The instant Satoru vanished, the ground beneath him collapsed.
Blue activated.
Space collapsed around Satoru, pulling him across the field in an instant. One moment, he stood several meters away.
The next, his fist was already in front of Hiroyuki's face.
Fast.
Precise.
Much better than a year ago.
Hiroyuki raised one hand.
Before their fists could meet, Satoru noticed a strange layer of cursed energy spread across Hiroyuki's body.
Infinity weakened the closer he got.
Ah, right.
That annoying technique.
Domain Amplification.
Their fists collided.
The impact spread across the training ground.
The earth split beneath them. Loose stones flew toward the barrier, causing several spectators to instinctively step back.
Within the field, neither brother gave an inch.
Satoru's eyes narrowed with recognition.
"You're using that from the beginning?"
"You attacked with Blue from the beginning."
"That's different."
"Of course it is. Yours is somehow fair."
Satoru's mouth twitched.
"I didn't say that."
"You were about to."
Satoru pushed away before Hiroyuki could turn the exchange against him.
Then Blue pulled him sideways, changing his angle halfway through his retreat.
Then he came in again.
Their next collision tore a shallow crater into the field.
The third sent a crack racing toward the barrier.
By the fourth, Satoru had stopped speaking.
The Six Eyes took in everything.
Every movement. Every shift in balance. Every change in the flow of cursed energy beneath Hiroyuki's skin.
Nothing escaped Satoru's sight.
Unfortunately, seeing something and reacting to it were two different things.
Hiroyuki redirected a straight punch with his palm and struck Satoru's shoulder before he could recover.
Satoru adjusted.
Hiroyuki hooked a foot behind his ankle.
Blue kept him upright, but the moment Satoru tried to use the opening, he realized Hiroyuki had left it there on purpose.
A knuckle stopped just short of his ribs.
"Again," Hiroyuki said.
Satoru clicked his tongue and obeyed.
Their pace climbed.
Blue distorted the field in short, controlled bursts.
The ground rose and collapsed as Satoru used its attraction to change his movement and disrupt Hiroyuki's footing.
It worked.
Just not enough.
Hiroyuki slipped through each attempt and dismantled his attacks with small, precise movements.
Senjumaru watched from beyond the worst of the damage, one hand held before her as she maintained the barrier. Its surface rippled with every heavy impact, but none of the force escaped.
Satoru stopped trying to force his way through.
He began learning.
The next time Hiroyuki redirected his fist, Satoru moved with it.
Instead of resisting, he allowed the force to carry him past Hiroyuki's guard. Then Blue pulled him sideways before Hiroyuki could ruin his balance again.
Hiroyuki adjusted.
Satoru had expected him to.
The first attack had been a feint.
Satoru planted one foot and changed direction again.
The moment Hiroyuki committed to the counter, Blue accelerated him forward.
His fist struck Hiroyuki in the stomach.
The impact drove through the field with a dull boom.
Hiroyuki slid back two steps.
Satoru immediately created distance instead of chasing him. His breathing had already grown heavier, but his attention remained fixed on the place he had struck.
The hit had landed cleanly.
It had also felt wrong.
There had been resistance, but it didn't feel solid.
The force entered Hiroyuki's body and then spread. Instead of remaining at the point of impact, it was carried elsewhere before it could do any real damage.
It felt less like punching a person and more like striking a river.
The current simply carried the force away.
Satoru's gaze sharpened.
For years, the Six Eyes had shown him the unusual circulation of cursed energy throughout Hiroyuki's body.
It was always moving. Every current joined another before separating again.
Satoru knew that the strange flow mattered.
Only now did he understand why.
Across from him, Hiroyuki brushed a little dust from his clothes.
Satoru stared at the gesture.
"Was that necessary?"
"The dust?"
"You know what I mean."
Hiroyuki's expression broke into a genuine smile.
"Good hit."
The irritation left Satoru before he could stop it.
"You saw the opening and changed your approach instead of trying the same thing harder," Hiroyuki continued. "You've been working on that."
Satoru straightened slightly.
He tried to act as though the praise meant nothing special.
Unfortunately, Hiroyuki knew him too well for that to work.
"Of course I have," he said.
"Then let's see how well it holds up."
The warmth in Hiroyuki's smile remained.
That somehow made the warning worse.
Satoru felt a familiar chill crawl along his spine.
"A new lesson?"
"You did ask me to see everything you've learned."
The ground beneath Hiroyuki's feet exploded.
Satoru tracked him immediately.
Hiroyuki crossed the ruined field in a blur.
One step.
Two.
Three.
Each one made him faster. His path changed again and again, forcing Satoru's eyes to follow the trail of cursed energy across the field.
It was fast, but not beyond him.
Satoru began to smile.
There.
He saw the next step forming in Hiroyuki's stance. Saw the cursed energy collect through his leg. Saw the angle his body would take.
Then Hiroyuki accelerated again.
The cursed energy vanished.
Satoru's smile disappeared with it.
The Six Eyes swept across the battlefield, searching for a flow that was no longer there.
No residue.
No reinforcement.
Nothing.
He had not become invisible. Satoru could still have seen him if his eyes had found him.
But Satoru had spent the entire fight tracking far more than physical movement.
Now, without warning, half the information he relied on was gone.
A pulse of danger crawled across the back of his neck.
Behind him.
Satoru twisted.
Hiroyuki's fist passed beside his shoulder.
The pressure following it struck the ground beyond and carved a trench through the field. Soil and broken stone erupted against the barrier, briefly hiding half the arena behind a cloud of dust.
Satoru leapt clear and landed several meters away.
His heart was hammering.
Not from the near miss alone.
He knew Hiroyuki could conceal his cursed energy. He had even understood what that meant.
At least, he thought he did.
Experiencing it at this speed was completely different. The world suddenly felt incomplete, and his senses continued searching for something that simply wasn't there.
Was this how ordinary sorcerers felt when facing something they couldn't properly perceive?
The sensation was unpleasant.
It was also interesting.
Satoru slowly grinned.
"I see."
If he could no longer follow Hiroyuki precisely, then he would stop giving him room to move.
Blue opened above the field.
Then another formed near the ground.
A third took shape behind Hiroyuki.
The pressure inside the barrier changed.
Broken earth trembled before tearing free in large chunks. Each piece was dragged toward a different point of attraction, causing what remained of the ground to fold and collapse.
Hiroyuki's expression sharpened.
Satoru noticed, and his grin widened.
Good.
His arms were getting heavy. Sweat ran down his face, and each breath came faster than the last.
The Six Eyes made his cursed energy consumption almost ridiculously efficient.
His body, however, was a different matter.
Every acceleration. Every impact. Every sudden change in direction.
All of it was catching up to him.
Hiroyuki still looked composed.
So Satoru pushed harder.
Fine.
If he couldn't win a direct exchange, then he would take away the entire field.
"Cursed Technique Amplification."
The Blues surrounding Hiroyuki intensified.
"Maximum Output: Blue."
The training ground groaned.
Attraction crashed inward from several directions.
The earth beneath Hiroyuki collapsed. Competing forces caught his body between them and, for the first time since the spar began, forced him to stop.
Satoru's knees trembled from the effort.
He raised both hands.
High above the field, another Blue began pulling in everything around it.
Stone tore free from the ground. Debris from their earlier exchanges rose into the air. Larger pieces collided and broke apart before being compressed together again.
Slowly, an enormous boulder formed above the arena.
It continued to grow.
Outside the barrier, the quiet excitement among the spectators died. Several servants backed away, while the instructors moved instinctively toward the younger children despite the barrier standing between them and the attack.
Only Senjumaru remained where she was.
Her eyes moved from the enormous mass overhead to Satoru's shaking arms, then finally to Hiroyuki.
She made no move to intervene.
Satoru pulled his hands down.
The boulder fell.
Blue pulled it toward Hiroyuki, making the enormous mass accelerate as it fell.
At that point, calling it a boulder no longer felt right.
It looked more like a meteor.
Satoru poured everything he could maintain into the attack.
His output. His control. Everything he had improved while Hiroyuki was away.
For the first time that morning, he thought he might have him.
Not because Hiroyuki had run out of answers.
Because this was the best answer Satoru currently had.
Then, through the strain and falling debris, he saw Hiroyuki smile.
"Feeling proud of yourself?"
Satoru almost lost his concentration.
"This is hardly the time."
"You should be."
The words reached him beneath the roar of the descending mass.
For one dangerous moment, those words meant more than the result of the spar.
Hiroyuki had seen it.
Not just the attack, but everything behind it. The failures. The corrections. The hours Satoru spent trying to turn all his potential into something he could actually control.
That was what Satoru had wanted since Hiroyuki returned.
Then Hiroyuki's cursed energy surged, and Satoru's attention snapped back to the field.
The energy did not burst outward.
It spiraled.
Hiroyuki lowered one arm.
His fingers curled. The joints bent and his wrist turned into an unfamiliar position.
Air twisted around it.
To everyone else, it probably looked like a simple movement.
Through the Six Eyes, Satoru saw something else entirely.
Countless layers of force spiraled around Hiroyuki's arm. Each current turned against another until the space surrounding his fingers looked like a storm filled with invisible blades.
Hiroyuki stepped into the falling shadow.
"Whirlwind Iron Cutting Fist."
His arm swept upward.
There was no massive collision.
The meteor simply started coming apart.
Spiraling cracks spread across its surface.
Layer after layer peeled away. Every piece caught by the current was immediately torn into smaller fragments, destroying the force holding the entire mass together.
Satoru's eyes widened.
Hiroyuki had not stopped the meteor.
He had unraveled it.
The remains detonated above him.
The blast swallowed the center of the field. A shockwave hammered the barrier hard enough to make its entire surface flash, and the force tugged at Senjumaru's sleeves and hair even from outside its boundary.
Within the arena, Satoru was thrown backward.
He struck the ground, rolled several times and finally came to rest among the shallow furrows left by their earlier exchanges.
For several seconds, he heard nothing but his own breathing.
Every muscle burned. His arms felt nearly useless, and when he pushed himself upright, the battlefield tilted before slowly settling back into place.
The dust began to clear.
A figure walked through it.
Hiroyuki emerged from the dust.
There was dirt across his clothes. One sleeve had been torn near the cuff, and a thin scrape marked his cheek.
Satoru looked at the scrape.
Then at the torn sleeve.
A tired laugh escaped him.
"I almost got you."
Hiroyuki glanced at his sleeve.
"You ruined perfectly good clothing."
"So I did get you."
"That's not how that works."
"It should count for something."
"A repair bill, perhaps."
Satoru laughed again, too exhausted to argue properly.
Hiroyuki stopped in front of him and held out a hand.
Satoru accepted it. Hiroyuki pulled him to his feet, then kept one hand on his shoulder until he was certain Satoru could stand without falling over.
"You did well," Hiroyuki said.
Satoru looked up.
There was no teasing in his brother's expression now.
"Your control has improved. So has your judgment. You still push too hard when you become frustrated, but you recognized that your first approach wasn't working and changed it before I forced you to."
The praise was too specific to dismiss as something Hiroyuki only said because they were brothers.
Satoru looked away, though not quickly enough to hide his satisfaction.
"Obviously."
"Naturally."
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
That brought his eyes back.
Hiroyuki gave his shoulder a final squeeze before letting go.
"I'm proud of you, Satoru."
For once, Satoru had no clever response prepared.
Satoru stood in the middle of the ruined field, exhausted and completely defeated.
Strangely enough, he didn't mind either fact nearly as much as he probably should have.
Above them, Senjumaru released the barrier.
Its surface faded into the morning air, allowing sunlight to fall across the ruined ground once again.
The spectators remained silent for several seconds. Apparently, none of them were completely certain the spar was actually over.
Hiroyuki looked around at the craters, trenches and scattered debris.
"You were right about the servants."
Satoru followed his gaze.
"Senjumaru said they wouldn't need to worry."
"She said you didn't need to worry."
Satoru glanced toward her.
Senjumaru met his eyes with perfect composure.
"The distinction was deliberate, Young Master."
Satoru stared at her.
Hiroyuki laughed and placed a hand on top of his head.
For a moment, it was only a quiet, affectionate gesture.
Then his knuckles tapped lightly against Satoru's skull.
"Ow."
"And that is for getting carried away."
Satoru rubbed the spot and frowned at him.
"You told me not to hold back."
"I did. I never said there would be no consequences."
"That's unfair, Nii-san."
"You'll survive."
Hiroyuki started walking toward the edge of the field.
Satoru glared at his back for several seconds.
It achieved absolutely nothing.
Eventually, he followed.
"I take back what I said."
"Which part?"
"All of it."
"No, you don't."
Satoru looked once more at the scrape on Hiroyuki's cheek.
A small, satisfied smile returned to his face.
"No," he admitted. "I don't."
The difference between them was still enormous.
Satoru understood that much better now than he did before the spar.
But for the first time, the distance did not feel like proof that he was lacking.
Now, it felt measurable.
And therefore, one day, reachable.