The Coliseum, once the immediate chaos settled, fell into a silence far more unsettling than the earlier panic had been — tens of thousands of people staring down at the arena floor, processing exactly what they'd just witnessed two "mortal" tournament competitors accomplish against a threat that should, by any reasonable measure, have required an army and considerable divine intervention to survive at all.
I'd held back, genuinely — nowhere near my full strength, nothing close to what Aria had witnessed during our sparring match in Valoria — but even the fraction I'd allowed myself in defense of a packed arena had clearly, unmistakably exceeded anything a Bronze-rank swordsman should have been capable of by any stretch of reasonable explanation.
Seraphine reached us first, having successfully overseen the evacuation of the royal box, her expression a carefully controlled mixture of relief and razor-sharp calculation. "Both of you. With me. Now, before the entire nobility of this kingdom decides to descend on you with questions neither of you are prepared to answer in public."
She led us through a service corridor beneath the stands to a private chamber normally reserved for royal family use, where King Aldous himself waited, flanked by a pair of guards and an older man whose bearing immediately marked him as considerably more dangerous than his advanced years suggested — the spymaster Seraphine had mentioned weeks earlier, I realized, finally putting a face to the title.
"Master Gigonos," King Aldous said, his voice carrying the weary authority of a man who'd ruled long enough to recognize a genuine crisis when it interrupted his own tournament. "My daughter has been telling me, with increasing urgency over the past week, that you know considerably more about whatever just happened above my arena than you've shared with the Crown. I would very much like that to change, effective immediately."
I glanced at Kai, who gave a small, resigned nod, and at Aria, who'd fought her way through the evacuation chaos to reach the chamber alongside us, her expression steady and encouraging.
"Your Majesty," I said, choosing my words carefully but no longer bothering with the careful evasions I'd maintained for weeks. "My name is Lukas Gigonos. I am not, in any meaningful sense, a Bronze-rank swordsman. I've spent the past several months investigating an ancient threat connected to a being called the Grey Sovereign — exiled from what historical fragments call the Court of Heaven roughly three hundred years ago, and apparently now attempting to reclaim relics, information, and power across your kingdom's borders in preparation for something I don't yet fully understand."
The spymaster's eyes narrowed sharply. "The eastern border reports."
"Are connected to exactly this," I confirmed. "As is what just happened above your arena. I believe that display was a deliberate test — an escalation, meant to gauge exactly how I'd respond under public pressure, and how much of my actual capability I'd be willing to reveal to protect innocent people rather than my own concealment."
King Aldous studied me for a long, heavy silence. "And did it work? This test?"
"Yes," I admitted honestly. "I revealed considerably more than I intended to. I don't regret the choice — I'd make the same one again, given the alternative — but I won't pretend the consequences aren't significant."
"Your true capability, then," the spymaster said, voice carefully neutral. "How significant are we discussing, precisely?"
I hesitated, glancing once more at Aria, who gave the smallest, almost imperceptible nod of encouragement.
"Significant enough," I said finally, "that if the Grey Sovereign had chosen to send that tear in the sky as a genuine attack rather than a test, I believe I could have closed it entirely and eliminated every creature that came through it without meaningful effort. I held back today specifically because I didn't yet know how this kingdom's Crown would react to seeing the full truth, and I judged, correctly or not, that a partial reveal serving the immediate crisis was wiser than an overwhelming one that might have caused as much panic as it prevented."
The silence that followed stretched long enough that I genuinely couldn't guess which direction it would break.