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The Warborn Academy was not a school. It was a battlefield wearing the mask of education. Its halls were paved with ambition, its walls echoed with bloodlines, and its students walked like wolves among prey.
And for first-years, the Mockery Games were their introduction.
"They call it tradition," whispered Amaris Thorne, her voice a low hiss in the dim dormitory. "But it's just the first culling."
Liora sat on the edge of her narrow cot, hands folded neatly in her lap. "What happens if you lose?"
Amaris gave a humorless smile. "You get laughed at for the rest of your life—assuming you have one afterward."
The other girls in the room gave Liora sideways glances, some openly sneering. She wasn't like them. Not tall or muscular or brandishing an heirloom sword. She was quiet, her accent unfamiliar, her eyes too sharp for someone who looked so fragile.
She ignored them all.
"Do they let you use magic?" she asked softly.
"If you have it," Amaris said. "But use it wrong, and you'll make yourself a target. Just survive. That's what matters."
Liora didn't reply. She didn't need to survive.
She needed to be seen just enough to be underestimated.
---
By morning, the stone coliseum groaned with anticipation. Students filled the high stands, some with face paint in house colors, others cheering names Liora didn't recognize. The older students placed bets and laughed. Below, the first-years stood in a trembling line on the sand-swept arena floor.
Liora's fingers were cold. Her mind was not.
She counted the movement of clouds overhead. Watched how the wind stirred the mist curling over the maze walls that had begun to rise from the ground. Every detail mattered.
A voice boomed from above, magically enhanced. Headmaster Kael, grim and statuesque in his onyx robes.
"Warborn welcomes its newest aspirants," he said. "Today you are not students. You are potential. Weakness will be carved away. You will show us what bleeds—and what endures."
Riven Thornhart sat with the Bladeward Council above the arena, legs relaxed, expression unreadable. But his eyes, sharp and black, never strayed from Liora.
She didn't look up.
The ground beneath their feet trembled. Stone shifted. Walls rose in a circular pattern, locking students inside a multi-tiered maze. Illusions sparked to life—spectral beasts, enchanted traps, collapsing paths.
"The rules," Kael said, "are simple: survive for one hour. Or surrender."
The horn sounded.
And the Mockery Games began.
---
The moment chaos erupted, Liora moved.
She darted left while most ran straight. A pair of boys immediately started fighting each other. Another girl screamed as a shadow-beast leapt from a corner. A massive student swung a spiked mace at anything that moved.
Liora climbed.
She found a ledge, jumped to a half-collapsed wall, and crouched low. She mapped the arena in her mind. Not just the shape—but the flow. Where students were grouping. Where the noise drew beasts. Where the traps hadn't reset.
A jagged slab of stone broke away beside her. She didn't flinch. The illusion spell had been sloppy—projected rage, not actual threat.
She moved again. She didn't strike. She watched.
One boy used fire magic too early and passed out from the drain. Another tried to teleport through a barrier and reappeared midair—only to fall into a pit of iron thorns.
Riven Thornhart watched from above with a faint smirk.
"She runs from every fight," scoffed one of his council. "Coward."
"She thinks she's clever," another said.
But Riven wasn't so quick to dismiss her. His gaze followed her with calculating interest.
"She hasn't made a mistake yet," he said. "Not one."
---
In the depths of the maze, Liora entered a chamber of mirrors. She blinked—and saw a hundred versions of herself reflected back. Each one subtly different. Some frightened, others furious. One version even bled from the eyes.
It was a soul-ward. A mind trap.
She closed her eyes.
She waited.
One breath. Two. Three.
When she opened them again, only one path remained. The illusions had vanished. The trap had fed on her mind—but found no fear to twist. Only purpose.
---
Forty minutes in, only a third of the students remained standing.
Some had fled to the outer edge of the maze, clinging to safety. Others were unconscious. One girl had summoned a lightning storm so wild it short-circuited half the runes in the arena—and collapsed, shaking from the backlash.
Liora moved like smoke.
She helped no one.
But she harmed no one either.
She let others draw attention. Let the chaos devour itself.
It wasn't courage.
It was control.
And above, Riven Thornhart found himself... intrigued.
"Not a drop of magic," he murmured.
"Maybe she has none," said Callan Vorth.
Riven didn't respond. But something in her steps—measured, calculated, unyielding—told him otherwise.
This girl wasn't hiding a lack of power.
She was hiding something far worse.
---
The horn sounded at last, long and echoing.
The maze sank into the ground. The illusions vanished. The remaining students stumbled into view—bloody, bruised, panting.
Liora stepped from the mist without a single cut.
The silence was absolute.
She looked up at the stands. Straight at Riven.
Their eyes locked.
This time, neither looked away.
But Riven felt something coil inside him—a strange sense he couldn't name.
Interest.
Or maybe, for the first time in his life... a flicker of unease.
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