does not yet understand?
Mana surged.
"Shall rise and fall…"
Above Astra's head, darkness coalesced. A sphere formed—slowly at first—woven from spiraling shadow and something far more profane. Light itself was being dragged screaming into the construct, torn from Lucien's blazing dominion and bent as though it belonged elsewhere.
As though it belonged to Astra. The murmurs in the viewing rooms swelled into gasps, then outright disbelief.
"He's—no—he's stealing the light!" "That's sun magic! It shouldn't—wait—leeching? That's impossible!"
"For millennia we've sought counters to that cursed domain and failed every time—how can a rank one—"
"The spell construct will collapse! It has to! There's no way it can sustain—"
Eyes turned toward Vesperion, hungry for judgment.
He gave none.
The orb writhed above Astra, jagged and alive, lashing tendrils of void toward the golden radiance like a predator tasting prey. It pulsed once—then again—growing heavier, denser.
A second sun. Black. Cold. Hungry.
"Leech thy cruel light…"
The words radiated outward in waves. The air bent. Reality warped. Stone groaned beneath the strain as if the coliseum itself feared what it was being forced to witness.
Light curved unnaturally toward the orb, folding like torn fabric dragged into an abyss. Sunfire screamed as it was stripped of purpose and dragged screaming into shadow.
"As you eclipse all…"
A wind howled into existence where none had been moments before. Astra's cloak snapped like a battle standard, shadows thickening around him—no longer passive, no longer reactive, but intentional.
The black sun swelled.
Golden arcs vanished into its heart, swallowed whole, defying every law that had governed mana since the dawn of the realms.
"Oh darkness of Shadowfall…"
The shadows surged. The orb expanded violently, its gravity absolute. Sunlight twisted, bent, and finally broke, consumed by the black core. Energy thickened until breathing felt like drowning. The arena was no longer a place of spectators—it was a crucible.
Lucien's blazing sun flickered. For the first time, it yielded.
Rank Two mages recoiled. Some stumbled back as though struck. Others stood frozen, mouths agape, as two youths tore apart everything they had ever been taught.
"Shadows…" one scion whispered, eyes wide with terror and wonder."…pushing back the sun?" His voice cracked. "This level—this isn't a rank one duel anymore."
No.
This was beyond rank. The Sun of Dawn was not a simple manifestation of power—it was a domain. A perfected spell, capped at Rank Two not by limitation, but by design. Rank was a mortal measure; the spell itself reached far beyond it.
Ambient mana did not exist as "ranked" power. Rank One and Rank Two were thresholds of access, not ceilings of strength. That was why breaking into them was considered easy by the standards of true mages—the environment itself was forgiving. Mana was plentiful, docile, eager to be shaped.
Only in places of excess did mana reveal its higher nature.
In the deep deserts of the Heartlands, where ley currents burned beneath the sand.In the Abyss of Penumbra, where shadows and true darkness pooled like oceans without shores.There, Rank Three mana existed freely, saturating the world.
And there, the Sun of Dawn would rise higher still. Its true function—what made it infamous—was not brilliance, nor fire, nor even authority. It was self-sufficiency.
A long-range domain spell capable of offense, defense, and healing in perfect balance. It drank from the world itself, converting ambient mana directly into usable energy, sustaining its wielder without strain. No spell arrays. No conduits. No external focus.
Once invoked, it fed itself.
The concepts required to construct such a spell were already beyond mortal Rank logic. That Lucien wielded it at all was testament not to his genius—but to his inheritance.
He had not forged the Sun of Dawn. He had received it.
A legacy spell, refined over generations of House Dawn, passed down like a crown of fire. Through it, Lucien accessed Rank Two power at its absolute apex. In an extreme mana environment, it would touch Rank Three outright. Beyond that, the spell's effectiveness depended only on how efficiently its wielder could draw, convert, and cycle mana.
And past Rank Three, such concerns became trivial. Mana reserves ceased to matter. Yet here—here—Astra had done the impossible. He had not overpowered the Sun of Dawn. He had not resisted it. He had not blocked it. He had understood it.
He seized its core principle—ambient conversion, domain authority, self-sustaining flow—and twisted it through shadow and whatever foreign element he had instilled in them. Not by copying. Not by mirroring. But by reframing the concept itself.
The light was not being stolen. It was being claimed. In a desperate, brilliant gamble—one that should have shattered his body and soul alike—Astra had forced shadow to perform a function it had never been meant to fulfill.
And it worked. For this moment, he wielded equal dominion. The coliseum felt it.
The coliseum leaned—not physically, but inevitably—toward Astra, as though the world itself had decided where history would anchor. Every noble, every mage, every common spectator understood without explanation:
This moment would be remembered. An adopted commoner of House Shadow, standing against the crown prince of a divine legacy. Not as a challenger begging recognition—but as an answer.
Astra did not merely oppose Lucien. He embodied everything House Shadow had ever claimed to be.
Versatile. Adept. Composed. Unyielding.
The shadows thickened—not in fear, but in celebration. They rejoiced.
Vesperion felt their authority spread outward, crawling beyond the arena floor, slithering up stone spires and through ancient arches, seeping into the upper viewing boxes like a tide returning home.
Bishops and Knights shifted in their seats as shadows pooled beneath them—richer, deeper, welcoming. Not hostile. Not defiant. Enhancing. As though recognizing kin.
One Bishop, robes traced in obsidian runes, let out a soft, delighted breath."Such affinity…" he murmured. "It surpasses most within our House. It touches even me. This child was truly blessed."
A woman crowned in raven-feathered regalia allowed herself a rare smile."This is no mere S-rank affinity," she said quietly. "This is S-rank at its limit—one that rivals even Prince Vesperion."
That word struck deep. Rivals. Vesperion's heart thudded once—heavy, measured. Unease coiled with exhilaration, something old and predatory stirring in his blood. He glanced sideways at Bishop Alistair. Unreadable.
Half shock. Half admiration.
Alistair had trained Astra. Bargained with him. Watched him stand unbroken before angels and demigods. He knew something—something none of them did. But it no longer mattered. The arena had become a cathedral of clashing truths.
Below, in the heart of it all, Astra's voice cut through the charged silence—low, steady, absolute.
"For far too long," he said, "shadows have lain dormant. Oppressed. Forgotten."
He raised his sword. Darkness rippled along its edge, pulsing in harmony with the black sun overhead.
"It is time," Astra continued, "for the realms to feel the wrath of the shadows—under their lord."
His gaze locked onto Lucien.
"Golden Prince of Dawn," he said calmly, almost gently,"You shall learn what it means to fear my shadows."
Vesperion could not look away. "How audacious!" the viewing box erupted. A champion's rise, unfolding in real time.
Win or lose, Astra had achieved the unthinkable—he had devised a counter to the Sun of Dawn. His name would spread like wildfire through the realms.
Vesperion had never seen a mage evolve mid-battle. Never watched a genius seize a battlefield and turn it into a throne.
And Astra did it again. And again. So often it began to look effortless. A small smile curved Vesperion's lips. A monster had awakened.
.....
The coliseum throbbed with tension, as though the stone itself had a pulse.
Prince Lucien stood beneath his sun like a living standard of dawn, his blade glowing molten-gold, heat rolling from him in suffocating waves. Each breath he took was measured. Each shift of his weight precise. His stance was flawless—disciplined, elegant, inevitable—power shaped into form.
He did not merely wield the Sun of Dawn. He belonged to it.
Astra watched him closely—not the obvious things, not the sword or the light, but the rhythm beneath it all. The silence between breaths. The faint twitch in Lucien's shoulder before motion. The slight bend in his knee as weight settled.
Threads. His blessing stirred, awakening like a predator scenting blood. Lucien's movements unraveled before Astra's eyes—not as actions, but as intentions. Possibilities branching, converging.
Astra did not just see his opponent. He began to understand him. Lucien moved. His sword came down in a blinding arc, light tearing through the air.
Astra vanished.
He sank into shadow as though the world had opened beneath his feet. The blade cleaved only heat and emptiness. In the same heartbeat, Astra reappeared behind Lucien in a coil of darkness, sword already whispering forward—aimed for the narrow gap at Lucien's shoulder, where a pauldron had been cracked in an earlier exchange. Steel kissed cloth. Not flesh. A breath too slow.
Lucien spun, eyes blazing with sunfire. His blade snapped back just in time, intercepting Astra's strike with a thunderous crack. Sparks exploded outward—gold and violet, dawn and night colliding without yielding an inch. Lucien stepped back and raised his hand. The air hummed.
Sunlight bent toward him, drawn as if by gravity. His blade ignited, brilliance cascading down its edge. A pillar of golden flame erupted outward, a blinding arc that devoured the space between them.
Astra did not retreat. He stepped into the fire.
Shadows surged with cunning intent, splitting and folding around the blaze. They redirected the sunfire, siphoning its force, carving narrow seams through the inferno. Astra flowed between them, slipping through reality's cracks, untouched by heat that should have reduced him to ash.
He emerged on the far side, armor smoking, eyes burning violet. Lucien's mouth twitched—neither surprise nor admiration, but something colder. Recognition. He advanced. Blades met again.
Once. Twice. A dozen times in the span of a breath.
Astra ducked beneath a radiant sweep, twisted to Lucien's flank, struck—but Lucien was already there, turning with him, his sword intercepting the blow with a shriek of protesting steel. Above them, sunfire and shadow clashed endlessly.
Astra sent shadows constricting, lunging like serpents—only for them to be burned away or severed by light. Lucien hurled spears of brilliance, orbs of sunfire, lancing beams of dawn—each met by shadow, bent aside, swallowed, or narrowly evaded.
Their mana expenditure was obscene. But their domains allowed it. Power fed power in a vicious, self-sustaining cycle. Lucien surged forward. The world turned white.
He struck with merciless rhythm, his sword carving blazing crescents through the air. Astra parried, stepped, vanished, reappeared—barely keeping pace. Every clash rang like a tolling bell. Every motion sharpened, more exacting than the last.
Then Astra's blessing flared. He no longer saw where Lucien moved. He saw why.
The thought before action. The intent behind the feint. The inevitability embedded in each strike. Threads unraveled in real time, and with the Sword of Shadows—adaptable, treacherous, alive—Astra adjusted with terrifying speed. The Sword of Dawn was dreadful. It was not a style meant to duel. It was a style meant to exterminate.
Equal speed. Equal force. Layered techniques designed to trap an opponent in a cycle of loss as certain as the sunrise after nightfall. If Astra were forced to name its principles, there would be three main ones. Dominance. Inevitability. Offense.
Without the Sword of Shadows—versatile, deceptive, ever-changing—Astra would have fallen long ago. Lucien swung in a wide, annihilating arc a curved beam of light flying past hitting the coliseum walls.
Astra bent backward, the blade slicing an inch above his nose. In the same motion, he pivoted, ducked low, and snapped his sword upward toward Lucien's ribs. Lucien spun again. His golden gauntlet caught Astra's blade mid-strike, twisting it aside with brutal precision.
Beneath their feet, the sand warped. Heat fused it into glass. The arena glittered with fractured reflections of dawn and shadow The air between their blades shimmered, light and shadow colliding so violently that reality itself seemed to recoil. The arena groaned beneath the strain. At the perimeter, ancient enchantments finally faltered—violet glyphs flaring awake one by one, pulsing like warning beacons.
Lucien stepped back, sword raised high. He channeled. The Sun of Dawn answered.
A wave of searing heat burst outward from him, crushing the air, bending light, and forcing Astra back several paces. Stone hissed. Sand fused into glass beneath Lucien's boots. For a heartbeat, there was stillness. They faced one another through wavering heat, both breathing hard, blades poised. Lucien's gaze drifted—not to Astra's eyes, but to the shadows clustered around him. They quivered under his scrutiny… yet they did not retreat.
They held. Lucien laughed softly, amusement threading his voice."How auspicious," he said. "The shadows once feared you. Served you with disdain." His smile sharpened. "Now… they kneel in tyrannical faith."
Astra chuckled, low and unbothered."Well, of course they do," he replied. "They've witnessed what burns brighter." Lucien stared at him, incredulous.
"Have you now…" He spat blood onto the stone, then smiled—dangerous, delighted. "Then allow me to re-educate them."
His blade vanished.
Light condensed mid-motion, splintering into narrow, radiant spears trailing behind him as he struck—an executioner's charge, precise and merciless.
Astra stepped left. Shadows surged, thickening into grasping appendages—but Lucien adjusted mid-lunge, twisting the strike into a diagonal feint. The real attack came low.
Astra parried. Barely. The force hurled him backward, boots carving trenches through stone as sparks and shadow burst at his feet. Lucien did not relent. He became a storm.
A disciplined maelstrom of gold and fire, his blade a continuous line of dawn carving through the arena. Light thickened around him, blinding, suffocating—too brilliant to stare at directly.
Astra staggered once. Twice. Then the shadows surged. They did not flee. They fought.
They wrapped around Astra like living armor, flowing over him in jagged arcs, volatile and dense. His blade vanished into darkness—then reemerged a breath later, sharper, faster, bound with something ancient and hungry. Tendrils lashed toward Lucien again and again, burned away or severed, yet never ceasing.
Lucien noticed. His footwork shifted. His eyes narrowed. Astra struck.
Their blades collided—light and dark exploding with such force that the ground buckled. Cracks split the arena floor. Dust billowed upward in thick, golden clouds as the coliseum shuddered.
Lucien slid back, breath tight. Astra advanced.
His cloak flared behind him. Shadows prowled at his heels like wolves scenting blood. He moved without sound—one step, then another—
Then he was gone. Lucien's instincts screamed. He spun—
Too late.
Astra erupted from shadow behind him, blade arcing toward Lucien's exposed side. Lucien pivoted, parried, twisted— But not fast enough. Steel kissed flesh. The strike grazed Lucien's ribs. The first hit. The arena erupted in cheers.
Both stood frozen for a breath, chests heaving, blades raised. Heat crackled. Shadows whispered. Lucien exhaled slowly. Astra felt his throat dry. The next clash came like a thunderclap.
Lucien's blade roared in a sweeping arc, fire trailing it like a comet's tail. Astra met it head-on—his shadowed blade thicker now, denser, its edge twisting mid-swing into something cruel and deliberate. The impact was not ethereal.
It was violent. The arena shook. Their swords did not slide—they screamed, metal shrieking against force and will. Astra's feet dug into the sand.
"You're slowing, Shadow," Lucien spat, breath blazing. "Has your blasphemous spell finally begun to corrode you as well?"
Astra's smile remained—but it no longer reached his eyes.
"Zeal blinds your vision Prince."He drove his blade forward. The shadows answered.
They surged behind him—not mist, not fear, but matter. Blades. Chains. Shards. All forged from the roiling nucleus of the Dark Sun beneath his core, pouring black radiance into the arena like a silent scream. The shadows solidified, humming with unbearable weight, warping the very light around them. Lucien's eyes narrowed.Ambition leaned closer. A spear of pure shadow tore through the air toward Lucien's chest.
He batted it aside—only for another to follow. Then another. Then four.Then eight. Each carried genuine mass now.
Pinnacle Rank Two force—shadow no longer content to imitate substance, but become it. What should not have existed outside a forge moved like smoke: blades of blackened steel, bent at impossible angles, burning with violet runes carved by Astra's will. Lucien raised a hand.
"Solar Guard."
The arena ignited like a dying star. Molten gold snapped into place around him, a blazing barrier that met the barrage head-on. Spears hissed and sizzled as they struck, punching into fire and light. Not all were stopped.
One tore through the shield and ripped the restored golden pauldron from Lucien's shoulder in a shower of sparks and blood. Astra's voice cut through the roar—cold as void.
"You think your magic invisible, Prince?" he said. "That your sun reigns supreme over the realms?"
Lucien stepped from the fading shield, blood trailing down his arm, steam rising where it struck the glassed stone. He raised his blade. It exploded with brilliance.
"Spoken like one who has never touched the true brilliance of the Sun."
Light poured around him, transmuted by his mana into a weaponized aura. Every step scorched the ground. He blurred forward, sword screaming with fire, and brought it down with force enough to sunder steel.
"Sunflare." A flare of sun crashed down toward Astra. Astra blocked it. Not with steel—but with shadow.
A wall of living darkness tore itself from the heart of his Dark Sun, a slab of condensed void so dense it cracked under impact yet held. Sparks detonated across its surface. The shadow hissed, melting, screaming— Astra burned. "Fuck," he muttered, teeth clenched. "That hurts."
If not for Shadowfall knitting flesh and bone even as they scorched, he would never have dared remain standing. He stepped through the void.
Lucien barely managed to turn in time to block the incoming slash. Even so, the force hurled him backward, boots carving twin furrows through glassed sand.
Astra pressed. His sword gleamed in an arc as he manifested shadows to follow. "Shadowed Arc"
A arc of shadows flew out in a cleaved manner, sharp and dangerous. Lucien sighed. His body erupted in flame.
"Sunbreak!"
A circular blast of blinding heat detonated outward, atomizing half the incoming wave in a white-hot flash. The rest struck home—shattering against armor, slicing into burning flesh. Lucien stumbled. Only for a breath. Astra was already there. Their swords collided againLucien snarled, eyes blazing, wild with fury and fire.
"I will burn you," he hissed."Champion of Shadow."
Astra hissed as pain tore through him.
Lucien burned hot—too hot. Heat clawed at Astra's flesh, searing through armor and will alike. Shadows flared behind him like broken wings, tearing themselves apart just to keep him standing. Yet Astra pressed forward.
And for the first time— Lucien yielded ground. The sun blazed brighter.
The shadows deepened, thickening into something vast and hungry. And in the narrowing silence between strikes, the crowd forgot how to breathe.
"Fall."
Astra's voice dropped like a guillotine. Mana laced the word, intent embedded so deeply that the world itself obeyed. The shadows behind him snapped.
A dozen spires erupted from the earth, spearing skyward toward Lucien with the sound of steel shattering bone. They were not mere constructs. They carried will—Astra's desire to drag Lucien down, to drown him beneath the weight of night.
Lucien answered with a word of his own.
"Burn." The command ignited.
It lashed from his mouth like a whip of divine light. The spires caught fire mid-flight, detonating into radiant explosions that tore them apart before they could touch him.
Their voices had become spells. Their wills—law.
Each word bled mana at a ruinous pace. This fight was nearing its end. Lucien surged forward, faster now, flame-etched armor thrumming with fury. His blade carved a horizontal arc toward Astra's ribs, fire trailing behind it like comet dust. Astra ducked low, twisted—and answered.
His cloak snapped. Shadows bent like knives, forming a jagged wheel mid-spin that smashed into Lucien's leg. His soul shuddered. The impact staggered him—and Astra seized the moment, slashing upward. Lucien twisted at the last heartbeat.
Steel kissed flesh. Blood spilled—and burned.
Lucien roared through the pain.
"Radiant Ascension!"
Astra barely had time to think. "I need real offensive spells, he noted grimly. He wielded many constructs, many techniques—but Lucien commanded raw firepower beyond anything Astra could yet manifest.
A pulse of sunlight detonated outward—not heat, but force. Divine pressure slammed into Astra's chest and hurled him backward through a pillar of obsidian. Stone exploded. Dust and shards swallowed him whole.
Lucien did not pursue immediately. He stood amid the ruin, blood streaming down his hip, golden eyes burning like twin stars.
Then— Astra stepped from the rubble. His hand pointing towards Lucien. His violet eyes glowed with a strange darkness. Above him, the Dark Sun flared.
"Shadowfyre."
The black sun pulsed. A wave of black flame rolled outward and crashed into Lucien. He tried to burn through it but the fire spread.
"What the—" It was not hot. It was cold. Soul-chilling.
Lucien felt it gnaw at him, tearing at something deeper than flesh, stripping away vitality with terrifying speed. He gasped for air. Astra smiled with malice.
He had saved this construct for last—a discovery born from the strange resonance between celestial and shadow affinity, forged in the pressure above the arena itself. Suddenly Lucien laughed. Cold. Certain.
"Extinguish."
The command fell like judgment. The black flame vanished—snuffed from existence as if it had never been. Astra's smile faltered. "Damn." he had not expected such authority from Luciens will.
And once more, they collided. Steel on steel. Shadow against dawn. The Sword of Shadow met the Sword of Dawn.
They clashed again and again, each exchange layered with danger, every movement threaded with feints, counters, and narrow survivals, until it became impossible to tell which of them stood closer to victory and which to ruin. Astra waited for it through the storm of steel and fire—the moment Lucien would draw his final answer, the Sword of the Morning
Yet it never came, and that absence gnawed at him far more than its presence ever could. Why won't he use it? the thought hissed through his mind even as he fought. Can he not? Is he forbidden? He did not know, and the uncertainty seeded a deep, instinctive fear.
Shadow met flame and both struck true. Lucien's gauntlet-wrapped fist crashed into Astra's jaw, snapping his head aside, while Astra answered with a knee driven hard into Lucien's ribs, the impact landing with a sickening crunch that echoed through bone and armor alike.
Astra whispered a single word—Spread—and the shadows clinging to Lucien's wounds spread with malignant intent, seeping into the sunfire, corrupting it, turning gold to bruised violet and draining its searing bite. Lucien answered at once, his voice flaring with authority as he invoked Torch, and the corruption was scoured away through sheer will, sunfire roaring back into dominance.
Astra lunged, driving his dark-forged blade forward, but Lucien caught it with both hands despite the burning flesh, then smashed his head into Astra's face. Astra reeled from the blow—then laughed, breathless and bloodied, even as fire surged around them both and swallowed the space between their bodies.
They became blurs of motion, flashes of light and shadow tearing across the arena, colliding in midair, crashing back to the ground in showers of stone and raw mana. Their movements mirrored one another not through similarity but through opposition; every strike one made was met by an answer already prepared, every feint anticipated, every opening closed almost as soon as it appeared. Lucien carved high with a sweeping arc of flame, and Astra parried low, shadows snapping upward to coil around Lucien's legs like living serpents. Lucien detonated upward in a flare of dawn to break free, and Astra vanished into shadow only to reappear behind him a heartbeat later, blade already descending.
"Hold."
The word fell like thunder, not merely sound but command. Flames dimmed. The arena hushed. Lucien's breath caught in his throat as his shadow grew suddenly heavy, anchoring him for the briefest, most lethal instant—and Astra struck. Lucien twisted just enough that the blade only grazed his side, carving flesh, but he answered immediately with a blast from his open palm as he snarled Ignite. The explosion detonated point-blank, hurling Astra across the arena once more. He struck the sand hard, rolled once, twice, his body steaming, his cloak reduced to tatters.
Still, he rose.
Slowly, deliberately, shadows coiling around him like living beasts as they licked at his wounds with black fire, knitting flesh and bone even as pain screamed through his nerves. The Dark Sun within him pulsed again, heavier and brighter, its gravity tugging at the very light around Lucien, bending it ever so slightly toward itself. Lucien stood across from him, chest heaving, sword trembling just enough to betray the strain beneath his discipline.
Astra's breath rasped as wisps of shadowfire danced along his limbs, and behind him the Dark Sun churned, its core swirling with that cursed glimmer that had begun to surge again, a whisper threading through his thoughts like silk drawn through bone. The crowd roared so loudly he could no longer hear his own heartbeat, let alone think, yet one truth cut through the chaos with terrible clarity.
You like this, don't you? The pain. The danger. The glory of it.
And damn it—he did.
Lucien stood across from him, his body cut, burned, and trembling beneath the strain, yet his grin only widened, feral and unbroken, his eyes blazing like twin suns on the verge of supernova. They surged toward one another again, closing the distance with reckless inevitability as shadow slammed into flame, flesh into bone, voice into will.
"Submit," Astra whispered, and the word carried a sickening weight as his mana erupted outward, coalescing into talons of living darkness that sought to drag Lucien back into his shadow, to suffocate him, claw at his soul, and strip away the last shreds of his will to fight.
Lucien bared his teeth in a crooked, defiant grin. "Not. A. Chance."
He twisted into the strike, drove a flaming elbow into Astra's jaw, then buried a knee into his gut hard enough to lift him from the ground. Astra answered with a shadow-drenched headbutt that cracked the air itself, the impact echoing like a thunderclap between them. Then—Lucien stepped back. Blood streamed freely from his mouth, staining his chin and armor, yet his voice rang clear and unwavering.
"Champion of shadow," he called, lifting his gaze skyward. "Witness the might of my sun."
Mana surged around him in violent waves as the air turned molten gold, heat rippling outward like the breath of a dying star. Lucien raised his hand to the heavens—and laughed.
"Fall," he commanded. "Sunset."
The sky answered.
A blazing sphere began to descend from above, vast and merciless, like a god's judgment tearing itself free from the firmament. It was not a spell; it was an ending. Lucien's personal sun, dragged screaming from the heavens and drawn down like a curtain on the final act of the battle.
Astra's eyes widened. Shit.
He roared his answer into the sky. "Shadowfall!"
Above him, the Dark Sun screamed as it plummeted downward—black gravity wrapped in twisted fire, a sphere of compressed shadow and singular intent hurtling upward to meet its opposite. The arena trembled beneath the weight of their convergence as the two suns collided high above, and the impact strained the entire coliseum in a roaring cataclysm that strained ancient enchantments and sent shockwaves rippling across coliseum. A whirlwind erupted at the point of collision, an apocalyptic storm of heat, shadow, and shattered stone. Airships swayed violently. Billions watching across the realms held their breath.
Lucien and Astra did not stop.
They grappled and fought within the heart of the storm itself, the explosion hurling them upward to the very crown of the coliseum, their bodies battered and flung through spiraling currents of fire, sand, and void. There were no swords now, no finesse—only two bloodied warriors locked together as their wills burned bright enough to scar the heavens.
Lucien's fist slammed into Astra's ribs. Astra answered with a brutal hook that snapped Lucien's head sideways. They laughed—loud, unhinged, almost joyous—as they were hurled through the air again and again, buffeted by the spiraling collision of their suns. Neither could summon anything more; too much of their mana was bound to the descent, too deeply committed to the annihilation above.
Below, the crowd could only watch in stunned silence, the pressure of their clashing power pressing down like a weight upon the soul. Though the enchanted barrier held, some nobles and commoners alike were forced to shield their eyes as light and shadow radiated outward, the spectacle carrying the unmistakable presence of absurd talent.
Then—impact.
The arena vanished in a storm of light and void.
Silence.
And when the flames finally dimmed, when black fire curled back into nothing and the searing radiance dispersed—
There Astra knelt.
His armor had long since been damaged and dismissed, leaving him shirtless, burned, and shaking, his body held together by will alone. Blood traced a slow line down his temple, cutting through soot and ash. His hair hung in singed strands around his face, and though his violet eyes looked hollow—drained to the brink—they still burned, stubborn and unyielding. He was exhausted, wounded beyond reason, his mind no more than a minute from collapse.
Below him, Lucien glowed.
Mana surged around the prince in relentless waves, growing denser by the heartbeat, brighter by the breath. Astra stared, eyes widening as disbelief crushed the fatigue from his thoughts. His voice echoed faintly across the coliseum.
"Rank… two…"
His hands trembled. In the final moments—those moments—Lucien had broken through. Not merely advanced, but ascended, forcing his way into Rank two as if the laws governing growth had bent rather than broken him. Worse still, the quality of mana radiating from his body was unmistakable.
Mythical.
Lucien had forged a Mythical core.
Lucien rose from the sand as though the battle had never touched him. Everything around him had been evaporated, reduced to scorched glass and drifting dust, yet his armored pants remained, his chiseled body unmarred. Ascension had healed him, reforged him, strengthened him beyond what he had been moments before. Fear coiled deep in Astra's gut—but it was not answered with hostility.
Lucien smiled.
Not kindly. Not cruelly.
Knowingly.
"Ah," he murmured, his voice carrying effortlessly through the coliseum. "I see. So that's how. That's why."
His laughter reverberated across the arena—and then he vanished.
"Shit—"
Lucien was suddenly beside Astra. Instinct screamed. Astra braced himself for the end. But no blow came. No fire. No judgment. Only a whisper, warm and dangerous against his ear.
"I understand it now," Lucien said softly. "Your secret is safe with me… for now, Champion."
"Shit he figured it out?"
Before Astra could respond, pressure flooded the air as a presence descended. A Rank Four mediator appeared between them, walking forward with deliberate steps. The crowd fell eerily silent.
"Prince Lucien Solaris," the demigod declared. "Disqualified."
A pause.
"Victor: Lord Astra of Shadow."
The coliseum exploded into pandemonium.
Across the realms, billions watching stared in disbelief. A battle that shook the heavens, ended not by defeat—but by law. Lucien had broken Rank Two mid-combat. He could no longer compete.
Lucien raised his hands as he walked away from the kneeling Astra, the crowd roaring in stunned celebration. Astra forced himself upright, every movement a battle of its own, and followed in the opposite direction. The ovation swelled into something thunderous—nobles standing, commoners screaming, even demigods rising in solemn approval of what they had witnessed.
Two champions. One victor. No resolution.
And as Astra and Lucien departed the arena, a single truth echoed in both their minds, heavy and inevitable.
This battle was not over.