Owen moved first.
He closed the distance with a measured step and brought his sword down diagonally toward Gareth’s shoulder.
Gareth barely moved.
The épée flicked across Owen’s line, meeting the longsword close to its edge and guiding the heavier blade past Gareth’s shoulder rather than trying to stop it outright.
Owen let the deflection carry him into the next motion, changing direction and cutting back from the opposite side.
Gareth shifted his wrist and caught the second attack with another compact parry, using only enough contact to turn the cut away before giving one step of ground.
Owen pressed.
A third cut came high.
Gareth turned it aside.
Owen shifted his lead foot, feinted another high attack, then stepped across and cut toward Gareth’s ribs.
This time Gareth had to rotate his guard more sharply to catch it.
Their blades locked for an instant.
Gareth grinned at him.
"Better."
Owen pulled away before his brother could push him off balance.
He came forward again, but this time he reached toward his Armament Core.
The copper lines brightened.
Fire rushed along the cutting edge as Owen attacked.
Gareth’s response changed immediately.
Instead of meeting the blade directly, he slipped outside the strike and let Owen’s fire pass through the space where he had been standing.
Heat rolled across the platform.
Someone among the soldiers whistled.
Owen recovered and attacked again.
The next cut left a curved trail of orange-red flame behind the sword.
Gareth retreated another step, tapping the longsword off its line with the stronger lower section of his épée before slipping away from the fire trailing behind it.
"That’s a lot of fire for Kindled," one of the soldiers said.
"His core pressure hasn’t changed," another answered.
Owen heard them, but Gareth gave him no time to look away.
He kept attacking.
A horizontal strike.
Parried.
A thrust that became a cut when Gareth moved off line.
Avoided.
Another empowered swing.
Gareth was already moving before the fire fully formed.
Owen frowned.
Every time he began channeling energy, the markings on his sword brightened.
Gareth was reading it.
More fire wasn’t helping when his brother knew exactly when it was coming.
Owen attacked again anyway, forcing Gareth toward the opposite side of the platform.
"Why hasn’t Lord Gareth attacked once?" someone asked from the edge.
An older soldier answered without taking his eyes off the spar.
"He isn’t trying to win yet. He’s testing the weapon."
Owen didn’t need the reminder.
He could tell.
Gareth was giving him space to show what the sword could do while controlling every exchange.
Worse, Owen was starting to notice something else.
The pressure inside his chest had changed.
His breathing was still steady enough, but his Armament Core no longer felt as full as it had when they started. Each burst of fire pulled something from it, and the connection feeding the sword felt slightly thinner afterward.
Gareth noticed the pause.
"Feeling it?"
Owen nodded once.
"That sword might produce a lot from what you give it, but your core is still Kindled."
"I noticed."
"You’ll notice more if you empty it."
Owen stopped feeding fire into the blade.
Then he attacked.
Gareth’s eyebrows lifted slightly.
Without the flare of copper markings giving away his intention, Owen’s movements became harder to read again.
Not enough to fool Gareth completely, but enough to change the rhythm.
Owen stepped in with a descending cut he had used against his brother hundreds of times before.
He knew Gareth’s answer.
Outside line.
Redirect away from the shoulder.
Gareth moved exactly as expected.
Owen shortened the cut before their blades met.
His wrist turned.
The attack became horizontal.
Only then did he feed energy into the sword.
The fire ignited at the last possible moment.
Gareth’s eyes widened.
The sudden flare struck across his guard and forced him back.
One step.
Then another.
His boots scraped against the reinforced platform as he created space between them.
For the first time since the spar began, Owen had made Gareth react instead of simply allowing him to attack.
Noise rose from the watching soldiers.
Owen reset his stance, unable to hide his grin.
Across from him, Gareth looked down briefly at his sword and then back at Owen.
"That was better."
Owen’s gaze flicked toward the viewing area.
His father was still seated, but there was no missing the satisfaction in his expression.
Gareth settled into guard again.
"Come on."
Still defensive.
Owen drew in a breath.
His Armament Core was running low.
He could continue using smaller bursts and drag the spar out, but Gareth was deliberately giving him the opportunity to test the weapon.
Owen wanted an answer.
How much could it really produce?
He tightened his grip.
Then he drew as much energy as he safely could from what remained in his Kindled core.
The response was immediate.
Copper markings blazed across the sword.
Flame erupted along the entire blade.
Heat washed outward hard enough that several soldiers closest to the platform shifted back from the boundary.
Even Gareth’s grin disappeared.
Owen felt the drain in his chest immediately.
One strike.
That was probably all he had left.
He moved.
His first step hit the platform hard.
The second carried him into range.
Owen brought the sword down with everything he had.
Gareth didn’t retreat.
Instead, his épée shifted across his body, point angled away as he positioned the stronger base of the blade to receive Owen’s descending longsword.
Their weapons met.
Gareth turned his wrist immediately, trying to guide the heavier sword past him rather than stopping it head-on.
Then Owen’s fire erupted.
The sudden force overwhelmed the clean deflection Gareth had intended. Orange-red flame burst across the platform, smoke swallowing both brothers as Gareth’s boots scraped backward over the reinforced surface.
One step.
Then another.
Owen forced himself upright, though the impact had sent a painful tremor through both arms and his nearly empty Armament Core made the longsword feel heavier than before.
Through the smoke, he could barely make out Gareth’s silhouette.
Then blue-white light flashed.
Lightning raced along the narrow épée from guard to point, crackling through the haze.
Owen froze.
A sharp crack split the air.
The familiar smell of scorched wood and fire was overwhelmed by something colder and metallic, like the air immediately before a storm.
Lightning crawled across Gareth’s sword.
Thin arcs ran along the steel from guard to tip, branching into the smoke and snapping back against the blade.
He had used his Armament energy.
Owen’s exhausted grip tightened.
Gareth had actually needed it.
The haze thinned enough for Owen to see his brother properly.
Gareth was smiling.
"Well," he said, lightning flashing brighter around the sword. "That was rude."
Owen took one step back.
He knew that smile.
Gareth shifted his weight forward.
Electricity cracked across the platform.
"My turn."