The moment the king stepped forward, the room changed.
It was difficult to describe precisely — not a sound, not a temperature, but a pressure. The air itself seemed to become aware of him, settling heavier on the shoulders of everyone present as his presence spread outward through the hall without effort or intention. This was what a transcendent felt like up close. Not a rank on a page. Not a title passed between mouths. A physical fact.
King Auburn was tall, light-skinned, and bald, his features sharp and prominent in a way that suited the weight he carried. He looked like a man who had never once needed a room's attention and received it anyway, always, without fail.
When he spoke, his voice filled the hall the way water fills a vessel — completely, and with no space left over.
"We will now commence the annual ball by announcing the families participating in this year's tournament."
His royal guard stepped forward and presented a scroll. The king took it, opened it, and read without preamble.
"Vin of Fou. Vern of Storm. Efram of Zerxia. Aza of Agapé. Tirvin of Night. Verna of Frost. Ifram of Makarious. Lom of Light. And Ivel of Revenant."
He closed the scroll and returned it.
"Whoever emerges victorious will receive a nexus core — taken from a devil."
The hall erupted.
Not in cheers — in the particular chaos of a crowd that has just heard something it cannot immediately reconcile with its understanding of the world. Voices broke out across the room in urgent, overlapping murmurs.
Last year it was an armor set — a nexus orb is something else entirely—
And from a devil, of all things—
Has there ever been a prize like that at one of these—
"Silence."
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't harden it. He simply said the word, and the room obeyed.
"I am aware that this year's prize is excessive. If I am being frank — I would not normally be this generous." He paused, and something that might have been dry amusement crossed his face. "We have Vas of Night to thank for it."
The silence broke again — differently this time. Shock rather than excitement, spreading from person to person in waves.
Vas of Night — here? I haven't heard his name in years—
He hasn't been seen publicly in how long—
Though if anyone was going to kill a devil for sport, it would be him—
"There is no point in looking for the man," the king said, and the murmuring subsided again.
"That is all for this evening. I look forward to seeing you all tomorrow."
The ride back to the manor was quiet.
Ivel sat with the carriage moving beneath him and the city passing dark beyond the window, and he turned the evening over in his mind. The man with the wine bottle who appeared and disappeared at will, who offered advice to boys training alone in the dark and slipped away before it could be acknowledged — the man who had donated a devil's nexus core to a children's tournament as though it were nothing of consequence.
Well, Ivel thought. He is a Reverend, after all.
He was still somewhere inside that thought when Aniya reached over and ruffled his hair.
He didn't move her hand.
She noticed immediately. Her eyes narrowed slightly.
What's wrong with this brat.
She flicked him hard on the side of the head.
"Ow—" He snapped back to the present, one hand flying to the spot. "What was that for?"
"I wanted to confirm you were still alive." She studied him. "Is the tournament making you anxious, or something?"
"No. I was just thinking."
She looked at him with open skepticism.
"Sure. Whatever you say."
She turned then, extending a palm toward Leom with the flat expectation of someone who has already decided the answer.
Leom looked at her hand. Then at her face.
"Already? You said for a special occasion."
"This is a special occasion."
He sighed — the sigh of a man who had identified a counterargument and elected not to use it. He reached into a spatial pouch at his side and produced something small: a claw, roughly the length of a finger, threaded onto a simple cord.
Ivel recognized it before anyone said a word.
The nightcrawler. His nightcrawler. The first one.
"It's from all of us," Aniya said, with slightly less ceremony than the moment probably deserved. "Elia even added a kind of compass to it."
"What kind of compass?"
"If you pour mana into it while you're lost, it'll guide you home." She shrugged, though her eyes were warm. "Might as well make your first kill mean something useful."
Ivel looked down at the claw in his hand for a moment.
Then he smiled — a full one, unguarded, the kind that didn't happen often.
He put the cord around his neck. It fit as though it had been made with him in mind, which it had. The claw rested against his chest, small and familiar and entirely right.
"Thank you," he said. "All of you. I'll keep it for a long time."
"You'd better, brat," Aniya said.
The carriage filled with laughter, and they rode the rest of the way back to the manor through the dark and quiet capital, the city pulling past them on both sides.
That night he trained again.
The katana moved through the dark with the same focus it always had, though there was something different underneath it — not anxiety, not the low hum of nerves before something uncertain. Something cleaner than that.
When he finally stopped and cleaned up, he looked down at his hand.
It was shaking.
Not from exhaustion. Not from fear.
From anticipation.
I hope I meet someone strong tomorrow.
He went to sleep with that thought and let it carry him through the night.
Morning came, and both families dressed without ceremony — practical this time, purposeful. Ivel buckled on the armor Aldrius had made, the black leather sitting against him like a second skin, light and fitted and exact. When they arrived at the palace, Verna was already there in her own armor — pale and precisely engraved, every line deliberate, the craftsmanship of a family that had been preparing its heirs for moments like this one for generations.
The other contestants filed in around them. Each face carried its own version of the same expression — focused, set, privately calculating. The kind of look that only appears when something real is about to begin.
They took their places.
The tournament was about to commence.