The arena was quiet at dawn. Mist curled along the obsidian floor, and the moon—though fading—still hung low in the sky, casting pale shadows. Daryn stood at the edge, his blade strapped to his back, his breath steady but shallow.
Today was his first trial. Not the final Trial of Champions, but a proving match—one designed to test his readiness, and to entertain the gods.
Lyra stood beside him, her staff glowing faintly. "You don't have to win," she said. "You just have to survive."
Daryn gave a dry laugh. "That's comforting."
She touched his arm. "You are stronger than you think. And she's watching."
Daryn did not need to ask who. He already knew.
—
The amphitheater smelled of bronze and dust, incense and the faint metallic tang of old blood. Morning mist hung low over the obsidian floor, and torches guttered in reverence rather than need.
When the herald called the names of the fighters, the sound rolled like distant thunder and the crowd tightened, a living thing that leaned forward to watch the god-play.
The opponent was introduced as Thalos, champion of Hermes. Lean, fast, and smug. Thalos entered like a strike of weather all quick and dangerous and—flashing a grin. He had twin daggers that shone as if they had their own light and moved with a predator's amusement. He moved before the audience had finished settling, and his motions made the air seem thinner.
When Daryn answered, it was with the awkward grace of someone who had learned to fight to protect, not to perform. Daryn, fueled more by instinct than showmanship, took his place opposite him, pulse a metronome in his throat.
Then Thalos bowed mockingly to Daryn.
"A moonborn, huh?" he said. "But let's see if you shine or shatter." He smiled widely with his words laced in contempt.
The crowd murmured and priests chanted while the gods watched. The spectators wanted speed they wanted a show and these divine warriors must give them that.
The horn split the morning.
Suddenly, Thalos was speed incarnate. He attacked in short, cutting sentences of motion—one step, a blade, then another. He became a blur, a hurricane of blades with his feet barely touching the ground. Thalos did not telegraph his movements. He slipped between angles as if he had measured the space and found the seams.
Daryn's first reaction was to match pace, to meet speed with speed dodge, parry, retreat and then he would try to match up to Thalos fast pace but a seasoned fighter would have noticed at a glance....he was struggling.
He will soon learn the hard way that the crowd's appetite for quick blood can be a deadly trap.
Thalos grinned as he sensed the impatience from Daryn's attacks and waited for the mistake he was obviously going to make as he kept cutting in speeding movements. This was a contest of speed and there was no way a champion of Hermes was going to lose in this contest.
Daryn kept up his attack. He lunged but he only found wind where he expected Thalos to be and his opponent did not hesitate to make use of the given opening. Thalos's right dagger kissed his shoulder. Precise and quick leaving a gaping cut.
The pain roasted through Daryn like a small fire and the cut burned bright sending sudden, hot pain to his senses. Daryn stumbled, tasteing his own blood with the cut stinging red on his shoulder but it was enough to force him to stop chasing and retreat.
"Is this all the moonborn has to show for his goddess ?" Thalos snickered as Daryn forced some distance between them.
Daryn hummed trying to keep his cool already knowing the messanger god's champion was obviously provoking him. Yet for some reason, the words stung more than the wide injury on his shoulder. He started to chant the divine spells Lyra had taught him before to heal his wounds and then he waited.
Stalling and breathing through the burn of the still healing injury as Kaelen's training echoed in his head—"achor yourself. let them come. Selene chose you for mystery not muscle make proper use of it. We all must play to our strengths in battle."
'That's right, my opponent's strenght his speed'
Then he anchored himself, concentrating on the rhythm in Thalos shoulders. He felt the small shifts in air, the breath between Thalos's strikes, the micro-shift of weight, the way a grin softened around the eyes just before a false move. Once he had pin-pointed them all, Daryn took stance.
By the third clash he was ready. He let a strike slide past him to let the first dagger pass just barely nicking at his torso allowing the motion to exhaust itself then he centered his feet and whispered the syllables Lyra had taught him like a thread through his teeth.
Moonlight pooled at his feet and drew up. It thread into the air—thin, not showy, more like frost collecting on a blade. A veil not for invisibility but a thin veil that softened edges and blurred certainty. So much as a misdirection of reality.....a mirage of moonlight's mist.
Then the second dagger passed through the mist.
Where Thalos expected a body, Daryn was behind him. Daryn had flowed where the dagger's arc left a space moving with the hush of someone stepping through water and closing a hand on Thalos weapon hilt.
Then Daryn pressed and the last blade clattered free. Thalos hit the obsidian floor hard, with the sound of a wind snuffed, breath leaving him like a bell gone silent. He was knocked out clean.
And the horn signaled the end of the fight announcing Daryn's victory.
For a fraction of a breath the arena was a single chord—crowd inhaling, gods watching and metal singing, next....they all roared—some for the spectacle, some because gods loved teeth-bared struggle.
A minute later, Thalos got back to his feet coughing out blood. This time, he was no longer smiling. The smug grin on his face was long replaced with a snarl and something else — respect and a need of challenge.
'The moonborn has become a worthy opponent'.
After the horn, Daryn stood with his ribs tight and the burn in his shoulder still raw while Thalos spat blood to the floor and laughed once, sharp and bitter indicating his displeasure. The arena tasted of sweat and copper. The crowd roared in approval, but in the undercurrent Daryn heard threads of something else—curiosity, calculation, the wary sliding of eyes that was measuring him not as a winner but as a variable.
Behind the applause, watchers shifted—priests, champions, schemers—recalculating what a "moonborn" might mean to their gods and their games.
Daryn left the ring with Adrenaline and pain singing in his limbs but with the uneasy awareness that he had not simply beaten a man but announced himself to a world with gods listening.