Lucia Lenorre had a strange power over her father. She did not win his favor with soft smiles or filial charm but with a look. A stare, sharp and ancient, as though something older stared out through her mortal frame.
That look could halt arguments, cancel treaties, bend time.
So, she stayed.
A full week in Paradise.
To Joselyn Alveretta, it passed not as days but as a single golden stretch like a silk ribbon drawn taut across the sky.
On their first night, they chased a silver-winged moth down the candlelit halls of the palace, barefoot and breathless. Their laughter echoed off domed ceilings as they danced past servants clutching towels and guards too tired to care. Lucia's hair had come loose, her smile alight with rebellion.
When she was near, the world felt weightless, fragile, infinite all at once. As if they walked atop a glass sky.
But time, like all generous things, had its cruelty.
By the third night, the warmth turned. The blanket of joy was pulled away by unseen hands.
It began with a whisper.
"Joselyn," she hissed, breath hot against his cheek, shaking him awake in the dark. "Wake up. Now."
His eyes blinked open, the fog of dreams still heavy in his limbs. "What…? What is it?"
Lucia crouched beside his bed. Joselyn's hair tangled like ivy and Lucia's eyes wide with a terrible wonder.
"I heard them. Your cousins. In the hall. They said something about a fighting tournament taking place outside of Paradise..."
"A tournament?" He sat up slowly, heart still sluggish.
She nodded, electricity threading through every word. "The Ironclad Tournament. It's real. Outside the walls. An old village in the center most wastes. Fighters from all over Eryndrallis fight in. People with Blessings. The worst kind. The best kind."
There was something trembling just beneath her excitement. Not fear, but awe. A craving for the untamed.
Joselyn rubbed his eyes. "You're not serious."
"I already stole a horse."
"You what?!"
"Shhh!" She grinned and yanked the covers off him. "Don't make me go alone."
A groan escaped him, half curse, half surrender. He was too tired to argue, too awake now to refuse.
Lucia had that effect.
They crept through the halls like conspirators in an old epic, ducking past dozing guards and fading torchlight. The palace held its breath as they slipped out into the night.
Outside, the moon sat swollen in the sky, pouring silver over the city's bones. The gardens lay still, dew-kissed and hushed.
Near the stables, a horse waited. Its coat black as ink, its hooves restless.
"You bribed someone," Joselyn murmured, eyeing the reins.
Lucia pulled a sapphire the size of a knuckle from her sleeve. "My father has more. I doubt he'd realize it's missing."
"You're terrifying."
"And you're still my friend." She climbed into the saddle, motioning for him to follow.
They rode under a sky spangled with starlight, past the wall's jagged perimeter where construction had stalled months ago. The air beyond Paradise tasted different, untamed, full of secrets the kingdom tried to forget.
No one followed. No one stopped them. The world itself seemed to lean aside to let them pass.
Then, Lucia reined the horse to a halt.
"Wait," she breathed.
The hills opened before them, flooded in moonlight. Fields of wildflowers stretched like a dream made real, petals gleaming with silvery dew.
This was Paradise. The land The First King of Flowers had fought for 30 years ago in 197AA. This land used to nothing but a swampy wasteland but with my father's blessing, the Savior, he was able to give birth to this beautiful land.
Lucia slid from the saddle and stepped into the flowers. Her fingers brushed their heads, each bloom pulsing faintly, as if lit from within.
"They're glowing," she whispered. "Like they're burning on the inside. You're father truly is amazing to create such a wonderful land with just magic…"
Joselyn joined her, feet sinking into the damp earth. The air hummed.
"My father created the flowers, but he didn't make them grow." Joselyn muttered, standing besides her. "That was the land that did. The beauty of a stagnant world shows what happens without the interference of war. Unlike the other kingdoms like the Land of Crimson Skies…"
"When did you become a philosopher? Do you have the Luminary's blessing?" Lucia joked. Turning back to Joselyn with a soft grin that made his heart beat in an alien way to him.
He said nothing. There was a sadness to her voice, too old for twelve. He remembered, she wanted to renounce her throne, to live here. In Paradise. Among hibiscus and ruins.
They stood in silence, caught between starlight and memory.
Then, without another word, they rode on.
The Ironclad Tournament was not a place.
It was a scar left by the old wars fought for the land of Paradise. Far from the palace or any civilization. One would be closer to the Tsukihana Fields than any kingdom.
The village that held it had long since died. Its houses half-eaten by fire, beams warped, glass shattered. A single bonfire burned in the center like a summoned god. Shadows danced around it. Men and women clad in rusted mail, bone, and blood.
Some wore masks. Others were shirtless, branded, laughing with teeth too sharp.
Lucia gripped his hand.
"This is worse than I imagined," Joselyn said.
"I expected worse," she murmured, not blinking.
Fighters battled in a pit of gravel and ash. One man in blood-red plate crushed his opponent's skull with a hammer swing that left a crater in the dirt. The crowd cheered like wolves.
Then, a hand fell on Joselyn's shoulder.
"Hey. Well, well…"
The voice slurred. The man behind Joselyn stank of old wine and coal-smoke. His breath drifted hot across the back of Joselyn's neck, sour and soaked in malice. He was tall, at least compared to the boy, and moved like someone who'd never once cared to ask permission. When he spoke, his words slurred into one another like mud and spit.
"I know you," he muttered. "You're that flower brat. Palace boy."
Joselyn didn't meet his eyes. He kept his gaze low, fixed on the ring of spectators encircling the pit, where torchlight bled through the dark like veins of flame. "I'm just watching," he replied quietly. It wasn't a lie. But it wasn't enough.
The man's laugh was short and wet, like a cough. "Nah. You don't watch here. You can watch from down there!"
The shove came without warning. Joselyn's heels skidded against the gravel, and before he could regain his footing, rough hands seized his arms. Two more figures, older teens, maybe, or young men hardened too early by the world, grabbed him without hesitation and dragged him toward the pit's edge.
The men tossed him into the pit without hesitation.
All Joselyn saw were their devilish grins. Like they had just committed an act that the gods themselves could not do.
He fell. Two meters onto his back.
He hit the ground hard, knees catching stone and dust. Pain shot up through his ribs as the breath tore from his lungs, and for a few seconds, the world spun in a haze of torchlight and mocking laughter.
"Joselyn!" Lucia's voice broke through the noise like a whipcrack.
He coughed, chest heaving, and tried to rise to his feet. Around him, the crowd pressed closer, cheering not in cruelty, but in sport, as though this were just another match. Just another show.
A bell rang out.
It echoed deep and metallic, a sound that reverberated through the bones more than the ears. Joselyn froze. He'd heard that tone earlier in the night, just once, from afar. It hadn't rung for sport. It had rung for spectacle.
Something moved on the far side of the pit. From the shadow of an old collapsed silo, a shape emerged, crawling with a crooked gait that scraped and dragged. At first glance, Joselyn thought it might've been human, but the longer he looked, the more wrong it became. Its limbs were too long, and bent in the wrong places, elbows jutting out like blades, knees reversed and trembling. A half-cage of ribs protruded from its chest, as if its flesh had peeled back to reveal something less than a soul.
It had no face. Just a long hollow mouth, gaping where a skull should've been, stretching in silence. But the silence didn't last. From that void came a low, rattling hum, not a growl, not a shriek, but something in-between, like a death rattle turned inward.
Someone in the crowd shouted its name. Shadrith.
Joselyn's throat closed. His feet stumbled back, shoes grinding against gravel as he tried to retreat, tried to disappear into the dirt. "No," he whispered. "Please… I'm not fighting. I didn't come here to—"
Joselyn had been taught a fair little about fighting. He'd only watch his cousins spar, but even then, he wasn't old enough to be able to be taught by Azralyn.
The crowd didn't care. Some laughed. Others hollered for blood. Most of them couldn't even see his face clearly, but they knew what he was: too clean, too soft, too noble. A child of Paradise, tossed to the wolves.
They only saw him as any other royal. A spoiled, nonsensical, absurd child. Not as the child of a Freedom fought nation.
Lucia screamed from the edge of the pit. "He's twelve! You maniacs, he's just a boy!"
But the crowd wasn't listening. They didn't want truth. They wanted heat. Fear. Spectacle.
And Lucia didn't wait.
Without warning, she jumped.
Her boots slammed against the ground beside him, knees bent, her arms outstretched protectively. She didn't hesitate. Didn't even look at the monster. Her eyes were locked on Joselyn, wide with panic, fierce with rage.
"Get up," she hissed. "Please, get up!"
He tried. His legs trembled, body numb with fear. He had never felt so small, so utterly unmade. His vision blurred. The Shadrith began to approach. Its limbs jerking, ribs clicking with every step, that hollow place where its head should be still humming its terrible sound.
Lucia turned toward it, holding her ground.
Then everything changed.
The moment the creature lunged, something inside Joselyn broke open. Not a bone, but a silence. Something buried deep within him, something older than memory, cracked wide like a dam under pressure. Time didn't slow so much as fracture. The world became unreal.
One moment, the Shadrith's claw was descending toward them.
The next, Joselyn had moved. Faster than thought, faster than fear. He caught the creature's arm with both hands, the weight of it nearly buckling his knees into the hard soil below him. Pain bloomed in his wrist, but it didn't matter. His limbs had begun to glow.
It wasn't light.
It was fire.
His skin shimmered red, not burning, but radiating heat. An aura that flickered and danced like the tail of a comet. The sensation was overwhelming. It rushed through him like thunder down a hollow tree. All the fear, all the helplessness, all the silence that had sat in his chest like stone, it ignited.
With a guttural yell, he swung the Shadrith by the arm and hurled it into the far wall like throwing a stick.
The impact shook the pit. Dust flew, stone cracked, and the monster slumped into a motionless heap at the base of the wall, its ribs twitching once before stilling entirely.
The crowd was silent.
Lucia stared at him, breathless, unable to form words. Her eyes were round and shining. Not with fear now, but with something close to awe.
Joselyn looked down at his hands.
The red glow remained, pulsing softly like the dying light of a fallen star. He'd recognize this sort of blessing. He'd read it in a book given by his father a few years back.
It was the Savior's Blessing, yet it functioned differently from just the average magical one. It was from a sub path of the Blessing.
Both the Savior and Luminary had sub paths of their blessing respectively.
This sub path Savior's Blessing that Joselyn had somehow awakened dealt with bodily manipulation to an absolute certainty.
The cheers came slowly, then all at once. The pit roared with approval, chants and whistles and stomping feet. But Joselyn heard none of it. The noise rolled over him like a tide, but he remained still, kneeling in the dust, watching his own trembling fingers.
He had no words.
Only one thought repeated itself, like a whisper from the far corners of his mind:
He wasn't afraid anymore.