Thud. Thud. Thud.
The rhythmic, deep pulse of taiko drums vibrated through the amber dome.
Before the smoke from Mai's blue flames had even cleared, a line of young servants clad in snow-white linen rushed into the arena. They moved with a choreographed, ghostly grace, spreading silk rags over Jiro's broken form.
Within seconds, the blood-stained sand was covered, and Jiro was whisked away so swiftly it was as if he had never existed.
"Where are they taking him?" One of the competitors asked, but his question fell on deaf ears.
As the drums continued, the piercing, ethereal wail of a hichiriki trumpet joined the fray, signalling a shift from slaughter to celebration.
"Yi-Ouuuuuuuuuuh," Mai's voice declared, and everyone faced him.
Thud!
The Drum echoed.
Mai did not walk out of the ring. He began to move with the sharp, jagged elegance of a traditional kabuki introduction. His feet stomped the sand in time with the drums—Don! Don! as he began to sing his lineage in a rhythmic, chanting cadence.
"Heir to the Sky! Master of the Azure Ember!" Mai sang, his voice echoing with a jagged, melodic arrogance. "Behold the Fox of the Minakaze! We who birthed the sun from the mountain's peak! We who turn the heretic to ash!"
He spun, his sleeves snapping like whip-cracks, finishing with a dramatic pose, his hand resting on the hilt of his smoking wakizashi. The music stopped instantly, leaving a ringing silence.
"The victor: Mai no Minakaze!" Yasumasa announced, his voice booming with pride.
As Mai stepped down, the balconies erupted in polite, rhythmic clapping.
"Befitting of a legend in the making," a high-ranking lord remarked, snapping his fan shut. "He understands that a warrior's duty is not just to kill, but to represent the beauty of the Throne."
Among the remaining contestants, the mood had turned funerary.
"I didn't know it would be like this," a ronin whispered, his face pale. "This isn't a test of skill; has the way of the warrior been tuned into nothing but the entertainment of nobles. How are we supposed to compete with that?"
Nearby, a group of minor nobles were locked in a hushed, heated debate. "The Blue Flame is magnificent, yes," one muttered, "but remember the legends of the Minamoto. Which family truly holds the greater fire? The Minakaze's Fox Fire that burns gracefully, or the Minamoto's Willo' Fire that is as ferocious as the demons they hunt, which is truly better?"
Yorimitsu stood by his pillar, watching Mai's retreating back. "Interesting," he mused. "They compare our fires as if they are the same; they know nothing."
He watched over the nobles mummering amongst themselves.
"This is just ever so annoying, that that Mai no Minakaze has shown his skill, I must now show something great so as not to be considered weak."
The trials continued. The next match was a brutal, ugly affair between Ren of the Silk Thread and a hulking warrior from a vassal house. It was a gruelling struggle of attrition. Both men fought until their Reiryoku was nearly spent, their movements becoming sluggish and heavy.
The crowd's interest began to wane as the fight dragged on, decided only when the warrior lost focus for a split second, distracted by a drop of sweat in his eye. Ren's silk thread snapped out, catching the man's throat and dragging him to the sand. It was a victory, but a desperate one, a stark contrast to Mai's effortless execution.
The silver ink in the sky shifted once more. The names glowed with a sudden, sharp brilliance that demanded attention.
"Number Twelve: Minamoto no Yorimitsu," the herald barked. "Against... Number Six: Fujiwara no Michinaga."
The courtyard went silent. Michinaga was a prominent name of the Capital, a scion of the house that currently held the strings of the Emperor himself. He stepped into the ring, his kariginu robes a brilliant, haughty white, his hand resting on a blade adorned with gold leaf.
Yorimitsu stepped onto the sand, his heavy Dōjigiri still strapped to his back.
"Whaaa, the Prince of the north and the Golden Son," a noble whispered. "Now we shall see if the North has anything left but ghost stories."
Yorimitsu and Michinaga met in the centre of the ring. The contrast was stark: Yorimitsu in his sombre, travel-worn indigo, the massive and weathered Dōjigiri weighing down his frame, and Michinaga, who looked like a creature made of sunlight and silk.
They bowed a deep, formal exchange that carried the weight of a thousand years of political tension between the Minamoto and the Fujiwara. As they rose, they pivoted, moving to their respective sides of the circle with a measured, lethal grace.
The whispers among the elder masters intensified.
"Do not let his delicate frame fool you," an Onmyōji proctor muttered, stroking his thin beard. "Michinaga is quite skilled. While he might lack the raw physical violence of a Northern warrior, as a Spiritual Medium, he is the greatest talent the Fujiwara has produced in a century. He is said to have been trained by the wandering Witch Mastuki."
Michinaga's weapon was peculiar. At his hip hung a small sword, barely longer than a dagger, encrusted with pearls and gold filigree. It looked like a mere decoration, a toy for a child of the court. But he didn't reach for the hilt.
Instead, he reached into the folds of his wide sash and drew out a flute carved from pale, bleached bamboo. It shimmered with a faint, ghostly luminescence.
Michinaga brought the flute to his lips. He didn't play a note yet, but the air around him began to ripple as if seen through a heat haze. The amber dome above seemed to hum in sympathy with his presence. Yorimitsu felt its immediate psychic pressure, a weight on his lungs that felt like being submerged in honey.
"A sound-based medium," Yorimitsu analysed, his internal energy coiling like a viper. "He intends to use the vibrations to disrupt my Reiryoku before I can even close the distance. Clever."
Yasumasa stepped to the edge of the sand, his chest heaving as he drew a final breath.
"BEGIN!" he roared.
The moment the word left his mouth, a sharp, twanging strike of a Shamisen echoed from the musician's gallery, cutting through the silence like a blade.
Michinaga's fingers danced over the bamboo holes, and a high, haunting note pierced the air, a sound that felt less like music and more like a physical needle aimed at Yorimitsu's heart.