The final ticks of the round passed, and Viktoria sat on one of the stone benches at the edge of the stands, head tilted slightly back, savoring something that felt almost like peace for the first time since the tournament began. The wind brushed gently over her skin, smelling of warm stone and damp grass, and the sun stood high and golden over the arena, so that even the bustling stands seemed muted, almost peaceful, for a moment. For one heartbeat she forgot she was even in a place where people fought. Her gaze drifted lazily to the great Aether screen, which still showed Katarine's search—her opponent crawling through dense undergrowth, while somewhere at the edge of the image a family fished together at the shore of a small lake, perfectly at ease, as if there were no tournament, no arena, no ancestors watching over everything. A smile crept onto Viktoria's face. She would have liked to experience something like that too—with her own family, somewhere no one had to fight, where the loudest sound of the day was a fishing line splashing into the water.
She glanced up at the sky one last time as the final ten ticks arrived. Katarine lay motionless on the ground, defeat long since sealed, even if her pride still resisted it. Five ticks remained. Viktoria closed her eyes. "You'll see," she murmured, more to herself than to anyone, her thoughts already half elsewhere—with her family, with the stillness of the lake, with everything that wasn't fighting.
Then the surroundings around her dissolved into shimmering Aether. When she opened her eyes again, the arena lay before her, the same one she herself had entered not long ago. Up in the stands sat Alvios, cheering loudly and waving both arms, while Nouel beside him only gave a brief nod, arms crossed over his chest, a satisfied, almost smug smile on his lips. Raiiko remained motionless as always, but a barely noticeable tilt of his head revealed that he, too, had registered the victory—a sight Viktoria wouldn't soon forget. The voices around her fell silent for a moment—Viktoria was still half caught in her own world, until the bright, refreshing green of victory lit up her vision. Confused, she looked at her own hands. "Huh… did I just…" But there was no time for the thought, as the king had already announced her victory in full voice across the entire arena.
Katarine walked past her unhurried, then stopped, bowed slightly, and looked deep into Viktoria's eyes. "Forgive me for how rough I got toward the end." Viktoria blinked in surprise before Katarine straightened again and offered her hand, upright and proper, as good manners demanded. "I hope you don't hold it against me that I threw a stone or two at you." A trace of shame lingered in her voice—losing, despite tricks like that, was a bitter pill. But could one really blame her for it? She had, like everyone else here, thought of nothing but victory. That, at least, was how Viktoria saw it, as she smiled and laid her hand on Katarine's. "Oh, no problem. I don't hold it against you." Relieved, Katarine let out a breath and thanked her, before the two strolled back to the stands together.
"How positively adorable," the king boasted, amused, letting his gaze sweep across the stands. "The youth of today still have manners after all." His son Shrodmir merely narrowed his eyes and let out a long, drawn-out sigh. "On to the next round," he said dryly, clearly unmoved by his father's sentimentality.
The ancestors called up the next two participants: Entrima, a wood elf who wielded bow and arrow, his Aether springing from the element Ventus, and a fighter named Lunara Aqualis, guardian of the Deep Oases, whose current was Aqua. A quiet murmur ran through the stands as her title was announced. Even the king, who otherwise only offered amused remarks over every fight, fell silent for a moment and nodded to her with respect as she reached the steps—those who knew the name knew that in the Deep Oases, no one contradicted her judgments without regretting it.
Lunara descended the stone steps at an unhurried pace, with a grace that made even her opponents pause for a moment. In place of legs she bore a shimmering fin, which served her perfectly well for her usual way of moving through the arena. Without show, without unnecessary gesture, both fighters stood ready, before the announcement held them back once more. "Cheerful contenders, you are granted the honor of showing everything within you," the voice of the ancestors proclaimed over the arena. "This fight allows you to use everything you possess—but there's a catch: gradually, objects and stones will appear out of nowhere, which can serve you as cover or as weapons." No sooner had the last word faded than the first stone flickered into existence somewhere at the edge of the arena, followed by a second, as if the arena itself had begun to breathe.
Entrima looked confident, bow and arrow already in hand. Lunara, meanwhile, held her trident relaxed at her side, barely in a fighting stance—as if she already knew she wouldn't need it to know how this fight would end.
Up in the stands, Alvios leaned forward eagerly. "You think he's got a chance?" he whispered to Nouel. The wood elf watched Lunara's posture a moment too long before answering. "I'm watching how she moves first." He said nothing more, but the undertone in his voice revealed he already had a good idea how this fight would turn out.
The ancestors let the fight begin.
Wind flowed through Entrima's bow, compressed Aether shot through the air, its target: Lunara. She dodged with a brief tilt of her head to the side, without a word, without any show. "You don't exactly look built for fighting," he called to her, as more arrows sped from his string, each wrapped in a hint of Ventus. Lunara answered not with words but with a single flowing sidestep that turned into a full spin—a step of Motus Aetheris, that ancient dance magic of the Deep Oases, which channeled the Aether not through spoken formulas but through movement itself. Around her a swirl of water and air formed, a small, tamed storm that gently nudged every incoming arrow off its path before it could touch her. Ventus Spiral, her teachers called it—one of many forms this dance magic could take, just as distinct as her people's song magic, that Vocem Minor with which Lunara would shortly turn her own voice into a weapon.
Entrima focused, fired again—two arrows this time, one close behind the other, a double strike meant to break through the swirl. Lunara stopped her spin abruptly, parted her lips briefly, and a single, clear tone rose from her throat, barely louder than a breath. The air itself seemed to respond: a wave of condensed Aether-water rolled toward the arrows and pushed them back with gentle, unyielding force, as if the sea itself had rejected them. Lunaris Vox—the moonflow voice, which no one ignored unpunished.
Neither fighter showed any reaction—but while Entrima searched for a new answer, Lunara had already begun to read him. Under her breath she shaped a second, quieter syllable, barely audible, a fragment of that rune which tolerated no lie. For the blink of an eye her eyes deepened to a rich, clear blue, in which his hesitation was reflected as in still water—the tiny tremor in his draw hand before he released. "You count your shots," she said finally, calm, almost offhand. "Always three, then a pause."
Without any hurry her fin dissolved, and two legs took its place—a shift she had performed a thousand times before, as ordinary to her as a breath was to others. Fine, barely visible traces of fins shimmered briefly along her back before vanishing beneath her clothing, and faint blue-silver veins traced themselves for a moment along her calves. Her first step on the dry sand felt a shade heavier than it should have—the ground here didn't obey her as readily as the water of her homeland did, but she let nothing show. She now took her trident in both hands. Nothing else about her had changed, no glow, no armor of light—only a fighter who knew exactly what her body was capable of. "I take back what I said earlier," Entrima said, before answering with a hail of arrows.
A whirlwind of steel and wood raced toward her, and Lunara danced again, tighter this time, faster, her trident an extension of her movement, deflecting every arrow sideways with its tines, dissolving Aether into fine sparks. Not one step too many, not one motion wasted.
"Tch. Fine, then differently," Entrima growled, lowering his bow—not out of defiance, not out of surrender. He was only just getting started. In a cut stance he fired, this time without any Aether at all, for wrapped in it the precision would have been lost. Two arrows skimmed low across the ground. Around the two fighters the terrain kept changing—barricades formed out of nothing, single stones, entire stone walls, turning the arena into a labyrinth within a few breaths—but for Entrima's low-flying attack the path stayed clear.
Lunara sang a short formula, her voice deeper than usual, firm as that of a general commanding an army. Water rose beneath her feet, formed into a perfect wall, and swallowed both arrows in one stroke. But she didn't stop there. A second spell flowed from her lips, without a stumble, without hesitation: "Aqua, redde ei quae eius sunt." The Aether spat both arrows back out—twice as fast, just as precise as before. Entrima threw himself into a roll to the side, as the arrows struck thunderously into one of the freshly formed stone walls, the Aether shattering in a dramatic rain of particles.
The young elf fled through the growing labyrinth of obstacles, over barricades, beneath an improvised wooden fence, his breath heavy now, his steps less measured than at the start. "Finally," he panted, as a stone wall offered itself as perfect cover. He pressed his back against the cool stone, listening for every sound beyond the wall, his own heartbeat pounding louder in his ears than anything else. Panicked, he looked around—left, right, nothing. "Where are you," he murmured, before reminding himself to stay calm and think. A blink of stillness settled over the labyrinth, so heavy that even the spectators in the stands unconsciously held their breath.
A shadow spread over him. A column of water rose high into the sky, and atop it, with the gaze of a falcon tracking every movement below, stood Lunara. Nothing escaped her eye—not his trembling breath, not the quiet crunch of sand beneath his boots. The metal of his own arrow reflected in her eyes as he fired again from his knee. This time he deliberately missed his target—a rope was tied to the arrow, which he guided with Ventus around every obstacle and finally around Lunara herself, at a speed even she couldn't cut through in time.
The rope drew tight, leaving her no room to move—except for a narrow gap below. Lunara dissolved her legs back into water and slipped, glittering like liquid silver, out of the noose before it could close completely. "Damn it," Entrima blurted, immediately beginning his retreat. He raced along the arena wall, leapt over a freshly risen barricade, ducked beneath a jutting outcrop of rock, and left obstacle after obstacle behind him with an agility that earned him an admiring murmur from the stands. For one brief breath he believed he'd gained distance. Then Lunara hummed a short, bright sequence of tones—Caelum Celeris—and her steps gained a speed no eye could properly follow anymore. She caught up to him in just two strides, as effortlessly as if the chase through the labyrinth meant hardly more to her than a stroll along the shores of her homeland.
In this tournament, as explained before, no one was allowed to be killed—but that made the moment no less unsettling for Entrima, as her trident came within a hair's breadth of him for the space of a blink. He pictured the tines running through his body, a groundless worry, as quickly became clear: bold and swift, Lunara struck with the blunt shaft of her weapon, for the trident Thalassaris had never been forged to kill, but to bind currents. Faster and more precisely than Entrima would have thought himself capable, he managed to dodge sideways. "You're exposed, now I've—" Without pause her shaft came at him again, this time from above, again with the blunt side. Shock shot through him. On instinct he sent two arrows into the ground—her strike hit one of the scattered stones instead. "Ventus!" he shouted, and dust settled over the entire ground, swallowing all sight of what was happening.
Entrima left the dust cloud first, waiting patiently for her to follow next.
Up in the stands, Alvios followed the events with bated breath, while Nouel studied both fighters' movements with narrowed eyes, as if committing every step to memory for later. Raiiko seemed unmoved by it all, his gaze calm and detached, fixed on the arena as if watching a natural spectacle that could only ever have one outcome. Nouel was the first to realize where all of this was heading. "He can't win here with ranged combat alone," he said, a dark line at the corners of his mouth. "That's that, then," Raiiko added, so matter-of-factly that even Alvios understood the weight behind it. "Entrima relied too much on his distance."
Inside the dust cloud, Entrima's own Ventus merged with something else—cool, blue-black wisps of fog that mixed silently among the dust motes, Noctis Veil, summoned with a single whispered word. When the cloud finally thinned, Lunara was nowhere to be seen. Entrima spun on his own axis, bow raised, eyes narrowed with tension. Before he could react, he heard a battle cry directly behind him, just as Raiiko's sentence ended with the words: "Every ranged fighter's greatest strength is also their greatest weakness."
Lunara spun around, her trident carried through one final, flowing dance step around her own axis—and for the fraction of a breath, something happened that no one in the stands had ever seen before. Along the tines of her weapon a light began to travel, fine as moonlight on rippling water, and faint, barely visible lines suddenly traced themselves across her arms and shoulders, as if for one heartbeat the entire depth of the Deep Oases itself glowed beneath her skin. Her eyes deepened to a blue that no longer had anything to do with ordinary water, her hair lifted as if she suddenly stood in a current only she could feel. It wasn't a shout, not a called name, no transformation—only the tide within her, choosing, for a single moment, not to hold back any longer. "Dance, Aquadorra," she said quietly, almost gently, and the gathered Aqua at her tines struck Entrima with the force of a wave nothing could stop.
The blow hurled him through several barricades and stones, until he slammed motionless, almost lifeless, against the arena wall. A crater remained as his body sank dully to the ground. Even as the dust settled, the light on Lunara's skin faded as quietly as it had come, and she stood there again as she always had—only with a trident whose last sparks slowly faded away.
In a real fight, this would have been an execution. He had fought bravely, but he had never truly stood a chance.
The fight was decided.
"The winner is Lunara," the king announced, and this time his voice carried no mockery, only a trace of respect. Lunara remained standing on her legs—on land there was no reason for her to change back, as long as the ground beneath her stayed dry. She knelt briefly beside Entrima, hummed a soft, warm melody—barely more than a few notes—and a touch of Aqua settled soothingly over his ribs, before the hurrying healers took over. She didn't fight to destroy, but to preserve, and that held true even for the one she had just defeated.
Shrodmir, standing beside his father, watched her for a long while. "She could have beaten him in ticks, couldn't she," he murmured, gaze fixed on the flickering light that had just played over her skin. The king only nodded, not looking away from the arena. "And that's exactly why she watches over the Deep Oases, my boy. Not because she's the strongest. But because she knows when she doesn't have to be—and when she's allowed to show the world for one breath, without anyone needing to fear it."
The spectators roared over the most spectacular duel the arena had seen so far. Viktoria smiled, not from excitement, not from worry—adrenaline flooded her body as she murmured quietly: "So my next opponent is… her." She looked up at the stands, hopeful, while Entrima gathered his spent arrows with the help of Ventus and returned to the stands with his head held high. Not a word crossed his lips—only his gaze spoke, the look of a fighter who would return stronger than he had left.