“I’m going to be boring,” I say.
“Textbook. Every shadow move straight from the year-two curriculum. Nothing flashy, nothing unexpected, nothing that a moderately talented dark Nephilim couldn’t do in her sleep.”
“I’m going to fight Elara to a draw using abilities so ordinary that the judges fall asleep and the Hunters in the gallery writeunremarkablein their little notebooks and Elara looks like a petty bitch who picked a fight she couldn’t win.”
Bael’s mouth twitches. Almost a smile.
“And if she pushes hard enough that boring isn’t enough to survive?”
“Then I lose. Losing a demonstration duel is embarrassing. Getting exposed as an Ascendant is fatal.”
Thursday comes too fast.
The demonstration arena is smaller than the Trial grounds — an indoor space beneath the academy’s east wing, circular, walled in ancient stone carved with runes that dampen power output to prevent structural damage.
Gallery seating rises in tiers around the perimeter, and every seat is full.
Three hundred students. Two dozen faculty. And in the top row, seated in a cluster that makes my skin crawl — four Hunters with notebooks open and pens ready.
Elara is already in the arena when I arrive.
White training clothes. Light aura pulsing around her in waves that she’s not bothering to hide because a demonstration duel is the one place where showing off is the whole point.
Her light is strong — I’ll give her that. Bright enough to make my shadows flinch and compress when I step into the ring, the darkness reacting to her brilliance the way shadows always react to concentrated light.
The judge reads the rules. No lethal force. No attacks targeting the face or throat. No abilities above sixth-year classification.
The duel ends when one participant concedes, is knocked from the ring, or when the judge calls time after fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes.
I can be boring for fifteen minutes.
“Ready positions,” Ashworth says.
I settle into the standard dark Nephilim combat stance.
Feet shoulder-width apart. Shadows drawn to my hands in the two visible formations that every dark Nephilim learns intheir first semester — right hand holding a shadow blade, left hand maintaining a shadow shield.
Basic. Predictable.
Exactly what a well-trained second-year student would produce under pressure.
My shadows hate it.
They strain against the shapes I’ve forced them into like animals shoved into boxes too small for their bodies. They want to spread. To fill the arena floor with the living darkness that is their natural state. To reach for the light pouring off Elara and test it, taste it, learn its patterns the way they learn everything — independently, curiously, with the intelligent hunger that makes them what they are.
Not now,I tell them.Not here. Be small. Be ordinary. Be nothing.
“Begin,” Ashworth says.
Elara opens with light bolts — the standard offensive display, bright projectiles launched in rapid succession to test my defensive response.
I block with the shadow shield. Absorb two. Deflect a third into the arena wall where it bursts into sparks that make the front row flinch.
Standard. Clean.
Three minutes in. The gallery is quiet.
