From his elevated seat, beside his silent father, the King, hidden behind his white mask, Prince Gabriel no longer carried that calm everyone had known him by since the opening ceremony began. That serene smile that hadn’t left his face all day had started fading, bit by bit, with every blow Alexander took, replaced by something closer to a suppressed tension he was trying to hide behind delicate features everyone had always read as pure indifference.
His ring-covered fingers had stopped fidgeting with the edge of his cloak and were now gripping the edge of his seat with an intensity unusual for him, while his eyes never left that boy fallen on the arena’s dirt.
The city of Scarbi, the one that had welcomed Alexander only days ago, held a meaning for the prince he’d never wanted to admit to anyone; it was the city where he himself had been born, before being taken to the capital as a small child, the city his mother — before her death — had spoken of with a nostalgia he hadn’t understood until visiting it today for the first time in years. For a boy from this exact land to win, in front of everyone, meant more to him than he dared admit in the middle of this crowd.
*Why do I feel this anxious? He’s just some village boy I don’t know, whose fate means nothing to me at all... or that’s how it should be.*
The prince told himself that silently, though his fingers never stopped their faint trembling.
Richard moved again, his swollen body closing the distance between them in one heavy step, and there was no need for a sword this time; he raised his fist, glowing with prominent dark veins, and drove it straight toward Alexander’s chest with a force his broken sword could no longer hope to match.
*No time to think... no time.*
But time gave him nothing. The fist struck his chest like a moving wall, sending his feet completely off the ground before he crashed into the dirt several steps away, his body rolling once before settling motionless, the sound of air being forced entirely out of his lungs louder than any scream the crowd let out.
He lay there, eyes half-closed, the world around him dissolving into overlapping patches of light and shadow that resembled nothing clear. And in that moment, among all those blurred, staring faces, he saw his own.
Prince Gabriel, leaning slightly forward, a ring on his finger pressing against the edge of the wooden platform hard enough to nearly leave a mark, his lips pressed tightly together, his eyes carrying none of that usual playful smile — something else entirely.
*That face... I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen it hundreds of times, in the corners of cheap rings no one even knows the name of. Bettors who put everything they had on my name, waiting for me to prove I was worth their stupid trust. I always let them down. I always fell, then heard the sound of their money being swept off the table without so much as a last glance at me.*
*Strange... a prince dressed in silk and rings, and in this exact moment he looks just like the poorest bettor I ever saw at that ring. The same fear, the same need to have bet on the right horse.*
*This won’t happen again. Not here. Not in this body.*
His body didn’t decide to get up — it got up before deciding anything. His arm pushed against the ground with no clear order from his mind, his knee locked beneath him with a tremble, and he stood, swaying, blood mixing with dirt on his cracked lips. But standing.
Richard stopped at a distance from him, his eyes carrying genuine astonishment this time, no mockery, no cold curiosity like before.
*"Why... why are you still standing? I hit you with everything I had. No one stays up after a hit like that."*
Alexander didn’t answer right away, his breath barely coming in any regular rhythm, but he slowly lifted his head toward him.
*"Because standing back up... is the only thing I’ve ever actually been good at."*
Richard looked at him for a long moment, and that’s when Alexander noticed something in that exact instant — something small, almost invisible amid all that smoke and dust.
Richard’s raised hand had begun trembling faintly.
Not from anger.
The prominent dark veins along his arms, the ones that had pulsed with such force moments earlier, had begun fading gradually, as though a river were drying up at its source. His swollen muscles no longer held the same fullness, his stance — solid as an old tree trunk moments ago — had begun leaning slightly to one side, like a man trying to hide a sudden dizziness.
*He’s weakening... this beast that threw me through the air like a feather, with just one hand, after I shattered his sword — he’s weakening. His Blessing isn’t limitless after all. Every power has a cost. Even his.*
Alexander said nothing about it, just kept his eyes fixed on that faint tremble in his opponent’s hand, while his mind calculated, with a coldness he hadn’t expected from himself in that exact moment, how much time was left before that swollen body would collapse on its own.
That moment of weakness didn’t give him the opening he’d been waiting for. Richard lunged despite the faint tremor in his hand, seizing Alexander by the collar of his shirt with a single grip, lifting him off the ground with humiliating ease, as though his exhausted body no longer weighed anything worth mentioning.
*"Still think standing is enough? Let me teach you just how useless standing really is."*
He threw him aside without warning, and Alexander slammed into the ground again, rolling once more before coming to rest on his back, his breath cutting off completely for a moment before returning with difficulty. Richard gave him no time to recover, closing the distance with two quick steps, grabbing him by the arm this time, lifting him into the air in front of the entire crowd, then tossing him aside like a worthless sack of dirt.
Every throw was like a silent announcement directed at everyone watching: this boy isn’t even worth the effort of fighting seriously.
Scattered murmurs rose from the crowd, some carrying pity, others faint laughter from the westerners who’d begun regaining their confidence in Richard after that moment of doubt.
Richard looked at him from where he stood, Alexander having fallen for the third time just a few steps away, his body trembling more from exhaustion than pain, then said in a cold voice carrying no trace of that curiosity he’d shown just moments earlier:
*"That’s enough. I won’t let you stand again."*
He raised his glowing fist high, his dark veins pulsing again with force gathered from somewhere within him, ready to end this with one final, irreversible blow.
Alexander searched with his exhausted eyes for anything he could use to defend himself, and found his sword lying several steps away, far beyond the reach of his outstretched hand on the ground.
*No time to crawl to it... I’ll die before I even touch it.*
And in that exact moment, the memory came back to him without warning; that besieged alley, the smell of exploding stone, and his father pressing his palms together before his chest in that slow, ritual motion before speaking that strange word, summoning his black sword from nothingness itself.
*Appear... that’s how he did it. He just pressed his hands together, and called it.*
He didn’t think it through — there wasn’t time to think at all. Alexander pressed his hands together in front of his chest with a trembling motion, barely able to hold them steady from sheer exhaustion, and closed his eyes for a single moment, summoning the weight of that sword between his fingers as though it had never once left them.
*"Appear."*
Richard lunged in that exact same moment, his fist cutting through the air toward Alexander’s head at a speed that allowed no further thought.
But Alexander’s hands opened at exactly the right moment, and the sword suddenly materialized between them, its familiar weight returning to his palm as though it had never left, and the transformed blade, with its new glowing lines, was already raised directly in front of him in a vertical position just as Richard threw the full weight of his body into the lunge.
Alexander hadn’t planned a strike, hadn’t even meant to aim the blade with any precision, but it was Richard’s own momentum that completed the motion; the sword drove into the middle of his stomach with a thick, sickening sound, piercing muscle and skin with terrifying ease, until it settled deep between his lower ribs.
Richard stopped abruptly, his swollen body freezing in place, his eyes widening in total disbelief as he stared down at the blade buried in his stomach, as though he couldn’t accept what he was seeing despite having driven himself onto it with his own momentum.
A short, heavy silence fell over the entire arena, before the crowd erupted in one wave of shocked screaming.
Richard staggered back a step, then another, his legs gradually losing their footing, while blood poured from the deep wound without stopping, staining the ground beneath him with a dark line that widened with every stumbling step. The dark veins on his body hadn’t vanished entirely yet, but they’d lost that powerful pulse they’d carried throughout the duel, as though the wound itself had drawn out the last remnants of that borrowed power.
Richard finally fell to his knees, then onto his side, his swollen body gradually losing its fullness in front of everyone, returning to its normal size like something deflating of trapped air.
*I did it... I didn’t even know I could do that.*
From his seat, William rose with a sudden motion, not even realizing he’d done it, his eyes wider than anyone who knew him had ever seen. That rising wasn’t from open joy, but something closer to pure shock, as though part of him still refused to believe what he’d just witnessed.
*Appear... he summoned the sword the exact same way he saw me do it, once, in a dark alley he shouldn’t have been able to remember the details of this precisely. Where did he get this from? I never taught him that.*
Beside him, Daron had risen unconsciously as well, his mouth slightly open, his gloved left hand pressing involuntarily against the edge of his seat until it let out a faint wooden creak.
*"Did you see that, Father? He never trained for this... I didn’t teach him that, and neither did you."*
William didn’t answer, staying silent, his eyes still fixed on his son’s transformed sword, and those glowing lines that had begun pulsing more visibly now that they’d tasted fresh blood.
As for the mother, her hand had risen to cover her mouth since that last fall and hadn’t lowered since, her distant eyes darting quickly between her son lying on the ground and the blood pouring from Richard’s arm, as though trying to decide which sight deserved more of her worry.
From his elevated platform, Prince Gabriel had already stood, not with that boyish excitement he’d shown earlier, but with something calmer and deeper, a slow smile beginning to form on his lips as his fingers finally relaxed from the edge of his wooden seat.
*"I told you... I told all of you the first fight reveals the truth."*
He said it without raising his voice much, directing his words more toward the nobles around him than the arena itself, while his eyes never left Alexander lying in the dirt, that sharp curiosity that had begun settling in them since the first glowing strike of the duel.
The King, meanwhile, remained seated with his usual stillness behind his white mask, but his head tilted slightly toward the arena this time — a small motion, enough to tell his son, seated beside him moments ago and now standing, that even that silent man behind the cold metal had found something in this boy worth his full attention.
In the middle of the arena, Richard staggered back another step, then another, his legs gradually losing their footing, while blood continued pouring from his arm without stopping, staining the ground beneath him with a dark line that widened with every stumbling step. The dark veins on his body hadn’t vanished entirely yet, but they’d lost that powerful pulse they’d carried throughout the duel, as though the wound itself had drawn out the last remnants of that borrowed power.
Richard finally fell to his knees, then onto his side, his swollen body gradually losing its fullness in front of everyone, returning to its normal size like something deflating of trapped air.
He lay there, a few steps from Alexander, and turned his head slowly toward him, his glassy eyes barely able to focus while blood still flowed from his arm into the dirt beneath him.
He looked at Alexander for a long moment, at that boy lying on the ground too, exhausted, his own blood mixing with the arena’s dirt on his cracked lips and bruised face.
*"Your blood... it looks exactly like mine."*
He said it in a faint voice, barely reaching Alexander’s ears over the rising noise of the crowd, as though he’d just discovered a simple truth he’d spent his whole life believing was impossible.
*"I thought the blood of the strong had to be different... a different color, a different weight. But it’s exactly the same color."*
He closed his eyes after that — not entirely losing consciousness, but a calm surrender to the exhaustion that had finally overtaken his body — leaving that last sentence hanging in the air between them, while the referee rushed toward the middle of the arena, announcing the end of the duel amid the crowd’s screaming, which hadn’t quieted since the moment of that final strike.