Scott climbed back to his feet, wiping the thin trickle of blood from his neck with the back of his hand, and there was something different in his eyes now, the humiliation curdling into something sharper, something with a harder edge to it.
’He thinks he’s going to win this one,’ Alex thought, watching the shift happen in real time, the way Scott’s jaw set and his stance dropped lower without anyone needing to tell him to fix it.
’Good. That’s the right reaction. Anger that turns into focus is useful. Anger that just stays anger and burns itself out for no reason gets people killed, gets them sloppy at exactly the moment they need to be sharp.’
Scott’s reasoning wasn’t wrong, either.
He’d Awakened a while back, his mana control already settled into something competent after months of guard training, and a five year old’s base attributes, even an unusually capable five year old’s, should have sat well below his own by simple, unforgiving math that every recruit in this hall had been taught to trust.
He squared his stance, gripped his practice sword with both hands this time instead of one, and felt something steady itself in his chest, a resolve hardening where embarrassment had been sitting a moment ago.
’I will not lose to a child,’ he told himself.
’Not twice. Not in front of everyone I train with, not after they already saw what happened the first time.’
The rest of the hall had gone quiet, every other spar abandoned, every recruit now clustered loosely around the open space, watching with the particular stillness of people who understood they were seeing something they’d be talking about for weeks.
"Begin," Theron said.
This time, Scott moved first, mana flooding down into his legs in a controlled surge, and he closed the distance fast, his blade already swinging in a tight horizontal arc aimed to test rather than to finish, a probe rather than a commitment.
Alex met it.
He’d pulled back on the mana this time, sending only a fraction of what he’d used in the opening exchange, and the difference showed immediately in how the clash played out, steel meeting steel with a sharp ring instead of the explosive, distance erasing burst from before, the sound carrying clean through the hushed hall.
They separated.
Circled.
Clashed again.
Scott pressed forward with a quick feint high, then dropped his blade low at the last instant, a clean piece of technique that should have caught most opponents flat footed, the kind of move he’d clearly drilled enough times to make it feel natural under pressure.
Alex wasn’t most opponents.
He read the shift a half second before it landed, his own blade dropping to intercept, and the two weapons met with a crack that rattled up through both their arms, the impact strong enough that Scott felt it in his shoulder.
’He’s better than me at mana control,’ Alex thought, resetting his footing as Scott pulled back for another exchange, watching the way Scott’s breathing had already started to deepen with effort.
’I knew that going in. I’d be surprised if it were any other way, given how much longer he’s had a mana core. But control isn’t the only variable in a fight, and reading the opponent matters just as much, maybe more, and that’s the part the Aspect has been quietly building since the moment I started this body, the part nobody can teach in two months of guard training.’
They clashed again. And again.
Scott’s brow had started to bead with sweat, the continuous small bursts of mana through his legs and arms taking a visible toll, his breathing growing more deliberate with each exchange, each breath a conscious effort rather than something automatic.
He thought, somewhere in the back of his mind beneath the focus of the fight, that Alex should have run dry by now.
A five year old’s reserves, even an exceptional one’s, simply shouldn’t last this long against the steady drain of real combat, shouldn’t be able to keep matching him exchange after exchange without some sign of slowing.
But the prince was still there. Still matching him. If anything, getting marginally better with each clash, small adjustments compounding in real time in a way that made Scott’s stomach twist with something close to dread, a creeping suspicion that he was fighting something he didn’t fully understand.
Their blades met a sixth time, a seventh, the rhythm of the fight settling into something neither of them had planned for, two people genuinely testing each other rather than one humoring the other, the spar having long since stopped being a formality.
Around the edges of the hall, the watching recruits had gone completely silent, the kind of silence that meant nobody wanted to be the person who broke it.
***
It happened on the next clash.
Alex reached inward for the thread of mana he needed to meet Scott’s incoming strike with proper force, and found almost nothing there, his core scraped almost clean from the day’s earlier exertion, the well genuinely, finally dry in a way that left a hollow, scraped feeling behind it.
The blades met anyway, but without the extra push behind his own swing, the force imbalance sent him stumbling backward, his shoulder catching the impact at an angle that jarred up through his whole arm, a sharp jolt that made his teeth click together.
He hit the ground.
For half a second, the entire hall seemed to hold its breath, the prince of Winterfang sprawled on the training floor in front of a roomful of witnesses, the sound of his fall landing louder in the silence than it probably actually was.
Alex was back on his feet before the half-second finished.
No mana left, his legs moving on pure trained reflex instead, the same reflex he’d built over a dozen falling drills earlier that very day, his body remembering what his mind hadn’t fully processed yet, the muscle memory taking over before conscious thought could catch up.
Scott saw the stumble.
Scott saw the recovery.
And Scott, reading the moment the way any trained fighter would, recognized exactly what it meant, his exhaustion suddenly feeling worth something.
’He’s out,’ Scott thought, a surge of something close to triumph cutting through the exhaustion in his limbs, a brief flare of hope after several minutes of feeling like he was losing ground he couldn’t afford to lose.
’He’s finally out of mana. This is it. This is my chance, the only one I’m probably going to get.’
He gathered every remaining thread of mana he had left, funneling all of it down into his legs in one final, decisive push, his body launching forward in a burst of speed meant to end this before the prince could do anything but accept it.
Alex saw him coming.
He had no mana to meet it with.
No burst of his own to match the incoming speed.
What he had was a blade in his hand and roughly half a second to decide what to do with it.
He threw it.
The Viper’s Spine left his grip in a tight, spinning arc, aimed not at Scott’s body but directly at his head, and Scott’s eyes went wide with genuine shock, his trained instincts overriding everything else, his sword whipping up in a desperate parry that knocked the blade spinning off to the side with a metallic clatter that echoed through the hall.
He looked up to find the space where Alex had been standing.
Empty.
A fist caught him in the side a half-second later, the impact driving the air out of his lungs, his own sword flying from his suddenly nerveless grip as his body twisted sideways and went down hard, the breath leaving him in a single sharp grunt.
Somewhere above him, against the lantern light, he caught a glimpse of Alex catching the spinning sword out of the air with one outstretched hand, the motion clean, unhurried, like he’d planned every piece of it three steps in advance, like the whole exchange had simply unfolded along a line he’d already mapped out before it started.
Scott hit the ground.
A weight landed on him almost immediately after, knees pinning his shoulders, and the cold edge of a blade settled against his throat in nearly the exact spot the first wound had opened.
The hall had gone completely, utterly silent.