The crowd was already screaming Aurelius' name before the first strike.
The arena trembled with their chants, a thunderous rhythm pounding through the stone as the golden-haired Hero raised his blade toward the sun, basking in their adoration. Holy light shimmered around him, his aura swelling like a tide, every movement rehearsed for worship.
Across the ring, Kaito only yawned.
His borrowed cloak clung to his shoulders, plain and dust-stained, utterly unworthy of the stage he now stood upon. Yet his gaze was steady, and behind his eyes burned something the crowd couldn't see — a storm of creation waiting to be unchained.
"Fight me with everything you've got, Aurelius," Kaito's voice was low, almost bored. "Show me what the Empire chose over me."
The Empire's Hero didn't wait. With a shout, Aurelius lunged, his blade glowing with holy fire, slashing down in a radiant arc. The strike split stone, exploding the floor between them into shards of molten debris. The audience roared.
Kaito raised a hand.
The shards froze in the air.
Every fragment of stone hung suspended like stars scattered in a frozen night sky. Gasps rippled through the stands. Aurelius faltered for only a heartbeat — but a heartbeat was all Kaito needed.
"Let me demonstrate what Spell Creation truly means."
He spoke the words not as an incantation, but as a law. The floating shards elongated into glittering spears of obsidian glass, each humming with runes that had never before existed. With a flick of his wrist, the air itself cracked as dozens of lances rained down on Aurelius.
The so-called Hero barely managed to block the first.
"Impossible…" Aurelius hissed, his shield arm buckling under the weight of magic that didn't belong to this world.
Kaito didn't relent. His mana surged, not summoned from books or teachers, but born from his will. He wove storms and flame together, sculpting a hurricane that bled fire at its edges. Lightning arced inside it, but instead of striking outward, it coiled into the form of a massive dragon, its roar shaking the arena.
The crowd went silent.
Aurelius charged, desperate, slamming his blade into the fiery tempest. For a moment, the light of the Empire's Hero clashed with the chaotic brilliance of creation itself.
Then Kaito whispered:
"Collapse."
The dragon of storm and flame shattered into a wave of pure destructive force. It swallowed Aurelius whole, blasting the golden Hero across the arena like a rag doll, his armor splintering on impact.
When the smoke cleared, Aurelius was gasping, half-buried in broken stone. His holy aura flickered. His supporters fell silent, their chants cut short by the weight of what they had just witnessed.
Kaito stood in the center of the devastation, untouched, his eyes cold.
"This is the difference," he said, voice carrying like a death knell. "You were chosen because you were convenient. I create because I was abandoned."
The silence was suffocating.
For the first time, the world glimpsed not a discarded outcast, but a force that could unmake kingdoms.