Chapter4

Assessment Day. The instant the arena's warding shield sealed shut.

Liliana stood ten paces away, her hands folded submissively in front of her. Hushed whispers from the crowd bled through the barrier.

"She actually took the challenge."

"House Oberland is going to be humiliated this time."

"Liliana is a proper healer, and her sister can't even hold a fireball steady..."

She heard them. The faint smile playing on her lips deepened just a fraction.

"Forgive me, Sister."

She shouted it loudly, making absolutely sure the entire arena heard her.

Then, the magic that snapped from her fingertips was a thick, viscous beam of black light. It slithered flat against the ground, striking like a viper lunging for its prey's throat. It was the Shadowbone Hex from that forbidden, ruined grimoire, aimed straight at the heart. In her past life, she had used this exact move to cripple six opponents ranked higher than her. Every single one connected, without exception.

When the black light slammed into my chest, it felt like a red-hot iron hammer driving through my ribs.

A metallic sweetness surged up my throat. I swallowed half of it, but the rest spilled from the corner of my mouth. My knees instinctively buckled, my right leg dropping almost all the way to the floor—but in that fractured second, I remembered Kane's words.

"Use the searing pain. Tank the blast. Take three steps forward."

I brutally forced my knees to lock and held my ground.

Thick smoke and shattered stone shards erupted from the point of impact, blanketing the entire ring. Through the dust, Liliana staggered a half-step back, covered her mouth, and cried out to the crowd in a theatrical, tearful wail. "Professor! My sister is hurt—please, quickly, save her!"

A wave of commotion swept through the stands. Someone yelled "Call the medics!", while others gasped in shock. Cedric's voice mixed into the chaos, low and cold like a sheathed blade. "It's over."

Wind slashed through the gaps in the arena's dome, sweeping the black smoke away.

I stood exactly where I was.

I ground my right boot into the cracked stone beneath me and straightened my spine. The chest of my uniform had a fist-sized hole burned clean through it. The edges were charred and curled, revealing a tight, silver-gray inner lining underneath. It was anti-magic fabric, scavenged out of discarded gladiator armor during three of my 4:00 AM training sessions. It wasn't enough to block the full curse, but it was enough to stop half of it. I tanked the remaining half with blood and bone.

The arena fell dead silent in an instant.

Liliana's hand, frozen in the act of covering her mouth, hung suspended in mid-air. The black light hadn't fully dissipated from her fingertips, but those fingers were now trembling.

"Is that all you have?"

I wiped the blood from my chin with the back of my hand and took a step toward her.

She stumbled backward, her voice cracking into a high, breathless pitch. "S-Sister... how did you—"

"I'm done hurting."

The rough bandages wrapped around my right hand incinerated into ash from a sudden bloom of silver flame. The light was blindingly hot, so searingly hot that the blood scabs on my fingertips split open again. But this pain was deeply familiar. At four in the morning, down in the muddy pits, it had blasted me off my feet every single day. Every time, I thought I was broken. Every time, I got back up.

I didn't speak an incantation. Three weeks of intensive compression training were entirely for this fraction of a second. I forced my mana down to the absolute critical limit where my veins were about to rupture, using pure willpower to chain it down. I wouldn't let it blow my own hand off; it would only detonate exactly where I wanted it to.

A cluster of silver-white fire took shape in my palm. It was smaller than a standard fireball, cruder than any proper spell. But its density was seven times that of ordinary flame.

I brought my hand up and hurled it.

The silver fire dragged a blazing tail right into Liliana's face. Shards of the barrier, pulverized stone, and a shriek that was violently cut short—all exploded into the air at once. The kinetic force slammed her body into the stadium's stone wall, over thirty feet away. As she slumped to the ground, a thick, dark crimson streak was painted against the masonry.

The entire arena went dead.

The presiding professor stood rigid near the ring. His registry slipped from his fingers, hitting the floor, and he entirely forgot to pick it up. Cedric stood midway up the stands. His lips parted slightly, then snapped shut tight, and he unconsciously took half a step back.

I lowered my hand, turning my head to look at the referee.

"In a duel, life and death are left to fate—Academy Rule Thirty-Seven."

The professor bent down to retrieve his book. His lips twitched, but no words came out. He simply jerked a stiff nod. In the distance, two medics were already sprinting toward the stone wall with a stretcher, though they didn't seem to be in much of a hurry. A person with three shattered ribs and a magical circuit half-melted by silver fire was in no immediate rush to go anywhere.

I walked off the dueling platform.

The crowd parted before me, splitting open like a severed sea. People lowered their heads, shrank aside, or nailed their eyes firmly to the floor. No one was smiling anymore.

I walked down that open corridor, heading straight for the darkest corner at the edge of the arena.

Kane stood there.

His heavy broadsword was drawn halfway from its scabbard, but he wasn't holding the hilt. His right hand squeezed tight over the exposed steel of the razor-sharp blade. A dark liquid seeped through his fingers, dripping down. Drop after drop, splashing into the cracks between the floor tiles. He hadn't rushed the stage. He had used this exact method to nail himself in place, using agonizing physical pain to suppress his primal instinct.

I stopped right in front of him, barely half a step away.

The spot on my chest where the curse hit began its violent backlash. A deep, splintering agony rolled up from my core in waves, shooting from my spine, up through my neck, straight into the back of my skull. The strength in my legs was bleeding away at a speed I could clearly feel. I watched his eyes sweep over the gaping hole in my uniform, the dried streak of blood at the corner of my mouth, and the bare fingertips of my burned hand. They were trembling. He saw it.

"Kane."

I spoke at a volume only he could hear.

"Catch me."

The second my knees gave out completely, my vision faded to black with terrifying speed. But the moment my back was caught, I heard the breath I'd been holding in my chest finally, fully exhale. A pair of strong arms completely enveloped me.

Right before my eyes slid shut, I felt the hand that had been gripping the bare blade let go. A blood-stained palm pressed flat against my back. It was warm.