Today Radeon Terraces swelled until it felt like the city might split its own seams.
rchants had been advised to close for the event, and they listened.
Not a stall open, not a hawker calling, as if the whole city had agreed to hold its breath.
Three million souls still poured in. Custors with coin clenched hard in their fists.
Hopefuls with nothing but a blade, a bruise, and the belief that luck could be bullied into obedience.
In a world where most people talked about forty like it was an edge you fell off, this was the best ti to throw yourself at sothing that could make you.
The tournant was close enough to taste. Word of the prizes moved faster than the heralds.
When the full list was posted, n and won leaned in, counted twice, and swore they would win at least one.
What the crowd loved was not the shine. It was the use.
The rewards were practical, the sort of things that kept you fed, healed, housed, and alive, not just flashy weapons for fools to wave around.
[Martial Arts Tournant For Mortals]
[First Prize] - [Lifeti]
[Core Discipleship on Radeon Terraces]
[Second to Fifth Prize] - [Ten Years]
[Inner Discipleship on Radeon Terraces]
[Sixth to Tenth Prize] - [Five Years]
[Outer Discipleship on Radeon Terraces]
[Eleventh to Twentieth Prize] - [Two Years]
[Nad Discipleship on Radeon Terraces]
[Twenty First to Fiftieth Prize]
[Workman’s Body Strength Codex]
[Details: A reliable cultivation manual that reaches up to the Cornerstone Setting Stage. It can be continued with any other thod without side effects.]
[Fifty First to One Hundredth Prize]
[Hundred-Year Pri Renewal Pill]
[Details: Take this pill as a mortal and live a hundred years without the common sicknesses or the creeping weakness of age.]
[One Hundredth First to Five Hundredth]
[Mortal Recovery Pills]
[Details: Three pills that nd broken bones and heal deep cuts. For mortals only. No effect on cultivators.]
[Notice: There are limited seating. Event starts at midnight.]
Ti? No one gave a damn.
An Aberrant could have been rampaging outside the walls and the mortals still would have stayed in their seats.
To them it was all or nothing now. Half a day ant nothing. Even a month would have been tolerable as long as there was food and water.
The arena had been built to house a million, and it still felt tight.
They ca anyway, even with the entrance fee. A silver coin if you were cheap.
A middle grade spirit stone if you wanted a better seat, or wanted to be seen.
The prices were sincere. They were fed. They were handed morabilia.
Robes printed with Radeon Terraces’ patron deity, cloth that ward the skin when the wind bit and cooled it when the heat rose.
An artifact bought with a middle grade spirit stone. So even thought it was such a great heirloom.
Calyx watched it all and felt the power of faith swell in him, not because of the image on the cloth, but because of the mouths.
Thousands of mouths talking about Preta Lurienna Labyrinth. Saying his surna.
That was faith, and it flooded him fast. He felt it trying to shape him. Thoughts not his spiraled.
Voices layered over his own until his skull felt too small to hold him.
Radeon’s hand landed on his shoulder, hard enough to jerk.
"ditate."
Calyx nodded, too quick, and sat on the mat. He closed his eyes. The mat looked simple, but the thousands of hidden arrays inside it spun the mont his weight settled.
Sothing pulled. Sothing redirected. Faith that had been pouring toward Calyx twisted away in an instant, streaming toward Radeon instead.
Calyx panted like he had been held under water. The ancient wraith went a shade paler on skin that was already pale, like nausea had found him.
"Lord Radeon... I," Calyx drew a tight breath, fighting for his composure.
"I cannot, my lord. It felt as though that power of faith ant to take in whole, to subsu ."
Calyx ant every word. Part of him wanted to answer the voices, to speak back to them, to bargain.
He could feel their emotions like hands on his ribs, mostly greed and anticipation, and he hated how easy it would be to mistake that hunger for his own.
"I’ll handle it. For now," Radeon said. "But you don’t get to complain forever."
He turned to leave. Calyx watched Radeon’s back and clenched his fist.
"How am I ant to take any satisfaction in duties such as these," Calyx said, tight-jawed, "with so many voices clamouring in my head?"
He forced himself to look away from Radeon and toward the arena’s security lines instead.
Ghosts and wraiths in plain seating. Hidden details. Eyes that kept moving and pretended to enjoy.
Each one watched the crowd through morning, noon, and afternoon, patient as stone.
Mortals and cultivators alike drifted from one small comfort to the next.
Water, free. Good bread for a few copper. Rooms where they could relieve themselves.
Then night ca, and midnight after it. People slept in their chairs.
Then the lights began to glow. Dim at first. Then brighter. Then blinding, like the sun had been dragged down and chained above the arena.
The sleepers snapped awake, blinking hard, afraid to miss even a blink of history.
Eldric, the master showman, stepped into view.
"Everyone. Did you sleep well?"
Laughter rippled through the arena, the kind you heard when people genuinely enjoyed the old man’s banter.
Eldric watched it wash over him, then snapped his fingers. Down below, the participants appeared.
So were as young as ten, children with eyes too sharp for their soft faces, children soone had decided could survive.
Others were older, twenty nine and hard around the mouth, calculation flashing quick and bright when they thought no one was looking.
The crowd scread anyway, cheering for family mbers they could barely see from this distance, shouting nas into a space too wide to answer them.
Then screens flared to life all around the arena. Faces ca into view, not perfectly clear, but clear enough for recognition.
It was the sa art the ghosts used, borrowing one eye while keeping another to watch, a trick of sight made grand and public.
Fabric banners shimred with moving images, portraits that breathed and shifted as the contestants moved.
To mortals it was spectacle. To cultivators it was reverence.
This was the power of a god among n, displayed with holding back.
Eldric lifted his arms as if he were gathering the noise into his palms.
"Now, the first segnt of our tournant."
The whole Radeon Terraces went black. Darkness slamd down so hard hearts lurched.
It was the kind of dark that made eyes useless, a night too thick to blink through.
Then Eldric adjusted it, just enough. Thin lines appeared, faint and wrong, the sort of marks that made you stare twice and wonder if your mind was inventing them.
The lights in the arena ca back, but only for the audience.
The whole arena brightened into a hard, eager daylight while the floor below remained swallowed in black.
Not empty black. A fog of it. A thick, rolling dark that clung to the contestants like wet wool and hid them from the crowd’s naked eyes.
Nervous participants did what nervous people always did when their hands had nothing to hold onto.
They reached for rations. They gulped water until it hurt, as if a full stomach could steady a shaking soul.
The audience did not need a long explanation to understand what the contestants felt.
"Settle down. Everyone. Settle down."
Gossip died on the tongue. A million mouths found a sudden respect for silence.
"Listen well, I shall say this but once. The contest is simple in form. You are to find a flag."
"A flag bearing our Twelve-Ard Deity, wrought upon dark-gold cloth."
All around the arena, screens shimred and shifted. The participants could not see the crowd, but the crowd could see them now through borrowed sight, faces and bodies outlined by ghostly arts.
Above the arena, Eldric raised a flag on a pole so everyone knew the size and shape of what they were hunting.
"This is a large version of the flag. You will be looking for sothing like this," Eldric said.
His image flared across the screens that pierced the darkness for the contestants.
The sudden glare almost blinded them. So flinched and raised an arm. So blinked hard until tears ca.
The mortals stared anyway, stubborn as nails, burning the size and color into their minds.
"There are also flags there to confuse," Eldric went on.
"Purple flags. Orange flags. Too many flags for a calm mind."
"You will find flags that show ten arms, four arms, even no arms at all."
"These are duds."
"Lastly, killing is forbidden. Yet if a man is injured and unconscious, that lies within the rule."
"Do not bla your fellow n for granting you no quarter. Such is the common way of n."
"And do not turn my words against ." Eldric’s voice hardened, a chill went through the crowd.
"Insidious weapons ant to kill a participant afterward, curses, poisons, and the like, too many to na, are likewise forbidden."
"Any other question?"
No one spoke. The rules were clear enough to make the audience itch.
So even cursed under their breath, not because it was unfair, but because it sounded easy, and they regretted staying in their seats instead of joining in.
Eldric held up a hand.
"Before we begin."
He paused, and the arena answered him with drums. A roll that started low and spread through the seats.
People leaned forward. Teeth bared in smiles with excitent from what was to co.
"Who wants to make so money?" Eldric said in a way that hosts entice clients.
"Now, ladies and gentlen," Eldric said, smooth as oiled rope, "to make a bet, this is but a simple feat."
"Think of our Radeon Terraces exclusive coin. Then point your hand at the face you want to wager on."
"A small hollow drop right below your foot will take in your currencies."
"We will gladly accept anything from copper, silver, gold, up to even high grade spirit stones."
A murmur surged, then broke into motion.
People shut their eyes for a heartbeat to picture the coin, to picture paynt.
Hands rose. Fingers stabbed at the air, chasing the moving portraits on the screens.
Little hollows opened near their feet. Large enough to take copper. Too small for a man to slip through.
The offerings dropped with soft clinks and vanished, and then glowing letters appeared above each opening.
The na of the person they had wagered on.
For those who could not read, neighbors leaned in and helped.
Then rumors followed right after, traded like bread in a famine.
"See him over there, the one with the big lips? Aye, curly-haired. Heard tell he laid five n out all by his loneso."
"That’s Goldman’s son, they say. Look at the belly on him, soft as suet. Waste of coin, that is. I wouldn’t wager a copper."
"City Lord Gregorius’s bastard, aye, small boy with large muscles. Makes you wonder, don’t it, what sort of training a lad like that’s had."
Voices piled up until the arena felt less like a sporting event and more like an auction house.
Then Eldric lifted a single finger, and the noise thinned as if he had squeezed it.
"I’ll count to a hundred," he said, smiling like a man offering rcy, "no more bets will be allowed afterward."
Panic fluttered through the arena. Hands snapped up faster.
Fingers jerked toward faces on the screens with sudden, desperate certainty.
Coins and stones disappeared into the hollows in a rush.
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