The crowd roared like a beast of its own—cheering, stomping, alive with fevered excitement. Ari sat calmly in the shaded spectator rows near the lower dueling pit, disguised beneath the folds of a traveler's cloak. Kaien was beside him, arms crossed, but even he couldn't hide the quiet tension brimming beneath his stillness. The sixth duel had ended, and the next name was already being called—Xerxes.
The moment the inked young man strode into the arena, a different kind of hush fell across the crowd. Not reverence, not fear—anticipation. Ari leaned forward.
Xerxes stood barefoot in the circle, average in build but adorned in power. The spiral tattoos around his legs pulsed with a faint, luminous threadlight, and strapped to his back was a worn, beaten object no larger than a child's medicine ball—his relic football. He reached for it slowly, ceremonially, as if awakening a friend. Then he placed it at his feet and tapped it once.
A chime echoed through the arena—not sound, but thread resonance. And then he moved.
Ari's eyes widened.
Xerxes didn't run, he danced. Each step was a rhythm, a calculated brushstroke on the battlefield's canvas. When he kicked the ball, it didn't just fly—it tore across the air with geometric precision, threads snapping into patterns mid-flight, imprinting glyphs and hexes in an instant. It curved, ricocheted, pulsed with kinetic sigils that shimmered along the arena's edge. Every pass of the ball carried a new spell—a flash barrier, a piercing bolt, a tethered trap.
It wasn't brute force. It wasn't textbook spellcraft. It was performance art woven in battle.
His opponent—a muscular spearsman with decent reflexes—barely lasted thirty seconds. The moment he stepped forward, the ball ricocheted behind him, dragging a net-thread that tripped him mid-lunge. A sigil burst beneath his foot, launching him airborne just long enough for the ball to reappear and tag him square in the chest—imprinting a stun glyph and locking his limbs.
The fight was done.
But Xerxes didn't gloat. He caught the ball with his heel, balanced it, bowed slightly, and walked off the arena without ever breaking his calm.
Ari felt something stir inside him. Not envy. Not rivalry. Admiration. He'd never seen threadweaving like that. It wasn't just beautiful—it was innovative, fluid, and deeply personal.
"That..." Kaien muttered, visibly stunned. "That was just a ball."
Ari exhaled slowly. "No. That was choreography. That was a battlefield rewritten as a stage."
He leaned back in his seat, eyes never leaving Xerxes as he disappeared behind the dueling gate.
So this is Batangara's caliber... he thought.
And as his own name crept closer in the bracket, Ari knew—this was more than a tournament. It was artistry. War reimagined. He couldn't wait to step onto that stage.
Not to prove himself.
But to answer it—with brilliance of his own.