The golden light faded from Leo’s hands.
He had used Divine Obstruction to redirect the Glorious Scattering Fire Dance — not block it, redirect it. The technique had required him to push Bright Vengeance outward as a conversion layer, turning the fifth-tier combined spell’s targeting lock against itself. It had worked. He wasn’t entirely sure it should have.
Soren stood in the settling ash with burns across his ribs and an expression of profound satisfaction.
Gareth’s earthworm had gone still beneath him. His spear was raised but not extended. For the first time since the confrontation began, he was looking at Leo instead of at the bald priest.
"It’s you," he said.
Leo met his gaze. "It’s me." A pause. "You remember the bet your father made with my master on Knights’ Sacred Mountain?"
Something moved across Gareth’s face. His eyes went briefly to Soren — who was still standing, still unhurt beyond the burns, still in Madness mode with his staff resting across his shoulders — then back to Leo. The math was visible in his expression. Two of his people were down. The priest hadn’t fallen. And now Leo was here, and Leo had just redirected a fifth-tier combined spell without flinching.
"We’ll settle things at the Selection," Gareth said. His voice was flat. "Pull back."
The two warriors who could still walk gathered themselves. The assassin was on his feet but moving carefully. The two mages followed without argument. They turned and walked toward the Halcyon Capital road without another word.
Gareth’s earthworm turned with them.
Leo watched them go.
Soren watched them go with open contempt, then spat once onto the scorched earth. "What a performance," he said. "Good riddance."
He turned, and for the first time looked at Leo directly. Up close, he was even larger than he’d appeared from the ridge — the kind of man who made doorframes feel like a personal inconvenience. The burns across his ribs were already fading slightly, the Madness effect still working through his system.
Leo extended a hand. "Hello. I’m Leo Ashford."
Soren looked at the hand. Then at Leo’s face. Then he grabbed the hand and shook it once, firmly, the way people shake hands when they mean it. "Soren. Thank you, little brother. That was well-timed."
"What happened with them?"
Soren’s expression darkened. "Long story. Short version: Gareth’s father is Jiuwen City’s Consul. My master is his master’s rival. Gareth decided that if I placed well at the Selection, it would embarrass his family’s position." He shrugged one massive shoulder. "He told me I’d disgrace Jiuwen City because I can’t heal. Which is correct — I cannot heal. But that’s not the same as being a disgrace."
Leo looked at him carefully. "A priest who can’t heal."
"A priest who chose to specialize differently." Soren said it without apology. "Sacred Light and Sacred Hammer are enough for what I need to do. Healing is for people who plan to stand behind someone else. I don’t."
Leo thought about that for a moment.
Mira appeared at his shoulder. She looked at Soren the way you look at something impressive that you’re not entirely sure is safe. "He’s going to the Selection?"
"It appears so," Leo said.
Soren was already gathering himself to leave. He hoisted his enormous staff onto one shoulder and looked toward the road east. "I need to reach Jiuwen City first. My master has to hear what they tried before the Selection starts." He looked back at Leo. "I owe you one, little brother. I remember debts. Find me in the finals."
He walked away. Long strides, unhurried, the black staff resting across his back like something he’d carried since childhood.
Mira watched him go. "A priest who hits things with an iron bar and can’t heal anyone."
"Sacred Hammer," Leo said. "Sacred Light. Madness."
"He was using a Warrior Temple secret technique."
"Yes."
Mira absorbed this. "I want to fight him," she said eventually.
"I know."
"Not now. Later."
"I know," Leo said again.
---
The Halcyon Capital announced itself before they could see it.
The road changed first — wider, smoother, maintained at a standard that only a city of this importance would bother with. Then the travelers. Not dozens but hundreds, moving in both directions, many of them young and armed and carrying themselves with the particular energy of people who had been training for something and were finally arriving at it.
Then the walls.
The Halcyon Capital was hexagonal. Not approximately, not as a broad description, but precisely — six equal sides, each one faced with pale stone that caught the afternoon light differently depending on the angle. The design was intentional and symbolic. Six sides for six Great Temples. Every angle of the city pointed toward something that mattered.
It was the largest city Leo had ever seen.
Moonhaven would have fit inside one district. Silverrest City would have fit in two.
Garrick Yorne appeared at the gate, as if the journey from the garrison had taken him no time at all. He processed them through the entry check with the efficiency of someone who had done this exact thing dozens of times, said three words that might have been a farewell or might have been an instruction, and vanished.
Inside, the Alliance Great Stadium dominated the central plaza. Three hundred meters in diameter, circular, with towers at six points that marked the borders of its territory. The Demon Hunt Exclusive Mission Tower rose from its north face. The Transaction Center occupied the east quarter. The Temple Treasury Vault was somewhere beneath it all, accessible only to those with the right authorization.
The five of them stood together in the plaza for a moment, looking at it.
Then Liora straightened. "We separate here."
It wasn’t a question. The Alliance registration system divided participants by temple — each person reporting to their own branch, submitting their qualifier tile, receiving their competition number. After that, the preliminary rounds would happen within each temple’s own division. Only the top ten from each would advance to the cross-temple final.
Leo looked at his group.
Darius and Caden, who had survived demon territory and a Dark Green Dual-Bladed Demon and several thousand gold worth of dried fish purchases. Liora, who had redirected her own pride and her considerable ability toward saving Leo’s life and then bought him a ten-thousand-gold stone sphere without being asked. Mira, who had been beside him for long enough that the distance between them had stopped feeling like distance.
"Do your best," he said. "All of you. We’ll see each other in the finals."
Caden punched the air once, the way he did when he was nervous and trying not to show it.
Darius put one hand briefly on Leo’s shoulder.
Liora smiled — the real one, not the public one. "Don’t lose before I can see you fight properly."
Then they walked in different directions, and Leo watched each of them go until they disappeared into the crowd.
---
Kessel was standing outside the Knight Temple registration hall.
He looked exactly as he always looked — like a wall that had decided to take human form and was mildly displeased about it. He watched Leo and Mira approach with an expression that conveyed no particular emotion and somehow communicated everything.
"Master," Leo said.
"Register first," Kessel said. "Then we talk."
The registration process was brief. Entry tile in, competition tile out. The number on Leo’s new tile was 34. He tucked it away and followed Kessel to the hotel block the Knight Temple had reserved near the Stadium.
In a plain room with a window that faced the Stadium’s outer wall, Kessel sat across from Leo and said what he’d found out.
"The preliminary round starts the day after tomorrow. Minimum one hundred participants in the Knight Temple division." He paused. "Three Earth Knights have already registered."
Mira went very still.
"Earth Knights," she repeated. "Fifth tier."
"Three of them," Kessel said. "There will likely be more. Final registration closes tomorrow."
Leo heard the number and felt it settle into him without the shock Mira was feeling. He had known, at some level, that this competition would be different from everything that had come before. The qualifier in demon territory had been real combat. This would be real competition — people who had been training since before Leo could hold a sword, people who had spent years specifically preparing for this event.
Earth Knights were fifth tier. The gap between fourth and fifth was the same gap that had made the Dark Green Dual-Bladed Demon nearly impossible to fight head-on. In human terms, it was the threshold between Grand Knight and Earth Knight — a boundary that most cultivators never crossed in their lifetimes.
Three of them had already registered.
There would be more.
Leo looked at his hands. The memory of the demon’s impact, the moment his sword had met that second foreleg and the world had gone sideways — he held it in his mind without flinching.
*The Jade Body Protection Pill,* he thought. *Evander’s recovery pills. The Divine Light Wristguard. Everything Kessel taught me.*
*Everything I have.*
He looked up.
"I understand," he said.
Kessel looked at him for a long moment. Then he nodded once, very slightly, in the way he nodded when he meant something more than the gesture suggested.
"Good," he said. "Rest tonight. Tomorrow we prepare."