Cassian Vale walked through the ruined streets of Valdris humming a song. Nobody knew the name of the song because he hummed it off-key, which somehow made it more unsettling than if he’d been singing actual words. A dead elf lay twenty meters behind him, an arrow still lodged in the elf’s own chest. Cassian had turned the archer’s own weapon against him using a time-accelerated ricochet.

His bracelet ticked upward with each kill. Criminals. Beasts. One Neon Abyss student who had made the mistake of trying to ambush him from behind a collapsed wall. Cassian had frozen time for exactly one second, walked around the wall, and broken the student’s jaw with his staff before time resumed. The student had been eliminated before he even knew he’d lost.

Cassian checked his points. Climbing steadily. Not fast enough to catch Kael or Michael, but respectable.

He rounded a corner into a wide avenue lined with shattered storefronts and stopped.

A human male stood in the middle of the avenue, covered head to toe in blood. Not his own blood. The bodies of four criminals lay scattered around him in various states of disassembly. One was missing both arms. Another had been torn in half. A third was simply a red smear across the pavement.

The man turned toward Cassian with a smile, his eyes burning with a feverish light that had nothing to do with mana and everything to do with something fundamentally broken inside his head.

Dean Hawthorne. Astral Zenith Academy. Vice Captain. Mana Heart Rank 3. Body cultivator.

Cassian took a slow step backward.

"What the fuck is wrong with my luck," he muttered under his breath. "Just a few minutes left before this tournament ends and I encounter a battle-crazed fucker. Shit. Shit. Shit."

Dean’s smile widened. He cracked his knuckles one by one.

CRACK. CRACK. CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.

"Hey," Dean called, his voice carrying a childlike eagerness that was absolutely terrifying given the carnage at his feet. "You’re from Heaven’s Gate, right? Fight me."

Dean rushed him.

Cassian didn’t even think about fighting. He turned and ran. Time manipulation surged through his legs, accelerating his movement beyond what his Mana Heart Rank 2 body should have been capable of. Buildings blurred past. Wind tore at his clothes.

"COME ON, YOU COWARD! FIGHT ME!" Dean’s roar echoed through the empty streets, accompanied by the sound of heavy footfalls smashing concrete as the body cultivator gave chase.

Cassian glanced back while running. "No way! Why would I stop? So you can take my points? No way in hell I’m stopping!"

"You can’t run forever!"

"Watch me!"

Dean crashed through a wall to cut the corner. Cassian slid under a collapsed beam and kept going, time stuttering around each step to add precious fractions of a second to his lead. The chase disappeared into the eastern district, two figures vanishing between ruins, one screaming with rage and the other humming off-key.

Three kilometers away, Kael wiped dark blood off his Void Edge blade while Karacus shook frost from his scales. A Neon Abyss student’s unconscious body had just vanished, transferred to the stadium. Beside the scorch mark where that student had died, the remains of a Sylvan Star fighter were already fading, eliminated by a combined frost slash from Karacus that Kael had set up with a gravity trap.

Only the captain of Sylvan Star remained in the city. The rest of their academy had been systematically dismantled over the past five hours.

[6,900 PTS]

Kael checked the time on his bracelet. Fifteen minutes remaining.

Karacus said, his deep voice carrying satisfaction. "That’s the last of the easy targets in this district."

"Don’t jinx it," Kael replied, sheathing his blades.

The wind changed.

A shift in air pressure, a subtle displacement of mana that carried a quality he hadn’t encountered before in this tournament. Pure. Radiant. Heavy with the weight of something ancient.

Both of them looked up.

A figure descended from the gray sky, bright wings spread wide, each feather trailing threads of golden light that lingered in the air like slowly fading contrails. The wings weren’t mana constructs. They were part of him, growing from his back, organic and divine, casting a warm glow that made the ruins of Valdris look like a cathedral bathed in stained-glass sunlight.

Michael Weston hovered thirty meters above them, his white uniform immaculate despite hours of combat, his bright eyes fixed on the two Heaven’s Gate fighters with an expression of mild amusement.

"Finally found you," he said, his voice carrying effortlessly across the distance.

Kael’s frown deepened. His fingers twitched toward his blades, but he hesitated for a fraction of a second. Something was off. His eyes were telling him more than his other senses could confirm.

He activated the Spirit Eyes of the Dark Emperor.

The world sharpened. And Michael Weston’s true nature blazed into view like a bonfire in absolute darkness. Beneath the skin, beneath the mana, beneath even the cultivation base, Kael saw it. A bloodline. Not the common elemental bloodlines or beast-kin inheritances that populated the tournament. Something older. Something that resonated with the fundamental forces of creation in a way that made Kael’s Transcendent Core and bloodline hum in recognition.

Angel bloodline.

Kael’s surprise was genuine. Angel bloodlines were nearly mythical. The pure ones had retreated from mortal affairs millennia ago. To find one in a first-year academy tournament was like finding a dragon egg in a chicken coop.

Karacus’s eyes narrowed, his slitted pupils contracting to thin vertical lines. White scales rippled along his forearms, thickening, the partial dragon transformation instinctively reinforcing itself against the perceived threat.

"So that’s Michael," Karacus murmured.

Kael didn’t respond. His mind was racing, processing the visual data from his Spirit Eyes. The angelic wings weren’t just for show. They were mana conduits, each feather acting as a micro-array that processed ambient energy at terrifying efficiency. Michael’s mana regeneration in that form had to be astronomical. Combined with whatever combat abilities the bloodline granted, this was an entirely different fight from anything they’d faced.

But Heaven’s Gate was ranked first in the academy standings at this point. They couldn’t afford to back down.

Kael drew the Void Edge MK. II blades, the Tier 1 weapons appearing in his hands with a soft hum of void resonance. Shadow Armor materialized over his skin, the Heaven Grade technique settling into place like a second skin of living darkness.

Karacus dropped into a wider stance, his tail sweeping behind him, frost already crystallizing on his claws. The white dragon halo flickered to life above his head, a crown of icy light that dropped the surrounding temperature by twenty degrees.

Michael watched them prepare with that same mild smile. He reached over his shoulder and drew a sword of pure light from thin air, the blade humming with a frequency that Kael could feel in his bones.

"Two on one," Michael observed. "I suppose that’s the advantage of being first place. Everyone wants a piece of you."

Kael’s lips curved. "Don’t flatter yourself. We just want your points."

Michael laughed.

"Good. Let’s make it interesting."

He dropped from the sky like a falling star.

BOOM.

The impact cratered the street, sending shockwaves in every direction. Kael and Karacus split apart, Kael going left and Karacus going right, both moving on instinct as Michael’s light sword carved a vertical line through the space between them.

SWOOSH.

The slash missed both of them but left a glowing line across the ground that hissed and sparked for three full seconds before fading. Kael felt the residual heat from two meters away.

Kael attacked first. Shadow Step carried him behind Michael, both Void Edge blades trailing dark energy. He aimed for the wings, guessing correctly that they were both weapon and weakness.

Michael’s wing folded forward, the feathers interlocking into a shield of golden light that caught both blades.

CLANG-CLANG.

The impact sent Kael backward, his arms numb from the vibration. The feathers were harder than steel. Much harder.

Karacus attacked from the opposite side, a frost-enhanced claw strike aimed at Michael’s exposed back. Michael twisted mid-air, one wing sweeping down like a blade. Karacus raised his scaled forearm to block.

PAM.

The wing hit like a battering ram. Karacus slid backward, his claws gouging trenches in the street, but his dragon scales held. He countered with a tail whip that Michael dodged by leaping upward, wings beating once to gain altitude.

Kael fired three Lightning Fangs from below. Michael’s wings folded around his body, each feather angling to deflect the bolts.

Crackle-crackle-crackle.

The lightning scattered harmlessly.

Kael switched to gravity. A gravity well opened beneath Michael, trying to pull him out of the air. Michael’s wings flared, light energy pushing against the gravitational pull. For a moment he dipped, but then the wings blazed brighter and he stabilized, hovering above the well.

"Gravity and lightning," Michael noted, still hovering. "Darkness and shadow. You have an impressive toolkit for a Mana Heart Rank 1."

Kael smirked. "And you have impressive wings for a guy who’s about to lose first place."

Michael’s smile faded.

They clashed again. And again. Kael used Shadow Step to blink around Michael’s guard, dark blades searching for gaps. Karacus used raw dragon speed and frost enhancement to pressure from the opposite angle, each strike carrying enough force to crack buildings.

PAM. CLANG. BOOM. SWOOSH. CRACK.

For thirty seconds, they pressed Michael hard. Kael landed a grazing cut across his forearm that healed in two seconds. Karacus drove a frost-coated fist into his ribs that left a patch of ice crystals, which Michael burned away with a pulse of light.

But they were winning. Incrementally. Michael was being forced to defend more than attack, his movements becoming more reactive, his wing shields activating more frequently.

Then Michael stopped retreating.

He hovered in the air, both arms slightly spread, and closed his eyes.

"What are you—" Kael started.

Light exploded from Michael’s body.

The light took shape, flowing over Michael’s skin like liquid gold, hardening, crystallizing, forming plates of luminous armor that covered his torso, arms, legs, and head. The wings grew larger, their feathers sharpening into blade-like protrusions. A halo of pure light materialized above his head, spinning slowly.

Angelic Armor. Bloodline form.

The pressure in the air multiplied. Kael’s Shadow Armor flickered under the radiant weight. Karacus’s dragon scales tightened against his body, the frost around him evaporating from the heat.

Michael opened his eyes. They were no longer merely bright. They were golden, burning with an intensity that made looking directly at them painful.

The smile returned. But this time it wasn’t mild or amused.

It was predatory.

"Shall we begin?" Michael asked.