The day of the finals was less a competition and more a coronation. A hundred thousand souls packed the Grand Colosseum, a roaring, living sea of humanity that stretched from the sun-bleached sands of the arena floor to the highest marble tiers that brushed against the sky. The air was thick with the scent of roasted meats, expensive perfumes, and a palpable, electric tension that felt like the moments before a lightning strike. This wasn't just a fight; it was a historical event, and every soul in Aethelgard wanted to bear witness.
From my place in the waiting area, a stark, cool tunnel of stone that smelled of damp earth and old steel, the roar of the crowd was a distant, physical pressure that vibrated through the soles of my boots. I ignored it, my mind a calm, quiet space where only one thing existed: the steady, powerful, unified beat of my two hearts. It was the anchor that held me to the world, the rhythm that had carried me here through blood and fire. I had survived assassins, political vultures, and the finest young warriors in the kingdom. All that was left was the storm.
Then, a hush fell over the hundred thousand. It was not a gradual quieting, but a sudden, absolute cessation of sound, as if a god had placed a finger to the world's lips. The pressure in the air intensified, the ambient Aether of the city, once a chaotic hum, now bending, deferring, kneeling before a single, overwhelming presence.
I didn't need to look. I could feel her.
Through the archway that led to the arena, I saw her enter the royal box. The Zenith. Elara. Her silver-white hair was a stark, brilliant banner against the deep blue of the sky, catching the sun in a way that made it look like a halo of woven moonlight. She moved with an impossible grace, a being who seemed to float rather than walk, her simple white robes a stark contrast to the gaudy silks of the nobles around her. Her face was a mask of calm, beautiful indifference, but her eyes… even from this distance, I could feel the soul-crushing weariness in them, a quiet tragedy that was invisible to the adoring masses who now fell to their knees in reverence.
As she took her seat, my Dragon Heart gave a single, powerful thrum, a deep, resonant note of pure, instinctual recognition. It was not the warning of a predator, but the acknowledgment of an equal, a creature of a higher order recognizing another. For a split second, as if drawn by that silent call, her tired eyes swept across the arena, past the cheering nobles and the kneeling proctors, and met mine.
There was no emotion in her gaze. Just a flicker of something… a momentary pause, a subtle recognition that I was not just another ant in the hill below her. The bored indifference in her eyes was pierced by a microsecond of pure, analytical focus. Then her attention drifted, and the moment was gone. But it had been enough. I had been seen.
A herald's horn blew, its note sharp and clear, and my name was called. I took a deep breath, the Two-Heart Cadence settling back into its steady rhythm, and walked out of the tunnel into the blinding sunlight and the deafening roar.
Across the arena, Aria Thorne waited. She looked different. The wild, reckless energy that had always clung to her was still there, but it was tempered, banked like a forge fire, glowing with a focused, controlled intensity. The conversation we'd had, the advice I'd given, had taken root. She was no longer just a storm; she was a storm with a purpose, a hurricane with an eye. She gave me a sharp, determined nod, the greeting of a true rival who had come to claim her victory.
The proctor's signal dropped. The fight began.
It was not a cagey, tactical duel like my fight with Lyra. It was a symphony of violence from the first second. Aria did not unleash a wild, chaotic barrage. She attacked with a terrifying, beautiful precision. Spears of pure, white-hot flame, each one as long and sharp as Cassius's lance, shot toward me in a complex, overlapping pattern, cutting off my lines of retreat.
I was a river, and she was a storm of falling stars. I flowed with the Two-Heart Cadence, my Rhythmic Sense a three-meter sphere of perfect awareness around me. I didn't just dodge; I weaved through her attacks, a dance of impossibly narrow margins. A spear of fire would scorch the air an inch from my face, another would pass just under my outstretched arm, the heat blistering my skin. The crowd roared, thinking I was on the defensive, a desperate man fleeing for his life. They didn't understand. I was learning. I was listening to the rhythm of her new, controlled storm, feeling the ebb and flow of her power.
She saw it too. She saw that her precise attacks were not enough, that I was reading her magic like a book. So she changed her strategy. She stopped trying to hit me directly and started trying to control the battlefield. She stomped her foot, and a wave of fire washed across the sand, turning the entire arena floor into a shimmering field of superheated, molten glass. The air grew thick and heavy, so hot it was like breathing in razor blades. My boots began to smoke.
I couldn't just stand there. I was forced to move, to leap from the few solid patches of sand that remained. She had taken away my foundation, my ability to remain grounded. As I was in mid-air, leaping between two pools of lava, she struck. An arc of brilliant, crackling lightning shot from her hand, not at me, but at the place I was about to land. It was a perfect, predictive attack.
There was no time to change my trajectory. No time to dodge. I had only one option.
As I descended toward the lightning-wreathed patch of sand, I pulled my fist back. Thump-THUMP. The cadence synced, and I poured my Aether into a single, perfect Rhythmic Infusion. I struck not the ground, not Aria, but the arc of lightning itself.
The impact was a deafening CRACK. My infusion, a wave of pure, resonant force, met the raw elemental power of her spell. It didn't negate it. It shattered it. The arc of lightning exploded in a shower of harmless, glittering sparks. I landed, my boots sinking into the now-cooling sand, my arm numb to the elbow from the sheer feedback of a power that was still vastly greater than my own.
Aria stared at me, her eyes wide with a mixture of shock and grudging admiration. I had met her storm head-on and, for a moment, I had won.
A fierce, joyful grin spread across her face. This was what she wanted. A real fight. A real challenge. The probing was over. The true battle was about to begin.
She raised both her hands, and the air around her began to distort, the heat in the arena intensifying until the very light seemed to bend. The molten sand began to glow with a blinding, white-hot intensity. She was no longer throwing spears of fire. She was gathering the entire sun. 'This is it,' I thought, my body tensing, every instinct screaming at me to run. 'Her ultimate technique.'
I watched, my own heart a steady, powerful drumbeat, as she prepared to unmake the world around me. My simple infusions, my clever sense—they would not be enough. The air itself was beginning to ignite around me. This was a level of power that could not be dodged or broken. It could only be endured.
And as the first wave of pure, incandescent plasma began to wash toward me, a river of a dying star, I knew, with a cold, terrifying certainty, that I was about to find out if I was truly a dragon, or just a boy in a stolen skin.