The blade sliced through air where Soren's knee had been a heartbeat before. Sand shifted beneath his boots as he pivoted, the movement guided by instinct honed through countless brutal training sessions.

Aric's momentum carried him forward, his balance compromised by the force of his failed strike.

'Now,' Valenna whispered, her voice no longer advice but command. 'Strike the opening.'

Soren's counter-cut opened a thin line across Aric's forearm where the armor plates met. Blood welled, staining the black mourning ribbon wrapped around the heir's wrist. The crowd's murmur rose like distant thunder.

Aric's eyes widened, shock briefly overtaking rage. Then his face contorted, grief transforming into something primal. He abandoned all pretense of tournament form, charging forward with a barrage of heavy overhead strikes that sent tremors up Soren's arms with each desperate parry.

"Die," Aric hissed, voice cracking with emotion. "Just die like you should have."

The shard pulsed against Soren's chest, its rhythm matching his accelerating heartbeat. Cold spread through his veins, sharpening his senses until the roaring crowd faded to distant whispers and Aric's movements seemed to slow before his eyes.

'He overextends after the third strike,' Valenna observed, her presence so strong it felt as if she stood beside him rather than existing as a voice in his mind. 'Redirect. Let his rage exhaust him.'

Soren stepped back, letting Aric's blade cut empty air. The heir's breathing had grown ragged, each attack fueled by emotion rather than technique. Sweat plastered his short brown hair to his forehead, his eyes wide with a hatred that had consumed all rational thought.

From the corner of his eye, Soren caught glimpses of the noble galleries. Ayren Velrane moved with practiced nonchalance between Dravien and Trescan lords, his head inclined toward them in confidential whispers that made their eyes widen.

Lord Lanther leaned forward in his seat, knuckles white against the wooden railing, his grief-hollowed face twisted with anticipation.

Aric lunged again, overextending just as Valenna had predicted. Soren sidestepped and struck, his blade finding the gap beneath the heir's raised arm. A clean hit that would have scored points in any normal tournament match.

But this was no normal match.

Aric howled, more in frustration than pain, and redoubled his assault. His technique deteriorated further, each strike wilder than the last. He fought like a man possessed, abandoning the precise forms drilled into noble sons since childhood in favor of raw, desperate aggression.

'Like Kaelor said,' Soren thought, ducking beneath a swing that would have taken his head had it connected. 'He's not fighting to win. He's fighting to hurt.'

The shard pulsed faster, colder. 'He leaves himself open,' Valenna insisted, her voice hardening. 'End this before he gets lucky.'

Soren circled to his right, forcing Aric to pivot on his back foot, the weakness Kaelor had identified during training. The heir compensated poorly, his balance compromised by his own fury. Another opening appeared, this one more significant.

Without hesitation, Soren drove forward, blade flashing in the morning sun. The strike landed with surgical precision, cutting deep into the muscle where Aric's right arm met his shoulder. Not a killing blow, but one that carried unmistakable message: I could have taken your arm.

Blood spattered across the sand. The crowd roared, the sound breaking over Soren like a physical wave.

Aric staggered back, his sword arm hanging awkwardly. Shock replaced rage as he stared at the wound, then at Soren, as if seeing him for the first time.

The heir's face drained of color, not just from pain but from the dawning realization that he faced something unexpected. Something dangerous.

Whispers erupted among the nobles, urgent and alarmed. Soren caught fragments as he circled, keeping his guard raised against Aric's next assault.

"—fights like he's killed before—"

"—not just luck in the forest—"

"—Velrane found something in the gutter—"

The Ashgard contingent had gone utterly still, their collective attention focused with military precision. A gray-haired captain leaned toward his companions, murmuring something that made them nod in grim agreement.

Lord Ashgard himself remained impassive, those steel-gray eyes missing nothing as he assessed each movement with cold calculation.

In the Velrane gallery, Lord Callen sat with fingers steepled before him, his expression unchanged despite his champion's success. He might have been watching servants arrange furniture rather than a life-or-death struggle that carried his house's reputation on its outcome.

Aric shook his injured arm, blood dripping steadily onto the sand. His face had transformed, grief and rage giving way to something colder, more calculated. When he raised his blade again, his eyes held the desperate clarity of a man with nothing left to lose.

"For Edric," he said, voice steady despite his pallor.

He launched himself forward, not with wild abandon but with deadly purpose. His blade moved in a pattern Soren recognized too late, the Lanther killing sequence, a technique taught only to the house's direct bloodline, designed not for tournaments but for battlefield execution.

The crowd gasped as Aric's sword drove straight toward Soren's throat, a direct violation of tournament etiquette. The herald stepped forward, then hesitated, glancing toward the Lanther gallery where Lord Lanther's cold stare promised consequences for interference.

The shard against Soren's chest went from cold to burning in an instant. Time seemed to slow, the world narrowing to the gleaming point approaching his throat with inexorable precision.

'Deflect left,' Valenna commanded, her voice like steel against stone. 'Then take the opening. End him.'

Soren twisted, bringing his blade up in a desperate parry that sent Aric's sword scraping past his ear. The heir's momentum carried him forward, off-balance and exposed. In that heartbeat of vulnerability, Soren saw a dozen possible counters—each one potentially lethal.

The shard burned against his skin. 'Now,' Valenna insisted. 'He forfeited mercy when he aimed for your throat.'

Instead, Soren executed the technique Kaelor had drilled into him during those painful days after their return, deflect then counter, a sequence designed to disable without killing. His blade moved with a precision that felt beyond his own skill, opening Aric's defense like petals unfurling.

The final strike caught Aric across the chest, the force sending him crashing backward into the sand. Blood bloomed across his torso, staining the tournament ground crimson.

Silence fell over the arena, absolute and suffocating.

Aric lay motionless, his sword fallen from nerveless fingers. Blood pooled beneath him, turning the sand from gold to dark red. He still breathed, Soren could see the shallow rise and fall of his chest, but the wound was severe, far beyond what tournament combat typically produced.

The herald stepped forward, face pale beneath his ceremonial makeup. "Victory," he announced, voice unsteady, "to Soren Thorne, Blade of House Velrane."

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