The silence in Outer Practice Arena D stretched taut, punctuated only by the soft, confident breathing of Kaelen Dravos. The Heir looked at Arin as one might observe a contemptible insect that had landed on a ceremonial garment.
"You seek an audience, labourer? Very well," Kaelen said, his voice laced with absolute contempt. He didn't even bother to draw a weapon or fully focus his cultivation. "Let us conclude this shame swiftly. I will spare you the executioner's blade if you return to the labourer barracks right now and confess to attacking Disciple Rennus, acknowledging your place."
Arin remained silent, taking a single, steadying breath.
"You won't speak? Fine." Kaelen sighed, an act of supreme boredom. He lifted his hand and gathered a small, precise ball of refined golden Qi. It was a minimal technique, barely enough to stun a common man, but delivered with the focused precision of a Spirit-stage master. "Be gone, filth."
He flicked his wrist. The golden ball shot toward Arin's chest, intended to strike a non-lethal, paralysing blow that would render the fugitive unconscious without mussing the arena floor.
Arin's mortal instinct was to raise his hands in futile defence. His divine instinct, however, was already in motion.
He didn't activate his power; he activated his traps.
The moment the golden Qi left Kaelen's hand, Arin launched himself sideways, using the subtle burst of Blood-Engraved speed. Kaelen, focused on the trajectory of his Qi ball, shifted his weight to follow.
His foot caught the almost invisible fibre thread Arin had strung low to the ground.
Kaelen Dravos did not fall, but the sudden, unexpected snag completely ruined his perfect equilibrium. He stumbled, his powerful Qi momentarily disrupted, his concentration flickering just as the minor attack impacted the far wall.
Arin moved into the fractional window of confusion, sprinting toward the Heir as his feet kicked up dust. Kaelen, now off-balance and looking down at the ground, tried to sweep Arin back with a basic physical push.
Arin avoided the push but slammed his reinforced elbow into the mound of shale. The stones exploded outward, spraying Kaelen's pristine robes with a cloud of grey grit. Arin darted past the spluttering Heir, not with a strike of power, but with a contemptuous act of sheer defiance. He slapped his hand against the small of Kaelen's silk-covered back, leaving a clear, damning handprint of cellar grime and mountain dirt.
Arin immediately retreated, back to the safety of the perimeter wall, assuming a defensive stance. He hadn't wounded Kaelen, but he had done something far worse: he had visibly, publicly, and dirtily humiliated the Core Disciple Heir of the Duskwind Sect.
Kaelen froze, the golden Qi around him boiling into a violent, uncontrolled storm. He stood rigid for three counts, his breath whistling in his throat, processing the sheer audacity of the insult. His perfection was ruined; his prestige was stained by a fugitive he'd dismissed as worthless.
Rage, pure and blinding, overrode all caution. The Heir didn't care about propriety, execution protocols, or the low status of his attacker anymore. He cared only about obliteration.
"You stain my honour!" Kaelen shrieked, his voice cracking with fury.
He abandoned his gentle golden technique and unleashed a focused torrent of his true power: the Raging Serpent Palm. It was a high-grade technique, a wide, sweeping wave of concentrated golden Qi designed to liquefy the internal organs of any opponent below the Spirit-Core stage. It was a killing blow, powerful enough to ensure not only Arin's death, but the total annihilation of his body, leaving nothing for the healers to find.
The terrifying wave of raw spiritual power rushed toward Arin, an inescapable wall of searing force.
Arin was already bracing, but he knew with absolute certainty that his Blood-Engraved resilience was not enough. He was about to be erased.
And that was the final catalyst.
The threat of absolute obliteration the willingness to stand against a power so overwhelmingly vast that it guaranteed his immediate death was the ultimate sacrifice. It was the perfect, final defiance of fate that Seliora's fragment had been waiting for.
The crescent Mark did not pulse; it ruptured.
A cold, white-hot agony tore through Arin's body, eclipsing the pain of the approaching killing blow. The Mark consumed the last of his mortal life force and, simultaneously, greedily pulled on the raw, external spiritual energy of Kaelen's oncoming attack. The divine fragment used the power of its enemy as fuel.
The fusion was immediate and horrifically complete. Arin's entire body seized. His bones, his skeleton, were being chemically and spiritually overwritten by the raw divine essence. He heard a grinding sound the sound of his skeleton transforming.
Kaelen's Raging Serpent Palm struck Arin dead-centre. The massive Qi wave should have turned him into fine powder.
Instead, the force hit a body in the midst of a complete transformation. The impact was still devastating, sending Arin hurtling into the stone wall with bone-breaking force, but the killing energy was not absorbed; it was deflected. The Mark had successfully used the impact as a pressure chamber, completing the fusion instantly.
When Arin slammed into the wall and fell to the dirt, he was no longer merely Blood-Engraved. He had ascended to the Bone-Forged stage.
He tried to gasp, but his throat was locked. He looked down at his hands. The skin was rougher, like polished, pale stone. He felt the weight in his limbs as a profound, physical density. His very skeleton was now laced with divine runes, granting him a terrifying, passive defence. He wasn't just resilient; he was a walking fortress. A faint, silver-grey aura, dense and utterly solid, clung around his body the visual signature of the Bone-Forged Mark.
Kaelen, standing twenty paces away, watching his devastating killing blow merely toss the labourer like a rag doll, froze. He saw the grey aura, the impossibility of survival, and the cold, terrifying light in Arin's eyes.
The Heir's arrogance was shattered. He didn't see a labourer anymore; he saw an incomprehensible, monstrous violation of the natural order. His mind, trained only in the rigid structures of the sect, could not process the impossible resilience. Fear, cold and absolute, replaced rage.
"What… what are you?" Kaelen whispered, his Qi suddenly retreating, his composure gone. He didn't move toward Arin; he took two terrified steps back.
The fear in Kaelen Dravos's eyes was the only true victory Arin needed.
Kaelen, too shaken and terrified to fight a force that defied all logic, turned and ran, fled from a prone, gravely wounded labourer. His luxury robes snagged momentarily on a loose bench as he vanished into the night, abandoning his practice scroll and his honour.
The moment Kaelen's formidable Qi vanished, the divine high broke. The fusion had been successful, but the cost was astronomical. Arin's mortal body, though now immensely reinforced, had been ravaged by the internal stress of the ascent. His bones might be forged, but his muscles were torn, his organs bruised, and his spiritual sea was a hollow, echoing shell.
He pushed himself up, leaning against the cold stone, the new grey aura wavering. He could not stay; the sound of Kaelen's scream and the power blast would soon draw every master in the area.
Arin used the last fragments of his energy, crawling away from the arena floor and into the thick brush. He did not make it far. He reached a dense, root-tangled copse just outside the Arena D perimeter and collapsed, the agonising process of his new Bone-Forged resilience struggling to heal the mortal wreckage of his body.
He was alone, wounded, and triumphant. He had earned his third Mark. He was one step closer to challenging the heavens, and to saving Lyra. But first, he had to survive the night.