I shut the door to my room, and the soft click of the lock was the sound of a coffin lid being sealed.
I was a dead man.
The despair was so absolute, so profound, it was almost peaceful. It was a cold, deep ocean, and I was sinking into it. There was no more paranoia, no more self-loathing. Those were emotions for people who still had a chance, for people who had something to fight for. I had nothing.
My life was over. In one week, I would walk into an arena. I would be ordered to needle a grieving, enraged, and powerful hero until he snapped. And he would, in his righteous fury, beat me to within an inch of my life. That was the best-case scenario. That was Damien's goal.
The worst-case scenario, the far more likely one, was that Leonidas—in his grief, in his rage, in his newfound, protagonist-fueled power—would not be able to stop. He wouldn't just break my arm or my ribs. He would break my neck. He would shatter my Mana Core. He would kill me, accidentally or not, in front of the entire academy.
And Damien would be disappointed. Not that I was dead, but that his plan to have Leonidas expelled had been "messy."
I sank onto the edge of my bed, my body moving on its own, my mind a million miles away. I looked at my hands, the hands that I had worked to blisters. I thought of my training. My ghost-sparring. My Mana Breathing. All of it. All that effort, all that pain, all that sacrifice of my own morality... for this. To be a more convincing, more durable sacrificial lamb.
A sound bubbled up from my chest. It was a laugh.
It was a quiet, dry, and utterly hysterical sound. The sheer, cosmic irony of it was staggering. I had done everything right to survive, and it had led me directly to an unavoidable, public execution.
The laughter died, and in its place, something new stirred. It was not hope. Hope was a fool's luxury. It was a cold, simple, and primal emotion. It was the feeling of a rat, cornered by a snake, with its back to the wall. It was the realization that since it was going to die anyway, it might as well bite.
I was not going to win. I was not going to escape. But I would be damned if I would die for their story.
Damien wanted a sacrifice. Leonidas wanted a villain to smite. Seraphina wanted a coward to pity. I would be none of those things.
I was a prisoner, yes. She was right. But a prisoner, in his last moments, with nothing left to lose, is the most dangerous man in the world.
My objective, in that instant, crystallized. It was no longer "survive the plot." It was survive the duel.
I could not win. I could not run. But I could endure.
I had one week. Seven days to turn my body from a sacrificial lamb's into a tempered, defensive wall.
I stood up. My room was a cell, yes. But a cell can be a training ground.
The courtyard was compromised. I couldn't risk it. I couldn't risk being seen. But I didn't need to swing a sword. My training with Damien's echoes had always been about defense, about interception. Now, I would take it to a new extreme.
I pushed the heavy chair and desk aside, clearing a small space on the plush rug.
My sword practice was now silent. I moved through the forms of the Greyfall family swordsmanship, not with a blade, but with my bare hands, my body carving slow, deliberate patterns in the air. I wasn't practicing attacks. I was memorizing the precise, economical movements of a perfect block, a perfect parry, a perfect deflection. I was burning the muscle memory into my body, turning my arms and legs into a system of pure defense.
The ghost-sparring in my mind was no longer about parrying. It was about taking a hit. I replayed the echo of Damien's strongest blows, but instead of meeting them with steel, I practiced shifting my body a single inch, turning my shoulder, angling my ribs, moving with the blow to bleed its kinetic force. I was training to be a punching bag, yes... but the most resilient, most indestructible punching bag this academy had ever seen.
And then, there was my mana.
I sat for hours, cross-legged on the floor, and I breathed. I sank into the meditation, but it was not for calm. It was for work. I wasn't just letting the pure, world-mana cleanse my Core. I was actively pulling it, forcing it into my body, using the technique from the ancient book to polish my Mana Core, yes, but also to saturate my body.
I visualized the mana, not just as a pool in my chest, but as a fine, crystalline weave, reinforcing my muscles, my organs, my very bones. I was trying to turn my entire body into a mana-infused artifact. If I could make my body stronger, more resilient, it might mean the difference between a broken rib and a shattered lung. Between a concussion and a caved-in skull.
Days and nights blurred. I did not truly sleep. I meditated until I passed out, and I woke up and I trained. I attended classes like an automaton, my eyes glazed, my mind a million miles away, running drills. I saw Seraphina in the halls, her gaze a mixture of pity and contempt. I saw Leonidas, a thundercloud of pure, murderous rage, who thankfully was too consumed by his own grief to notice me.
And I saw Damien, who gave me a subtle, approving nod, mistaking my haunted, sleepless-zombie-like appearance for the grim focus of a loyal soldier preparing for his mission.
My body was a screaming symphony of agony. My muscles were torn and healing, over and over. My Mana Core felt raw, stretched to its absolute limit. But I was no longer a dead man.
I was a man building his own armor, thread by painful thread.
Damien wanted me to be his bait. He wanted me to be the lamb.
He was going to get a goddamned porcupine.