I keep my face still. Eyes locked on his.

’This idiot thinks I’m a rookie. Attacking that openly without a plan.’

The instant his leaf-blade deflects Eventide upward and to my left, I twist my torso with everything I have, riding the same direction his deflection pushed me. The attack wasn’t an attack.

It was a feint.

I launch into a butterfly twist in the same instant. My body rotates parallel to the ground, my legs sweeping through a horizontal arc, the cape of my own movement carrying me sideways through the space where the counter-thrust was supposed to land.

Cassio’s spear passes a hair’s width from my cheek and the line of my neck. The leaf-blade kisses my skin and draws out a thin red line under my jaw. I feel the cold of the steel before I feel the cut.

In mid-air, while the rotation is still in motion, I activate Pressure Steps. Three consecutive ignitions. My feet detonate against nothing, redirecting the momentum of the twist into a single point of force.

I aim a kick at Cassio’s head.

His pale eyes widen.

I see it.

The exact micro-second of recognition. The entire move happens in under a second, and even at his rank, deflection is impossible from that angle.

My boot connects with his temple.

I see his eyes roll right, following the trajectory of my leg. His cheeks distort from the impact. A long string of saliva pulls free from his open mouth and stretches sideways through the air with the impact.

A hollow detonation rings across the arena. Cassio leaves the ground. He launches laterally, tumbling, rolling across the stone floor of the Oathring in a fan of dust. I land on one knee, the other leg extended behind me, Eventide still gripped low.

The arena goes silent.

I can hear my own breathing echoing off the southern wall of the Oathring. In a movement that lasted less than three seconds, I just reminded Cassio Veil of an old lesson: a loud mouth writes checks the body has to cash—and his just bounced in front of every spectator in this arena.

The dust cloud where Cassio landed starts to settle. I rise to my feet with a small smile but say nothing.

The kick was massively amplified by Pressure Step. If it had been a clean kick of my own bodyweight, it would have barely registered. The acceleration probably multiplied the impact several times over.

Cassio rises out of the dust, brushing the sand off his platinum-blue plate. His cape is dirty. The proud line of his shoulders looks wrong now. He spits a glob of blood onto the arena floor.

I feel the vibe of the fight change.

He’s going to come hard now.

Cassio exhales. Looks down at his own boots for a long second, like a fighter resetting before something serious. And then he launches at me.

The footwork isn’t fast. He doesn’t move quickly across distance. What’s deadly is the lunge—his entire body extending into each thrust, closing the gap between us in a single instant. He covers ground like water closing over a dropped stone. He starts firing strikes so fast I can barely see the spear. Each thrust carries the weight of one of Oliver’s hammer swings. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

With difficulty, I parry the ones that land at the right angle. I evade the rest, stepping backward. He targets shoulder, belly, throat, right leg. The point of his spear whistles on every thrust, cutting the wind audibly.

I keep retreating, parrying what I can. The arena shrinks around me. My lateral vision tightens. I’m running out of room to escape.

Until my back hits one of the Oathring’s perimeter pillars.

The spear comes for my head in the same instant. I tilt my skull to the side—barely an inch—and the leaf-blade explodes against the pillar where my temple used to be. The blast of energy from the impact makes me deaf for a second, the world dropping into a soft, ringing fog.

The next strike comes slower, the pillar impact having absorbed some of his momentum. I parry it downward. The spear blade buries itself in the stone of the arena floor.

I take the opening.

I plant my front foot on the shaft of the spear and use it as a ramp, jumping upward and forward off the trapped weapon. The whole motion unfolds into a forward flip—Eventide carving an arc toward the top of Cassio’s head as I rotate through the air above him.

He ducks.

The blade misses the crown of his skull by less than a finger’s width.

I land behind him, in a crouch. He’s already turning. Already ready. Whatever surprise he had with my ability is officially gone.

I smell blood.

A warm liquid is dripping onto my shoulder. I glance down. Horizon’s armor at the chest is splashed red.

I bring my hand up to my ear. Everything is wet. There’s a piece missing.

The pillar blast tore off half my ear.

Pain begins to arrive. Slow. Hot. Punitive. It doesn’t peak fast—it just keeps pressing harder as the seconds pass. To my surprise, the system hasn’t registered bleeding yet. I check my OXI.

[OXI: 2,302 / 2,500]

The tactic of activating and deactivating Eventide is still working. I’m nowhere near the limits of my energy yet, but still fighting with Memory of Lightwaves active would drain me in seconds.

"You took half my ear off," I complain at Cassio.

"You’re lucky it was only half... and only the ear."

"You owe me. And I’m going to take something of yours."

"Try."

This bastard is starting to annoy me.

Time to fight for real.

I roll my shoulders once. Loosen the grip on Eventide.

The crowd has come back to life around the perimeter. They were silent when I sent Cassio into the dust. Now they’re loud again, picking up on the blood, on the smell of a fight that has stopped being a demonstration and started being a kill.

Cassio rolls his neck once. Lifts the spear. Settles into a guard I haven’t seen him use yet—lower, wider, more compact. He stops talking.

That’s worse for him than for me. Talking was the part of him that lived in the audience.

Now we’re alone in the ring.