The long-anticipated clash. A fight between them had been predicted for so long it had become legend, and now they were facing each other.

Silas felt his pulse spike annoyingly just from seeing Damien. His body still hadn’t calmed down, which meant he was standing on the edge of a showdown with the academy’s most aggravating bastard while dealing with the worst possible physical disadvantage.

Damien smirked as he moved forward with a lazy swagger that made the watching crowd lean in unconsciously.

"Well, well. Just look at that. Silas playing bulldozer... Shouldn’t you at least watch where you’re going?"

"Back off, Damien. She fell," Silas replied with tightened jaws.

"Uh-huh." Damien coked his head. "Sure she did."

The girl scrambled up, embarrassed and apologizing under her breath, but neither boy’s attention was on her. The courtyard had gone silent with tension crackling in the air like invisible lightning.

***

Damien Crowhurst stood there with the kind of confidence that made people want to throw something at him just to wipe it off his face. His blond hair fell in layered waves, the front strands tucked behind one ear while the rest drifted down his shoulders as though he was auditioning to be the cover model of some elite academy brochure. His blue eyes were sharp, icy, and annoyingly self-assured, as if to say, " You should feel honored that I’m looking at you."

Damien was a head shorter than Silas, but he carried himself with the smug posture of someone who believed height was merely optional when you could bend reality with your fingertips. He could manipulate gravity. That was his ability, and it was an A-rank ability. He was already being treated like royalty for that in his class, Class 3-A. Silas was in Class 3-B.

Fights weren’t banned at Valecrest. It was quite the opposite, actually. The administration had a very specific stance: Better a bruise today than a funeral tomorrow. It was practically etched into the welcome brochure. The world was changing. Rifts appeared like cosmic doorbells no one remembered installing. Danger didn’t wait politely for anyone to mature. It was mature now or die.

So Valecrest chose not to ban fights long ago. Of course, they regulated it. No deaths and no killing moves, plus there were people around to intervene before someone got permanently rearranged.

They believed in preparation, and that meant letting students test their limits in controlled chaos. A scuffle in the courtyard was better than panic during a real rift event. Combat built reflexes, sharpened instincts, and revealed who would freeze and who would move when the world went sideways. At Valecrest, this wasn’t rebellion; this was tradition, and everyone knew it was about to begin... Again.

"Well, Silas..."

"Move," Silas said before he could continue. "I’ve got somewhere to be."

His brain wasn’t fully processing the words. It was too busy chanting not now, not now, now... He needed to leave, immediately.

"Somewhere to be? What, finally giving up and transferring out of B-Class? Or did you come out here to cry after P.E again? Careful, your reputation might bruise before you do," Damien clicked his tongue.

"Damien. I don’t have time," Silas exhaled sharply.

"Oh, but I cleared my entire afternoon," Damien continued, spreading his arms in a mock display of generosity. "The least you can do is stay long enough for me to embarrass you."

A few students exchanged glances, some backing away instinctively: the tension had thickened. Silas grit his teeth in anger. Each second standing here made his current predicament worse. His body didn’t care about logic or humiliation or the fact that this was absolutely the worst time for Damien’s nonsense.

"Seriously," Silas growled. "Get lost."

Damien stepped even closer, until Silas could see the faint reflection of himself in those irritatingly bright eyes.

"What’s wrong?" Damien cooed. "Finally scared of a real fight? Or..."

Silas’ patience tore clean down the middle. He straightened, his shoulders rolling back, with his expression cooling into something flat and lethal.

"I said. Move," His voice dropped low.

Silas lunged. Gasps rippled through the courtyard while Damien reacted instantly, his muscles tensing as a pulse of warped gravity swirled around him. He swung his palm outward, the air bending like a warped lens as he unleashed a sharp gravitational crush, aimed at knocking Silas off balance and flattening him to the ground.

But Silas wasn’t there. His body shifted with a clean, vicious elegance, ducking under Damien’s attack as if he’d seen it days in advance, causing the gravitational wave to slam into space. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

Damien’s eyes widened, a rare crack in his perfect control as Silas slipped behind him, silent as a ghost, and pressed two fingers lightly between his shoulder blades, causing him to freeze in shock. Silas leaned close enough that only Damien could hear him. His breath brushed Damien’s ear as he whispered, voice calm and cold:

"You’re slow."

Before Damien could react, Silas was already gone, sprinting toward the dorms with a speed that made the crowd instinctively part like war around a speeding jetski, his backpack still clutched tight in front of him.

"Did... he dodge Damien?"

"No way, Damien never misses..."

"He just ran. Did he just RUN?"

"What just happened?!"

"Is he scared? Or did he win? Or... did something happen with his..."

"SHH!"

Damien finally snapped back to reality, his face flushed with equal parts rage and humiliation. Silas was already halfway across the grounds, a blur vanishing into the dorm building. Damien clenched his jaw. Tomorrow was going to be war, and no one, not even Silas’ own pride, understood what kind of chaos had truly been set in motion.

***

Silas slumped deeper into his seat, his chin propped on his palm in the heroic, noble posture of a teenager on the brink of intellectual death.

’Man, this class is sooo boring...’

His brain was already halfway out the window, drifting somewhere far from the chalk-stained battlefield Mr. Gilbert insisted on calling a classroom. The man stood, balding, bespectacled, and armed with the unstoppable weapon of monotony, lecturing about how "one hundred Spartan warriors repelled an entire Syrian battalion with nothing but swords, shields, spears, and the renowned crimson cloaks flapping heroically in the breeze."