The air was thick with tension, as if fate itself were hanging by a razor's edge. But Brann didn't draw his blade. He didn't need to. He simply turned slightly, his steel-gray eyes locking onto Gaël's with a chilling intensity, a gaze heavier than a thousand words. "Win me some real battles," he said, his voice calm, almost weary.
Gaël felt his breath catch. The idea struck him like a punch to the gut. 'Me, fight in the arena?' He searched Brann's face for a hint of hesitation, a trace of mockery hidden behind that mask of indifference. There was none. Only that ruthless expectation, that implacable certainty that defined the man standing before him.
Brann never joked.
Slowly, Gaël felt the weight of the challenge settle onto his shoulders. His fists clenched involuntarily. The arena...He could already see it: the blood-stained sand, the roar of the hungry crowd, the screams of agony lost among the cheers. It wasn't just a battleground, it was a yawning abyss where one entered as a warrior and left as either a corpse... or a legend.
A voice, smooth and mocking, sliced through the heavy silence. "Well then, kid?" she purred, tracing an invisible circle on the counter with a fingernail.
"Are you a dog who follows his master's orders, or do you have a fighter's fire burning inside you?"
Gaël's cheeks flushed with anger at the provocation. He opened his mouth to answer, but Brann cut him off sharply.
"He won't fight to prove anything to the people of Valombre, or to Valérian," Brann said.
Silence fell like a blade. Gaël turned toward the man he considered his master.
"Oh?" the woman teased, a glimmer of curiosity in her eyes. "Then you don't trust him? Or are you afraid he'll disappoint you?"
Brann didn't take the bait. He leaned casually against the counter, his gaze never wavering from the woman's.
"Tell Valérian I have nothing to prove. Neither does he." His words hung in the air. "This little test of his, just to earn an audience? It's pathetic. I'm only agreeing because I already intended to throw Gaël into the arena, to sharpen his blade against your pitiful fighters. Valombre loves a show, doesn't it?"
The woman narrowed her eyes, like a panther sizing up a stubborn prey.
"The crowd does love to see blood spill, that's true." A sly smile curled her lips. "Why not fight yourself, then? Is your blade still sharp enough?"
"Because they don't deserve to see my blade."
This time, she laughed, a low, velvety sound, almost enchanting.
"A tired wolf who refuses to bite. What a shame."
Gaël's jaw tensed. He didn't like the way her words dripped with contempt for Brann, thinly veiled behind her smile. "I'll fight," Gaël declared.
The woman nodded slowly, clearly pleased.
"At last, a brave decision." She approached Gaël, lightly brushing his chin with the tip of her fingers.
"You'll fight for both of you, then. Very well. But beware, little wolf. The arena offers no mercy. You won't have the luxury of mistakes."
She turned on her heel, her black dress slicing the air like a blade of shadow.
"Follow me. We have a battle to arrange."
Gaël moved to follow, his heart hammering like a war drum, when Brann's voice, calm and final, froze him in place.
"If you prove yourself better than those so-called heirs to my blade… then perhaps I'll take you as my apprentice."
He paused, then added, his tone devoid of emotion: "If not... our paths will part here."
The weight of the challenge dropped fully onto Gaël. There was no turning back now.
He took a deep breath, and made his first step toward the arena.
_ _ _
Brann stared down at the arena below, his steel gaze sweeping over the deserted stands and the pit of sand, blackened by countless battles. His eyes didn't see the damp-stained walls or the flickering torches casting restless shadows.
He saw only memories.
The clash of blades, the torn cries of the defeated, the metallic tang of blood soaking into the dust. He had fought here, once.
After he left the Brothers of the Blade.
After the betrayal, after the blood that had sealed his exile.
Back then, he was nothing. A broken man, wandering without purpose, his sword stripped of meaning. It was here that he had been reforged. It was here that Brann Erathorn had died, and where Brann, the Umbra Drinker, had been born.
This arena… more than any other place, it embodied the raw truth of the world. And it embodied himself just as well: a shard of the Severance plunging into an abyss of darkness. A pit where calamity slept, best left undisturbed.
His own Severance had sunk into the Umbra too. He had fed upon it, cut through it to avoid losing himself, faced it down to remain who he was, forever teetering on the blade's edge without falling into madness.
Shouts and muttered voices rose in the stands, scattering like pebbles across a pond, but Brann remained still, anchored in his thoughts. He had seen the bloody gleam in the eyes of the woman who had welcomed them in the Umbromancer's stead. A fighter. Violence clung to her aura; her step carried the mark of those who had walked the sands without ever fearing they might not walk back out. She wanted to face him. He had felt it the moment their eyes met. She bore the ferocity of survivors.
But she lacked the intent.
She could kill, no doubt. She could dance in the blood of her foes, her body sculpted by battle and the predatory instinct. But she didn't have the will that the Sword bestowed. She could have been a fearsome warrior, but a BladeSister? Impossible. The Blade chose only its Brothers. And there had never been room for anything else but the blade and those who served it.
His thoughts drifted back to Gaël. Now it was his turn to prove himself. The path of the Severance wasn't measured by how many bodies you could cut down. It wasn't in slicing stones, or air, or even corrupted beasts, that one's worth was proven. It was in facing another's will. It was in holding someone's gaze without flinching, without breaking, without falling apart. It was in imposing your own will upon a world desperate to crush you.
Brann knew what awaited Gaël. The early matches of the day drew few spectators: a handful of addicted gamblers, a few lost souls looking for a jolt of violence before the city fully awoke. The stands plunging down toward the pit, a tangle of grimy stone and rusted iron, were nearly empty.
But when the sun began to sink, when the shadows stretched across ValOmbre, everything would change. For the night was the true domain of this pit.
That was when Lameclaire itself would descend in secret, cloaked in shadow. The wealthy of the High City, the ones who pretended the arena didn't exist, who preached order and justice in their gilded parlors, would become ravenous spectators, their identities hidden beneath dark cloaks. Under the veil of anonymity, they indulged. They craved it, the real show of ValOmbre, the one they barely dared to name.
Brann knew Gaël wasn't ready. And yet, he would have to be.
Brann gazed once more at the arena, then exhaled, almost to himself: "Kid, this is where your real fight begins."