Nobody moved.
Eleven assassins hid in the shadows of the arena, each one holding their breath. Each one staring at the blind girl standing alone in the center of the floor.
She looked harmless. A thin frame wrapped in dark robes, one hand resting lightly on a pale blue bamboo cane, her sightless eyes half-closed, her face completely calm. She could have passed for a lost child if not for the way she stood — still as a held blade, waiting.
The arena announcer’s cold voice had already called the match. Forty-eight competitors. Twelve spots left for the top ten. The first four to lose would be tossed into a tiebreaker round. The last eight standing? They walked through automatically.
No one wanted to move first.
Except her.
*Tap. Tap. Tap.*
The blue cane struck the stone floor in soft, even beats as Lyra walked — not fast, not slow. Just steady. The rhythm was unhurried, like a heartbeat, and somehow that made it worse. Eleven trained assassins, blades drawn, watched a blind girl walk toward the center of the arena like she owned it, and not a single one dared to rush her.
She stopped beside a tall black pillar — a stone marker planted in the arena floor. For three full seconds, she stood there without moving.
Then the cane tapped left.
And she walked.
One of the assassins hiding just behind the pillar pressed his back against the stone and exhaled slowly. She was heading straight for him. But her pace was so unhurried, so completely unguarded — arms loose, body open — that something felt wrong about attacking. His instincts screamed a warning.
He ignored them.
He launched himself from the top of the pillar, feet silent, robes flaring, pitch-black dagger aimed at Lyra’s shoulder. Clean angle. No hesitation. If this had been a real fight — not a tournament — he would have gone for her neck.
He hit air.
There was a Lyra standing exactly where he had aimed. She hadn’t moved. His dagger passed through her like smoke through a window.
A shadow. A copy.
His feet hit the ground, momentum carrying him forward — and before his brain could catch up, something tapped the back of his neck. Light as a finger. Gentle as a whisper.
The arena went dark.
The real Lyra stood two meters away, cane extended, her expression unchanged. She swept the cane slowly across the floor in a low arc and caught the falling assassin in the side, folding him neatly to the ground.
"Competitor eighteen — eliminated."
The announcer’s voice was flat. Uncaring. The number barely had time to settle before every assassin in the arena felt their grip tighten on their daggers.
*Shadow Doppelganger.*
That was the name that rippled through every mind at the same moment.
It was a fifth-stage secret skill — one of the rarest, one of the hardest to master, one that demanded more accumulated achievement than almost any other technique at that rank. When used perfectly, the Shadow Doppelganger was indistinguishable from the real body. No tells. No shimmer. No lag. The copy didn’t just look like her — it had fooled a trained assassin’s instincts completely, right up to the moment his dagger swung through it.
She was fifth-stage.
A fifth-stage Earth Knight-ranked assassin with a flawless Shadow Doppelganger.
*Tap. Tap. Tap.*
The cane started again. Lyra turned without hurry and walked in a new direction, slow and even, as if she were simply taking a morning stroll.
The assassins moved.
Not toward her. Away from her.
Figures launched from their hiding spots like startled birds, scrambling for cover behind pillars, pressing into shadows, doing anything to put distance between themselves and that soft, rhythmic tapping. Two of them collided in their haste — blades scraped together in a sharp metallic ring, and both men froze, staring at each other, then back at the approaching cane.
The sound of that bamboo tap had somehow become the scariest thing in the room.
Lyra stopped again.
She stood in the center of the arena, surrounded by ten assassins who would not come near her, and she was simply... quiet. The icy stillness around her had dissolved. What remained was something softer. Warmer, almost.
A single thought crossed her mind, private and unhurried:
*If I wrap this up quickly, I can go wait for him. I wonder how his match turned out today.*
She almost smiled.
—
Knights’ competition arena. Same hour.
"Competitors #97 and #4 — please enter the arena."
The call rang out for the seventh knight match of the day. Mira, sitting with arms crossed in the competitors’ lounge, dropped her easygoing expression the moment she heard it. Beside her, Kessel’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly — almost. He was too disciplined to let more show than that.
Of the four knights waiting for their matches, one had already finished — badly. A fifth-stage Earth Knight against a fourth-stage opponent was barely a contest. One charge, one crumpled figure, one surrender. That was it.
Competitor #4 was the second fifth-stage knight called today.
And his opponent was Leo Ashford.
Thirty-eight competitors remained for this third round. Four of them were fifth-stage Earth Knights. By pure draw, Leo had been matched with one.
Standing up from his bench, Leo turned and looked at Kessel with that ridiculous bright grin of his — the same one he wore whether he was sparring, eating, or walking into something that should have terrified him.
"Teacher," he said lightly, "just like you told me. No matter what I’m facing — I don’t lose my confidence."
Kessel stared at him.
Then, against all odds, something in the old iron wall’s expression softened. He gave a single, firm nod.
"Go. You’re the student I’m proudest of."
Leo turned and jogged toward the arena entrance, unhurried and easy, like a boy walking to meet an old friend.
The lounge had gone quiet. Every knight still waiting for their match had their eyes on the arena now. Even the young man in black robes — the one Leo had provoked the day before — had fallen still, his expression cold but attentive. His gaze said what he would never bother saying out loud:
*Only if you get past this one will you be worth my time.*
Leo stepped into the light.
His opponent was already in position on the opposite end of the arena floor.
The man was big. Around 190 centimeters, broad across the back, with short dark-brown hair that curled slightly at the edges. He looked like someone who had spent years carrying heavy things — not muscle for show, but muscle for use. His right hand held a sword that was noticeably wider than standard issue, the blade thick and heavy-looking. His left hand carried a shield — and that was the first unusual thing Leo noticed.
Most knights used round shields. Circular, easy to angle, good for deflecting.
This one was square at the top and tapered to a sharp point at the bottom.
Not for deflecting.
For driving forward.
Leo looked at the sword. Looked at the shield. Looked at the man holding them.
And his sunny grin didn’t move an inch.
The announcer’s voice dropped over the arena like a curtain.
"Match seven — begin."