Chapter 476: The Heavens Shall Fall (XVII)

The arena had already been repaired after the last few fights of the competition.

The ground looked untouched, smooth and clean, like nothing had ever broken there in the first place. No cracks, no marks, no sign of the vines that had torn through it earlier.

I stood on my side of the platform and took a slow look around.

The crowd was louder this time.

News had spread fast after the last match, and now almost everyone in the academy seemed to be here.

Every seat was taken, and people were packed together along the upper rails, leaning forward just to get a better view.

I spotted Kael a few rows up.

He wasn’t even sitting, even though there was space next to him. He had both hands on the railing, leaning over it like he’d been waiting all day for this exact moment.

Tyrian was beside him, calm at least, watching the arena without moving much at all.

Then Emyria walked in.

She didn’t look at the crowd.

She didn’t react to the noise or the way people shifted when they noticed her. She simply walked straight to her position, slow and steady, as none of it mattered.

When she stopped, she finally looked at me.

Her white hair settled around her shoulders, the ends of it shifting in a way that didn’t match the light around us, almost like it was divine.

Her gold eyes found mine the moment she cleared the entry and stayed there as she settled into position.

For a few seconds, neither of us said anything.

The entire arena went silent, like everyone was waiting for something to happen.

Then she spoke.

“Why is Lunara avoiding us?”

I blinked once.

“…Good afternoon to you too,” I added dryly.

“Answer me.”

“I don’t know.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly.

“You don’t know?”

“Why would I know?” I shrugged my shoulders.

“You’re with her all the time.”

“And that still doesn’t mean I know what’s going on in her head.”

Her jaw tightened a little.

“She hasn’t replied to any of our messages,” she stated.

“She turned down the last three times we asked to meet her. After the festival, when we tried to talk to her, she said she was busy and left.”

She paused, then added more quietly,

“She wasn’t like that before.”

I stayed silent.

“Before you, at least…” she narrowed her eyes coldly.

I looked straight at her.

“You think I told her to stay away from you?”

“Didn’t you?”

“No.”

“Then why is she acting like this?”

“Emyria,” I said, keeping my voice neutral as ever, “have you thought about the idea that she’s making her own choices? Not everything she does has to be because of me. Or you.”

Her expression didn’t change much, but something behind her eyes shifted.

“She was our friend,” she added, more quietly now.

“For years. Before all of this.”

That hit differently.

I looked at her for a moment before answering.

“I know. And she still is.”

“Then why is she—”

“I mean it,” I cut in gently. “I don’t know. I haven’t told her anything about you. Whatever she’s doing, it’s her decision.”

She held my gaze.

Then, after a small pause, she inquired,

“…Does she talk about us?”

I thought about it for a second.

“Not much,” I said honestly.

She looked down for a brief moment, then back at me.

“Not much…”

“No.”

She paused for a few seconds.

“Do you know why she might be acting like this?”

I let out a quiet breath.

This was a conversation I had been expecting for a while, and I had hoped it wouldn’t happen right before a fight.

Still, here we were.

“Emyria,” I said slowly.

“What?”

“She knows how you feel about her.”

Her response came immediately.

“Of course she knows. We’ve never hidden it.”

“I know.”

“Then what does that have to do with anything?”

I held her gaze.

“I think she also knows she doesn’t feel the same way.”

She froze.

“And I think she doesn’t know how to deal with that,” I continued, keeping my voice calm. “So she’s avoiding it.”

“She doesn’t…” she started, then stopped.

She tried again.

“…We’ve been her friends for years. That doesn’t just disappear because of something like that.”

“I agree,” I nodded lightly, reasoning with her. “But she might not know how to stay friends when she knows you want something more, and she can’t give that to you.”

The place fell into silence.

The entire arena was surprisingly still quiet, everyone watching and waiting.

“…So you’re saying she doesn’t see us that way,” Emyria declared.

“I’m saying I don’t know exactly what she feels,” I replied. “But you should be asking her, not me.”

“We tried talking to her.”

“I mean a real conversation,” I said. “Not a message she can ignore. Not an invitation she can refuse… like something direct and also honest.”

She didn’t answer right away.

For a moment, the calm look on her face slipped just a little, just enough to show something underneath it.

At this moment, she was just someone who wanted an answer and didn’t have one.

Then she straightened her posture again, and her expression closed off as if nothing had happened.

“This isn’t finished,” she stated firmly.

“I know.”

“After the match.”

“If you still want to talk after this, I’ll be here.”

She looked at me for one more second, then the distance came back into her eyes.

“Don’t hold back, as I won’t.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to.”

From somewhere above us, someone suddenly shouted,

“KAEL, WHAT ARE THEY EVEN TALKING ABOUT?”

“I DON’T KNOW, I CAN’T HEAR THEM!”

“WHY IS THIS TAKING SO LONG?”

“I SAID I DON’T KNOW, BUT IT LOOKS SERIOUS!”

“SIT DOWN,” Tyrian snapped.

“WE ARE SITTING…”

“…SIT DOWN PROPERLY!!!”

Right after that, the signal rang out across the arena.

RIIIINGGGGGG!

“Hmph!”

Rustle!

Emyria was the first one to move, summoning vines, but this time they did not hesitate or spread slowly across the surface like before.

They burst out all at once, forcing their way through every crack in the platform in the same instant, then surged outward in thick, overlapping layers that swallowed the stone in a matter of seconds.

There was a clear difference in the match of the competition, something sharper and more refined in the way they reacted, and I could feel the improvement immediately.

They were faster now, not by a small margin, but enough that standing still for even a moment to study the pattern would have cost me my footing.

She had probably trained, just for me… or probably not.

I drew Midnight in a smooth motion, leaving the Heavenly Swallowing Sword resting untouched at my side.

Emyria saw it.

Her golden eyes dropped for a brief moment, no longer than a heartbeat, settling on the hilt I had chosen not to reach for.

Then her gaze lifted back to meet mine, and in that short glance I could tell she understood the meaning behind it.

She did not question it, but she clearly noted it.

Rustle…!

The first cluster of vines reached my ankles, twisting upward with the intent to lock me in place.

I cut down through them with a single clean motion, the blade sliding through the organic mass with little resistance, and stepped forward before the severed ends had even begun to fall.

Two more clusters surged in to replace what I had cut away, but I was already moving, lifting my foot over the shifting surface as the platform beneath me began to feel less like stone and more like something alive.

It pulsed and responded, every step I took triggering a new reaction, the growth tightening around my position as she poured more control into it.

While I was still adjusting to the movement beneath me, she launched her first direct attack.

A lance formed in her grasp, compressed and hardened into something far denser than the surrounding vines, then shot toward me with enough speed that evasion would have been tight.

Clang!

I brought Midnight up instead, catching the strike along the flat of the blade, and the impact traveled through my arm with a weight that did not match its appearance.

It felt heavier than it should have, the force behind it driven by more than the material itself.

I shifted the angle and pushed it aside, letting the momentum carry past me as I stepped forward without hesitation.

Fwish!

Closing the distance mattered more than anything else, and I did not give her the space she preferred to work with.

The closer I got, the harder it would be for her to form those lances cleanly.

She adapted immediately.

Her hands dropped, abandoning the direct projection, and the platform beneath me answered instead.

RUSTLEEE!

Vines erupted from the ground at my feet in tight, coiling bursts, aiming low for my legs in an attempt to catch and bind rather than strike outright.

I reacted on instinct, pushing off the surface and clearing the eruption with room to spare.

I landed two meters to her left, where the growth was thinner and slower to respond, and turned the motion into an attack.

Midnight swept across at knee height, not with full commitment but with enough intent to force a decision from her.

It was not meant to land, but to shape her movement.

She read it the same way I expected she would.

She stepped back.

The alternative would have been worse.

As she moved, both of her hands came up, and the authority she wielded gathered between them, condensing into something far more solid than the lances she had used before.

It formed into a wide, flat mass of interlocked organic material, dense and reinforced, and instead of launching it, she drove it forward like a wall.

The sheer width of it limited my options, pressing into my space and guiding my movement toward the edge of the platform, where the vines had grown thickest.

It was a good decision.

I acknowledged it without slowing down, shifting diagonally instead of retreating in a straight line.

Midnight moved in quick succession, three clean strikes carving into the left edge of the barrier.

The material resisted, but not enough to hold, and the cuts opened a narrow gap that was already beginning to close as the severed ends twitched and tried to reconnect.

I slipped through before it could seal, stepping into her range with the blade already rising.

THUMP!!!

She barely had time to respond.

An organic bracer formed across her forearm at the last second, dense enough to catch the upward arc of my strike.

The impact was solid, not hollow or weak, and I felt the resistance clearly as her authority reinforced the structure in real time, hardening it against the edge of my blade.

She pushed back against me with more strength than the size of the construct should have allowed, her golden eyes locked onto mine without the slightest flicker of distraction.

I did not meet that force head-on.

Instead, I gave ground, stepping back twice in quick succession and letting the distance open again, resetting the exchange before the pressure could turn against me.

Phew…

It’s going well at least…

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