The Blue Company sent out scouts, a pair, then another, each time feinting and drawing short-lived pursuit. Soren didn't chase.

Not yet. Instead, he let the approach close until the rhythm of bodies and weapons beat together, turning the grass slicker and the air three degrees warmer just from the friction of effort and anxious sweat.

First contact was the transfer, who Soren thought might be called Jannek, but wasn't entirely sure: Jannek spooling round the left with a half-crouch, trying for the leg hook on Cassian's second.

The move failed, but it bought time. The twins hit next, not to wound but to force the Blue Company to slow, tempo change, not triumph.

Soren watched the first three exchanges from two paces beyond the melee, then stepped in as Cassian tried to box one of the twins against the nave wall.

Soren took the clash at full force: steel, then steel, then the abrupt shudder of real bone through Cassian's forearm as the blades tangled and Soren twisted out, using the leverage of Cassian's own posture to break contact and reset the line.

They traded blows, the clack and ring of it echoing up the nave, and Soren felt the old battle-lust creep up through his boots, settle as a feral smile in his mind.

This time, Cassian didn't try to talk, only bore down with increasing aggression, as if every failed attack could be fixed by doubling the pressure.

It almost worked, until the twins circled back and clipped Cassian at the shoulder, hard enough to stagger but not quite unseat him. Soren took the opening, feinted for the head, and then, when Cassian's defense came up, dropped low, catching the other boy's knee with the flat of his blade.

Controlled, but not gentle. Cassian grunted and backpedaled, pride stuttering along with his footwork, but even so his riposte came quick: a slash to Soren's outer thigh, close enough to sheer threads from the uniform and slice a shallow welt in skin.

The blood surprised Soren more than it should have. The pain was a clean, cold thing, a boundary, not a warning. He reset, watched the angles, and braced for the next contact.

Behind them, the cohort pressed: grunts and shouts, bursts of coordinated violence, all of it cycling through the choreography of near-misses and makeshift alliances among a group that had, until recently, been convinced of its own irrelevance.

Seren fought as Soren expected, staying just behind the tempo, only intervening when the risk of chaos outweighed the cost of standing aside.

Twice she caught a misdirected strike meant for Soren; neither time did she break rhythm or return the favor, but both times she met his eyes, as if in silent contract to finish this on the same beat.

The instructors didn't interfere, but their voices rolled over the field at intervals, calibrating expectations and noting each escalation. Verrin's voice, flat and bone-heavy: "Watch the hands, don't overextend." Hest chimed in, more clipped: "Reset pattern. DO NOT RUSH THE LINE." Soren half-suspected these instructions were more for the crowd than the fighters.

For five minutes, time collapsed. Every muscle turn, every slip of boot, every eye-tracked feint blended into one conviction: Soren was not playing for points, not anymore. He wanted to see how far Cassian would go. And Cassian seemed to want the same.

So Soren let himself slip, just once, as the paler boy charged. He let the blade come close, let it bite into the flexor of his arm before using the momentum to drive his shoulder into Cassian's chest, knocking the wind out of him and landing them both hard on the rain-soaked ground.

The impact jarred Soren's teeth, but he came up faster, jamming the cold metal across Cassian's collarbone before feeling the hands clamp around his own, trying to break the hold.

It unspooled from there in shouts and boots and the smell of blood gone to copper in the wet grass. Soren's vision tunneled, but he saw Kale drag another

Blue fighter down, saw the transfer drop out with a broken blade, saw the twins, finally, gloriously, succeed in pinning Aria against the nave with what looked like a shared headlock.

Seren's position never changed. She stood, blade at rest, monitoring every kinetic shift. When the signal bell rang, once, twice, then the long, final peal, Soren realized they'd held the field.

He rolled off Cassian, propped himself on one elbow, and waited for the next move. Cassian didn't spit, didn't curse.

He only looked at Soren with an expression so blank, so wiped of earlier calculation, that for a moment it made Soren nauseous to be looked at that way. Like a blueprint, or a mirror with the backing peeled off.

Their match was already over, but the tremor in Soren's hands wouldn't stop. He pressed the cut on his arm, watched the twin lines of blood seeping through the skin, and let the ache remind him of the rules: never escalate, never give back more than you're willing to have taken.

Kale offered a hand up, grinning wide and wild in the face, then promptly swore when Soren's weight nearly toppled him. "Beautiful," Kale whispered, low enough for only Soren to hear, "I thought you were dead at least three times."

"Me too," Soren said, and for a heartbeat, he almost laughed.

Behind him, Cassian was already on his feet, collecting the broken halves of his blade as though reconstructing the scene of his own defeat. He said nothing, only stalked toward the instructors with the gait of someone who would rewrite this moment again and again in his head until it became a story he could survive.

The world outside the hollow was brighter than before; the mist risen into sunlight. Soren could see the Academy's highest windows in the distance, reflecting gold, as though the Spire itself had decided to briefly pay attention.

The debrief happened an hour later, after wounds were cleaned and clothes swapped out for dry. In the main hall they assembled, Gray and Blue intermingled, the lines now blurry as the purpled bruises that mottled every wrist and cheekbone.

Dane stood at the head, hair still loose but body squared inside the uniform once more. He waited three beats after the room fell silent, then addressed the group in the tone reserved for funerals and midwinter verdicts.

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