Leon's POV
I stood on the platform with my hands resting loosely at my sides, staring across at the man who would decide whether I moved forward—or walked off as just another name scratched out of the bracket.
This was my last match for the preliminaries.
The one that determined who would step into the semifinals.
You'd think I'd feel nervous. Maybe a little tense. Maybe dramatic music would start playing somewhere in the background.
But what I really felt was… different.
The air itself felt heavier than usual. It was not suffocating, just charged. Like the second before a thunderstorm cracks the sky open. The kind of pressure that makes even the loudest people lower their voices without realizing it.
And there were a lot of people.
More than usual.
