The sky over the Scaled Arena turned dark by the time the final match was announced.
Runes traced silver constellations overhead, marking the boundary of the event's arcane dome. Every spectator remained seated. No one left—not even for food. The tension was too sharp, the quiet before the duel too full.
In the coliseum below, lights focused into a single spotlight.
Instructor Varn's voice rose through the open air, amplified but calm.
"Final trial match. Class C Division. Roth Talveir… versus Toji Fushiguro."
The crowd reacted instantly.
Roth—favored to win since the qualifiers.
Toji—the anomaly, Echo-bound, unranked, unorthodox.
Kaela, seated with the other participants, watched Toji walk toward the platform. Her fingers clenched lightly around the fabric of her sleeve.
She didn't cheer.
But she didn't look away.
⸻
Roth stood at the opposite side of the ring. Tall. Golden-haired. Confidence in every breath. His longspear glowed with lightning-etched runes.
"You're not the only one with rare toys," he said, nodding at the Mnemo-Eye, already floating behind Toji.
Toji offered no reply.
The Eye blinked once. Then twice.
Then stopped spinning entirely.
Roth noticed.
"Your eye doesn't like me."
"It's not supposed to," Toji said.
Varn's hand went up.
"Begin."
⸻
Roth struck first—no hesitation, full-speed.
His spear arced with lightning. Toji dodged left, but the air screamed with voltage. A static barrier slammed into him. He rolled, came up in a crouch.
The Phantom Vector formed—half-shadow, half-light.
He didn't swing it.
He waited.
The Mnemo-Eye pulsed once.
Then again.
But something was off.
Its spiral iris had slowed—not spinning to anticipate Roth's moves. Instead, it trembled.
"Truth splintered," it whispered. "One of you has two outcomes."
Toji's eyes widened.
What does that mean?
Roth pressed the attack.
Three feints.
Two strikes.
A chain-lightning thrust that seared the arena tiles.
Toji blocked with Kareth—summoning the jackal-armor around him just in time.
Then he saw it:
Roth's stance—too loose.
Too unreadable.
Like he was hiding something.
The Mnemo-Eye whispered again.
"He is lying. But not to you. To himself."
⸻
Toji countered.
Blade met spear.
Clash. Step. Parry. Slide.
He didn't overpower Roth.
He didn't need to.
He moved in exact rhythms.
But the Eye pulsed violently—suddenly, erratically.
"The outcome is collapsing."
Toji stepped back.
"What's happening?" he whispered aloud.
Roth's aura flared.
He wasn't casting lightning now.
He was casting—shadow.
A second affinity.
One he had never revealed.
Toji's blood froze.
The Eye blinked.
"Impossible."
Toji stared.
"You're Echo-touched."
Roth said nothing.
But the blackness that rose from his arm… answered.
His shadow curled, not like a spell—but like something alive.
⸻
Spectators murmured.
Council members leaned forward.
Kaela stood without meaning to.
Toji gritted his teeth.
Two Echo-bound mages, in the same class?
That shouldn't be possible.
The Eye trembled.
Not in warning.
In recognition.
"He has a fragment. A lesser tether. Unstable. Born of fear, not choice."
Toji understood.
Roth hadn't forged his Echo.
He'd absorbed it.
Borrowed power. Fragmented truth.
And now it was breaking loose.
The shadow behind Roth cracked.
Screamed.
Not aloud—but through the tether.
A jagged figure split from him—humanoid, skeletal, broken. Its eyes were hollow runes.
Toji raised the Vector.
Kareth surged behind him.
The Eye spun faster.
"You must strike. If you don't—it will consume him."
Toji hesitated.
Then stepped forward.
A single strike.
Clean.
Precise.
It didn't wound.
It dispelled.
The fragment shrieked as it unraveled.
Roth dropped to one knee, breathing hard, eyes wide.
Toji stood over him.
Didn't raise his blade.
Didn't speak.
Just waited.
Roth looked up.
There was no hatred.
Only confusion.
And, maybe… a sliver of gratitude.
⸻
Varn raised his hand.
"Fushiguro. Victory."
⸻
The crowd didn't cheer right away.
They watched.
Measured.
Feared.
Then applause began—scattered, confused, but real.
In the top gallery, the Echo Council remained still.
One whispered to another:
"He recognized a broken tether."
"And he chose not to destroy it."
"He's more dangerous than we thought."
⸻
Later, outside the arena, Toji found a quiet corner beneath a marble archway.
The Eye hovered beside him—still trembling.
"What did I see?" he asked it.
The Mnemo-Eye whispered:
"The cost of borrowed power. And the danger of looking away."
Kaela approached.
She didn't speak at first.
Just stood beside him.
After a moment, she said softly:
"You could've ended it. Crushed him."
"I didn't need to."
"That's not what most people saw."
He looked at her grinning slightly .
"I'm not most people."
She smiled faintly.
"No. You really aren't."
——
The arena did not rest.
Less than a day after the final duel, the entire coliseum had shifted again. What was once a dueling pit was now an altered battleground—a landscape of stone platforms, forest-like runes, gravity pockets, and kinetic wards designed to destabilize the unprepared.
They called it: The Gauntlet of Dominion.
Unlike the first stage, this was not one-on-one.
It was warfare.
⸻
Toji stood at the assignment platform, eyes locked on the pulsing glyph board floating above the arena's edge.
Names aligned in glowing trios:
Team 4:
Toji Fushiguro
Kaela Vrenn
Levia Thorn
Team 9 (Opponents):
Roth Talveir
Cyrin Marr
Niko of Winterholt
The board rotated once, and Toji's eyes narrowed.
Cyrin—precise, patient, illusion-touched.
Roth—stable, if shaken. Dangerous if desperate.
But Niko… was unknown.
A new name. A foreign presence. Whispered rumors claimed she arrived from a northern spire academy. Her element was aether-sourced. Her Echo unconfirmed.
He tapped his thigh once.
Kaela approached from behind.
"Of all the people to end up on our team," she muttered, "you got me and Levia."
"I didn't pick."
"I know," she said. "That's what makes it worse."
He almost smiled.
Almost.
⸻
The field lit up with boundary lines.
Each team was assigned a zone to defend—a citadel core of floating crystal spires. Lose the core, and your team was eliminated. Capture your opponent's, and you advanced.
Toji, Kaela, and Levia stood in a tri-spike formation around their glowing pillar, while spectral copies of the battlefield hovered around them like maps in midair.
"We can't win this straight-up," Levia said. "Roth's tether is unstable, but he's still heavy offense."
"And Niko?" Kaela asked.
"Illusive pressure mage," Levia replied. "Supposedly. She fights like she's already two steps ahead."
"Then we go three ahead," Toji said quietly.
He summoned the Mnemo-Eye.
It flared into existence—larger this time. Spinning slowly. The spiral didn't stabilize.
Kaela blinked. "It's twitching."
"It's tracking all six of us," Toji muttered.
The Eye blinked once.
"Cyrin is projecting a false position. Roth's resolve is fractured. Niko… is veiled."
Toji frowned.
"Veiled?"
"Unknown affinity. Unknown alignment. Danger variable: rising."
⸻
The signal blared.
A single rune in the sky exploded with gold.
The Gauntlet began.
⸻
They moved fast—Kaela low, Levia high, Toji through the middle.
Their zone was forested stone, split by narrow ridges and cloaked elevation tricks. Magical foliage obscured a third of the crystal's path. Good for defense. Terrible for retreat.
Toji raised the Eye.
"Kaela—hold the core. Levia, take position on the outer cliffline and loop shots wide. I'll draw."
"Draw what?" Kaela asked.
"The lie."
Then he vanished into the brush.
⸻
Cyrin struck first—three mirage clones, each masked by smoke and shadowlight. All were armed with illusion-bound daggers. They moved with intent, but not lethal edge.
Toji watched from above, crouched on a rune-grown tree limb.
The Eye pulsed.
"Left clone holds aether signature. The others are projection."
He dropped, silent.
A single arc from the Phantom Vector erased the false image.
Cyrin spun—but not in surprise.
In response.
"You really are as fast as they say."
"And you're slower than you think," Toji said.
They clashed—blade to illusory dagger, step to feint.
But it was a distraction.
Toji looked up—through the Eye's lens.
Niko was already inside the perimeter.
⸻
Kaela stood with her staff lowered.
She hadn't seen Niko move.
One moment, the core shimmered untouched.
The next—snow.
Actual snow.
The ground flash-froze in a ring around the crystal. Kaela slipped, instinctually casting a support anchor.
But it was already too late.
Niko appeared from within a shimmer field—slender, white-bladed spear in hand, Echo forming behind her like a mirror-frosted version of herself.
Her eyes glowed silver.
Kaela raised her staff—fired two quick rune bolts.
Niko walked through them.
Ice laced her movements. Each deflection carved runes in the air.
Then Kaela saw it.
Behind Niko—no shadow.
No tether.
Just ice.
⸻
Toji reached the ridge in two bounds.
The Eye spun violently.
"Warning: Niko's Echo is not singular. Not bound. Not hers."
"What?" he whispered.
"She channels a memory not her own."
⸻
Niko turned toward him.
They'd never spoken.
But her expression was already reading him.
"I've heard of you," she said. "You're not the one they fear. You're just the one that got here first."
She raised her hand.
Toji raised the Vector.
The battlefield froze.
Literally.
She cast a radial flash—a dome of aether-frost that slowed time perception, then stabbed directly into the tether link.
Kareth emerged.
Armor, jackal-eyed, leaping into position.
They collided—Kareth against the mirrored Echo.
Toji moved under their shadow.
His first strike missed.
She countered with a backstep and thrust.
A slice of frost scored across his cheek.
The Eye flickered.
"Her Echo isn't stable. It's symbiotic. It listens to her—but it remembers someone else."
Toji parried low.
"Whose memory?"
"Unknown."
⸻
Behind him, Levia fired.
A scattershot of explosive glyphs.
Niko spun—her ice-blade dissolving.
She retreated—melting into cold air like she was never there.
Kaela rushed in to regroup.
"You okay?"
Toji nodded, jaw tight. "She doesn't fight to win. She fights to teach."
Levia landed beside them. "Teach what?"
Toji stared toward the horizon.
"The cost of sharing someone else's Echo."
⸻
The round hadn't ended.
But something else had started.
He could feel it.
So could the Mnemo-Eye.
It blinked three times.
"Tether resonance breach detected. Six signals unstable. One expanding."
Toji's eyes widened.
"Niko is drawing us into an Echo-weave."