The transport to Oblivion's Edge Academy was a sleek, intimidating vessel of black alloy and silent engines—a far cry from the utilitarian academy skiffs. The inside was all muted luxury and oppressive silence. The team sat in a pressurized cabin, the atmosphere thick with unspoken tensions.
Kieran held court, discussing strategy with Lyra in tones that assumed compliance. Dorian and Mira listened quietly. Arlan sat apart, using the time to meditate, to solidify the fragile, painful memory of the Null-State. His bracer's new hairline crack hummed faintly, a reminder of the cost.
Status Check:
Mana:1200/1500
Umbral Mana:400/500
Instability:17% (Elevated - Post-Training Backlash)
Condition: Minor Spiritual Burn, Core Fatigue.
Oblivion's Edge lived up to its name. It wasn't built on a mountain, but into a gargantuan, jagged fissure that split a continent-spanning glacier. Towers of black crystal and spun metal grew from the ice walls like vicious thorns. The air was thin, cold, and saturated with dense, orderly mana that felt heavy in the lungs. It was a place of harsh discipline and absolute control—the perfect home for Kieran's philosophy.
They were ushered into austere guest quarters deep within the ice. The viewing port showed a dizzying drop into blue-ice darkness. The message was clear: you are here at our sufferance, in the heart of our power.
The opening ceremony was held in the Grand Crucible—a colossal, multi-tiered arena carved from the living glacier, lit by floating orbs of cold white light. Students from the four academies filled the stands, their auras a riot of colors and pressures. The air crackled with competitive hostility.
Arlan scanned the opposition with Umbral Sight, careful to keep the ability utterly dormant, only using his enhanced mundane perception.
He saw Anya of the Silent Tide from Oblivion's Edge—a girl with hair the color of deep ocean and a calm, crushing aura that made the space around her seem denser. 4th Order, Rank 9. Crushing Intent (Nascent).
He saw Jaxon Grimm from Sky-Cleave Spire, a mountain of a young man with stone-like skin, standing so still he seemed part of the arena floor. 4th Order, Rank 3. Mountain Intent (Established). His aura didn't flare; it settled, making the ground beneath him more real.
He saw Rork Emberheart, a taller, fiercer version of Borin, his hair like living lava, his eyes scanning the crowd until they found Arlan. A promise of violence burned in his gaze. 4th Order, Rank 4. Consuming Intent (Established). His aura didn't just radiate heat; it seemed to hunger, to pull light and warmth toward it.
The headmaster of Oblivion's Edge, a severe woman with a voice that echoed without amplification, announced the gauntlet. Five stages over three days. Points for team and individual performance. Glory and profound rewards for the winning academy.
Stage 1: The Frostfall Maze. A shifting labyrinth within a magically sustained blizzard. Survival and navigation against environmental hazards and roaming ice constructs. Team-based.
They were teleported into the maze. Instant, biting cold that seeped through mana-reinforced gear. Walls of opaque, howling snow limited visibility to a few meters. The very mana in the air was sluggish, cold.
"Form up!" Lyra commanded, her stellar aura pushing back the cold in a small bubble. "Kieran, take point. Sense the path of least resistance. Dorian, root us. Mira, clear the snow ahead. Thorne, watch our flanks and rear."
Kieran didn't argue. He raised a hand, his Dominion Intent extending forward like an invisible probe. "This way. The maze's shifting is algorithmic. Predictable."
They moved. Ice constructs—faceless humanoids made of packed snow and sharp icicles—ambushed them from the walls. Kieran didn't fight them. He redirected. A flick of his wrist, and the kinetic energy of a charging construct was inverted, sending it stumbling backward into a wall. Another had its potential energy nullified, causing it to slump into a harmless pile.
It was terrifyingly efficient. He didn't expend mana; he manipulated the existing physics.
Arlan handled the flank with precise, mana-conserving dimensional slashes, cutting constructs apart before they could fully form. He used small spatial folds to deflect icicle volleys. He played his part, the solid, unremarkable combatant.
They encountered a team from Emberheart Forge, struggling against a massive Ice Golem. Rork Emberheart saw them.
"Solara! A little help would be courteous!" he yelled over the wind, even as he bathed the golem in white-hot flames that barely melted its surface.
Lyra hesitated. Alliance was not against the rules.
"Waste of time," Kieran said flatly. "Their failure is our advantage. Around them."
As they moved to bypass, the Ice Golem, enraged, slammed a fist into the ground. A shockwave of cold and fracturing ice shot out. A spire of ice erupted directly under Mira.
Arlan reacted without thought. A Spatial Anchor on Mira, a Fold of the space she occupied. He yanked her two meters to the left. The ice spire speared empty air.
It was a clean, quick save. It also used more mana than his assigned role should have.
Kieran's mercury eyes snapped to him. "I did not give an order to deviate."
"The mission is team survival," Arlan replied, his voice calm. "Losing our area controller reduces survival probability."
A faint, icy smile. "Noted. Do it again without my command, and I will consider you a rogue element to be contained."
The threat hung in the frozen air. They pressed on, leaving the Emberheart team to their fight.
They finished the maze in third place, behind Oblivion's Edge and Sky-Cleave Spire. Solid, not spectacular.
Stage 2: The Aethelstone Conquest. A capture-the-flag style game across floating islands of magnetically charged rock in a lightning-filled void. Individual speed and combat prowess.
This was where individual strengths shone. Lyra blazed across the void like a comet, securing two flags. Kieran simply walked across the chaos, kinetic energy bending to create stable pathways and repel opponents. Dorian used vines to swing and secure a flag. Mira used ice bridges.
Arlan's role was interception. He was tasked with stopping enemy flag-carriers.
He faced Liana Swiftstride, the wind adept from Sky-Cleave. She was a blur, moving so fast she left after-images. She had a flag and was streaking for her base.
He couldn't match her speed. So he didn't try. He planted a Spatial Anchor ahead of her predicted path. As she zipped past his position, he Folded the space between his anchor and a point directly in front of her.
To her perspective, the empty space ten meters ahead of her suddenly contained Arlan Thorne, his blade already in a downward slash. She had to abort her flight in a screeching, wind-tearing halt to avoid impaling herself on Purple-Crack.
In that moment of stopped momentum, he hit her with a trickle of Amethyst Voidfire, turning her movement momentarily sluggish. She stumbled. He didn't attack. He snatched the flag from her hand with a shadow-tendril so fast and subtle it was just a flicker of darkness.
"Hey! That's—!" she protested.
"Conquest," Arlan said flatly, and Folded space again, delivering the flag to Dorian who was closer to their base.
He did similar disruptions twice more, using spatial tricks and subtle voidfire effects to harass and delay, not to engage in drawn-out fights. He played the perfect, annoying guerrilla.
They finished second in that stage, gaining ground.
At the end of the day, their team was ranked second overall, behind Oblivion's Edge. In the austere dining hall, Kieran looked pleased. "Adequate. Tomorrow, the puzzle and the team combat. Thorne, your disruptive tactics are passable. For the team combat, you will remain within twenty meters of me. You will be my focus amplifier. I will channel force vectors through your spatial anchors for increased precision. You will not initiate independent action."
It was a tighter leash. Arlan nodded. "Understood."
That night, in the freezing guest quarters, Arlan lay awake. He accessed the secure, point-to-point comms device Selene had smuggled into his gear—a single-use, encrypted pulse.
He sent a brief message: "Stage 3 tomorrow. Accord presence?"
The reply came an hour later, just before dawn: "Scanners detected off-site. Low profile. Be careful. K says watch for pattern breaks. Their move will look like an accident."
Kaelen's warning. The Accord wouldn't attack openly. They'd orchestrate a "tragic accident" in the high-stress environment.
Stage 3: The Ocularis Puzzle. A purely mental test. A giant, collective illusion where teams had to solve a multi-layered psychic riddle involving symbolic logic, mana-flow harmony, and historical reconstruction. It required perfect teamwork and intellectual synergy.
This was Lyra and Dorian's domain. Lyra's cosmic intellect parsed the symbolic layers at a frightening pace. Dorian's tactical mind saw the connections. Even Kieran contributed, his control perfect for fine-tuning mana flows. Arlan and Mira provided support, stabilizing constructs as directed.
They were in the lead, about to solve the final layer, when Arlan felt it. A tremor in the illusion's mana matrix. Not a flaw in the puzzle. A sabotage.
The psychic landscape, a beautiful forest of glowing crystals, shuddered. A "crystal" that was a key harmonic node suddenly flared with a familiar, sickly green energy—Phasing Slime residue. Accord sabotage.
The flare wasn't aimed at them. It was aimed at the team from Sky-Cleave Spire, who were working on a parallel layer nearby. The feedback from the corrupted node, if it connected with their delicate psychic probe, would cause a catastrophic resonance, likely brain-scrambling several of them.
It would look like a tragic puzzle malfunction.
Arlan saw it unfold in slow motion. He was the only one who knew the signature. He had a split second.
If he acted, he'd break formation, draw attention, reveal knowledge he shouldn't have.
If he didn't, students—not enemies, just competitors—would be grievously hurt or killed.
Break the cage.
The Accord's cage of anonymous, acceptable collateral damage.
He didn't shout a warning. He acted.
He flung a Spatial Anchor at the corrupted node and a second at a dead, inert crystal far to the side. He triggered a Fold, not of space, but of the mana connection itself, using his spatial affinity to briefly reroute the deadly feedback pulse into the dead crystal.
It was incredibly complex, done on instinct. The dead crystal exploded harmlessly into glittering dust. The Sky-Cleave team jerked back, startled by the sudden explosion near them but unharmed.
The puzzle environment stabilized. The sabotage was neutralized.
But every eye on the Celestial Ascent team was on him. Lyra's was calculating. Dorian's confused. Mira's concerned.
Kieran's was furious. "What. Was. That." His voice was a whisper of controlled rage. "You broke synchronization. You compromised our solution sequence. For what? A minor environmental glitch?"
"The glitch would have critically injured the Sky-Cleave team," Arlan stated, meeting his gaze. "It was a mana-feedback trap."
"And how," Kieran asked, his Dominion Intent beginning to press down on Arlan specifically, a crushing weight of disapproval, "did a 3rd Order spatial adept with a fractured core detect a subtle mana-feedback trap before our 4th Order sensors or Lyra's stellar perception did?"
The question hung in the air. The implication was clear: he had outside knowledge. He was suspicious.
"I sensed a spatial anomaly in the node's structure," Arlan lied, the pressure making his bones creak. "My affinity is sensitive to dimensional stress."
Kieran stared at him, not believing a word. But with no proof, and the stage still active, he had to relent. The pressure lifted. "You are on the thinnest of ice. One more deviation. One."
They finished the puzzle, but their rhythm was broken. They came in third.
Back in the prep room before the crucial Team Combat stage, Kieran cornered him, alone. His Dominion Intent sealed the room in a bubble of absolute control.
"You are hiding something, patchwork. You move with the caution of a hunted thing. You recognize threats you shouldn't. My aunt believes you are a precious victim. I believe you are a seed of chaos. During the combat, you will stick to the plan. You will be my instrument. And after this tournament, I will peel apart every secret you have, until I understand what you truly are."
Arlan looked back at him, the cold void inside him meeting Kieran's controlled tyranny. He said nothing.
The cage was tightening. The Accord had made their move. And his own teammate was now a confirmed enemy.
The Team Combat stage was next. Five-on-five battles in the Crucible's central arena. The stakes were about to get mortal.
And Arlan's list of enemies in the arena had just grown by one.