Sixty-five percent to eighty-five in the single second Varen’s eyes were on Mark’s face—the jump larger than the incremental gains the fight had been producing, the direct sustained contact at close range with the simulation’s structure actively projected giving the lock more input than any previous moment of contact had provided.

Varen looked away.

But the Nikegami on his legs had released and he stumbled—the partial lock’s brief duration ending, his legs’ function restored, but the restoration arriving while his weight was distributed incorrectly from the lock’s freeze.

He caught himself.

His eyes—in the catching motion—went to his feet again.

Mark was still projecting.

Two seconds of indirect contact—Varen’s eyes on his own feet, which were in Mark’s line of sight, the simulation advancing at the slower rate of non-direct contact but advancing.

Eighty-five to ninety.

Varen found his footing.

He looked at Mark’s body—the deliberate reassertion, the shatterpoint-reading position, his eyes finding the structure of Mark’s right wrist.

The simulation stalled at ninety.

Ten percent from completion.

Varen struck the right wrist—the shatterpoint there, readable from the current configuration, the strike precise.

Mark’s reflex caught it.

Barely—the three compromised joints and the simulation-building focus pulling from the same attention reserves, the reflex at its thinnest margin of the fight. The wrist moved—clear of the exact shatterpoint, the strike landing on the forearm below it.

Real hit. No collapse.

The forearm hurt.

Mark looked at Varen.

At the eyes on his forearm.

At the ten percent separating the simulation from completion.

He needed Varen’s eyes on his face for three more seconds.

Three seconds of sustained direct contact at close range with the simulation actively projected would complete the lock.

He threw a punch.

Not a fast punch—a slow, telegraphed, obvious punch, the kind of punch that communicated its intention so clearly that reading it required almost no effort. A punch that said I am going to hit your face, aimed directly at Varen’s face.

Varen’s eyes went to the incoming fist.

The fist was in front of Mark’s face—the trajectory bringing it from Mark’s shoulder, past his own face, toward Varen’s face.

Looking at the incoming punch required looking in the direction of Mark’s face.

Not directly at it. In its direction.

Close enough.

The simulation advanced—ninety to ninety-five in the second Varen’s eyes were on the incoming punch, the gaze close enough to the face for the lock to treat it as near-contact.

Varen slipped the punch—the shatterpoint-reading telling him exactly where Mark’s fist was going without requiring his eyes to stay on it, the body mechanics readable without full visual engagement.

His eyes dropped back to Mark’s body as he slipped.

Ninety-five percent.

Five percent.

Mark threw the punch’s follow-up—the same sequence, the telegraphed commitment, the second punch following the first along a trajectory that required Varen to track it through the space in front of Mark’s face.

Varen’s eyes tracked it.

Two seconds.

Ninety-five to one hundred.

The simulation completed.

The constructed reality folded into Varen’s perception—the same unending simulation that had trapped Gorr, the same constructed world that felt completely real while the actual fight continued, the arrival sudden and total rather than gradual.

Varen stood in the arena.

The arena was real.

The crowd was real.

Mark was standing across from him—but Mark’s posture was wrong. Mark was standing with his hands at his sides, his silver eyes ordinary-colored, the specific relaxed posture of someone who had just finished a fight rather than someone in the middle of one.

The referee was moving toward them.

In Varen’s perception the referee was moving to declare the result—coming toward both fighters with the hand-raise that ended fights.

The referee’s hand went up.

Varen’s.

The simulation had constructed a world where Varen had won—the specific victory condition his mind would most naturally accept as the fight’s conclusion, the simulation reading what would lower his guard completely and producing it.

Varen’s body relaxed.

The tension of the fight—the reading, the striking, the sustained deliberate gaze-avoidance—releasing all at once as his perception told him it was over and he had won.

The Nikegami activated.

Full lock—not the partial sixty-five-percent version that had been available throughout the fight, the complete simulation’s support producing the full Nikegami effect, Varen’s body locked from throat to feet in the same configuration it had occupied when the simulation completed.

The configuration of someone receiving a referee’s hand-raise.

Both hands slightly raised. Body upright. Eyes forward. The posture of a winner.

Locked.

In actual reality Mark stood at three feet from Varen—three compromised joints carrying their respective damages, the simulation built at significant cost, the fight’s toll real. But the fight was over in every way that mattered.

He held the simulation.

Varen stood locked in the posture of his own constructed victory.

The actual referee moved—the real one, crossing the actual floor, arriving at the actual configuration. He assessed both fighters. He looked at Varen—locked, upright, eyes forward, the Nikegami visible in the specific quality of stillness that Mark’s ability produced. He asked.

Varen’s eyes answered from inside the simulation—the eyes that could see the constructed referee, the constructed Mark, the constructed hand-raise, none of which corresponded to what the actual referee standing in front of him was seeing.

The actual referee looked at Mark.

Mark released the simulation.

The constructed reality dissolved from Varen’s perception—the victory disappearing, the constructed referee and constructed Mark and constructed hand-raise gone, the actual configuration of the arena arriving all at once.

Varen in the posture of victory.

Mark standing three feet away.

The actual referee’s hand in the air.

Not Varen’s.

Mark’s.

Varen blinked.

Looked at the configuration—at his own hands slightly raised, at the posture his body had been locked in, at the simulation’s constructed version of this moment dissolving from his memory like something that had been completely real a second ago.

He looked at his own body.

The three shatterpoints—right knee, left hip, right shoulder partial—were the real things. The joints carried what they had been carrying. His legs were functional. His shoulder was reduced. His hip was reduced.

He exhaled.

Not the exhale of someone who had lost—the exhale of someone who had been somewhere else and had returned, the specific quality of returning from inside the simulation that Mark had now produced against two fighters.

The Aurelius sections produced the complicated noise they had produced for the Drex-Cullen final—both directions, both fighters theirs, the result carrying warmth in both directions simultaneously.

"Mark of Aurelius Academy," the announcer said. "He let the shatterpoints land—three of them—because landing them required Varen to look at his body. And every time Varen looked at his body, Mark was looking at his face." He paused. "He built the simulation through the attention of a fighter who was trying to avoid it. He completed it with a telegraphed punch that put Varen’s eyes exactly where they needed to be."

Another pause.

"Your winner—Mark of Aurelius Academy."

In the stands the bracket updated.

Mark advancing to the Class 2 final.

FF2 — Sarah against Ordin — was next.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​