Kael stepped onto the arena floor and thought about Rin.

Not for long. A habit he had developed sometime in the last ten years of doing difficult things alone. A reminder of why the difficult thing needed to be done.

I need the title. I need the resources. I need the position that comes with being the heir of this house because without it I am a nobody in a world I did not choose and I have a sister in a hospital bed who has nobody sitting in the chair beside her.

So let us get this done.

***

Aria had arrived at the arena before him.

She was already standing at her position when he crossed onto the stage, sword at her hip, hands at her sides.

She was not nervous. She was not holding back out of concern for him.

Kael had read enough of the novel to understand that. Aria Ardyn did not leave things unresolved. The succession had been hanging over this household like a question nobody wanted to answer out loud, and she had spent months watching it remain unanswered, and she had issued this duel because she wanted a clean conclusion more than she wanted to win.

Aria hated unresolved things. If he beat her properly, she would accept it.

That was Aria.

So this couldn’t look close. Kael thought. A close fight leaves room for interpretation. I need this to be clear enough that nobody in this arena can question the outcome. Not today, not in six months, not when I need the authority this title gives me to matter.

The Duke had spoken. The terms had been set.

Neither of them had moved yet.

"Why is he even up there."

"Someone should have told him to stay in his room."

"This is going to be embarrassing for everyone involved."

The soldiers had stopped pretending they were guards and started acting like spectators.

Then a different voice, coming from further back in the formation.

"Have any of you actually looked at him recently?" No response.

"Because I have been paying attention. And I am telling you that the person standing on that stage is not the same person this house produced a year ago. Look at him properly before you finish that sentence."

.......

"The face is the same."

"Yeah, the face is the same. Everything else isn’t."

"How does someone change that much without anyone noticing?"

"Someone did notice. The question is whether you noticed."

The first voice went quiet.

From a different part of the crowd, another soldier.

"Is that not the one who fought Reinhardt to a draw yesterday?"

"Yes."

"Yeah... I’m staying out of this one."

Kael heard all of it.

Good. Now stop getting distracted.

"Aria." He kept his voice. "Are we starting or are we waiting for a specific moment."

She looked at him across the arena floor.

"Are you not going to arm yourself."

"No."

She studied him for a moment.

"You have thought about how this ends," she said.

"I like knowing how things end before they start."

Her expression changed. Not amusement.

She drew her sword.

"Fine. Let’s end this."

Ether Authority.

[Aspect activated.]

Mana answered instantly. Not just his own, even the air reacted to him.

The mana thickened until even ordinary people could see it, light moving along the lines of his arms and rising off his shoulders in a way that had nothing to do with temperature.

Aria’s eyes tracked it.

She was not surprised. That was the first thing he noted. She had expected him to have something, the duel with Reinhardt had told everyone in this household that the previous understanding of Kael Ardyn required revision. Aria already knew there was something he hadn’t shown yet.

She still had no idea how much he was hiding.

All Elements.

[Affinity activated.]

The mana outside him became an extension of what was inside him. As long as he stayed focused, he wouldn’t run dry.

Vector Authority.

He did not announce it. He simply cast it.

The stone cracked before anyone understood what happened. Pressing down across the entire surface with a force that exceeded seven times the pull of natural gravity.

Someone in the crowd coughed. It sounded inappropriate in the silence.

Aria’s feet shifted to widen her base. Her shoulders came down a degree.

She did not go to her knees.

Aria looked interested more than worried.

"Pressure magic... annoying."

"Is it working?"

"Not yet," Aria admitted. "But it is well constructed for someone who was not supposed to know how to construct anything."

She came forward.

Her technique was everything the novel had described: no wasted motion, no gaps in the foundation, every movement precise and practiced. She’d trained for this her entire life.

He crossed the air itself instead of the ground. The distance between them collapsed in a fraction of a second and he was beside her before the motion had registered as having started.

"You see," he said quietly. Close enough that it was meant only for her.

Then he was behind her.

He felt the correction happen the slight turn of her head, the instinctive reach for a position that was no longer where she had registered it. She reacted a second too late.

"You could not follow that," he said, already back at his starting position."Now what?"

Nobody spoke.

From somewhere in the watching crowd, the careful voice from before said one thing.

"I told you."

She wasn’t done yet, Kael thought. She’s already adapting. Another few exchanges and this gets dangerous.

But he did not move immediately.

He remembered exactly what kind of monster Aria would become in the future.

Not someday. Already. Right now, in this arena, pushing through a gravitational compression field that should have brought her to her knees, none of them understood what she would become.

I am not going to be here to see most of it, he thought. I am going to find a way home. I am going back to Rin. Somehow.

But before he left this world behind, he would make sure Aria survived what was coming.

Starting with this.

He stepped forward.

His next step landed on air.

Aether Step.