Chapter 129: The Sky Came Down
The Razorwing returned to Mira’s side, where Glitch was already closing on the objective.
It dropped into a series of defensive attack passes, using its talons and speed to drive Glitch off his line without landing. The first pass worked, raking in fast enough to force Glitch away from his direct approach.
On the next pass, Jin timed a sudden stop beside a stone block. The Kite had already committed to its interception line, and it overshot, sweeping past the spot Glitch had vacated. Glitch resumed the instant it passed, feet digging back into the arena floor as he drove for the marker again.
Mira adapted at once. She didn’t repeat the failed pass; instead, she delayed the next dive, expecting another stop, and when it didn’t come, changed the angle to aim for Glitch’s shoulder rather than his path.
Jin didn’t solve every pass, and Mira didn’t hand him the same opening twice. Each exchange cost Glitch another fraction of distance or forced another adjustment, but he kept advancing until he reached the last stretch before her marker.
Now the Kite had exactly two options, and Mira knew both.
She could stay safely above and let Glitch take the marker, or come down low enough to physically stop him. She knew Jin wanted the second one. Knowing it didn’t change the fact that she had to defend her objective.
Mira chose the best answer available—a fast talon strike intended to knock Glitch sideways before he reached the marker.
The sky had to come down.
Jin wasn’t trying to make Glitch leap into the air. He had spent the entire exchange forcing the Kite toward the one height where it could actually stop them, and now the Razorwing had no choice but to enter it.
As the Razorwing committed to the interception, dropping into reach with one leg extended for the strike, Jin gave the command.
"Harden—hold!"
Glitch flushed dark and planted instead of dodging.
The talon struck his hardened shoulder and dragged. It hurt, and the impact shoved him half a step off his line, but Glitch stayed low with his weight planted beneath him. The lighter Kite couldn’t knock him fully aside in one pass, not while it was committed low and fast with its extended leg swinging directly into range.
"Catch."
Glitch twisted into the contact and closed his jaws on the Razorwing’s lower leg.
The Kite had committed too low, with its leg extended and its full momentum carrying it forward. Glitch stood braced against solid ground, his centre of gravity a fraction of the height, and there was no altitude left for the Razorwing to recover once its balance broke.
Its own momentum yanked Glitch forward a stride, claws scraping across the arena, but his weight and grip tore the clean escape out from under it.
One wing caught the arena floor.
The Razorwing went down in an ugly, uncontrolled skid, feathers and claws scraping across stone as its momentum finally bled away. Glitch was on it before it stopped moving.
Grounded, the Kite was in the wrong world. It scrambled to regain its feet and open its wings, but the stone block on one side and Glitch’s body on the other left it no room to launch. Glitch pinned a wing and shouldered into a decisive position over its vulnerable body, jaws drawing back.
"Off—enough, stop."
The instructor called it at the same instant.
A barrier snapped into place between them, and Jin was already pulling Glitch back. Winning didn’t make another student’s beast fair game, and there was nothing left to prove once the intervention came down.
[Match Complete]
[Winner: Jin Astor]
[Victory Condition: Safety Intervention]
[Combat Ladder Evaluation: Updated After Practical Completion]
The replay showed exactly what had happened.
Jin had attacked the one thing Mira had to defend and narrowed her options until staying in the sky meant losing the marker. Once the Kite was forced into reach, Harden let Glitch absorb the necessary contact, while the Razorwing’s own speed and low altitude supplied the rest of the fall.
Nothing supernatural.
Only a lizard, a stone block, and a Tamer who had made the sky descend on his terms.
Mira crossed to him after the barrier dropped and took the loss cleanly.
"You wanted it to come down," she said.
"You could’ve left it up."
She tipped her head toward her threatened marker, faintly rueful.
"And lost anyway."
She wasn’t bitter about it. She had understood, the same way Corven had. Jin hadn’t fooled her with a cheap trick; by the end, every choice she could see carried a loss somewhere inside it, and she had picked the one that at least gave her a fight.
"Every option was losing by then. I just picked the one that let me try." She paused. "I’ll be better next time."
Another rival worth keeping.
Jin was collecting them.
Glitch was enormously pleased with this victory, far more than the one over the Ram, because he had finally made real physical contact with the enemy. His satisfaction was only slightly dampened by the barrier cutting in before he could establish whether flying beasts tasted meaningfully different from grounded ones—a question he clearly considered scientifically important and unfairly left open.
The Razorwing had struck his already-bruised side, so Jin ran him through another inspection. He checked the shoulder first, then the ribs and joints, watching for any flinch that lingered longer than it should.
The scan came back the way he needed it to. The earlier bruise hadn’t turned dangerous, and the talons hadn’t gone deep because Harden had held where they landed.
Joints stable.
Still cleared.
Then the board updated, and Jin actually let his shoulders drop half an inch.
[Reward Qualification Secured]
[Feed-Credit Allocation: Minimum Tier Guaranteed]
[Final Allocation Pending Tournament Placement]
Secured.
Even the minimum tier meant real feed credits—better food for Glitch, breathing room in the budget, and not one Credit pulled from a family that had already given everything it had. The pressure hadn’t disappeared, but for once the next bag of proper feed didn’t have to come from Arthur or Elena giving up something else.
He hadn’t fixed the shortage. But he had bought some breathing room with his own two wins.
It was clean, and it was his.
Glitch approved of the reward wholeheartedly, now that it had been earned through an acceptable quantity of violence.
The tournament wasn’t done, though, and the next win would push the allocation up substantially. Jin looked back toward the board rather than lingering on the secured minimum.
He wasn’t stopping.
The board posted his next opponent.
[Elian Voss]
[First Class]
[Contracted Beast: Chainweb Spider]
[Quality: Silver]
[Combat Rank: Rank 1 Novice, 3-Star]
First Class. Silver-quality.
Elian stood four classes above Jin, and the Chainweb Spider was two quality grades above Glitch.
Jin watched the end of Elian’s match, and the shape of the next problem arrived before the footage even finished.
The Chainweb Spider hadn’t chased anything. It hadn’t tried to overpower the opposing beast at all. Instead, it had simply webbed the arena—anchoring thick strands across every useful lane and gap, filling the routes and choking the open ground until the enemy beast could barely take a step without fouling itself in threads.
Then it picked the tangled, half-immobilized beast apart at its leisure.
Against the Razorwing, the ground had been Glitch’s whole advantage: his footing, his fast reversals, his terrain reads. Every time the Kite came down, Glitch had been standing in the part of the fight that belonged to him.
Against the Chainweb Spider, the ground itself would belong to the enemy.
Glitch watched the trapped opposing beast thrashing against the strands with visible distaste, gold eyes fixed on the webbed arena.
Underground things that stabbed from below.
A wall that wouldn’t charge.
A sky that wouldn’t land.
And now, at last, the academy had found something worse than all of them—an enemy perfectly willing to stand on the ground and fight while making very sure Glitch couldn’t cross it.