The moment Arthus's shout echoed, the gathered throng erupted into a cacophony of hushed murmurs and fevered gossip. This was a scandal of a magnitude they had never anticipated. The air thrummed with a renewed excitement; the journey to the Sanctus had become worthwhile before a single spell had been cast.
The magis of Sanctus stood frozen, reeling from the revelation of an illicit entanglement between Seraph and Arkflame's most celebrated actress. They struggled to reconcile the stoic youth they thought they knew with the scandalous whispers now ringing in their ears. Seraph had already been the talk of the citadel, but no one had expected a theatrical intrigue of such magnitude.
"What kind of madness is this?" Seraph roared back, his temper finally snapping. "I've left no one to rot in a grave! I've made no claims on any girl's heart! Sophia and I crossed paths exactly once, and it was strictly a matter of duty. I have absolutely nothing to do with that woman!"
Until now, Seraph had viewed the duel with weary indifference, loath to waste his breath. But the moment Arthus loosed those accusations, the young man resolved that, today, he would silence his opponent's mouth by force.
"If I win this bout," Arthus bellowed, utterly deaf to Seraph's denials, "you're going to confess to Sophia's face... that you deceived her just to toy with her! You will declare that I, and I alone, am the only one who ever truly cared!"
The crowd cared little for the truth. The moment the red-haired knight finished his proclamation, a tide of vitriol erupted from the stands. A barrage of ale tankards and refuse rained down toward Seraph as the mob turned. Voices surged in support of Arthus, egging him on to strike down the wretch who had dared trifle with a maiden's heart. The arena had found its villain, and the current of loathing was absolute.
Marina watched him, her gaze heavy with betrayal. Her eyes were glazed with unshed tears, her composure poised to shatter at the slightest tremor. At that moment, she felt as though she could scarcely bear the sight of him.
"I haven't the foggiest what bloody delirium has gripped you! I've no bond with that actress—not even a passing acquaintance!" Seraph bellowed in retort. "You challenged me to a duel, so let's have it! I never agreed to your preposterous terms!"
The young man's grip tightened upon his wooden staff until it groaned, nearly splintering; his eyes smouldered with a searing, absolute irritation. He could scarcely recall the last time his blood had been brought to such a boil.
'If I have to endure one more syllable from this moron, I'll lose my mind,' Seraph thought, fixing his gaze upon his adversary as if to weave a silent curse.
"Deny it all you like, you can't wipe away the stain of what you've done!" Arthus roared, ignoring him entirely. "Today, I'm taking retribution on Sophia's behalf!"
Arthus unsheathed his blade, the metallic rasp echoing across the arena with chilling resonance. "I'll use this Flamestone to purge the world of your filth! Defend yourself!"
He levelled his claymore at the young magis. The Flamestone possessed a blade of deep, visceral crimson, forged from the very marrow of volcanic rock. It was a broad, double-edged beast of staggering weight, looking as though it could cleave solid granite in a single stroke. Even from a distance, the heat bleeding from the steel was palpable.
"Molten Step!" Arthus bellowed, driving his heel into the sands.
[Fwoosh!]
The knight lunged without further preamble. Fire erupted from his metal boots as he charged. With a violent exertion, Arthus swung the claymore, his entire form enveloped in a fiery aura radiating from the blade's heart. Sanguine sparks trailed the steel as he closed the distance.
Arthus became a violent arrowhead, hurtling toward the young man in the gold-trimmed white cloak who stood motionless at the arena's heart. The visual disparity was jarring—one a blur of kinetic fury, the other a pillar of absolute, haunting stillness.
The flame knight lacked raw celerity, yet his assault bore a crushing, feral weight. The inferno dancing upon the Flamestone's edge exerted a staggering atmospheric pressure. Even the spectators in the tiers recoiled as if the blade were seeking their own throats; jeers dissolved into gasps of dread, and some turned away, unable to stomach the sight of what looked like an impending execution.
Seraph's eyes ignited with a sudden radiance, his white cloak billowing as a tide of mageia erupted from his form.
"Ventus Aura!" Seraph's command rang out, cutting through the roar of the flames.
[Voom!]
In the heartbeat before the flaming steel could pierce his throat, the young magis became a verdant phantom. His physical form blurred into a spectral mist, moving with the fluid grace of an iridescent fish weaving through a current. Rather than retreating, he glided along the very length of the blade, treading the razor's edge of mortality.
In a move that defied all expectation, Seraph surged into Arthus's reach. He levelled his wooden staff directly at the knight's sternum.
"Ventus Galeburst!"
[Bang!]
An emerald luminescence flared within the void. Seraph unleashed the spell without a flicker of hesitation. A concentrated sphere of gale-force wind slammed into the flame knight with the force of a battering ram. Arthus managed to cant his blade to absorb the brunt of the detonation just in time, yet the sheer percussion sent him reeling. He was tossed backward by the tempest; only the immense weight of his plate armour prevented him from being cast out of the arena entirely. For a fraction of a second, he hung suspended in the air—a stationary target.
The young magis's voice cut through the gale as he wove his second incantation in seamless succession.
"Ventus Galblade!"
A monstrous, incandescent crescent of emerald force lanced through the air, hurtling toward Arthus while he hung vulnerable in mid-air. The impact resonated across the arena with punishing violence. The gale-blade struck Arthus's steel with such ferocity that the claymore shuddered, nearly wrenched from his grasp.
The knight scrambled, clamping both hands upon the hilt of his wind-lashed steel to prevent it from being spirited away by the mageia tempest. Violent gusts scoured the arena, the surrounding treeline swaying as the winds let out a primal roar that drowned the amphitheatre. Though Arthus maintained his grip, he was cast across the sands, tumbling in a tangle of limbs and gold plate. The thermal draughts whipped against the spectators, stinging their eyes and nearly unseating the unwary from the tiers.
Gradually, the tempest receded, revealing the red-haired man sprawled in the dust at the arena's heart, his fingers still white-knuckled around his hilt. His once-pristine armour was now marred by the grit of the arena floor.
The multitude stood agape; a suffocating silence claimed the grounds. To the vast majority of the outsiders, the name 'Seraph' was an absolute void. While many of the Sanctus elite commanded a renown rivaling that of the actress Sophia, this young man's existence had seemingly never bled into the public consciousness.
Yet, the nobles gathered within the stands knew the lineage of Arthus. They were well aware he possessed a high affinity for the flame—a swordsman of noble extraction whose power was of such a magnitude that he might easily have ascended as a magis, had he so desired.