The Colosseum was packed. Voices stacked on top of one another until the sound became a wall pressing down like pressure onto Kieran. He hadn't realised how big of a tournament this truly was until this very moment.
He walked slowly to the lifted stage, to the very centre, sword balanced at his side.
He looked up and around, seeing not a single empty seat in the crowd. Everyone was looking down at him, waiting for him to win or to lose.
Then the air shifted.
The step was weirdly loud.
Aurelian Veyl walked through the corridor onto the stage's stairs. He was last year's champion with his stone statue outside aura farming. This slightly pissed Keiran off when he first saw it. This man went undefeated. His fencing jacket was crisp white with gold trims catching the light. His blade gleamed with his casual grip.
The crowd broke into a rhythm. "VEYL! VEYL! VEYL!"
Kieran looked down, feeling the vibrations of the chant shake the ground slightly so that dust rose.
He initially thought that Veyl would be a random French guy with a French moustache and a French voice until he walked up onto the stage.
He was indeed not French.
Aurelian Veyl was taller than Kieran expected him to be. He was lean and not too bulky, with the kind of posture that suggested he was slightly lazy but sporty at the same time. His hair was dark, tied back with a ribbon that matched the gold on his jacket. His eyes were the unsettling part. They weren't cold or cruel. They were bored.
Veyl reached the centre of the stage and offered a polite nod. Not arrogant. Not mocking. Just… acknowledging Kieran's existence.
Somehow that was worse.
Aurelian lifted his blade in salute, his expression unreadable. "Kieran, is it? I hope we have a good battle."
Kieran returned the gesture, jaw tight. "Yeah, I hope we do."
Kieran raised his blade. Veyl mirrored him with perfect form, effortless, like muscle memory older than he was.
They took their en garde positions.
The crowd fell into a hush so sudden it felt like the air had been sucked out of the world.
Kieran's heartbeat filled the silence.
The referee stepped forward, voice amplified by the arena's speakers.
"Fence!"
The ground betrayed Kieran instantly. Not even giving him a chance. His boots sank as if the stone had turned to sand. His body felt very heavy, as if he were carrying tonnes of steel on his back. Aurelian's blade cut forward, impossibly light, with precision. Kieran barely caught it, steel clashing with force that rattled his bones.
He was strong. Very strong.
Roy muttered from the stands, "He's bending mass like clay."
Brock's voice cracked. "That's why no one beats him."
Kieran pushed against the sinking pressure that could kill a normal person who wasn't using prana. He kept on driving forward toward Veyl, blade flashing. Sparks burst as steel met steel. The crowd gasped.
They gasped at the fact that Kieran was able to keep up with Veyl's strikes even though he was being affected by his Soul Art.
Aurelian tilted his head, a slight smile formed by intrigue. "Not bad, kid. Not bad. Most would have crumbled by now."
Kieran grinned with his teeth bared. "I'm not like most."
The colosseum roared again, louder, hungrier.
Veyl shifted his grip on his foil. Not the light, elegant hold of a fencer he used before, but a real grip. A swordsman's grip.
Kieran felt his pulse spike, as if it was forewarning another attack from him.
A blur of white and gold. His blade cut through the air with a hiss, not a tap or a probing touch but an actual strike to his opponent.
The strike flew at him.
Kieran twisted, barely slipping under it. The air split beside his cheek, a line of heat tracing where the blade would have opened him. He countered with a slice aimed at Veyl's shoulder.
It was clean, efficient and a textbook definition of a vertical cut.
Veyl wasn't there.
He stepped aside with a lazy pivot, as if gravity itself bent politely out of his way. Kieran's blade stabbed only air. The ground beneath him thickened again, dragging at his ankles like wet cement.
"Focus," Veyl murmured, almost disappointed. "Your stance collapses when you rush."
Veyl flicked his wrist; it barely did it justice.
Kieran's next step exploded.
Not outwards but downwards. The stone beneath his lead foot suddenly gained weight, magnitude spiking so violently that it cratered. The stage cracked in a perfect ring, dust erupting upward as Kieran was dragged knee-deep into the floor.
"…Ghk!"
His knee screamed. Prana flared on instinct, reinforcing bone and tendon just in time to keep them from snapping.
Veyl advanced.
Each step of his was soft. Like a feather touching the floor. His feet barely whispered against the stone, yet each stride covered more distance than it should have. He wasn't moving fast, but it was as if he was a feather in himself.
Kieran tore his leg free, the stone ripping loose like broken teeth. He raised his blade just as Veyl thrust.
The impact was wrong. The skinny foil hit like a battering ram.
Kieran flew backward, skidding across the arena, heels carving trenches. He barely stopped himself before the edge of the stage, breath knocked clean out of his lungs.
The crowd lost its mind.
Roy's eyes narrowed. "Huh," Roy said in a high pitch, as if he understood something that he didn't quite comprehend yet. "He's not just changing mass… He's a scaling force. That thrust had the magnitude of a siege strike."
"WHAT. That's completely unfair," Tanaka muttered.
"It's not, though. That's his Soul Art, and it is completely within the rules of the tournament."
Veyl rolled his shoulder once, casually. "Still standing. Good."
Kieran spat blood onto the stone and pushed himself upright. "You talk too much for someone who is bored."
That got a reaction.
Not anger; interest.
Veyl raised his blade again, but this time, the air around it shuddered.
The space itself seemed thicker near the tip, like heat haze bending light.
Kieran lunged first.
The instant he committed, the world tilted.
His blade suddenly became weightless.
It completely overshot its target
His momentum carried him far past where it should have, his arms whipping forward as if he'd swung at air, which, effectively, he had. Veyl stepped inside the opening with surgical calm.
Then Kieran's sword became heavy again.
So heavy his wrists screamed.
The hilt slammed downward, dragging his arms with it. Kieran barely twisted in time, the blade smashing into the stone instead of his own leg. The impact detonated, fracturing stone as if struck by a falling tower.
Veyl's knee drove into his ribs.
That kneestrike was precise. Kieran's prana flared hard, but the blow still launched him upward. Not backward. But up.
The air felt thin.
Too thin.
Kieran realised, mid-flight, that Veyl had reduced the magnitude of gravity on him alone.
He was weightless and was now drifting towards space.
"...Holy Shi..."
Veyl looked up, his arms covering his eyes that tracked Kieran calmly from the glaring sun. He raised his foil, point aligned with him.
Then increased the magnitude of the gravity on Kieran.
Kieran twisted desperately, Prana screaming as the blade screamed past, tearing the air open. The shockwave hit him anyway, spinning him end over end before gravity returned all at once.
He slammed into the stage.
The sound was thunder.
Stone shattered beneath his back, dust and debris erupting as if the arena itself had been struck by a meteor. Kieran lay there for half a second, lungs refusing to cooperate.
The referee took an instinctive step forward… then stopped.
He heard a laugh.
A serious laugh.
It was rough, cracked, but full of joy.
"Heh… okay," he wheezed, rolling onto one knee. "That's… that's impressive."
Veyl approached, blade lowered slightly. Not threatening. Observing.
"You adapted very quickly," he said. "Most panic when they are magically in the air."
Kieran forced himself up, legs shaking, boots crunching on broken stone. "Yeah? That's because I like food."
"Huh?" Veyl was slightly confused but didn't comment on whatever Kieran was talking about.
The crowd roared at that, sensing the shift.
Veyl's smile sharpened.
"Then let me show you something lighter."
He snapped his fingers.
The sound hit first.
The roar of the crowd dropped to a dull murmur, like cotton stuffed into Kieran's ears. His heartbeat thundered absurdly loud in his skull.
Then he released…
The magnitude of the sound around them had been reduced to nothing.