# Chapter 106: The Exchange
The silence over Ring Seven was thick enough to touch.
Every eye in the courtyard was on the center of the ring, from the lowest first-years at the ropes to Master Thorne and Instructor Edward and the rest of the instructors, and Lyra with them, her crimson eyes locked on Silas. He stood bare-faced and composed, his silver-white hair stirring in the wind, his pale features cool and unreadable. Only his eyes gave anything away. They burned a steady, luminous red.
Across from him, Zerav was practically vibrating.
"Don't hold back, Silas!" he roared, and the shout rang off the stone walls of the main building.
This time he didn't just charge. He had seen his boxing combinations get slipped and caught, and he changed the fight.
He lunged with a feinted jab, snapped his hips around with startling speed, and swung a rising roundhouse at Silas's head. His shin cut the air like an iron bar and the wind whistled in its wake.
Up on the balcony, Elisa gasped and pressed her hands to the glass. "He's that flexible? Someone that big?"
Silas didn't jump back. He dropped.
He went flat into a low, sliding sweep beneath the kick. His boot swept between Zerav's legs and hooked the back of his standing ankle, the one carrying all that weight, and he pulled.
"Wha—!"
Zerav's balance tilted sideways and he began to fall.
But his instincts were as monstrous as his body. He slammed his right forearm into the sand and used the fall as momentum, spinning through the air and whipping a back-heel kick at Silas's chest while still horizontal.
The speed was absurd for a man of his size.
Silas was still low to the ground, and he didn't try to catch it. He set his knuckles against the dirt and pushed, springing upward so that the heel passed beneath his ribs with half an inch to spare. For a heartbeat he hung upside down above Zerav's shoulder. He brushed his forearm lightly against Zerav's shoulder blade, used that touch as a pivot, and flipped clean over his head, landing silently on his toes directly behind him.
The crowd gasped as one.
"Did he just flip over him?"
"How did he change direction in the air? That wasn't magic!"
Silas didn't pause to let it sink in. He stepped into Zerav's blind spot and drove a short hammer-fist at the nerve cluster at the base of his neck.
Zerav felt the air shift behind him a split second before the hit landed. He ducked his chin into his shoulders and caught the blow on the thick muscle of his upper shoulder
*THUD!*
It sounded like a mallet hitting dense leather. A jolt of numbness ran down Zerav's left shoulder, and his hand went tingly and slow.
"Gah!"
He spun on his heel with a bloodthirsty grin and closed the distance in a single step. If Silas wanted a fight, he'd get one in the pocket, where Zerav's height and mass counted for the most.
Fists, knees and elbows collided in a blur.
*BAM-BAM-CRACK-THUD!*
But inside the pocket, speed mattered more than reach. Silas slid in under Zerav's long guard and let go a four-punch combination: a sharp left jab to the mouth, a right hook digging into the liver, a left cross to the jaw, and a straight right to the sternum.
*THWACK-THUD-CRACK-BAM!*
The air left Zerav's lungs in a rush, and blood welled from his split lip. He stepped through the last punch anyway and whipped a short elbow at Silas's temple.
Silas slipped it with a hair's breadth to spare, close enough that the wind of it brushed his cheek. He pivoted and drove a short uppercut into Zerav's chin, snapping his head back.
Zerav ignored it. He spat red into the sand and jammed a knee at Silas's ribs.
Silas checked it with his shin. The force of the collision threw him back across the sand, boots carving long furrows in the dirt once again.
That was the cost of fighting without reinforcement. Every time Silas braced against a heavy blow, the difference in size and weight showed. His forearms were swollen and dark from the earlier clashes, and one more clean hit would end it.
But he came right back. For every wild swing Zerav threw, he landed three.
His eyes burned so brightly now that they cast a faint red glint across the sand beneath his boots. He was reading everything: the tightening of muscle, the flick of a pupil, the tiny shift in Zerav's breathing before a punch was even thrown.
At the ropes, Lyra stood frozen, crimson light reflected in her own eyes.
"No magic," she whispered. "Not even a little."
Beside the border, Master Thorne and Instructor Edward had forgotten their ledgers entirely. Edward's jaw hung slack.
"Look at them, Thorne," he said under his breath. "No weapons. No shields. And every strike in that ring is thrown to kill."
In the center, the pace didn't slow. It sharpened.
Zerav feinted a straight left, dropped his hips, and trapped Silas's lead wrist in a collar-tie, quick as a snake.
"Got you!"
He yanked Silas straight into a rising forehead strike, a headbutt meant to split bone.
Locked in the grapple, with nothing to cushion the impact, Silas's eyes flared. He didn't pull away. He leaned into the collision, using every ounce of his speed to twist the angle of the strike.
Their heads met.