Chapter 60: THE NIGHT BEFORE
The crystal displays flickered. Victor Harwick versus Doran.
Doran walked into the arena with his spear across his shoulder and his buckler on his arm, a fifth-year veteran who’d pushed Kellan to his limits and earned his place in the quarter-finals through patience and precision. The crowd gave him a respectful applause, a quiet acknowledgment of a fighter who’d earned his spot through years of disciplined combat.
He’d watched Victor’s matches. He knew about the blink. He knew about the lightning. He knew he was outmatched, but he walked to the center of the platform with his head up and his spear planted on the stone.
Victor walked in with his blade already drawn, golden light flickering along the steel. His easy smile was in place, but it was tighter now, more deliberate, the smile of a man who needed to prove something.
The crowd’s reaction was mixed. The Kane colors in the stands didn’t cheer. The Harwick green was quiet. Reyes’s public accusation had done its work, and the golden child’s halo was tarnished in ways that couldn’t be polished away.
"You’re going to lose," Victor said. His voice was light, almost friendly. "You know that."
"Probably," Doran said. "But I’m going to make you work for it."
The match lasted four minutes. Doran opened with javelins, causing Victor to use blink in the first exchange. The crowd stirred. The trump card Greer had forced out of him was now being used against a B-rank Spearman in the opening seconds. Doran pressed with the spear-dance, the continuous sequence of thrusts and sweeps that had overwhelmed Kellan, and Victor’s blade moved like water, deflecting each strike with a grace that reminded everyone why he was S-rank.
When the lightning came out on the third exchange, Doran’s spear shattered. The haft splintered in his hands. Victor’s blade stopped an inch from his throat, electricity still crackling along the steel.
"Not bad. At least you could say you tried," Victor said. His voice was quiet, almost respectful.
Doran raised his hand. The match ended. Victor walked off without looking back. He’d won, but the crowd wasn’t cheering for him.
***
The crystal displays flickered. Dominic Kane versus Seira.
The captain against the healer. Teammates forced to face each other.
Seira walked onto the platform in her healer’s robes, her barrier bracelet on her wrist, her long dagger sheathed at her hip. She’d used it against Trent. She’d shown everyone what a healer could do when pushed. But she wasn’t here to fight, and everyone could see it in the way she walked, in the steady calm of her eyes.
Dominic walked in with Wobbly on his shoulder, his enchanted black and gold catching the arena light, and they met in the center of the platform.
"Fighting you is pointless, I think I’ve achieved what I wanted already," Seira said. Her voice was clear, carrying across the silent arena. "I’ve watched you fight. Even against Reyes, it didn’t seem like you were even trying. I know what you can do, and I know what I can do, and there’s a gap between them that I can’t close."
She paused. The crowd was listening.
"So I’m not going to fight you. I withdraw. Not because I’m afraid. Because you’re my captain. You got me through the team phase. You never asked me to be anything other than what I am, and I’m not going to stand here and pretend I have a chance just to prove something to people who never believed in me anyway." She looked at Dominic. "Go win the semi-finals. Go beat Victor. Make them remember your name. I’ll be cheering for you."
Dominic crossed the platform. He put his hand on her shoulder. "Thank you," he said quietly. "I’m glad I was your captain."
Seira nodded. She turned and walked off the platform, her head held high, and the crowd rose in awe of what they’d witnessed. A quiet appreciation of something honorable. The healer who’d learned to fight, who’d beaten a Lightning Mage in a straight match, and had gone further than anyone would have expected of a support class.
Dominic watched her go. The crystal displays flickered above the arena. The semi-final bracket appeared. Dominic Kane versus Victor Harwick. Lysandra Li versus Pembroke. The grudge match and the wall. The crowd roared.
***
The evening settled over Caldmore like a held breath. The quarter-finals were complete. Four fighters remained. The semi-finals would begin at dawn.
In the competitors’ quarters beneath the arena, Pembroke sat alone in a small stone room with his two swords laid across a wooden table. He was just sitting, his pale eyes fixed on the wall, his expression as serene as it had been for five years. This was to be his very last run in the trials.
Someone had left a cup of tea outside his door. He hadn’t touched it. It wasn’t the first time someone had. Tomorrow he would face Lysandra Li, the shy girl who’d beaten Baines close to death and a Cassidy Vance to submission, and he felt nothing about it. Not anticipation. Not concern. Just the quiet certainty that the match would end the way all his matches ended. The thought didn’t comfort him. It didn’t disturb him. It simply was.
In the infirmary, Lysandra sat on the edge of a cot while a healer wrapped her shoulder. The chain barbs had gone deeper than she’d thought. The healer was efficient, her hands quick and practiced, and Lysandra watched her work without speaking.
The switch had faded completely now. The shy girl was back, her shoulders curled inward, her eyes on the floor. But something was different. The fear was still there, Pembroke was tomorrow, and the thought of facing him made her stomach cold, but alongside it was something else. Resolve. The same resolve that had carried her through the team phase, through Baines, through Cassidy Vance. She wasn’t going to win tomorrow. She knew that. Everyone knew that. But she was going to give the fight her all.
Across the city, in the Harwick estate, Victor stood in front of a mirror in his private quarters. His armor had been repaired. His blade had been sharpened. His smile was gone. He’d been staring at his own reflection for minutes, and what he saw there wasn’t the golden child who’d walked into the Trials expecting to win.
It was someone who’d been forced to reveal his hand by someone he’d thought less of. It was someone who’d been publicly accused of attempted murder by a man begging on his knees. Someone who was about to face Dominic Kane in the semi-finals, the same person that had stalled him in the team phase, and Dominic Kane had been showing he was not like the pushover he knew, he’d beaten Reyes bloody, and it seemed he still had more to show that he’d been holding back.
Victor’s hands tightened on the edge of the table. Tomorrow, he would end this. Tomorrow, he would remind everyone who he was.
In the Caldmore Adventurer’s Guild, Frank Castle sat at his desk with a stack of reports and a hot cup of coffee. The gold core from floor ten was still in the vault, waiting for transport to the capital auction house. The questions from the regional office were still piling up.
The Harwick situation was still simmering. But none of that was what kept him at his desk this late. He was thinking about Dominic. About the F-rank Summoner who’d walked into his guild two months ago, how far he’d come and now a C-rank fighter who was now one match away from the finals, reviving the Kane name.
Frank had known Edmund Kane. He’d watched the man climb from nothing and die in a cell. He’d spent years wondering if he could have done more. And now Edmund’s son was wearing black and gold into the arena, and Frank couldn’t shake the feeling that something long overdue was finally being set right.
In the apartment, the lantern was burning low. Dominic sat at the table with Wobbly beside him, its glow a steady pulse in the dim light. Theresa was on the couch, her legs tucked under her, a book open in her lap that she hadn’t turned a page of. Florence was in the courtyard, running through her drills one last time before bed, the sound of her feet on stone a familiar rhythm through the open window. Tomorrow, Dominic would face Victor.
Two months of waiting. Two months of training. Two months of climbing from F-rank to this moment. He looked at Wobbly, at its steady glow, at the little vest that was slightly crooked, at the creature that everyone had dismissed as a useless summon. Tomorrow, Victor would learn what Wobbly could do. Tomorrow, the grudge would be settled.
But tonight, there was tea. There was warmth. There was the quiet hum of a home that had somehow, against all odds, become full.