The mirrored glass beneath Lucien's feet didn't just reflect his form — it reflected possibility.
Aerenya's spell wasn't meant to trap.
It was meant to test reality.
The moment Lucien stepped upon it, the reflection blinked — and from the mirror rose a perfect copy of him, clad in identical robes, casting the same spell he had prepared.
Lucien didn't flinch.
He didn't blink.
He accelerated.
Three of his magic circles collapsed into a single nexus, and he spoke a name — not a spell, a name — stolen from a language only divine relics remembered.
The mirrored clone combusted in golden fire.
Aerenya's eyes narrowed.
"You speak the Old Light?" she said, her voice colder than her usual elegance.
Lucien answered by walking through the fire like a man who had never known fear.
"You insulted me," he said, voice low. "You spoke of magic as art. But this world isn't a gallery."
He lifted a hand.
The sky darkened.
Lightning shaped itself into calligraphy — each bolt a character from a forgotten scripture.
"This world is a battlefield."
The Dragonoid Young Lord laughed — but blood spilled with every laugh now. His jaw hung slightly askew, reset improperly from Kael's earlier strike.
His weapon, shaped of dragonfire and blood, screamed through the air. Each swing left trails of vaporized stone. Kael dodged barely, narrowly, but always forward.
No flourish.
No wasted movement.
Just intent to destroy.
The Dragonoid raised a clawed hand for a breath attack — and Kael moved.
Faster than before.
Not like a martial artist — like a weapon drawn by instinct.
His elbow shattered ribs.
His knee crushed flesh against spine.
And his voice came low, rasped:
"Too slow."
The Dragonoid, bleeding from five points, staggered. For a heartbeat — a single one — his eyes showed something new.
Fear.
He roared and surged again, but it was no longer a game.
Kael wasn't fighting to win.
He was fighting to end.
Magic and Madness
Aerenya floated now — wind bound to her heels, hair silver-white and wild. She raised her hands and sang.
Not words. Not spells.
A song of the Worldroots — a spell not taught, but inherited.
Lucien's spells met it head-on, but the magic was different now. Hers came with sorrow. Regret. Memory of forests lost and brothers buried beneath steel.
A tree erupted between them — old as the stars, its branches gilded with aurora.
Lucien sent meteors into its trunk.
The tree didn't burn.
He gritted his teeth.
"Stop playing with me," he snapped.
Aerenya answered with one word:
"Bleed."
Across the Battlefield
Selene stumbled.
She had run far, far beyond the first trees. But the light behind her hadn't dimmed. If anything — it grew stronger.
She turned, against every instinct, just in time to see:
Kael catch the Dragonoid's blade with bare hands, aura pouring from his arms like rivers of blue fire.
Lucien split the sky in half — and lightning rained down with such force it shattered the horizon.
Aerenya scream something in a language she wasn't supposed to remember — and the trees answered, bending reality in waves of emerald distortion.
And then—
The Dragonoid Lord dropped to a knee.
A tooth fell from his mouth.
His weapon dimmed.
His smile cracked.
He looked up at Kael, hatred now eclipsed by something else.
Recognition.
"You're not human," he said softly. "You're something born when the world forgot to care."
Kael didn't speak.
His aura expanded, black and blue, forming the shape of a massive silhouette behind him — not a god, but a shadow of something older.
Kael exhaled.
And punched.
One strike.
The Dragonoid Lord flew backward — and through four trees, skidding across dirt and rock until he stopped, coughing blood that shimmered red-gold.
He didn't rise.
He laughed again.
But he didn't rise.
On the Other Side
Lucien bled now. Thin cuts on his cheeks. Burn marks on his sleeves. The sky still obeyed him — but it resisted.
Aerenya, too, had begun to tremble. Her magic grew wild. Less graceful.
They had stopped trying to win.
Now, they tried to survive each other.
Lucien raised his hand.
Nine circles became twelve.
Aerenya's hair lifted. Tears streaked her face.
"I don't want to kill you," she whispered.
Lucien responded with the gentlest of smiles.
"I know."
The Moment Breaks
Kael stood over the Dragonoid Lord's fallen body — and looked up.
Lucien and Aerenya stood too far apart — but their powers reached too far.
Kael's eyes widened a fraction.
Their next spells would collide.
And if they did—
The forest would die.
The sky would break.
And Selene wouldn't outrun it.
Kael didn't think.
He moved.
Faster than sound.
Faster than thought.
He shot forward like a blade unsheathed from reality, black and blue aura streaking behind him.
Lucien's eyes widened.
Aerenya gasped.
Kael stood between them.
As the smoke and magic fade from the battlefield, champions lie broken, exhausted or victorious. The crowd across the continents cheers. The world believes it's over.
But deep beneath the arena — beneath the soil, the stone, and the runes...
Six presences stir.
"Now," one whispers. "While the light is busy admiring itself."
In the distance, the Dragonoid laughs mid-battle, his weapon clashing with Kael's knee. Aerenya hurls another glyph toward Lucien, barely holding ground.
None of them realize—
The real enemies are already here.
Like death incarnate, the demons move.
Not in open battle.
But like hunters.
Their targets: the remaining champions.
One by one, they fall — vanished in bursts of red smoke or cursed runes. All while the final four are locked in their duel of pride and blood.
Until…
A scream.
Then another.
The Dragonoid falters. His weapon disintegrates mid-swing, his body bound in black flame, symbols crawling up his skin. He grits his teeth, roaring — and vanishes into the void.
Aerenya turns, sensing it too late. A demon slides out from behind her shadow. She utters a ward, but she's not fast enough.
She's next.
Kael's back straightens mid-punch.
He doesn't look. He knows.
He ducks a swing before it comes, sidestepping a cursed blade with inch-perfect instinct. His aura flares — primal, sharpened by death.
Lucien isn't so lucky.
Two demons converge on him mid-cast. One targets his glyphs. The other his neck.
He doesn't have time to dodge both—
"LUCien—!"
Selene's voice.
Then: impact.
A shield spell doesn't block it.
Her body does.
Light flashes. Selene is thrown back, body marked with the rune of disqualification. She disappears, unconscious — eliminated.
Lucien stares. Silent.
Kael catches his breath, watching the demons circle.
The crystal feeds go silent across nations.
Elves. Dragonoids. Beastfolk. Even the demons' own agents watching from afar.
Only two humans remain.
And six demon champions now stand tall — surrounding them.
"So this is how it ends."
"Humanity falls again."
Kael — bloodied, bruised, breathing fire — grins.
Lucien glances sideways, still silent from Selene's fall.
Kael raises a single eyebrow.
"Wanna decide who gets to end this?"
Lucien exhales.
"You're resting?"
Kael shrugs. "no way."
Lucien chuckles. Then?
They both raise a fist.
Rock.
Paper.
Scissors.
Lucien wins.
He steps forward, unbuttoning the last of his scorched robe.
"Twenty minutes."
"No more."
Lucien's ninefold circle spins in the air, faster than before. Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
The demons charge.
And the world sees what it truly means to be a Sovereign-born human.
He doesn't run.
He walks — spell circles stacking like a constellation behind him.
One demon lunges — vaporized by a single lance of sovereign flame.
Another shifts through shadows — trapped in a mirrored prism that compresses until gone.
The third opens a void — and is dragged into it, screaming, by Lucien's reversed tether spell.
Three gone in five minutes.
Kael eats a fruit casually, watching from the arena's edge.
"Twelve minutes left," Kael mutters. "He's showboating."
Lucien dances through spells, eyes calm, his fury buried under precision. For Selene. For humanity.
At the 19-minute mark, the last demon — larger, crowned, more twisted than the others — roars and leaps.
Lucien steps forward.
Whispers one word.
His magic folds.
A singularity forms — and the demon is gone.
The island — the world — is dead silent.
Then a roar.
Not of monsters.
But of nations.
Humans… won?
Kael walks up, pats Lucien on the shoulder.
"Told you."
Lucien wipes his face.
"We weren't fourth."
Kael smirks.
"We just weren't born yet."
Lucien and Kael standing alone.
All other factions eliminated.
The human flag raised.
A world changed.