Alexander stood there, amid that white light rising from his sword, his breath ragged but not a single step back in him, while words flowed through his mind with a force he’d never known before — closer to a vow he was swearing to himself than any passing thought.
*The day I woke up in this world... I knew it was another chance. I don’t know who gave me this chance... but I know I’m not letting it go. My story won’t repeat itself the way it did before. I won’t accept a loss... I won’t accept falling. If they cut off my hand, I’ll hold my sword in my teeth.*
The light rising from his sword grew even stronger, until it seemed as though the entire arena had been lit by a small sun that had descended from the sky to settle in the hands of a single boy.
From his seat, William froze completely, his eyes widening as he watched that light — a light he knew well, the same one he’d seen rise from his own black sword on a handful of rare nights throughout his life, except this time it was coming from his son’s ordinary sword — a sword that had been nothing but rust just one week ago.
*This boy... who is he really? I’ve never seen anyone push simple magic this far before. Not even in my own youth.*
Beside him, Daron slowly rose from his seat, without even realizing he’d done it, his eyes never leaving his brother, while his gloved left hand clenched unconsciously, as though his body recognized something familiar in the way that unbounded power surged forward.
*He’s doing with his right hand what I’m afraid to do with my left... pushing power without ever asking himself when to stop. Is this what I used to be, once, before I learned to fear myself?*
The entire crowd, from north to south, stopped whispering, stopped moving. Thousands of strangers’ eyes were now fixed on a village boy no one had known a week ago, standing amid a light too bright to look at directly, as though the whole world had just rewritten its opinion of him in that exact moment.
Then, without warning, that light burst from the tip of the sword — not as a steady glow, but as a single compressed beam, launching toward Richard at a speed no human hand could match, closer to gunfire from a world no one here knew of, except Alexander himself.
Richard didn’t have enough time to fully evade it, raising his sword in front of him in one last attempt to block it, but that beam wasn’t like any sword strike he was used to parrying; it struck Richard’s blade with a sharp metallic explosion, splitting the sword clean in two, the pieces flying through the air, one of them spinning away still burning with the trace of that harsh light, while Richard staggered back two steps, staring at what remained of his broken sword in his hand with an astonishment he no longer bothered to hide — the astonishment of a man who never once imagined his weapon could be broken this easily, in front of thousands of eyes.
The shattered fragments of Richard’s sword scattered in every direction, and one of those metal shards, still carrying the trace of that burning light, cut a path toward his forehead, leaving a thin line of blood suddenly trickling between his brows, a red drop beginning to slide slowly down the side of his nose.
Richard paused for a moment, his free hand rising to touch that wound in complete disbelief, as though feeling something he couldn’t accept had actually happened; him, the knight who had never once been touched in any duel he’d fought, now standing with a bleeding wound on his face, in front of a village boy whose name he hadn’t known just a week ago.
A wave of shocked murmurs rippled through the entire crowd, voices refusing to believe what their eyes had just witnessed; whispers flying from every direction, some from the westerners themselves, Richard’s own family, unable to believe that the promised heir of the Strength Blessing had been struck — even if only a surface wound — by a boy with no known family name.
Alexander looked down at the sword in his hands and realized something had changed for good.
That burning white light hadn’t vanished completely as he’d expected — part of it remained trapped inside the metal itself. The blade, which had been dull and rusted just a week ago, began changing before his eyes with a strange slowness, as though something were reshaping it from within. Fine, glinting lines began appearing along its edge, like veins of frozen light beneath a layer of metal, and the shape itself seemed to lengthen slightly, harden, losing that slight sag he’d known in his ordinary sword throughout his time in this body.
*What’s happening to my sword? This isn’t just a glow fading away... it’s changing. Like it’s not the same sword I was holding a moment ago.*
He suddenly remembered his father’s words by the fire, that first cold night: *"Even your sword, if you develop yourself enough, could become one of the deadliest blades out there."* He hadn’t understood it back then as anything more than a passing piece of advice, but now he felt its true weight in his hands — metal breathing in a way he’d never known before, as though the sword itself had just woken from a long sleep it hadn’t known it was trapped in.
At the same moment, he felt a sharp pain flare up in his right hand. He looked down and found the skin badly reddened, small blisters beginning to form at his fingertips, and the sleeve of his shirt, which had been touching the sword’s hilt this whole time, had started charring at the edges, thin wisps of smoke rising silently from it, the smell of burnt fabric mixing with sweat and dirt.
He hadn’t felt that pain right away — only now, after the beam had fired and his sword had begun transforming before his eyes, did his body start sending him delayed signals about the price he’d unknowingly paid.
*So this is the cost, then... this is what Father was warning me about. But if this is the price for a sword like this, I’m ready to pay it, again and again.*
But he didn’t back down, didn’t lower his transformed sword in front of everyone’s eyes. He stayed standing despite the pain, his eyes fixed on the shocked Richard before him.
From his raised platform, Prince Gabriel suddenly stood, his hand shooting up into the air with an excitement he hadn’t shown all day, a wide smile spreading across his delicate face, as though what had just happened were a personal achievement belonging to him alone.
*"This is exactly what I wanted to see! Look at him! Everyone, look!"*
He clapped his hands with a boyish enthusiasm strangely at odds with his usual composure throughout the opening ceremony, as though he’d discovered a new game that fascinated him more than anything he’d seen in years, his voice rising above the noise of the stunned crowd around him.
The King, meanwhile, didn’t move an inch, remaining seated with his usual stillness behind his white mask, but his eyes — the only visible part of him behind that cold metal — stayed fixed on that transformed sword in Alexander’s hand with a new kind of focus, different from the silent warning he’d sent before the duel began. It was something closer to cautious curiosity, the curiosity of a man suddenly recalculating his assumptions about a boy he’d thought was just another passing name on a long list of competitors.
Alexander didn’t wait for Richard to reassess his footing, lunging at him again, his transformed sword lighter and sharper in his hands than his old one had been, as though the change in its metal had granted him extra speed his arm wasn’t yet used to.
Strike after strike, he tried to exploit that moment of lingering shock still trapped in Richard’s eyes; a quick horizontal cut forced Richard to stumble back a step, then a diagonal one that nearly slipped past the broken remains of his sword entirely, small metal sparks flying every time the remaining iron met that new glowing blade.
Alexander kept up the pressure until he finally found the opening he was looking for; a quick strike slipped past what remained of Richard’s broken sword, cutting a deep gash across his right shoulder, dark blood pouring out immediately, staining his fine robe with a rapidly spreading red line.
Richard swayed for a moment, dropping to one knee, his free hand pressing hard against the bleeding wound, his breathing turning sharp and angry, his eyes fixed on the ground before him, as though gathering something from within before lifting his head again.
Richard rose slowly, despite the bleeding, despite the visible pain on his face, standing with a sudden steadiness drawn from somewhere he hadn’t used yet in this duel. He looked at Alexander with something fundamentally changed in his eyes; no longer that mocking calm he’d started the duel with, but something closer to a cold anger long held in check.
*"Do you think you’re the only one who wants to win here? Do you think you’re the only one fighting to survive?"*
Richard slowly raised his right hand and placed it directly over his chest, right over his heart, his fingers pressing into his blood-stained robe with sudden force, and said in a voice dropped to something like a sharp whisper:
*"Stronger."*
At that same moment, his body began changing before everyone’s eyes; dark veins began bulging beneath his skin at his neck and arms, swelling like small rivers suddenly surging with double their force, while his muscles began expanding beneath his clothes, his sleeves looking on the verge of tearing from the sudden fullness. The bleeding from his shoulder stopped abruptly, as though the transformation itself was enough to seal the wound temporarily, and his entire stance shifted — from that relaxed, elegant noble to something closer to a savage warrior finally unleashed from a restraint that had been holding him back this entire duel, as though the man who had stood before Alexander from the very beginning had only ever been a thin shell hiding someone else entirely, waiting for exactly this moment — the moment of a real wound, real pain — to finally come out into the open.