The board finished shuffling, and when the name beneath mine finally settled into place, I recognized it immediately: AMAYA FAWN. For a second I thought I had read it wrong, but then I looked across the training room and saw the same girl from the hallway earlier, the one who had been walking beside Reyna and had ended our conversation before Nadia could somehow stretch thirty seconds into five minutes.
Amaya looked up at the board, saw my name above hers, and barely reacted. She simply stood, adjusted the sleeves of her training uniform, and started down the stairs with those turquoise-blue eyes already fixed on me like she had been expecting this before I had.
Elias glanced between us and gave me a small grin. "Well, there's Reyna's friend. You two already have such a warm history together, so this should go great."
"Yeah, hilarious," I muttered while getting up, but Nadia leaned forward enough to catch my expression before I could walk away.
She narrowed her eyes at me and asked, "Okay, why do you look nervous?"
"I don't," I replied, although apparently my body betrayed me because Nadia immediately pointed toward my throat.
"You just swallowed," she said, looking far too pleased with herself.
"That doesn't mean anything," I told her,
but she shrugged and replied, "Well, it means you swallowed."
Without thinking about it, I sighed and said, "Thanks, Saph," completely forgetting that Nadia had no idea who Saph was or why I had just called her that.
Nadia raised one eyebrow and stared at me for a second. "Uh… you're welcome?" she answered slowly, clearly deciding it was easier to accept the mysterious nickname than ask me to explain it right now.
I didn't even realize what I had done until I was already walking down the stairs. By then it was too late to explain without making it stranger, so I decided that future Gabriel could deal with Nadia asking who Saph was whenever she remembered.
Amaya reached the platform from the opposite side at almost the same time I did. The moment we faced one another, though, I became painfully aware of something I hadn't considered while sitting comfortably in the audience watching everybody else get punched.
I had never really fought a woman before, at least not like this. In the military, I had trained beside women, practiced drills with them, sparred under instruction, and gone through controlled exercises where somebody stopped us every few seconds to correct technique, but that was different from standing across from someone while an instructor basically told us to beat each other until one of us lost.
It shouldn't have mattered, because Amaya was obviously here for the same reason I was. Unfortunately, my brain apparently had other ideas, and I stood a little too straight while trying to convince myself that she was simply another cadet.
Amaya lowered herself into a stance that looked significantly more comfortable than mine probably did. She kept one hand near her chin and the other slightly forward, her feet placed carefully beneath her, while those bright turquoise eyes stared through me with enough intensity that I could feel sweat starting underneath my collar.
The instructor glanced between us and asked, "Cain, Fawn, are you both ready?" Amaya nodded immediately.
I hesitated just long enough to embarrass myself before raising my hands and answering, "Yeah, I'm ready."
His hand dropped, but neither of us moved. We just stood there staring at each other while several seconds crawled past, and I kept waiting for some more socially acceptable way to begin a fight to magically reveal itself.
Amaya's eyes slowly narrowed, and mine probably did the same out of instinct. Eventually she exhaled through her nose and asked, "Okay, are you serious right now? Are you actually going to fight me, or are we going to stare at each other until class ends?"
"Well, I was planning on fighting," I replied, which apparently wasn't a convincing answer because Amaya stepped forward immediately.
"You could've fooled me," she muttered, and that was apparently the end of her patience.
Her first punch came fast enough that I had to lean away almost immediately. Her knuckles passed in front of my face, and before I could fully reset, she followed with another strike toward my ribs, forcing me sideways as I caught her forearm against mine and redirected it rather than countering.
Amaya noticed the lack of retaliation immediately. She turned with me, threw a quick low kick toward my thigh, and when I stepped out of range, she followed, pushing me backward another two steps while somebody somewhere in the seats laughed.
"Would you stop running?" she asked, sounding increasingly irritated.
I kept my guard up and replied, "I'm not running," which only made her point out, "You haven't thrown anything either."
"Well…" I started, but she lunged before I could finish. Her jab pulled my attention upward, then her rear hand came toward my jaw, and when I redirected it with my palm, I saw her shoulder open completely.
Any other opponent and I would have stepped in, hooked behind the shoulder, shifted my hips, and put them straight onto the floor. Instead, my body started the motion before my conscience caught up, and I stopped myself and stepped backward.
Amaya froze and stared at me with an expression somewhere between disbelief and irritation. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me," she said, and when I asked what she meant, she gave me a flat look and replied, "You don't want to hit me."
"I didn't say that," I answered, but she immediately shook her head.
"You really didn't need to," she said
Amaya looked back at me and asked, "Are you seriously doing this because I'm a girl?"
"When you say it like that, it sounds worse," I admitted, which clearly didn't help.
Amaya's expression flattened even more as she replied, "It is worse."
"Look, I'm not trying to insult you," I said while readjusting my stance,
but Amaya simply raised her hands and answered, "Then hit me." When I still hesitated, she sighed and said, "Fine, then I'll make you!"
She attacked hard enough this time that thinking became optional. A jab came first, then a hook immediately behind it, and after I slipped both, she stepped deeper and drove her knee toward my body, forcing me to twist fast enough that it brushed my side rather than landing cleanly.
I caught her shoulder briefly to stabilize myself before letting go again, which only seemed to irritate her more. She kicked at my thigh; I withdrew my leg and circled away, and Amaya immediately started cutting off the angle rather than chasing me in a straight line.
That was when I realized she was actually pretty good. She wasn't exceptionally polished or overwhelmingly experienced, but she understood distance, she recovered quickly, and if I continued treating her like something fragile, she was eventually going to hit me hard enough to make me regret being polite.
More importantly, she wasn't going to quit until I treated her like an opponent. That didn't mean I had to hurt her, though, and once I accepted that, the problem became much simpler.
When Amaya rushed again, I stopped watching her hands and focused on her feet. Her front foot planted, her weight shifted forward, and the moment her rear foot began following, I stepped diagonally into her space before she could establish the next strike.
She tried to retreat, but I caught her wrist and elbow, turned with her momentum, and guided her arm across her own centerline. Amaya resisted instinctively, which gave me exactly what I needed, so I stepped behind her, hooked one leg around hers, and lowered us both instead of throwing her.
We reached the mat almost gently, although Amaya immediately tried rolling free. I followed the movement, controlled her wrist behind her back, and pinned her shoulder without applying enough pressure to actually hurt the joint.
She stopped struggling and slowly turned her face enough that one turquoise eye could glare at me. "You have got to be joking," she muttered, and when I apologized automatically, she sighed and said, "Stop apologizing while you're pinning me to the floor!"
"Right, sorry," I replied before realizing what I had just done again. Amaya's eye narrowed further, and I wisely stopped talking.
She tried shifting her shoulder once more, but the position wasn't going anywhere unless I allowed it. The instructor finally raised his hand and announced, "Cain wins," and I released her immediately before standing and offering my hand.
Amaya looked at my hand, then at me, and finally back at my hand before getting up by herself. "You didn't hit me once," she said while brushing off her uniform.
I answered, "No," which made her look even more dissatisfied.
"That wasn't a thank you," she said, and I nodded because I had already figured that part out. She started walking away.
When I returned to mine, Nadia immediately leaned toward me with an enormous grin. "You fought her like she was made of glass. I'm pretty sure you offended her more by refusing to hit her than you would've by actually punching her."
"I still won," I replied while sitting down.
The board shuffled again, and the next name changed the atmosphere of the room almost instantly.
GRIM SALDOUR appeared across the display, and little murmurs immediately began spreading through the seats. I remembered the cafeteria that morning, the crowd gathered around the same guy while somebody shouted that he had been assigned Obsidian Echelon, and apparently everybody else remembered too.
Then Grim stood, and the fox-patterned hair made him impossible to mistake. Brown and black formed most of it, but irregular patches of burnt orange and dark red ran through the layers, and he didn't acknowledge a single person staring at him as he walked toward the platform.
Nadia leaned forward and whispered, "That's the Obsidian guy from breakfast." I nodded.
Elias looked between Grim and his opponent and asked, "So, do we think he's actually that good, or did he just destroy the exams?"
His opponent stepped onto the platform looking significantly less enthusiastic about finding out.
The instructor dropped his hand, and the other cadet attempted exactly one punch before Grim stepped inside it.
One hand caught the wrist, his shoulder drove into the cadet's chest, and his foot hooked behind the man's ankle almost simultaneously. The movement was so smooth that I didn't completely understand what happened until Grim's opponent was already on his back.
Grim followed him down, trapped one arm, shifted his knee across the shoulder, and immobilized him so quickly that the instructor barely needed a moment before raising his hand.
"Saldour wins," he announced, and Grim released the hold immediately before standing.
His opponent sat up looking more confused than injured, while Grim returned to his seat as if he had just completed a basic warm-up drill. Elias blinked and said, "Okay… yeah, never mind."
Nadia leaned back and murmured, "Obsidian makes a little more sense now."
I didn't say anything, because I was thinking about the thirteen grades between us again. Watching Grim fight made that distance feel much more real than a number on a screen.
More matches followed after that, with Elias getting called again and winning after a surprisingly quick exchange. Nadia's next match, however, was the first time I got to properly watch how she fought, and her style was strange enough that I forgot about Grim for a while.
Her opponent was taller and tried controlling distance with straight punches, but Nadia kept slipping around the outside of his arms with movements that almost looked too loose to be deliberate. Her shoulders rolled, her hips turned, and whenever he thought he had cornered her, she seemed to coil away before coming back from another angle.
She used her knees often and worked short elbow motions into controlled openings, while her feet kept shifting rhythm in ways that made her difficult to predict. There was something vaguely similar to Muay Thai underneath it, but the rest felt almost serpentine, like she preferred flowing around somebody's structure instead of colliding directly with it.
Elias leaned forward and asked, "Okay, why does she move like that? Is that even one fighting style?"
I watched Nadia duck under a hook, step sideways, bump her opponent off balance with her hip, then sweep his ankle before answering, "I honestly don't know."
She took control of his arm before he could recover, and the instructor called the match. When Nadia returned, I stared at her long enough that she noticed and immediately asked, "What?"
"Well, what style is that?" I asked, genuinely curious.
Nadia shrugged and said, "I dunno. I learned it from somebody who learned it from somebody else, so if it had a name, nobody bothered telling me."
"That explains absolutely nothing," I replied.
Nadia sat between us with a small smile. "Then I guess it stays a mystery."
The ladder kept shrinking, and unfortunately Kieran fought again too. His second opponent lasted longer than Uriel had, but that didn't make watching it any better because Kieran seemed perfectly capable of ending the match quickly and simply chose not to.
He kept allowing the other cadet enough space to recover before closing in again, almost like he was experimenting with how much punishment he could deliver before the instructor decided the match was over. Eventually he dropped the guy with a hook, mounted him, and started hitting him until the instructor intervened again.
This time hardly anybody laughed, because people were starting to notice the pattern. Kieran didn't appear to care, and when he got up, I caught him glancing toward our section before returning to his seat.
By the time round two ended, the room felt completely different from when we had started. The nervousness had burned away and been replaced by competition, bruised pride, and the uncomfortable knowledge that everybody now knew who could actually fight.
Then the board reorganized for round three, and the first name that appeared was NADIA VOSS. A second later, KIERAN HOLT loaded beneath it, and Elias stopped moving while Nadia stared at the board for longer than usual.
"Well… that's unfortunate," she said eventually, trying to sound casual as she started shifting toward the edge of her seat.
Before she could stand, I looked at her and said, "Hey, Nadia, if it starts getting too bad, you can surrender."
Her eyebrows lifted. "Well, yeah, I know that," she replied, but I shook my head and made sure she understood I wasn't joking.
"I'm serious. You don't have to prove anything to him, and you definitely don't need to let yourself get hurt just because he wants to show off."
Nadia glanced across the room toward Kieran, who was already standing, then looked back at me with a small smile. "Okay, I hear you. I'm not planning on getting my skull kicked in."
"That's comforting," I said.
She added, "I'm also not promising I'm quitting the second he lands something."
I nodded because that was fair enough and replied, "I didn't ask you to."
She stood and looked toward Elias. "Alright, you got anything motivational this time?"
Elias thought about it for a moment and said, "Please don't die," which made Nadia sigh and mutter, "You really only have one line."
"It's versatile," Elias defended as she walked away. I watched Nadia head down toward the platform with an uncomfortable feeling settling into my stomach.
Kieran reached the floor first and rolled his shoulders while Nadia approached. The moment they faced each other, I noticed his expression was different from before because he wasn't looking through her or treating her like some random obstacle on the ladder.
He remembered her. Of course he did.
Nadia had fought him during the banquet, and she apparently noticed the recognition too because she lowered into her stance and said, "Well, you look happier to see me this time."
Kieran gave her a faint smile. "You interrupted me last time."
"Yeah, because you were busy being an asshole," Nadia replied, and Kieran's smile sharpened as he answered, "I remember."
The instructor looked between them and warned, "Whatever history you two have, keep it inside the rules." Nadia smiled without looking away from Kieran and said, "Of course," while Kieran said nothing, which somehow made me trust him even less.