The city stirred before dawn.
Ryne's eyes fluttered open, lids heavy, mind sluggish. She turned her head and found him already there. Nameless stood at the narrow window, arms folded, posture unyielding. Pale light sharpened the planes of his face until he looked less like a man than something carved from shadow and memory.
"You really don't sleep, do you?" she murmured, voice blurred by drowsiness.
For a long moment, he said nothing. His gaze swept the street below with the calm of a blade balanced on its edge. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, measured, unshaken.
"Sleep is for those who tire. I do not."
The words left no room for question, as if he'd never considered the lack strange. Ryne's chest tightened. She sat upright, brushing hair from her face, and sighed.
"Then at least try not to brood while the rest of us do. You must be standing there all night."
His eyes didn't move. "Every hour in this city is an hour stolen. Out there—" his hand twitched toward the horizon "—the ruins rot. Horrors fester. And the truth of who took her life sinks deeper into the dark. How long do you mean to wait?"
His tone carved through her like stone grinding against stone. Ryne forced herself to meet it, though her stomach knotted.
"I remember why we came," she said softly. "But charging into the next realm without knowing how and where it opens—or what devours—will end with us like all the others who never returned. We can't afford blind recklessness."
Nameless turned at last, his eyes fathomless, shadows within shadows.
"So you would linger. You would watch children duel while the world burns."
"I would learn," Ryne said firmly. "The Grandmaster's trials are more than play. There are vaults under this city, I feel it, knowledge older than the spires. If there are answers, they'll be there. And if we're to survive the next realm, we'll need more than sharp steel and grief."
His silence pressed down harder than anger. When he finally spoke, his words came like embers—controlled, but with heat that threatened to spread.
"You mistake knowledge for salvation. Nothing written will unmake what's been done."
Ryne forced a crooked smile, trying to break the weight of his stare. "Then let's eat before we both drown in your doom-speech. I refuse to spectate on an empty stomach."
A breath escaped him—half contempt, half something that almost resembled amusement. He turned away from the window.
As they walked out, The city was already alive. Rain-slick streets glimmered in the pale light, alive with voices, carts, banners. Anticipation threaded every sound: the Apex Laureate Trials.
The vendor from the night before stood beneath his patched awning, smoke curling from his brazier. When he spotted them, he called out, "So—you'll watch."
Ryne stepped forward, drawn by roasted bread and meat. "Yes. We'll see what the tournament holds."
The vendor leaned close as he wrapped her meal, his voice lowered. "Then hurry. The Grandmaster waits for no one. It begins soon."
Nameless lingered a moment, eyes narrowing as if peeling layers from the man's words, then turned away, already restless.
The Bowl of Stone rose before them like a wound in the earth. Hewn from living rock, its walls climbed tier upon tier, filled with banners and bodies, voices churning into a storm of expectation.
Ryne froze.
Half-hidden in the shadow of a column stood Lysera and Vaelric.
Vaelric wore no armor today, but the sword across his back gleamed with quiet menace. Lysera leaned toward him, her words sharp and hushed.
"…You cannot shield them forever, Vaelric. Not in your brother's name. Not from this. Not from her."
Before Ryne could catch more, Vaelric's gaze swept the crowd and found them. His face betrayed nothing, but his hand lifted in a measured greeting.
Lysera straightened, composure cloaking her like armor. "You came," she said, her tone poised between relief and calculation. "Sit with us. There are places reserved. Better sightlines than the streets."
They climbed spiraling stairs until the Bowl yawned open above them.
The roar of the crowd hit like a wave, rattling air and bone. Nobles sprawled across carved seats of polished stone, wrapped in silks and fur, eyes glinting like predators before a feast.
And then Ryne saw her.
The Ruler.
Silver hair spilled like river-light, a crown of dark iron resting upon her brow, its crimson gems pulsing faintly as though they breathed with her. Her eyes were grey, endless, like storms that had forgotten how to die. Her lips curved with a smile too gentle, too perfect.
Her aura was kindness. Too much kindness.
Ryne felt her breath catch. Something inside her chest loosened, as though the urge to kneel, to believe, to surrender, had been waiting all along.
Beside her, Nameless stood rigid. His fists curled, his stare locked on the Ruler, sharp and unblinking. Ryne felt it through him—what she could not name. Beneath that surface kindness lay something vast, something hungry.
The Bowl stretched below them, vast and cruel. Mages lined its edges, their threads weaving traps and wards into the stone.
And then the Grandmaster entered.
He strode into the center robed in black and red, his presence folding the Bowl around him. His voice rolled out like thunder wrapped in silk.
"Welcome, citizens of the Bowl. Welcome, honored guests. Tonight begins the First Trial: Blood and Brilliance. Today, the stones will drink. The air will scream. And we will see whose names endure."
The crowd roared, the sound splitting the sky. Ryne leaned forward, her pulse racing, eyes wide.
Nameless did not move. His silence was darker than any cheer.
The Grandmaster raised one hand, and the Bowl fell into silence so complete Ryne swore she could hear her own heart.
"Let the first duel begin."
"Step forward… Students of the University. Let us see if the hours you bled into ink and stone were worth the calling of your names."
From the gate beneath, two figures emerged. Both wore the simple white cloaks of students, but the ground seemed to weigh them differently.
The first was a tall boy, Kael. Lean, pale eyes as sharp as ice shards. A silver blade at his hip that seemed to leech the warmth from the air. Even before he drew it, you could almost taste winter on your tongue. The Grandmaster announced his name with a hint of pride. "Kael of the Frost." A name that sounded like it was earned, not given.
The second, Aric, was all restless energy. Dark hair, a broadsword on his back, and an impatient twitch in his fingers. The moment his hand brushed the hilt, the banners above fluttered, agitated by a wind that had no business being there. "And Aric of the Wind."
The arena floor hummed as the wards sealed, sigils pulsing across the stone. A show for the masses.
Then the Grandmaster's hand fell. "Begin!"
The world, for a moment, held its breath. Then Aric shattered it.
He didn't run; he erupted. A blur of white and steel, a howling gust of wind at his back like a chained beast finally let loose. His sword wasn't just a weapon; it was the heart of a storm he'd dragged into the ring with him. It was the kind of flashy, crowd-pleasing opening that made idiots roar and old masters sigh.
Kael, on the other hand, did not move. He didn't have to. His blade slid from its sheath with a sound like ice cracking on a winter lake. Frost bled from the steel, crawling across the sand in hungry, white veins. An arm swept out, a sigil of sharp angles burning in the air before him. The frost obeyed, rising in a jagged wall of ice.
It was the classic confrontation: spectacle versus substance. The raging storm versus the unyielding glacier.
Steel met ice. The wind tore through the wall, shattering it into a million glittering fragments, and the sound of the impact was a dry, unsatisfying crack. The crowd, ignorant as ever, roared their approval.
Aric was already spinning, his feet barely touching the stone, carried on the gale. His sword carved low, then high—each strike a masterpiece of momentum, trailing arcs of screeching air. Impressive. To a child.
Kael met every blow with the cold economy of a machine. Parry, block, deflect. His face was a mask of placid indifference, as if he were practicing against a training dummy. Another sigil blazed at his side, frost crawling up his own blade until it sang with cold. Then, he moved. Not a flashy rush, but a single, perfect lunge—a needle of winter aimed straight for the heart.
The wind shoved Aric aside, but not fast enough. The needle-point grazed his ribs, and blood welled, steaming in the sudden chill. A good hit. Clean. Efficient.
"Too slow!" Aric spat, but the gale he commanded tore the words from his lips. Desperation was creeping in. He drew a spiraling green sigil in the air, and the dust of the arena rose to meet it, coiling into a focused funnel. With a cry that was more fury than technique, he unleashed it—a cyclone condensed into a spear, a final, all-or-nothing gamble.
Pathetic.
Kael's lips barely moved, whispering words the frost already knew. Frost sigil sign spun around him, the geometry locking into a pattern that was both brutal and beautiful. Ice didn't just rise; it erupted from the ground in a wall as thick as a fortress. The cyclone struck it with a shriek, tearing chunks away, but it held. It always would.
And when it finally shattered, Kael was no longer there.
He stepped through the glittering curtain of ice shards like a phantom. His blade descended in a frozen arc that didn't just block Aric's gale—it split it, carving a line of absolute stillness through the air itself. Frost bloomed along the edge, biting deep into Aric's sword, locking the two blades together in a cage of rime.
The sound that followed was sharp. Final.
Up in the stands, the reactions were a silent storm of their own. Vaelric's jaw tightened, his gaze fixed on the clean, brutal efficiency of the strike. Beside him, Lysera's lips curved into the faintest, most calculating of smirks. But it was the Ruler who was most unsettling. As Kael's power crested, her "too gentle" smile did not change, yet for a fraction of a second, the light in her grey eyes seemed to sharpen, focusing on the display with a hungry, appreciative stillness.
Aric staggered back, his storm dying around him. The life went out of his eyes.
Kael pressed forward, relentless. His blade fell once, twice, three times—not the strikes of a duelist, but the dispassionate blows of an executioner. The last cut broke Aric's guard entirely, smashing him to the stone. His sword clattered away, its borrowed wind finally gone.
Silence. Then the Bowl exploded.
Kael stood over his fallen opponent, his chest heaving faintly, his blade dripping frost.
Aric clawed at the sand, trying to rise. But watching from above, Ryne saw it clearly. It wasn't the pain of injury that held him down. It wasn't even the shame of such a public defeat.
It was the hollowed-out despair of a boy who had bet everything on being special, only to find out he wasn't.
She felt the familiar ache in her own gut. That bitter taste of futility.
Her voice was a low murmur, almost to herself. "He didn't lose to the frost. He lost to the truth—that his storm was just a tantrum."
Nameless's eyes flicked to her, a flicker of something unreadable in their depths. Then, back to the arena. Kael, without a second glance, turned and walked away, leaving Aric kneeling in the sand, his head bowed.
Ryne was not the only one who saw it. Vaelric's expression was grim, a quiet pity for the boy's broken spirit. Lysera, however, watched Aric's collapse with the detached interest of a scholar examining a failed specimen. And on her throne, the Ruler's gentle smile finally deepened, a subtle but profound shift. She seemed to find the boy's despair far more interesting than his earlier fury.
The Grandmaster stepped forward, his voice oozing satisfaction as it filled the arena.
"This," he declared, arms spreading wide, "is the Apex Laureate." His words rolled like thunder. "This is how we honor the pursuit of power! What you have witnessed…"
He gestured to the broken boy and the silent victor.
"…is only the trailer."
The Bowl roared, louder than before, hungry for more.
The Grandmaster's eyes gleamed as he raised one hand.
"Send forth the next!"