The plaza smelled like sweat, incense, and where it mattered most — blood. The crowd's roar faded to a thin, faraway tide in Caelum's ears; up close it was a percussion only an audience could make, nothing to do with the taste that had begun to thrum low and sweet at his edges.
Elias stepped into the ring like always — shoulders forward, grin on the lip, roving arrogance like a second breath. He was all fire and defiance: bead-knuckled fists, a stance bred from street-sparring and showmanship. He had always moved like he owned the sky. Beside him, Seren lingered at the edge, eyes cool, the smile absent now, a shadow of apology or calculation; Caelum could not tell which.
For a moment he allowed the crowd to believe this was a show. The plaza leaned in as if waiting for a private joke. Then Elias spat a breathful of words, knife-fine.
"You finally show up from that tree of yours," Elias said loud enough for the onlookers to hear, the old jibe sharpened into a blade. "Think you can sit and sleep while others break their backs for the Academy? You think being last is cute?"
Caelum didn't answer. He only stepped forward and the ground seemed to respond; the scent of crushed leaves rose from the arena floor as his feet tread the carved designs. He looked like the same pale boy the crowd had seen days before — only calmer, smaller, less human in the way his eyes watched for movement.
"You broke my trust," he said at last — not loud, but every word carried. "You lied about my mother. You lied to me when I was a child. You promised to stand at my side. You put a collar on my soul." There was no theatricality in his voice; just cold weight.
Elias's face wavered for half a beat, then a laugh like small rocks tossed into water. "We did what we had to. You would have killed us. You would have become a danger to all of us." He took two steps, the old easy bravado slipping back on like armor. "So yes—sorry if our shelter came with strings."
A murmur ran through the crowd. All of it — the entire line of memory and betrayal — pressed against Caelum like a fresh cut. Something inside him went hot and sane and horrifying at once.
"Are you ready?" Elias asked, as if they were ten again and this was a spar of youth.
Caelum's grin was small and terrible. "Yes."
---
They began with hands.
Elias lashed first — fast, fluid, a practiced opening meant to test posture and reaction. His bead-knuckles hummed with impact as they cut the air, little explosions on contact with practice pads. He had always been the kind to over-commit just enough to appear larger than he was.
Caelum flowed around the first strike like water finding a small crack. He didn't meet power with power. He had long since learned how much better it was to redirect: a faint twist of his hips, a sidestep, and then his palm brushed the mat. From the brush, a green tendril unfurled — a thin, sinuous branch like a finger — and snaked for Elias's ankle.
Elias snarled and kicked. The branch snapped like a twig at his boot; he expected that. He expected less the second, quicker tendril that lashed up and looped for his wrist: Thorn Burst, fast and sharp, a sting that left a hot welt even where it only grazed. The crowd hissed.
Elias's response was old muscle memory: he surged, grit teeth, drove forward and rained down a flurry meant to break bones. He had speed and a fire that could blind. For the first thirty heartbeats of the fight he landed blows that made Caelum taste metal and grit. Each strike thudded home; each one Caelum answered by letting the plants take the tempo and the pain.
He did not dodge so much as inhale. The thorns did the bleeding-offs. The branches took blows. Caelum felt the world as if through a different skin — a living network where every shudder of leaf and the snap of twig fed into his bones. The training became choreography: a Branch Whip cracked across Elias's shoulder and sent him staggering; Thorn Burst riddled the air between their faces so that each inhalation burned like pepper.
Elias laughed through the blows, the grin becoming something rawer. "Is that all? You hide behind trees? Did the forest teach you grief?"
The words were fuel. Caelum's eyes narrowed. Where Elias struck hard with weight, Caelum struck precise: a severing cut at the tendon, a vine coiling to wrench balance. For every fist Elias threw, Caelum countered with a tendril that slowed the blow, siphoned its momentum, and redirected it into the dirt.
It began to tilt. The first crack in Elias's composure showed when his foot slipped — a shallow root, grown like a trap. Caelum landed a palm against his sternum, not to strike but to bind, and the sensation was like pressing a hand against a living thing: Elias's breath hitched.
There was no cruelty in Caelum's movement; there was the feral efficiency of someone who had learned to take what he needed. He never stopped moving. Every blow that matters came with a quiet, terrible economy: a broken jaw here, a bruised rib there — injuries that wouldn't kill but would keep a man from being proud.
"Stop!" Seren called from the edge, voice high and raw. "Elias—stop."
Elias did not stop. Had he ever stopped when the stakes were play? This wasn't a show anymore. He stumbled back, hand pressed to his side, mouth bleeding. Pride is a cruel stimulant; it burned in his eyes even as logic bled away.