The air tasted like ozone.
Sparks crackled from Kaelen's outstretched palm as he stepped forward, lightning curling around his fingers like a leash barely held in check. Each movement he made was deliberate, sharpened by years of ranked training and ego-fed confidence. He wore the arena like armor. This was his world.
Marek stood across from him with only a warped training staff and the weight of silence.
He didn't flinch. But every part of him was aware—of the crowd pressing in, of the enchantments pulsing along the barrier runes, of Chancellor Eltrane watching impassively from above.
This wasn't a duel.
It was a message.
Know your place, Null
Kaelen struck first.
The bolt didn't crack—it screamed. A jagged spear of white-hot lightning tore across the arena with pinpoint accuracy, enough to leave a crater if it hit.
Marek moved on instinct. No plan, no conscious thought—just a sideways twist and a low dive that let the bolt smash into the stone behind him, showering him with sparks.
The crowd roared. Whether in surprise or bloodlust, Marek couldn't tell.
Kaelen didn't stop.
Another bolt came, this time in an arc that split midair into two. Marek rolled beneath one, let the second glance off the end of his staff—it vibrated violently in his grip, the wood hissing where mana burned it.
He pushed forward.
Staff raised.
Kaelen laughed. "You think you can beat me with that stick? "
A surge of lightning exploded from his body, radiating outward in a sphere. Marek slammed his staff into the ground and braced, but the force still hurled him back several feet, scraping across stone. His fingers went numb.
But not broken.
Not dead.
Kaelen stepped toward him, hands glowing. "You're tough for a mistake. But let's end this before it gets pitiful."
Marek forced himself to stand.
Everything screamed at him to back down, to protect himself, to hide.
But he didn't move away.
Because deep beneath the fear, something was rising.
Something colder than pain. Sharper than instinct.
Something that had no name.
Kaelen launched forward.
He didn't throw a bolt this time—he came in close, blade drawn from the side of his belt, crackling with raw enchantment. It was a custom-forged mana-blade, streaked with blue veins of condensed arc energy.
He slashed.
Marek dodged the first strike, pivoted to deflect the second with his staff, and ducked under the third. Each motion was rough, improvised, but driven by something deeper—like a rhythm only he could hear.
Kaelen spun, trying to sweep his legs. Marek jumped. The blade grazed his boot, but missed.
The crowd was on its feet now. Shouting. Laughing. Gasping.
Another flurry, dblade against staff.
Kaelen snarled. "You're nothing. A glitch. A numberless rat."
He slammed the blade down in a wide arc.
Marek caught it mid-swing with the center of his staff.
The wood screamed under the force but didn't snap.
And in that moment, time slowed.
Their eyes met.
Marek felt something bloom in his chest, not anger.
Rejection.
Not just from Kaelen. From the system. The Grid. The world.
It didn't hate him.
It simply couldn't see him.
And that… was something he could use.
He moved.
Not with training. Not with calculation.
With interference.
His hand twisted around Kaelen's wrist, and with an unnatural, almost instinctive flick, disrupted the arc energy running through the blade.
It sparked, then died.
Kaelen's eyes widened as the mana-blade shorted out in his hand.
Marek drove his staff forward, ramming it into Kaelen's chest with brutal force. Not a clean strike. Not elegant.
But real.
Kaelen staggered back, coughing.
The crowd fell silent.
The barrier around the arena flickered.
Not because of a spell.
Because of him.
The ambient runes were glitching. Faint, trembling distortions danced around Marek's feet. His breath came hard and shallow, but something in the air, something invisible, was vibrating in rhythm with his pulse.
Then, without warning—
Kaelen screamed.
Not in pain. In fury.
He threw both arms forward, unleashing a concentrated arc of compressed lightning—not a bolt, but a wave, a battering wall of destruction.
Too fast to dodge.
Too wide to block.
It hit.
The entire arena exploded in light and sound.
The shockwave hurled Marek into the far wall. He struck hard. Crumpled. The crowd erupted.
Even Junic, watching from the upper stands, tensed.
Arden stood.
"He's still breathing," she whispered.
Below, smoke curled from the shattered floor.
Kaelen stalked forward, every step sizzling with static. "That's it. Stay down. Everyone knows what you are now."
Marek coughed once. His body wasn't responding. His head rang.
But he wasn't unconscious.
Something, something deeper, was moving inside him.
The Grid had ignored him.
But magic had not.
he stood.
Slowly. Unevenly.
Kaelen froze. "You've got to be kidding me."
Marek raised his head.
And in his eyes—
For just a second—
There was light.
Not any element. Not any rune the Grid knew.
A glyph bloomed in the air behind him. Not drawn. Not cast. It simply appeared. Floating. Jagged. Wild.
It didn't glow, it hummed.
And when Marek stepped forward again, the very foundation of the arena shivered.
Kaelen tried to summon another bolt—
But the glyph pulsed.
And the magic refused.
Not Marek's magic.
Kaelen's.
It fizzled in his hands like a wick soaked in oil.
"What—what did you do?! "
Marek said nothing.
He crossed the final distance between them, staff forgotten.
And drove his fist into Kaelen's stomach.
Not with enhanced strength.
With everything else.
Kaelen dropped.
Cracked stone caught his fall.
Silence.
Marek stood over him, chest heaving, glyph still hanging behind him like a brand of something impossible.
Then—
The glyph fractured, And vanished.
Marek dropped to one knee.
Not unconscious. But close.
The crowd didn't cheer.
They stared.
Not at a winner.
At something they didn't know how to define.
Above, Chancellor Eltrane stood slowly.
His expression unreadable.
He did not declare a winner.
He only said, voice echoing through the shocked stillness,
"This match… is concluded."
And in the shadows above the Chancellor's seat, someone else stepped back into darkness, one hand pressed to a mirror rune, already whispering
"Initiate observation level: critical. Subject Vales is active."