Aurelia's gaze sharpened, pupils flicking from student to student as if she were counting heartbeats instead of people.
The air around them was crowded with afterimages, half-finished spells, rehearsed motions, habits worn smooth by repetition. She let her Aspect breathe.
Too fast, she reminded herself. If I linger, I'll drown in it.
She skimmed instead of diving, catching fragments.
A shift of weight. A tightened shoulder. A breath drawn too early.
Her eyes snapped to Hiyori.
The girl's stance was open, deceptively relaxed, but her right arm had already begun its story, elbow angling out, wrist turning inward.
"That arm," Aurelia said aloud, stepping aside just as light flared where she had been standing. "You're about to cast illumination. Focused, narrow-band. Good for blinding."
Hiyori froze, shock breaking her rhythm.
Aurelia smiled faintly. "You always lead with your elbow. You did it yesterday. And the day before."
She pivoted, narrowly avoiding a second spell from another student, and continued as if lecturing mid-duel. "Remembrance works best on patterns. Repetition leaves grooves. The deeper the groove, the easier it is to follow."
And the easier it is to trap yourself in it, she thought.
Aurelia glanced back at Hiyori. "But it isn't perfect," she said, voice carrying. "If you change your pattern midway, if you decide instead of repeating, prediction fractures."
She raised her blade just enough to deflect a grazing spell, the impact humming along the metal.
"That," Aurelia added, eyes bright, "is your hint."
For a heartbeat, no one moved.
Then stances shifted. Breaths changed. Spells hesitated mid-formation.
Aurelia felt it, the arena's rhythm breaking, becoming uncertain.
She lowered her blade just a fraction, enough to let them breathe and to make her following words land harder.
"If you don't adapt," she said evenly, eyes sweeping across all forty-one of them, "if you don't change for the better within these five hours, you will fail this trial."
Silence answered her. Not fear, focus.
"That's not a threat," Aurelia added. "It's a fact. Power that doesn't evolve is just noise."
Then the arena folded away from her attention as if the world itself decided to turn a page.
Seris was having a wonderful time.
Water snapped and curved around her in clean, efficient arcs, no excess, no flourish. With her output capped and her spell list trimmed to the basics, she leaned into precision instead.
Elemental difference did half the work for her: steam hissing as water swallowed fire, mist diffusing light, pressure undoing careless force.
"Oh, come on," she laughed, sidestepping a barrage of spells. "You'll have to do better than that."
A magic circle bloomed beneath her palm—
—and collapsed.
Seris's eyes widened a fraction as she twisted aside, a firebolt screaming past where her ribs had been a breath earlier.
She landed lightly, boots skidding, and looked straight at him.
Hikaru.
There it was again, that clean, surgical interruption. Not overpowering. Not flashy. Just… gone.
"Tch." She clicked her tongue, grin sharpening. "Spell cancellation mid-formation? That's rude, you know."
She danced back as another attempt fizzled uselessly, irritation beginning to itch beneath her amusement.
If only I had Aura, she thought, ducking under a wave of force. Just a minor enhancement. Speed, strength, anything to close the distance.
Her eyes gleamed.
"Guess I'll just have to work harder," Seris said aloud, already shifting her angle, already recalculating.
And this time, her smile was dangerous.
Seris laughed as she skidded back, water rippling at her heels.
"I did say basic spells," she called lightly. "I never said I wouldn't make them… sturdy."
A magic circle flared into being before her palm—clean, simple, textbook.
Hikaru's arm snapped up instantly.
Then his breath caught.
The circle didn't stop at one layer.
A second ring slid into place. Then a third. Runes began filling in, tight, interlocking lines, reinforcement sigils threading through the structure.
The air thickened.
Hikaru's brow furrowed, teeth setting, "It's reinforced," he said sharply, voice carrying. "I can break it, but not instantly. I need time!"
Water surged outward as Seris smiled behind the growing construct, fingers steady, posture relaxed, utterly unbothered by the pressure bearing down on her.
"Well spotted," she said. "Take your time."
She didn't get it.
Fire streaked in from the left. Wind followed, compressing it. A shard of hardened light slammed down from above. Students pressed in, spells overlapping, forcing Seris to shift, to split her attention.
"Klaris!" someone shouted.
"I've got it," Klaris snapped, already moving.
She cut across the field, boots skidding, voice sharp and clear. "Don't let her finish the outer ring, keep her adjusting! Two on her left, now! Rotate!"
She flung a burst of force low, not to hit but to move Seris, herding her just enough to disrupt the flow. Seris clicked her tongue as the circle wavered, runes flickering unevenly.
"Well," Seris said, genuinely impressed. "Look at you."
Hikaru's fingers trembled as he dug into the spell's framework, sweat beading at his temple.
Almost…
Klaris didn't look back. She trusted him.
"Keep the pressure on!" she shouted. "If she breathes, we lose!"
For the first time, Seris's smile widened into something fierce.
"Oh," she said softly, water coiling tighter. "This is getting good."
The spell collapsed in on itself with a hollow whump, the runes unraveling as thread pulled too fast.
Hikaru sucked in a sharp breath, arm still outstretched, fingers trembling from the precision it had taken. Then he laughed, quietly, disbelieving.
"We can win," he said, the words slipping out before he could temper them.
Klaris felt it too. That electric click in her chest when a plan worked. Not luck. Not chaos. Cause and effect are lining up just right.
Seris, meanwhile, rolled her shoulder and smiled wider, water spiraling back into her palms. "Clever," she said lightly. "Very clever."
But Klaris noticed it then, the shift.
Seris was still relaxed, still playful, but her movements had changed. No wasted steps now. No unnecessary flourishes. She'd recognized Hikaru as the lynchpin.
She's going to break him first, Klaris realized. Or force him to overextend.
She raised her hand once, sharp, decisive, and the nearby students stilled. Klaris moved quickly, voice low but steady, carving the chaos into shape.
"Listen. She's adjusting. That means we do too."
Klaris split the group without ceremony. A rotating offensive line would harass Seris from three directions, never all at once. Fire and wind first, loud, obvious, meant to pull her attention upward and outward. The goal wasn't damage, it was orientation. Make Seris turn. Make her track.
Seris obliged, water snapping into shields and blades, basic spells reinforced just enough to feel heavy. She laughed as she fought, but Klaris could see the math behind her eyes.
Every time Seris began a circle, Hikaru canceled only part of it. Never the whole thing. Just enough to force a rebuild. It was risky, each partial cancel drained him more than a clean cut, but it forced Seris into repetition.
Again. And again.
"You're being annoying," Seris called, hopping back from a flame surge. "You know that?"
Hikaru didn't answer. Sweat ran down his temple.
Klaris whispered to the support line, and they seeded the field with faint Aether distortions, harmless, but messy. The arena began to feel crowded, like too many half-finished thoughts in the air.
Then Klaris made her mistake.
She stepped too far forward.
Seris's eyes lit up instantly. "There you are."
A water lance formed, clean, fast, basic but brutally reinforced, and Seris hurled it straight at Klaris.
Hikaru reacted on instinct, canceling hard.
Too hard.
The spell died, but so did his balance. Hikaru staggered, dropping to one knee, breath ripping from his lungs.
"There," Seris said softly, already moving. That's the thread.
Every student felt the shift as Seris surged toward Hikaru, intent clear: touch him first, end the coordination.
"Now," Klaris breathed.
The offense line detonated.
Not at Seris, around her.
Fire flashed high. Wind howled low. A support student shattered a light construct at her flank, flooding her vision with glare. Seris spun, reacting instantly, water snapping up in reflexive arcs—
—and for just a heartbeat, she looked away from Klaris.
That was all Klaris needed.
She didn't run.
She slipped.
Klaris cut through the gap her own "mistake" had created, steps small, controlled, her Aether wrapped tight around her like a second skin to mute her presence. Seris was brilliant, overwhelming, but she was fighting everyone else.
Klaris became background.
Noise without sound.
Motion without threat.
Seris finished dispersing the last flare and turned back, and Klaris was already there.
No spell. No flourish.
Just fingers, outstretched, trembling, and a light, undeniable touch against Seris's wrist.
For a fraction of a second, Seris froze.
Then she laughed, whole and ringing, raising both hands. "That's it," she declared. "Trial over."
The arena erupted.
Students shouted, some collapsing where they stood, others laughing in disbelief. Hikaru looked up from the ground, eyes wide, then broke into a grin so bright it hurt.
"You did it," he said hoarsely.
Klaris stared at her own hand as if it belonged to someone else, chest heaving. I really did.
Seris leaned down, voice warm and sincere. "Excellent call. Excellent timing. And excellent restraint." Her eyes gleamed. "Remember this feeling. You earned it."
Klaris nodded, still breathless, joy and shock tangling in her ribs.
They hadn't overpowered a professor.
They'd outthought her.
And that, Klaris realized as the noise washed over her, might be even better.
Seris laughed and clapped them on the shoulder as the students swarmed, some crying, some whooping, all bewildered and exultant. "Welcome to the Arcane Academy," she called, grin wide. "You've earned your place. I'll be your professor from now on. Try not to break the furniture."
The news ricocheted through the stands. Lysandra, Kael, and Lucien, seated together on the high rail, packed closer as the new reality settled.
Their faces showed the same first flutter of disbelief: relief for the forty-one. But their eyes kept slipping back to the sand below, where Aurelia moved like a blade given room.
Aurelia's posture was smaller in the colosseum, but the thing that struck them was the change in scale, she was quieter, honed, and somehow less forgiving than the last time Kael had watched her.
Forty-one students tested her in waves, and she met them with a calm that didn't need to shout.
The crowd called her "Moon Maiden" again, and she winced at the name, but her hands never hesitated.
Kael's chest tightened in a way that had nothing to do with envy. She's stronger than when I saw her last, he thought, a sharp, private knot forming. If she is the wall now, then who takes the blows for her?
The thought landed heavier than it should. He hadn't come here to be protected, he had come to stand between harm and those he cared for.
He wanted, stubbornly and simply, to protect her. The fact that she needed less protection than before felt like losing a role he hadn't known he'd claimed.
Lysandra noticed him drift, one slight shift in his shoulders, the way his jaw tightened. She nudged him with an elbow, voice low. "You spaced out. What's wrong?"
Kael blinked, the moment collapsing. He forced his lips into something neutral. "Nothing," he said, and the word was too quick, too small to be true.
He looked back to the ring, eyes narrowing not with resentful comparison, but with a new, private resolve.
If Aurelia would take the sharp front, he would learn to meet what came next.
The moment hung thin, then snapped.
Aurelia's eyes moved like a hawk's through the field. Remembrance wasn't just a way to read an echo, it was a thread she could tug.
The Aether she had woven across the arena that morning, barriers, thrown bolts, the careless fireball someone had cast days ago, had left grooves in the world.
If you press them, they answer back.
Cesare was the first to realize. His face went white with the realization, and he barked orders, sharp and fast. "Everyone, get back! Clear the arc!" He shoved students aside with the clumsy urgency of someone who'd learned to move ovens and people in the same breath.
Too late.
Where spells had once been, where she had once forced a bright thing into being, light seethed and reformed, old runes hummed awake. The air remembered and finished what had been started.
It was like watching ghosts return to their gestures.
Cesare slammed both palms to the ground and convoked the shape he knew best, heat and heft braided into a rushing wall of dense dough that slammed between the revived spells and the students.
He was pouring everything into the shield, his shoulders shook, breath coming ragged with effort. Hold. Hold, he mouthed at the bread-wall as if it listened, and the crust creaked but did not break.
Estelle's hand trembled where Aurelia's Finality had cut her link. She cradled her chest and then laughed, "You did well," she told Cesare, voice threaded with relief. "I—my Aether's back."
The constellations in her eyes flared, and Sagittarius pulled into focus like a compass finding north.
She let the Sagittarius pattern steady into being. Threads tightened into a taut bow of starlight, a single luminous arrow notched itself, its shaft humming with long-distance surety.
Estelle's voice rang out clear and bright: "The Archer."
Aurelia's breath snagged. There was no time for hesitation. The projectile burned with intent and flew with great speed.
Aurelia threw up a barrier, fast and reflexive, Aether knitting into a dome.
The arrow struck the shield, and the impact was an animal, a memory, and a force driving into the weave.
She reached with Remembrance, folding the same pattern she'd built earlier into the shield's edges: this exact barrier, made before, I know its seams. She layered more circles, reinforced runes like ribs.
The dome held, but it shuddered. The arrow's force shoved through the dome's tolerance and slammed Aurelia backward.
She hit the arena wall with a terrible, bone-singing jolt. Pain exploded along her side, and breath escaped like a struck bell.
For one cold beat, she tasted iron and sand and the slow, precise disorientation of someone who has been pushed past a margin they'd trusted.
Cesare's shield sagged. He shouted, voice raw: "Push now! Don't let her recover!"
They surged, precise, hungry, but before they could close, something unexpected happened.
Aurelia's fingers twitched, and a softer light bled from her chest: a warmth that was not Aether.
She drew inward, a muscle memory of self, and let Aura pour out like a slow, golden salve.
Bands of living heat and color wrapped her wounds, knitting and easing.
Students froze at the sight, she used Aura, and not as a show, it was small, practical, necessary.
Her limbs steadied. Then, as if testing the repaired gear of her body, she pushed a second order through that same Aura, sharpening her reflexes, speed sketched into muscle.
She moved, a hairline quicker, catching a thrown shard of light and sidestepping an incoming volley.
Surprise rippled through the ranks: not many had seen Aura wielded like that by someone whose reputation was as an Aether reader.
The duality sat on her like a new cloak, dangerous, precise, wholly her.
Aurelia rose on shaking legs, jaw set. You will not make this about mercy, she thought. You will make it about teaching.
"I'll be using my full power…"
The moonlight-silver Aether turned cold and black.
Color drained from the colosseum as if the world itself were being unmade.
Sound dulled, stretched thin, until only the echo of a distant, intangible bell remained, tolling once with every heartbeat.
Above Aurelia, an eclipse formed: a black sun ringed by a stark white corona that burned without warmth.
Her hair darkened as though ink had spilled through it, and wherever her shadow touched, the air hollowed. Space recoiled. Meaning thinned.
Even from afar, the professors and headmaster felt it, not just power, but Finality bleeding into everything.
Cesare swallowed hard.
"She's not testing us anymore," he said, voice hoarse. "She's losing herself."
Aurelia's gaze swept over them, forty-one students still standing. Her Aspect churned, Remembrance feeding Finality, Finality erasing what Remembrance pulled forth.
If we fight her head-on, Cesare realized, we won't even leave a memory behind.
"Listen!" he shouted. "We're not trying to beat her, we're trying to reach her. One touch. That's it."
They moved.
The students instinctively spread out, maintaining distance rather than clustering.
Several etched imperfect Aether anchors into the arena floor, not barriers, not shields, but reference points, giving the collapsing space something to remember itself by.
Estelle stepped forward, eyes burning as constellations rotated slowly within them.
Not power, she told herself. Balance.
Libra flared.
The distortion of Aether around Aurelia resisted spreading further. It didn't stop, but it slowed, like a tide meeting stone.
Blood trickled from Estelle's nose as the strain mounted, her breath coming shallow.
"I can't hold this forever," she called.
"You don't have to," Cesare answered. "Just long enough."
Aurelia moved.
Past spells, hers and theirs, replayed themselves, resurrected by Remembrance. Fire bloomed where fire had once burned. Light speared the air along remembered paths.
Several students surged forward, not to strike but to compress the space, forcing Aurelia to respond rather than advance.
Defensive constructs shattered instantly, Finality carving through them like mist.
The backlash was brutal.
One student was flung into the wall hard enough to leave a spiderweb of cracks.
Another screamed as their spell inverted, burning their own arm.
Still, they held.
Cesare poured everything he had into a massive bread construct, dense and layered, absorbing a wave of remembered force that would have wiped out half the field.
His knees buckled.
"I'm almost out," he gasped.
Estelle clenched her fists. "Then I'll make it count."
Sagittarius burned to life in Estelle's eyes.
A bow of starlight formed, not aimed to wound, but to interrupt. She loosed the arrow.
Aurelia reacted instantly, raising a reinforced barrier, Remembrance thickening it with echoes of past defenses.
The impact sent Aurelia skidding backward.
Not injured.
But displaced.
That was enough.
"Hiyori!" Cesare shouted.
She was already moving.
No Aether flare. No casting motion. Just speed and intent.
She slipped through a collapsing construct, vaulted over scorched ground, and ran straight into the hollowed space Finality had left behind.
For an instant, she saw Aurelia clearly.
Not the Moon Maiden.
Not a prodigy or a weapon.
Just a girl drowning in power she had taken too far.
Hiyori reached out—
—and touched Aurelia's wrist.
The eclipse shattered.
Finality recoiled violently, tearing outward before collapsing in on itself. Students were thrown like broken dolls, bodies skidding across the stone. Some struck the walls hard enough to go limp. Others lay gasping, burned, shaking.
But none were fatally harmed.
Selvara was already there, defensive runes locking injuries in place, voice sharp and commanding as she stabilized the worst of them.
Aurelia dropped to her knees.
The black drained from her hair. The bell fell silent.
Her hands shook uncontrollably as she stared at the students she had hurt.
"I didn't stop," she whispered. "I should have stopped."
Cesare lay flat on his back, ribs screaming, staring at the fractured ceiling. Estelle collapsed to her knees, constellations dimming. Hiyori stood frozen, fingers still tingling where she had made contact.
They had won.
And the cost sat heavily on every breath.
High above, Veyron exhaled slowly.
"This," he said quietly, "is why power must never outpace control."
And Aurelia, brilliant, terrifying, human, understood that truth more deeply than any of them.
Professor Weiss arrived in a flash of force, Aura rippling outward as she knelt beside the fallen students.
With a sharp breath, she drove her Aura into the ground, and it surged through the arena like a pulse.
Bones knit. Burns cooled. Breath returned where it had been stolen.
"Honestly," Weiss muttered, hauling one groaning student upright with far more strength than necessary, "you're lucky my trial ended before yours did."
She shot Aurelia a sharp look, not unkind, but not gentle either.
"Leonhard's still busy beating sense into his own group," she added. "So don't expect reinforcements."
Aurelia swallowed.
As the last of the wounded were stabilized, she stepped forward and bowed deeply, far lower than custom demanded.
"I'm sorry," she said, voice steady but strained. "I let my power go too far. I won't excuse it."
For a moment, the arena was quiet.
Then the reactions came, messy, human, divided.
Some students looked away, arms crossed, frustration still sharp in their eyes. One muttered something about broken ribs and unfair trials.
Others laughed weakly, adrenaline still buzzing.
"I can't believe we won that," someone said, grinning despite a bandaged arm. "Worth it."
A few nodded thoughtfully, bruised but thoughtful.
"…I learned more in those minutes than in weeks of drills."
"That pressure—if we hadn't adapted, we'd be gone."
Cesare exhaled, leaning heavily on his knees. Estelle sat cross-legged nearby, constellation-light dim but steady, listening in silence. Hiyori wiped dust from her hands, gaze fixed on Aurelia, not accusing, not admiring, just understanding.
Weiss crossed her arms, surveying the scene.
"Good," she said at last. "You survived. You adapted. And you didn't break when it mattered."
Her eyes flicked back to Aurelia.
"And neither did you, barely."
Aurelia straightened, chest tight, the weight of the trial settling fully at last.
This wasn't a victory.
But it was a lesson, one none of them would forget.
Lysandra came bursting through the doors of the trial hall, breathless, eyes wide.
"Aurelia!"
Before Aurelia could react, Lysandra threw her arms around her, holding on tight, too tight.
"Don't ever do that again," she said, voice shaking. "Don't ever put yourself in danger like that. Do you hear me?"
Aurelia stiffened in surprise, then slowly returned the hug, "I'm sorry," she murmured. "I didn't mean to scare you."
Footsteps followed.
Kael emerged from the hall, jaw set, eyes dark with something sharper than anger. He crossed the distance in two strides and grabbed Aurelia by the arm, pulling her toward him.
"Do you want to destroy yourself that badly?" he demanded. "Is that what this was?"
Aurelia froze. She couldn't meet his gaze. Her eyes dropped to the floor, guilt pressing heavily in her chest.
Before Kael could say more, another hand closed around his wrist.
"Enough."
Lucien had stepped in from behind, his grip firm, unyielding as he pulled Kael's hand away from Aurelia.
"Don't put your hands on her," Lucien said quietly. There was no threat in his voice, only certainty. "Use your words."
Kael stared at him for a heartbeat, then looked back at Aurelia. His anger cracked, leaving something raw underneath.
"…I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have done that."
He exhaled slowly, fists clenching at his sides.
"But don't ever do that again," he continued, voice lower now. "Never use Finality like that. I've seen what it does—to you. To everyone around you."
Aurelia swallowed.
"I promise," she said softly. "I won't."
The tension lingered, fragile and unresolved, but for the moment, that promise was enough.
Lucien released Kael's wrist and turned back to Aurelia, his expression easing just slightly.
"Come with us," he said. "Back to the observation room. Arthur can patch you up with Aura before those injuries decide to complain."
Aurelia blinked.
"…Observation room?" She looked between them. "Wait. Were you watching me the entire time?"
Lysandra shook her head quickly. "Not the entire time. But how do you think we knew you were in danger?"
Aurelia opened her mouth, then closed it again.
Lucien let out a small breath. "For what it's worth, you were doing well. Holding off forty-one students is… not a small feat."
Kael nodded once. "You handled it."
Lucien tilted his head, lips curling faintly. "Still, you could've done better."
Aurelia stopped walking.
She turned on him, eyes narrowing. "Oh? Please. Enlighten me, Your Highness."
Lucien raised his hands in mock surrender. "I'm just saying, less spectacle, more control."
She huffed. "Says the man who wasn't in the colosseum."
Kael actually snorted before catching himself.
Lysandra hid a smile. "You're both impossible."
Despite the ache in her body, Aurelia felt something loosen in her chest.
Annoyed, sore, exhausted, but alive, and not alone as they started back toward the observation room together.