The air in the VIP box didn't just turn cold—it froze.
Kael landed on the marble railing with the weight of a falling star, the stone shattering under his obsidian-clad feet. The golden wings of Varg flared behind him, blocking out the sun and casting the Count into a terrifying, artificial twilight.
"Guards!" the Count shrieked, stumbling backward over his gilded chair. "Kill him! He's been possessed! That's not a beast—it's a demon!"
Six Elite House Guards, dressed in shimmering silver plate, lunged forward. These weren't students; they were veterans of the Border Wars, their spears glowing with concentrated mana.
Kael didn't even reach for a weapon.
Varg responded to his silent command. The obsidian armor on Kael's chest rippled like water, and four black, bladed tentacles whipped out from his shoulders. They moved faster than the human eye could track, snapping the shafts of the spears as if they were dry kindling.
Weak, Skane's soul growled. They fight like men who have never looked death in the eye.
Kael stepped forward. One guard tried to draw a shortsword, but Varg's liquid gold essence surged down Kael's arm, forming a Viking Shield—round, iron-rimmed, and emblazoned with the "World-Eater" eye.
BASH.
Kael slammed the shield into the guard's helmet. The metal crumpled like parchment, and the man was sent flying through the stone wall, tumbling into the empty stands below.
"You speak of demons," Kael said, his voice a low, vibrating hum that seemed to come from Varg itself. "But you are the one who sent a child to be slaughtered in a pit."
He turned his gaze to the Count. The nobleman was hyperventilating, his hand reaching for a teleportation scroll tucked into his belt.
"No," Kael whispered.
Varg's eye flashed a blinding violet. The space around the Count distorted. The teleportation scroll burst into green flames before it could be activated.
Kael reached out. His hand, encased in the obsidian claw, gripped the Count by the throat. He lifted the grown man off the ground as if he weighed nothing.
"Where did you get the crest?" Kael asked, his voice dropping to a terrifying whisper. He pointed his free hand toward the violet crystal core he had won in the woods—the one bearing Harald's three-pointed crown.
"I... I don't know what you mean!" the Count wheezed, his face turning a sickly purple. "It's... it's an ancient relic! From the Southern Wastes!"
"Lie to me again," Kael said, "and I will let my beast show you what 'Endless Hunger' feels like."
Varg's wings shivered, the golden light turning into a jagged, serrated edge. The Shifter began to emit a low growl—a sound it had mimicked from the Shadow-Stalker, but amplified a hundred times.
"It... it comes from the Hidden King!" the Count blurted out, tears streaming down his face. "The one who appeared in the capital ten years ago! He gave the Great Houses the cores in exchange for our loyalty! Please! I was just following the new order!"
Kael's heart skipped a beat. Ten years. The exact age of this body.
Harald is here, Skane realized. The betrayal hadn't ended on that muddy northern shore. It had simply changed worlds.
Kael didn't kill the Count. Not yet. A quick death was a mercy Skane wasn't ready to give.
"Tell your 'Hidden King' that the Bone-Breaker is awake," Kael said.
He threw the Count back into his shattered chair. Then, Kael turned to the arena below. Silas was standing there, his jaw dropped, his sword half-drawn. The rest of the Academy was in a state of total panic.
"Silas!" Kael roared. "We're leaving!"
"Leaving?" Silas shouted back. "Kael, you just assaulted a Count! There's nowhere to go but the executioner's block!"
"Then we'll make our own path," Kael said.
He gripped the railing and leaped. But he didn't fall. Varg's wings beat once, a thunderous sound that cracked the remaining windows of the stadium. Kael soared over the city walls, a streak of black and gold silhouetted against the setting sun.
He wasn't a farmer's son anymore. He wasn't a student.
He was a Warlord in a child's body, and he finally had a scent to follow.