The arena's dome shimmered to life once more, bathing the battlefield in pale light. Dust still lingered from the last battle, but already, the energy in the air had shifted—lighter, faster, sharper.
The crowd buzzed. Whispers rode the breeze.
"Nyra's up… I heard she once tore through an entire mock arena with a single burst."
"Yeah? Dorian drowned a sparring team in ink until they yielded. No one's sure how his power even works."
On opposite ends of the marble field, the next two competitors stepped forward.
Nyra adjusted her gloves and rolled her shoulders. The wind stirred around her in delicate currents, ruffling her short, pale-blonde hair and tugging at the green and silver threads stitched along her uniform. Her eyes, clear and stormlight-blue, narrowed with focus.
She didn't smile. She never did before a fight. But her heart beat with anticipation, like wings pressed to the sky.
Let them see, the Star of Gale whispered in her mind. Let them feel us fly.
Across from her, Dorian moved more slowly.
He was tall and narrow, his coat ink-dark and buttoned high at the throat. A quill sat behind one ear. His gloves were stained with blotches that never quite faded. A leather-bound tome hovered beside him, its pages turning with a mind of their own.
He didn't make eye contact. Instead, his gaze wandered across the patterns in the arena's floor, calculating, reading, measuring. The Star of Ink pulsed at his wrist—a swirling spiral that looked less like a mark and more like a slow-spreading spill.
Draw the lines. Make them real, it whispered.
The signal dropped.
Wind screamed.
Nyra moved first—because she always did.
A blast of air exploded beneath her boots, propelling her forward like a bullet. In an instant, she was in front of Dorian, a gust spiraling from her palm aimed directly at his chest.
But Dorian… vanished.
A tendril of ink coiled from his boots into the ground, dragging him sideways in a sleek, liquid dodge. Pages fluttered beside him like wings.
Nyra landed, skidding slightly, boots carving twin grooves into the stone.
"Fast," she murmured.
Dorian didn't speak. But his tome flipped pages—once, twice—and symbols glowed from the parchment.
Tendrils of ink erupted beneath her feet.
Nyra leapt again, twirling midair, slicing the black cords with wind blades. One wrapped around her ankle mid-flight—but the moment it touched her, a burst of gale exploded outward, repelling the ink with a loud snap.
He's not just a summoner, she thought. *The ink reacts.
On the sidelines, students leaned forward, whispering with widened eyes.
"I've never seen Nyra forced back so soon…"
"Dorian's so calm. It's creepy."
Inside the field, Nyra circled, boots barely touching the ground as wind swirled at her heels. She raised a hand, and the air compressed into a spinning lance—a miniature twister shrieking toward her opponent.
Dorian raised his hand. Ink flooded upward in a dome—not a barrier, but a story.
The twister collided with a swirling black figure, a shape pulled straight from the pages of his book—an ink-knight, faceless and fluid, absorbing the blast with eerie silence before dissolving.
Dorian's eyes flicked up.
"Your power is movement," he said, voice low but clear. "Mine… is momentum."
He snapped the book shut.
Nyra blinked—then reeled as the ground beneath her tilted suddenly, slick with a wave of ink that spread in an impossible arc. She rolled sideways, but the ink followed her like a living tide.
"Momentum, huh?" she growled, slamming her palms into the ground.
A detonation of wind launched her skyward. She soared high, caught the air in her lungs, and summoned the Spiral Gale—a vortex that formed in her open palm, building pressure until it crackled with streaks of blue-white force.
"Let's see if you can ride the wind," she shouted—and hurled it downward.
The vortex struck the arena with a deafening crack, blasting ink and stone skyward. The shockwave flattened some of the crowd's front rows before the dome flickered to absorb the pressure.
For a moment, there was only mist.
And then—
A line of black slashed through the fog.
Nyra twisted in the air just in time to barely avoid a spear of hardened ink. Another followed. Then another.
Dorian's book floated behind him again, pages turning with increasing speed.
She landed, panting.
He stood in the heart of a growing sea of ink, now shaping itself into glyphs, beasts, blades.
"You're good," he said softly.
"Same to you," she replied, brushing blood from her lip.
They circled.
Above them, the Starbound watched in silence.
"I never realized how… fluid the Star of Ink was," one instructor murmured. "He doesn't fight—he writes his opponent's end."
Another nodded. "And Nyra's adapted more than I expected. She's more than raw speed—she's got instinct."
Back on the field, the tension was building.
Nyra's muscles coiled like springs.
Dorian's ink began to rise again—this time in the shape of wings, unfolding behind him.
The air thinned. The ink rippled.
Two storms about to collide.
Nyra dashed forward—
Dorian raised his hand—and the arena exploded into motion.
Nyra vanished in a blur of gale-force speed, the air cracking behind her. She zigzagged across the battlefield—left, right, up—riding microbursts of wind, each step faster, sharper, more precise.
Dorian stood still—but his wings of ink unfurled wide, not feathers but calligraphy, each line a symbol etched in midnight.
He raised one hand.
And the ink moved.
Dozens of slashes spiraled outward from him, like the strokes of a furious pen. One caught Nyra across the shoulder—blood flecked the wind—but she didn't stop. She twisted mid-air, wind gathering in her palms, spiraling tighter with every breath.
The tome beside Dorian flipped open—and one page turned red.
A single drop of blood had marked it.
Ink surged, and a beast rose—a towering serpent made of swirling glyphs and jagged symbols, its fanged maw yawning open to swallow her dive.
But Nyra only grinned.
She didn't avoid it.
She became the wind.
A piercing spiral of compressed air launched her forward, tearing through the ink-beast in a cyclone of shrieking force. The sound hit like a thunderclap. The dome's barrier rippled from the pressure, the crowd shielding their faces as wind and ink clashed in a violent vortex.
When the storm cleared—
Both of them were down on one knee.
Nyra's sleeve was torn, blood dripping from her arm. Dorian's coat was shredded, ink pooling at his feet. His quill had snapped. The book beside him hovered uncertainly, a single page glowing—blank.
They locked eyes.
No malice. Just fire.
Nyra stood first.
So did Dorian.
They charged—her fists wreathed in spiraling air, his fingers alight with inked sigils, momentum gathering like a tidal wave behind him.
But just before they collided—
Dorian's book shut itself.
His eyes widened. "No—"
Nyra's punch struck clean.
A burst of wind sent him flying across the field, tumbling through cracked marble and ink-slicked stone.
Silence.
Then the dome glowed gold.
Victory: Nyra.
The arena erupted.
But Nyra didn't lift her arms. She just exhaled, wind curling gently around her shoulders as she watched Dorian sit up, dazed but smiling.
From the stands, someone whispered, "That wasn't just a duel… it was a dialogue between stars."