The air in the Concord Arena was different.
It wasn't just the anticipation thickening it, or the hum of starlight crawling beneath the surface of the obsidian stone. Something deeper had shifted—something electric and sharp, like the moment before lightning struck.
Orion stood with the others on the observation level of the Citadel, where the arena stretched like a wound carved into the earth. The dueling platforms hovered slightly above the main ring—four circular discs of stone, floating weightlessly around a central spire. Pillars of starcrystal jutted from the perimeter, pulsing with celestial energy. And above them all, in a sky woven with constellations and stormlight, hung the ever-watching Eye.
The announcement came not with fanfare, but with silence.
Then a voice, layered and resonant, rolled through the arena.
"Initiates of the Star Academy. You have passed through fire, through storm, through shadow. Now comes the final trial—the Tournament of Ascension."
Gasps murmured through the student crowd lining the galleries.
"Sixteen remain. One will rise."
A burst of light flared at the center of the spire as a glowing bracket unfolded in the air—sixteen names etched in starlight, drifting into their places like chess pieces falling into fate.
Orion's eyes scanned the list.
He spotted Cyrus at the top. Then Vel. On the next line: Nyra versus Dorian. Varek and Kye. Lirael and Eira.
And then—
Orion vs Sena.
His name glowed beside hers, each character outlined in pale silver. A flicker of something stirred in his chest. Not dread. Not excitement. Just stillness—like the quiet between two crashing waves.
Serah whistled low beside him. "They're not pulling any punches. They put you up against the Crimson Girl first."
"I'm not surprised," Orion muttered. "We're all threats now."
"They're watching for more than just who wins," Iris added quietly. "This is still a test. They want to see how we fight."
Azrael said nothing. He stared at the bracket with unreadable eyes, fingers loosely resting on the hilt of his blade. But Orion caught the subtle flex of his hand. Even Azrael wasn't immune to the tension crackling in the air.
A second voice, sharper and colder, replaced the first.
"The rules are simple." It was one of the academy's masked arbiters—cloaked in veils of mirrored light, their voice amplified through unseen means. "Each round is a single duel. No substitutions. No interference. You fight until one combatant yields, is incapacitated, or deemed unable to continue."
"Lethal force is discouraged… but not prohibited."
That last line caused the crowd to stir again. A shiver danced along Orion's spine.
"Great," Serah muttered. "So we're just casually flirting with death now."
"Weren't we always?" Iris said softly, almost wry.
The arbiter continued.
"You will fight atop the duel discs. Each round, the arena shifts. Expect traps, changing terrain, and conditions tailored to your weaknesses."
"Your first match begins… now."
The spire dimmed—and two names flared brighter than the rest.
Cyrus vs Vel.
A hush fell. Then the crowd erupted.
"Cohort One's golden boy against the Choir's wild card," someone whispered.
"About time we saw Cyrus fight for real."
Orion leaned forward slightly, watching as two figures stepped into the arena from opposite sides.
Cyrus moved like a storm given shape—loose, calm, every step grounded and sure. He wore the silver-lined uniform of Cohort One, but the star pulsing in his chest made it shimmer like chain lightning. His skin flickered faintly, lightning webbing beneath the surface like veins of living fire.
Vel, in contrast, moved like a reflection—elegant, slow, and surreal. He wore robes of translucent grey, trimmed in moonlight glass. His star was dimmer, but the air around him shifted—warped with every step, as if reality was unsure how to hold him.
"He's unsettling," Iris murmured. "Like he's here, but not."
"Star of the Glass Moon," Azrael said. "Displacement. Reflection. Temporal misdirection."
"Fun," Serah muttered. "So how do you fight someone who's not really there?"
Orion narrowed his eyes. "With someone who is the storm."
The duel disc beneath them began to shift—cracks forming into lightning-shaped veins. A pulse of energy surged upward, and suddenly the platform was rising, hovering higher until it hung above the spire like a god's stage.
On the far end, Vel smiled faintly. His eyes shimmered with fractured light.
Cyrus just rolled his neck.
Then, with a flicker of starlight, the arbiter's voice rang out:
"Begin."
What followed was less a duel and more a collision of philosophies.
Vel vanished the instant the word left the air—his image breaking like glass into five perfect copies, each drifting in a slow orbit. The audience leaned forward, tracking with wide eyes as the duplicates flickered, danced, and shimmered in and out of alignment.
Cyrus didn't move.
He stood in the center of the disc, eyes closed.
The crowd murmured in confusion.
And then his star flared.
A ring of lightning exploded from him—silent, white-hot, and wide. It passed through the illusions like a storm parting mist.
Only one of them flinched.
"There."
Cyrus vanished.
The next second, he was behind Vel—arm crackling with voltage, driving forward like a thunderclap.
Vel twisted—but he wasn't fast enough.
The punch landed. Electricity flared.
But Vel shattered.
Glass. Just more glass.
A second Vel appeared above, descending with a blade of fractured moonlight in hand.
Cyrus caught it—bare-handed.
The blade screamed against his palm, shards breaking off into the air—but he held it. Lightning surged into it, and Vel was launched backward, crashing into the far edge of the platform.
This time, he didn't vanish.
The crowd roared.
Orion exhaled slowly, watching the dance unfold. Each move told a story—Cyrus with the weight of inevitability, Vel with the slipperiness of illusion. One was the storm. The other, a mirror.
And somehow, they were perfectly matched.
The duel didn't end.
It spiraled.
Illusions shattered. Stormlight surged. At one point, the entire platform inverted—turning into a fractal glass maze mid-fight. At another, Cyrus redirected lightning through Vel's illusions to find the true thread behind them all.
But Vel wasn't done.
With every hit he took, his distortions grew more layered. He started creating afterimages that bled into the real world, slowing Cyrus down, making the storm hesitate. Not because of fear—but because of uncertainty.
And that, Orion realized, was Vel's real weapon.
Not power. Not misdirection.
Doubt.
But Cyrus… didn't doubt.
When Vel tried to warp the platform's edge—bending perception so that one misstep would send Cyrus falling—
The storm stepped into the false edge anyway.
And rode the lightning upward.
A final strike.
Cyrus reappeared above Vel, lightning tearing from his arms like wings.
"Yield," he said calmly.
Vel's mirror-sword shattered in his hand.
And he nodded once.
The platform dimmed. The crowd stood. Even some instructors on the upper balcony gave murmurs of approval.
Orion stared at the boy made of storms, chest rising only slightly as he turned and walked off the platform like he'd simply gone for a stroll.
Cyrus was more than a prodigy.
He was a force of nature given will.
And as the bracket shifted in the sky, the next two names lit up in silver:
Orion vs Sena.