Silence shattered—sharp, splintered, wrong.
Not the hush of breath caught between strikes, but a brittle stillness that cracked the rhythm of battle and left the air raw.
A crater still smoked at the far edge of the arena, cracked stone spider webbing out from the point of impact like the mark of a god's hammer. Vaerin Stormont's body hung on the wall like a forgotten relic. Armor broken. Pride broken. His name — for now — broken.
Caelith stood where he'd landed after delivering the debilitating blow. His boot settled flat in the sand. Ashthorn still hung at his side, pulsing faintly with Rejection. His cloak swayed in the dead wind, but he hadn't moved an inch.
He didn't need to.
Everyone else had.
Serika Varendel's posture had changed first. Her spine straightened, not from tension but from readiness.
Her glaive, once resting like a staff, tilted half a degree forward. Her gaze locked onto Caelith's profile as she stared with interest. There was no fear in her stance, only the slight narrowing of eyes when one unexpected piece moved on a chessboard she thought she'd mastered. Her assessment of Caelith changed to hold more trepidation.
Vaerin wasn't the strongest of the five heirs. However, he was still one of them. To defeat someone like that in one blow required mastery of mundane combat and expert application of mana.
Theryn Damaris exhaled through his nose, lips pressing into a thin line. One hand rose slightly from his side — a half-invitation, half-warding. The gesture of a tactician forced to reassess the weight of an opponent.
"…Not luck," he murmured to no one.
Vessia Keldra was already writing. Her gaze moved over Caelith in small, darting cuts — neck, shoulders, grip, center of gravity. Her hands fluttered near her scrolls like a scholar ready to annotate a new theorem. Somewhere, she had a mental diagram of power ranks, affinities, and psychological variables. Caelith had just burst through all three of them.
"Unknown noble bloodline?" she whispered to herself. "No—too clean. Something else. Possibly from the central continent."
Jorun Velgrath's heat dimmed slightly. He didn't back away, didn't lower his stance. But he stopped moving. The lava trail beneath his boots slowed, the fire around his chest flickering with hesitation. One hand cracked his knuckles with a slow, deliberate pop. His grin was gone. His bravado, buried under a simple truth:
He didn't want to be next.
He was likely the oldest of everyone in the ring. Jorun would reach thirty this year if he lived past this battle. All his years of experience had allowed him to see what the heirs would miss.
That man hadn't used mana.
Braegor Dorn planted his spear into the sand beside him with a deliberate thunk. Not a threat. Not surrender. The action of a man who had seen what unchained technique looked like — and decided this wasn't a good moment to test it.
"I'm not throwing my name onto a wall for free," he muttered.
Lysara didn't speak. She didn't move. But the ash around her feet thickened. Not swirling like smoke anymore. Shards. Barbs. Spines. Her control was tightening, weaponizing the ground in case Caelith made a move.
She'd fought flame, speed, steel, pressure.
Not that.
Caelith stood steadfast. His posture hadn't changed from when the prince had released the torrent of gravity. After he had released it, Caelith had sent Vaerin flying. Almost five seconds afterwards, the arena had finished processing the change.
He was a statue made of war, standing in the wreckage of expectation.
No one approached.
Not because they couldn't.
But because not one of them wanted to be the second name buried in the walls.
The heirs, once spaced across quadrants, had unconsciously moved. Now, they and the three-star elites stood in an uneven section of the ring — a loose perimeter, not forged in alliance but in instinct. Like wolves pacing around something esoteric. Something more dangerous.
Caelith had not asked for their attention.
He'd taken it.
The Gauntlet was over. The spectacle had become war.
These were now the final contenders: the fifteen or so contenders standing in the ring with the prince at the center would compete for their place in the new order he would bring about.
And they were all now painfully aware of what it meant to hesitate.
Aurex Vykrall stood at the center, still unmoved. But his eyes gleamed now with something more dangerous than excitement.
Anticipation.
Because the one who struck first had done so with intent.
And the one who moved next… would need to be ready to bleed.
Caelith stepped forward through the settling haze. The air hadn't cleared from the previous clash, yet already the pressure was shifting again. His boot dug into torn sand, anchoring him to the weight of his own promise.
"I accept," he said.
The words landed heavily.
His gaze fixed on the center of the battlefield—on Aurex Vykrall.
"I'll leave a wound on you. One that won't heal easily."
The arena stood still. Not frozen—listening. Champions adjusted their footing. Heirs stood with silent poise. No one reached for new conflict. No one wanted to speak first.
The prince had asserted his dominion over the arena with his introduction.
He had an aura that left every competitor hoping to put on a good show, not to win.
Aurex remained still for a breath.
Then the prince walked.
The change was immediate.
The sand near his boots darkened, compressed without sound. Cracks bloomed across the stone beneath the surface, radiating out in symmetrical webs. With every step, something heavy pressed inward. Space itself narrowed. The arena seemed to tilt around him.
No one needed to speak. They felt it.
The prince's gift was one that had never appeared in Igaria before.
Gravity.
There was no performance in Aurex's movements. Nothing declared. Yet the field responded, bending, shrinking, losing shape. A wounded fighter groaned in the distance—then fell completely. Their body didn't collapse from pain. It obeyed the shift in pressure.
A healer nearby reached toward them—and dropped to one knee before their hand could touch skin.
Still, Caelith stood.
Aurex's face had lost its earlier curiosity. No flickers of humor remained. His voice, when it came, carried neither contempt nor interest. It simply existed—precise, unwavering, final.
"One strike was enough to turn him into a crater."
His head tilted toward the far wall, where Vaerin still hung broken in the stone.
"Imagine what your second will cost."
He raised one hand. The motion was casual. His fingers didn't clench. His mana didn't flare.
Yet the world responded.
The air turned dense. Movement slowed. Sounds stretched thin. From the edges of the arena, even the birds stopped. Breath caught in throats, stuck there like it no longer belonged.
Caelith held his ground.
Inside his head, Rejection stirred. Not loudly. Not with flares or growls. It turned like a key. It opened something deeper. He rolled his shoulders back, adjusted the weight in his stance, and focused on the pressure as it closed in.
Rejection did not exist until Caelith willed it so.
That was not meant to mean that Rejection did not exist inside of Caelith.
Caelith's will was Rejection, and Rejection was his will.
Maybe one day the volatile power would flow through his veins like mana in the prince's.
Ashthorn remained at his side, untouched. But the moment called it forward.
"I'll defeat you," Caelith said. "Then I'll claim what I came for."
The battlefield didn't tremble.
It contracted.
Gravity layered upon itself, subtle at first—then sharper. Pressure bent the lines between sand and stone. Edges blurred. Movement dragged. Every breath weighed more than the last.
One of the three-stars—Jorun—took an unconscious half-step back.
Braegor squared his shoulders, but didn't interfere.
Serika turned her weapon downward and kept her eyes on the center.
Lysara's ash rippled around her, but she made no move to deploy it.
Theryn's hand drifted to his sheath. Not to draw—just to measure.
Vessia remained still, eyes tracking the distortion of space between the two combatants.
Yet soon it grew too much to withstand.
Every spectator in the coliseum would need to watch from the floor.
Farren, however, stood beside Caelith, undaunted as well.
"Wowwww Mr. Mysterious didn't even flinch!"
Farren smirked and kept his eyes focused on Caelith.
"I'm only standing due to special circumstances right now my friend, I wish you luck in battle!"
Caelith turned his head, his eyes showed surprise but his words betrayed his shock.
"I won't need it."
Aurex's voice returned.
"Come then," he said. "Let's see how close you can get before you're crushed."
He didn't vanish.
He moved.
No burst. No flash. Just a direct path—the kind that nothing would survive if it stood in the way. The sand beneath his feet turned to black glass. A pulse slammed outward behind him as he launched forward. The weight of his presence trailed him like a tidal wave.
This would be a battle of physicality and combat prowess.
Caelith reacted.
A spark of Rejection flooded his legs, flowing through muscle, tendon, and bone.
Space shifted under his feet as Rejection manifested.
He surged forward, not with blind acceleration, but with control sharpened to a lethal point.
Two figures met at the center of a collapsing field.
And the arena roared.