While the entire crowd assumed everything was over, and waves of applause had already begun rising from every direction celebrating Alexander’s seemingly certain victory, some of those in the front rows felt something shift in the air itself — a faint change in the silence that had followed Richard’s collapse, as though the arena hadn’t finished saying everything it had to say.
A single sound rose, breaking that early celebration.
Richard rose with sudden fury, the sword still buried in his stomach, blood pouring heavily around the blade lodged in his body, but his eyes burned with something deeper than pain — something closer to a total refusal to accept that he could be defeated this way, in front of all these people, by a boy whose name he hadn’t known a week ago.
He lunged at Alexander with heavy, stumbling steps, his body swaying with every motion, but his remaining strength was enough to seize the stunned Alexander’s throat before he could pull away, lifting him off the ground with one trembling hand.
*"Die, you bastard."*
His fingers pressed with savage force around Alexander’s neck, and Alexander began losing air gradually, his eyes widening as he tried uselessly to tear that iron grip away, his lungs screaming for a breath that wouldn’t come, the world around him beginning to dissolve into fading spots of light at the edges of his vision.
*I can’t... I can’t breathe.*
Darkness began creeping in from the corners of his eyes toward the center, the screaming crowd’s noise fading into a distant, muffled hum, and he felt his body gradually losing its ability to resist.
And in that final moment, right before the darkness swallowed him whole, his left hand moved on its own, with no conscious decision, no thought, as though some separate part of his body had decided to save him in its own way. He tore the glove off his hand with a quick, violent motion, then struck Richard’s face directly.
His hand glowed with that sharp red light, and a single touch was all it took.
Richard’s grip loosened instantly around his neck, and his body began crumbling apart before everyone’s eyes, starting with the half of his face that Alexander’s hand had touched directly — the skin turning to fine gray dust scattering into the air — and that evaporation spread with terrifying speed across the rest of his body, his swollen muscles, his dark veins, all of that transformation he’d gained moments earlier began falling away like fine ash scattering over the arena’s dirt, until nothing remained of Richard but a small pile of gray dust where he’d been standing seconds before.
Alexander dropped to the ground gasping for air, alone now, with no trace of his opponent left except that scattered ash around him.
Alexander looked down at his left hand, still bare of its glove, and at that remaining ash before him, and felt something warring inside him; on one side, that instinctive gratitude toward the hand that had just saved his life without him ever asking it to, and on the other, a cold shiver creeping into his stomach as he realized he no longer looked at that hand as part of himself, but as something separate — a weapon that asked no questions, made no distinctions, knew nothing but the complete annihilation of everything it touched.
*It saved me... but it didn’t leave him any chance, didn’t even leave him a body to bury. I didn’t ask it to do that.*
He looked at that hand now with something closer to hatred, as though it were a stranger living attached to his body, serving him when it wanted to and overstepping every boundary whenever it pleased, without him holding any real authority over it.
A total silence fell over the entire arena, heavier than any scream heard that whole day. Even the wind seemed to stop, as though thousands of staring eyes had all failed to process what they’d just witnessed.
Some faces in the crowd recoiled in visible terror, mothers covering their young children’s eyes, men stepping back as though that red light had touched them too from a distance. Others stood frozen, unable to even move, as though their bodies refused to believe what their eyes had just seen.
Among the rows of priests, Alexander noticed that man in the red robe watching him with an interest entirely different from any look before — no fear in it, no condemnation like the rest of the crowd, but a calm, calculating scrutiny, as though he were recording every detail of that scene in his memory to return to later, his eyes never leaving that bare left hand.
From among the western representatives’ rows, that heavily built man with the carefully trimmed beard rose — the one who’d been watching Richard all day with the look of a man calculating a long-term investment’s return, not an ordinary spectator’s gaze. He rose with a sharpness no one had ever known in him before, his voice cutting through that heavy silence with an anger he made no attempt to hide, his face flushed red even beneath his trimmed beard, his fingers gripping the edge of the wooden platform in front of him until the knuckles went white.
*"This is forbidden! He used his left hand!"*
The word had barely left his mouth before he took another step forward, as though the anger itself pushed him ahead without his awareness.
*"Did you all see what he did? He didn’t even leave a body! A boy from our own region, one of the best the western lands ever produced, and now he’s turned to ash in front of all our eyes in seconds, as though he’d never existed at all!"*
His voice rose further, and he pointed his hand directly at Alexander lying in the dirt.
*"This boy carries a power that should never exist at all — a power with no mercy, no negotiation, leaving no trace behind. If we don’t stop him now, Richard won’t be the last one turned to dust between his hands."*
The word had barely left his mouth before other voices rose from the same rows in support, some pointing fingers directly at Alexander lying on the ground, others shouting angry, half-intelligible words amid the rising commotion.
That accusation didn’t go unanswered. From the northern rows, another man rose with equal speed, his voice just as sharp, the veins in his neck standing out from sheer anger.
*"That was self-defense! He was being strangled in front of all of you! Was he supposed to die by strangulation out of respect for duel rules no one even respects anymore, after that noble boy lifted his opponent into the air three times without a sword?"*
The heavily built man answered immediately, not giving silence a single chance.
*"Richard was fighting with his body alone, not with magic that erases existence from the ground up! There’s a difference between being defeated in a duel and being erased from it as though you’d never existed. Tell me, where does someone who dies like that go? No body, no grave, not even enough ash to bury with dignity. Is this the justice you want me to accept?"*
An argument erupted between the two sides, voices overlapping each other, hands rising into the air with agitation, until some in attendance seemed on the verge of stepping toward the other side, held back only by the Templars scattered among the rows.
But a third voice, from another part of the crowd, rose in objection with a calmer but no less decisive tone, the voice of a man who clearly held deeper knowledge of that power’s nature.
*"This is impossible in the first place. He can’t use his left hand yet... he hasn’t come of age. It requires a full Blessing, and he hasn’t received one yet. What we just witnessed wasn’t just self-defense — it’s a power a boy his age shouldn’t be able to possess at all."*
Everyone fell silent for a moment at hearing that remark, as though an entirely new question had suddenly opened up, far more dangerous than a simple debate over duel rules, before the murmurs rose again, more tense this time, conflicting voices questioning, accusing, defending, until the entire crowd seemed on the verge of splitting into warring factions in an arena that had, moments earlier, been celebrating a simple village boy’s win.
The heavily built man took advantage of that rising doubt, stepping forward again toward the royal platform, his voice colder and more decisive than before.
*"We demand justice for Richard. Cut off that boy’s left hand."*
That sentence froze everything for a moment, even the rising murmurs suddenly stopped, as though the entire crowd were holding its breath, waiting to see how the family would respond to a demand this blunt.
William didn’t wait another moment. He rose from his seat in one silent motion, his hand settling on the hilt of his black sword without drawing it yet, and stepped forward twice toward the edge of his family’s platform, standing between his son lying in the dirt and that crowd rising in anger.
*"No one touches my son’s hand."*
He said it in a calm voice, but one carrying enough weight to reach the heavily built man despite the distance between them, then added, his eyes never leaving the other man’s face:
*"My son was being strangled to death in front of thousands of eyes. He didn’t ask for that power, didn’t train for it, didn’t even know it existed within him until this very moment. And you’re asking me to cut off his hand because it saved his life?"*
The heavily built man answered sharply, not backing down an inch.
*"Your son killed a boy from the west without even leaving him a body to bury, William! I don’t care whether that hand saved him or not — what matters to me is that this power exists, and that it makes no distinction between an opponent in a duel and any other person that hand decides to touch on an angry day. Do you want me to wait until that hand touches someone who doesn’t deserve that fate?"*
*"My son doesn’t yet control that hand, that’s true,"* William replied without raising his voice, *"but he’ll never learn to control it while missing it entirely. Things will only grow more dangerous, not safer, if you cut it off now."*
The heavily built man looked at him for a long moment, as though weighing those words, then said in a slightly calmer voice, though not without a veiled threat:
*"Then what do you suggest? That we let a boy with no control over his power walk among us, and all wait for his mood to decide who’s next?"*
*"I suggest he be tried fairly, not out of the anger of a man who lost a boy from his own region in a fighting arena everyone knows permits killing. Richard entered that arena to kill my son, not to shake his hand."*
Some of the voices demanding justice quieted at that last sentence, but the heavily built man didn’t back down, raising his voice further, addressing the royal platform directly this time, unbothered by that silent threat.
*"We demand an official ruling! No single family can decide what’s just and what isn’t, no matter how much weight that family’s name carries in this land!"*
The voices rose again, sharper this time, until the arena seemed on the verge of erupting into real chaos, men stepping forward, knights placing their hands on their sword hilts in preparation for any escalation, while Daron had risen behind his father, his face carrying an anger he’d never shown before, his left hand clenched beneath its glove with enough force to tell any careful observer that he too was resisting an overwhelming urge to intervene.
Only then, without any preamble, did the King raise his hand.
One simple motion, barely noticeable behind that rigid white mask, but enough to freeze the entire arena in place, as though a single sound had come from a thousand throats and then suddenly cut off.
Prince Gabriel rose slowly, his delicate face having lost every trace of that smile that had accompanied him all day, replacing it with a cold seriousness no one had ever seen in him before.
*"Nothing will be cut off tonight."*
He said it in a calm voice, but one carrying enough weight to reach the farthest point of that suddenly silent crowd.
*"This will be settled in a closed council, tomorrow, before the priests and the judges. For now, let’s get the wounded off this field before we lose any more blood tonight."*
He gave a small hand signal, and the King’s guards moved toward Alexander, lying motionless in the dirt, while the entire crowd remained suspended between temporary relief and unresolved anxiety, as though everyone had realized that what began as an ordinary duel between two boys had suddenly turned into a matter that could shake the fragile balance between all four regions.