As the girl grasped her spear and spun it with ferocious speed, Nyssira shifted the weight of her hammer—and her stance. A slow, deliberate adjustment. Her gaze rose, locking onto her opponent with a calm that bordered on contempt.
Then the girl lunged.
Nyssira moved.
Her movement was soft—almost lazy. But in the very next breath, the girl who had been charging forward was suddenly airborne, eyes stretched wide, caught mid-run in a moment she would never complete.
What the crowd saw next was only the aftermath—the echo of a blow that had already fallen. Nyssira's hammer had soundlessly slammed into the girl's skull, sending her hurtling across the arena like a broken marionette.
She crashed near the platform's edge, limbs folding and rolling until she slipped off the stage entirely.
The Council President let her hammer dip low, holding it in one hand like it weighed nothing. Her expression remained cold. Detached. Unbothered. As if she hadn't just delivered a death blow to a fellow student.
Silence swept through the coliseum.
Among the rows of the student council seated in the right corner of the stands, several members visibly flinched. One swallowed hard. Another gripped the bench a little tighter.
"Damn it… Nyssira is pissed."
"I've never seen her that angry."
"I didn't even see her move until she had already stopped."
"I'm suddenly worried for that student… He's been doing well so far, but now? This feels like a death sentence."
"Uhh—what do you take our Student Council for, you nut juice? Nyssira's one of the most emotionally intelligent people I know. She wouldn't just pass aggression."
"Yeah… no shit, except you also once said she never gets angry—and yet, here we are."
"C'mon, guy!! How can you even say that after seeing what she just did to our vice president?!"
"No, no, no. I'm just saying—"
"Saying what, huh? Sa-yin-g WHAT?!"
"Haha… Never mind. My bad."
Down below, the medics were already in motion, running across the platform as they scrambled to attend to the fallen.
The final participant from the opposing team stepped onto the stage.
Black hair danced in the breeze, faintly ruffled by the gentle wind. The daystar hung high above—brilliant, though its warmth had been strangled by the encroaching cold. Most of its heat was stolen before it ever reached the earth, lost to the frostbitten horizon.
Nyssira shifted the weight of her hammer again—just slightly. There was a flicker of change in her cold gaze. It was still frosted over with detachment, but now, a thin film of wariness crept beneath. A quiet vigilance. She studied the boy standing before her, measuring something more than just his stance.
The lone student lingered in silence, his gaze sweeping across the coliseum—an endless sea of spectators, row after row of students staring down at the stage.
His eyes returned to Nyssira. There was a downturn in his lips. Disappointment, subtle but sharp.
Nyssira remained unmoving, shielded behind her stillness, watching.
Then the student fixed his dark eyes directly on her.
"Oii, President. Do you know the history of Milhguard Academy? The truth about that despicable man called Milhwa—the one you all now celebrate like he did the world some grand favor."
Nyssira wasn't much for conversation. She rarely spoke, and even now, words failed her. She only shrugged in reply, her face unreadable, her stare cold and unwavering.
The boy's lips twitched—something sour forming beneath them. Her silence wasn't apathy to him; it was insult. Disrespect.
He slapped his own cheek once, hard enough to leave a mark. A strange, bitter grin cut across his face.
"Oh, bless the Hunter of Souls—I forgot I'm supposed to be a child right now."
Nyssira's head tilted slightly at the phrase. Her brow furrowed for the first time. She opened her mouth to speak—but the words slipped away, unformed. For a moment, she searched her mind, tried to remember what she meant to say. But it vanished like snow in sunlight.
Then the boy's voice dropped into something heavier.
"But you… you—I know you. Daughter of Winterbound."
Nyssira's eyes widened.
A different light flickered inside her. Dark. Wary. Ancient.
"How do you know my father's true name?"
Her voice came softly, barely there—like breath across glass. Not agitated. Not cold. Just hollow. As if she were sinking into something deeper than fear.
Her father's true name wasn't sacred in the usual sense. In the North, names weren't bound by secrecy—people bore them openly if they chose. But no one here should know it. No one from the Central Plains.
The legends of the Northern Continent had always been sealed off, kept under ice and oath. A form of preservation, not pride. Outsiders were not welcomed. Visitors were turned back or lost in the cold. For someone from the Central Plains to know the name of the King of Northrowe…
Impossible.
Unless he was one of them.
Nyssira stared at the boy more closely now.
But no… it didn't add up.
Northern folk were pale—skin so light it often looked carved from snow. Their presence always carried a chill. And black hair was rarer than warmth in the Northern Continent.
This boy had neither the pallor nor the cold. No trace of the north clung to him.
So how?
A crude grin split across his face as he tilted his head, a wicked white glint flaring in the depths of his dark gaze.
"Did I hit a nerve… Daughter of Winterbound?"
Every time he uttered her father's true name so casually, it stoked a heat inside her—an unfamiliar, burning weight swelling in her chest. Not rage. Not yet. But something primal and sacred being scraped raw.
And his grin… gods, that grin.
It looked just like that of the girl she had just defeated.
Twisted. Off. Like a cracked mirror smile stitched onto the wrong face.
Nyssira's brows folded into a scowl, her small face taut with quiet fury. In that moment, her serene beauty flared with a radiant, almost divine anger—holy and chilling, like a snowstorm touched by flame.
"Who are you?" she asked, her voice low, sharp.
But his grin only stretched wider, eyes glimmering with madness.
He drawled, voice taunting and theatrical.
"Mmmmmmyyyy Lady…did I finally pique your interest?"
He lifted one hand like a conductor ready to unleash a symphony of chaos.
"Oh, spare me the talk, Daughter of Winterbound. Swing your hammer."
With a snap of his fingers, reality behind him cracked.
Several stars of black light bloomed into existence, hovering in the air. Each one coalesced with a low, ominous hum—forming sleek, jagged black blades that spun around him in orbit, ringing with a hollow clangor that echoed like the tolling of distant war bells.