Alexander stood in front of the door before it opened for him to enter the fighting arena.
It felt similar to the moments before stepping into a boxing ring — noise outside, silence inside his head. Especially now, after his father and brother had told him beforehand that killing was permitted here, in this ring.
Fighting itself didn’t feel strange to him. What felt strange was that he might actually be killed this time. No timeouts, no coach shouting instructions. Just you and your sword, facing an opponent dreaming of being the one to kill you first.
The door opened before him, and in a single second, the roar of the crowd erupted in his mind before it even reached his ears.
Seconds ticked by, neither fast nor slow. He wasn’t really afraid — he was ready, but tense. Tense for a win at any cost. He wanted to kill Tai Hong before his opponent could kill him. He didn’t want to see that same Chinese man standing before him again. He wanted to erase every failure from his previous world.
He walked in to the cheers of his own city, Scarbi. Everyone loved his father and his brother — maybe that was enough to make them love him too, even before he’d proven anything himself.
The southerners, though, some of them jeered and cursed at him, scattered voices carrying open contempt for a village boy who’d dared stand across from one of their own.
(Damn it... the era’s changed, but people haven’t.)
He scanned the crowd quickly and found his family in their designated spot; his father standing with arms crossed, his face showing neither a smile nor visible worry — just that same steady look Alexander had known from him on that first battlefield, the look of a man watching without intervening. Beside him, his mother gripped Daron’s hand tightly, as though drawing a reassurance from him she couldn’t find within herself. Daron’s own eyes, though, were fixed on Alexander’s sword, not his face — as though reading something in the way he held it that he couldn’t read in his expression.
The King looked at him too from his elevated seat, since he was the one who represented royal authority over this duel. That cold mask said little, but his eyes seemed to speak — don’t you dare lose — or so Alexander heard it in that moment, a silent whisper never spoken aloud but arriving clearly all the same.
Alexander glanced toward Prince Gabriel, seated beside his father, and found him leaning slightly forward, his voice reaching him despite the crowd’s noise, as though he’d trained himself to be heard without ever needing to raise his voice much:
"I do hope you’ll entertain me today, boy... I’ve always loved the first fight of any competition. It reveals everyone’s true nature, before they learn how to fool me with their masks."
Alexander didn’t answer, offering only a slight nod, while his mind filed that last sentence away far more carefully than his expression let on.
(Masks that fool him? Seems like this delicate little prince isn’t as naive as he looks.)
Then Hendro entered.
To Alexander, he looked tall, broad-shouldered, his body suggesting raw strength that had never been refined through proper training. But it was clear enough that he wasn’t skilled with a sword — his grip was stiff, his stance lacking the kind of balance Alexander had seen in his father’s and brother’s movements. Magic was probably his real strength, and that was likely exactly why this last-minute rule change felt to him like his true weapon had been stripped away before he’d even had a chance to use it.
Even so, Hendro’s crowd trusted him. The south’s cheers rose loudly behind him, men and women calling his name with the confidence of people who’d already seen his strength proven elsewhere.
Hendro closed the distance to Alexander with a few steps and looked at him — not with contempt, but with something closer to a strange pity — then said in a calm, serious voice:
"You can withdraw now, boy. No one will blame you... I’m not just some ordinary opponent, and there’s no shame in fearing what you don’t understand."
Alexander gave a faint smile — not open mockery, but something closer to private amusement.
(He’s offering me a way out? This guy thinks I’m some scared farm boy trembling before his first real fight. If he only knew how many times I bled on that ring back in my old world, he wouldn’t be saying any of this. Tai Hong would be shaking right now. But Tai Hong doesn’t exist anymore, does he?)
Alexander didn’t answer with a single word. He simply raised his sword slowly — a gesture that was answer enough for Hendro.
The referee raised his hand, announcing the start of the duel, and the crowd’s noise suddenly surged to its peak — then fell utterly silent, as though everyone had held their breath at once. Even the wind itself seemed to pause for a moment, in those stretched-out seconds where Alexander felt time freeze completely, nothing but the pounding of his own heart in his ears, nothing but Hendro standing before him, bracing to strike.
Hendro moved first, a heavy, fast step despite his size, his sword rising in a direct motion with no complexity or trick behind it — the attack of a man relying on raw physical strength rather than skill, expecting that alone to end the duel in seconds.
Alexander didn’t move in panic. He moved with the cold calculation he’d carried back from years spent in the boxing ring; his eyes tracked the angle of the shoulder, the direction of the foot, the weight of a body lunging toward him without enough balance behind it.
The instant Hendro’s sword closed in, Alexander shifted with a single sideways step, quick and precise, and raised his own sword in one counter motion — a single strike, nothing more.
He hadn’t meant for it to be lethal, and it wasn’t, but it was decisive enough to sever Hendro’s right hand at the elbow, a dry, sudden sound that silenced the entire arena for a moment before the crowd erupted in a collective scream of shock.
Hendro’s sword hit the ground along with his hand, and he stood stunned for a moment before the pain crept into his face and he dropped to his knees, his screams mixing with the shock rippling through the crowd around him. Two guards rushed toward him immediately, one wrapping the wound in coarse cloth with the practiced speed that suggested this wasn’t the first wound of its kind treated in this arena, while the other shouted for a priest carrying the Healing Blessing, his voice getting lost in the rising commotion from every direction.
Alexander stood there, his sword still extended before him, drops of blood glinting on the blade under the sunlight, and felt something rising in his chest — that same old warmth he’d known when killing the witch, except now it was far bigger, far deeper, because thousands of eyes had just witnessed it.
(This is it... this is exactly what I wanted. Not just a win — a statement. I’m not that failure of a boy who lost everything in his old world. Tai Hong died on that old ring, and now he’s buried under this blood. I’m here now, and I’m the one who decides who falls and who stays standing.)
He looked around slowly — at the stunned, silent crowd, at the southern minister whose face had frozen somewhere between old pride and present horror, at the King, who hadn’t moved behind his mask, and at Prince Gabriel, wearing an entirely new smile, completely different from before. It wasn’t the innocent smile of admiration — it was something closer to a man who’d just discovered a rare piece worth watching closely, a quiet calculation behind those delicate features that, this time, he didn’t fully bother to hide.
He searched for his family again and found his father still standing motionless, though his jaw was clenched tight now, unmistakably. His mother had covered her mouth with a trembling hand. And Daron — the one look that met Alexander’s own — carried none of the brotherly pride he’d expected, but a quiet worry instead, the same look Alexander had seen on his face that morning of left-hand training, as though he recognized something in that single strike that he understood all too well, and didn’t want anyone else to understand too.
One of the judges approached Alexander and placed a hand firmly but calmly on his shoulder, silently signaling him to withdraw toward the exit, while Hendro was still being carried away amid broken screams and the doctors’ rushed movements. Alexander walked slowly toward the door he’d entered through, the crowd behind him split between stunned silence and scattered murmurs that hadn’t yet decided whether what they’d just witnessed was admiration or horror.
Alexander felt a wave of pride sweep through him, stronger than any victory he’d ever known back in his old ring, as though all those old defeats were beginning to fade, little by little, before this new, delicious feeling of superiority.
(I want more of this feeling... I want to feel it again, and again, until no one is left who doubts who I am.)
At the door, he paused for a moment, looking down at his hand still gripping the bloodstained sword, then lifted his eyes toward his family one last time before disappearing behind the closing door, the shock still frozen on all their faces. And Alexander didn’t know, not then — leaving that arena amid the crowd’s stunned silence and Hendro’s fading screams behind him — that this exact moment was the first real stone laid on a long road he would never be able to turn back from.