As the arena roared back to life, the man on the balcony remained still.
At his side, his contract Aethel unfolded a fraction of its consciousness further into the world. Its presence spread in a thin, silent tide, brushing the stands without disturbing them. Most students felt nothing more than a fleeting hush at the edge of perception.
Then it stopped.
Its attention had found something.
Across the arena, nestled among Verdant green, a small black cat sat at the edge of a seat. Its tail flicking about lazily, as if bored by the spectacle below.
Recognition struck like a muted bell.
Not of surprise or fear, but confusion
The perception Aethel extended deepened, narrowing into a focused thread that reached for the cat. A memory stirred within it. A name older than the academy, older than the cities wrapped around it.
Kaelithar.
The response it expected never came.
The cat did not look up nor even shift slightly. Its presence remained sealed, a closed door where a storm should have been. The silence it returned was heavier than Aethel's own, dense and absolute.
The silence of disinterest.
Aethel withdrew a fraction, the sensation of it rippling back to the balcony. For the first time since his arrival, Valerian Crowe's gaze sharpened. His eyes traced the line of the arena and settled, briefly, on the small black shape among the students.
The cat yawned.
The moment passed.
The arena thundered on, unaware that something ancient had just been acknowledged and dismissed in the space between heartbeats.
"We shall begin with an exhibition match," The announcer said, and the arena stilled with instinctive obedience. "Second-year pair Ren and Solis versus Third-Year Squad Halcyon."
A ripple of recognition passed through the upper tiers. Not the screaming fanaticism reserved for house pride, but something tighter. Sharper.
Interest.
From the eastern tunnel, two figures stepped into the light.
They did not look identical. Ren was taller, shoulders squared and posture open. Solis moved with a quieter center of gravity, steps measured and economical. Separate bodies. Separate silhouettes.
Freya frowned. "Where are the other two?"
"They don't have any," Sera murmured. "They're registered as a Dual-Sovereign unit. The academy treats them as a single combat entity. Their contract doesn't function right if you split them into a normal squad."
Freya's gaze sharpened. "So they're not missing teammates."
Sera shook her head. "They are the full team."
But the space between them was wrong.
It shimmered.
Their contract manifested as they crossed the boundary line. A mirrored entity unfolded from the air itself, its form split perfectly down the middle. One half aligned with Ren. The other with Solis. The two reflections overlapped and fused, creating a single, translucent figure that moved in seamless correspondence with both.
When Ren breathed in, the entity expanded.
When Solis shifted her weight, it flowed.
They were not commanding it.
They were inhabiting it.
Freya's pencil froze above the page.
"Woah, they're sharing balance," she whispered.
On the opposite side of the arena, Third-Year Squad Halcyon entered in disciplined formation. Four veterans. Their contracts flared in controlled bursts: a spatial cutter that warped angles, a defensive lattice weaving hexagonal shields, a kinetic striker humming with compressed force, and a tactician whose presence anchored the formation like a spine.
They looked like a unit built to dismantle problems.
The signal dropped.
Ren and Solis moved first.
Not forward.
Together.
They stepped sideways in perfect unison, and the mirrored entity rippled with them. Halcyon's opening strike sliced through empty space where they should have been. The angle had been correct. The timing flawless.
But the twins weren't there anymore.
They flowed around the attack as a single organism. Ren's arm extended and Solis' followed a fraction of a heartbeat later, the mirrored entity completing the motion between them. Their strike landed from two directions at once, converging on Halcyon's striker.
The impact rang like struck glass.
Halcyon reacted instantly. Their lattice flared, hexagonal shields snapping into place. The spatial cutter carved a corridor through the pressure, trying to separate the twins.
It failed.
Ren and Solis did not resist the division. They folded around it. The mirrored entity stretched, impossibly thin, and reconnected them across the gap. Their balance never wavered.
Freya's pencil scratched furiously.
Shared center of gravity, she wrote. They don't recover from imbalance. They prevent it.
Halcyon adjusted. Their tactician barked a silent command, and the formation tightened into a rotating shell. Attacks layered in calculated waves, each designed to desynchronize the twins' rhythm.
Ren and Solis answered with stillness.
For a heartbeat, they stopped moving entirely. The mirrored entity solidified around them like a statue of liquid glass. Halcyon's strikes crashed against it and slid away, redirected by angles that hadn't existed a moment before.
Then the twins exploded outward.
They moved through Halcyon's rotation like a blade through water. Every step Ren took was mirrored and completed by Solis. Every strike Solis launched was anchored and accelerated by Ren. The entity between them translated intention into motion without delay.
They weren't reacting.
They were preempting.
Halcyon's formation began to fracture under the pressure. Their striker staggered as a perfectly synchronized blow stole his footing. The lattice flared too late to catch the follow-up. The spatial cutter tried to isolate Solis and found Ren already occupying the space she'd aimed for.
The arena had gone quiet.
Even the mascot squads watched in reverent silence. The fight unfolding below wasn't loud. It was precise. Every exchange carved another line of inevitability into the air.
Freya's notes devolved into fragments.
No command lag.
Intent equals action.
They're thinking in plural.
Her hand trembled. She couldn't keep up. The twins' movements blurred into something her eyes understood but her language did not. The mirrored entity flowed between them like a living equation, solving problems before they fully formed.
Halcyon made their final push.
Their tactician gambled everything on a collapsing spiral designed to crush the twins' shared center. Space warped inward. Shields locked. Kinetic force built to a screaming pitch.
Ren and Solis stepped forward.
Together.
The mirrored entity flared brilliant and whole. For an instant, the twins vanished inside it, bodies subsumed into a single luminous silhouette. When it moved, the spiral shattered.
Halcyon's formation broke like brittle glass.
The referee's voice cut through the stunned silence.
"Match concluded. Victory to Ren and Solis."
The arena exhaled.
Sound returned in a rolling wave of awe. Not the feral screaming of house rivalry. Something deeper. A collective recognition of mastery witnessed and acknowledged.
Ren and Solis separated as their contract dissolved. The mirrored entity folded back into nothing, leaving two fighters standing where one organism had been. They bowed in perfect unison and exited without celebration.
Freya stared at the battlefield.
Her sketchbook was a mess of incomplete lines and abandoned diagrams. For the first time since the League began, she felt the limits of her understanding press in from all sides.
"They weren't even faster," she murmured. "They were just… simpler."
Sera frowned. "Simpler?"
Freya nodded slowly. "No wasted motion. No negotiation between them. Just… one decision, executed twice."
Above the arena, Valerian Crowe leaned forward by a fraction. Acknowledging the performance with a weightless nod.
Recognition.
The crowd felt it and ignited.
Freya closed her sketchbook gently, pulse steady and burning. The ceiling of the academy had just lifted another meter, and the air above it stretched endlessly upward.
Freya flexed her aching fingers around the pencil and finally looked away from her sketchbook.
That was when she saw him.
Riven Kael lounged against the stone railing several rows down, Pyros red cutting a bright slash through the crowd. His posture screamed boredom. One arm draped lazily over the barrier. His expression was the same familiar smirk he wore in the arena.
But his eyes were locked on the floor below.
Unblinking.
The arrogance was still there. It curled at the edge of his mouth like a permanent scar. Yet his gaze tracked every movement of the upper-year fighters resetting the field with razor attention. He wasn't watching like a spectator.
He was dissecting.
As if he could already see himself standing where they were.
Freya followed his line of sight. The third-year squads moving onto the arena carried themselves with a weight the earlier matches hadn't touched. Even the crowd seemed to feel it. Conversations thinned into a hush threaded with nervous excitement.
Riven's smirk sharpened.
"Finally," he muttered, just loud enough for the people nearest him to hear. "Something worth my time."
The words weren't a challenge. They were a promise.
Freya felt a flicker of heat rise in her chest. Annoyance. Recognition. A mirror she didn't particularly like looking into.
Before she could chase the thought, the announcer's voice cut cleanly through the arena.
"Attention."
The single word snapped every head toward the center.
The lights shifted. A focused brilliance settled over the battlefield. Even the mascot squads fell silent, their energy coiling inward.
The announcer did not rush the next sentence.
"As a special exhibition under the observation of our honored guest," he declared, "the academy will present an elite duel between our two highest-ranked upper-year contractors."
For half a heartbeat, the arena didn't react.
Then it erupted.
Sound crashed upward in a tidal wave of disbelief and exhilaration. Students surged to their feet. Instructors stiffened along the perimeter. On the highest balcony, Valerian Crowe leaned forward by a fraction, Aethel's silent presence deepening like a shadow cast by anticipation.
Riven laughed.
It was a bright, sharp sound swallowed instantly by the roar of the crowd. His eyes gleamed as he stared down at the arena, hunger written plainly across his face.
Freya's pulse kicked hard in her throat.
This wasn't just another match.
This was a benchmark.
The kind of fight people talked about for years.
The arena lights flared brighter. multiple figures stepped into opposite tunnels, their silhouettes cutting clean against the glow.
The crowd held its breath.