The scent of burning amber and sweetroot drifted through the evening air as the three of them moved through the festival-lit streets.
Lanterns swayed overhead, strung like fireflies between ancient towers and rchant awnings, their light enchanted to flicker with warm reds and deep golds—each one ignited in honor of Empress Lysandra, the first bearer of the fla, the uniting founder whose reign had forged the Empire from dust and fractured thrones.
The Festival of the First Fla had always been equal parts reverence and spectacle, and this year, with the Academy's Candidate Trials being broadcast for the first ti during the holy week, it felt less like coincidence and more like ceremony dressed in armor.
Children ran barefoot through the square, faces smudged with pastry sugar, trailing enchanted ribbons that sparkled as they moved. Street perforrs danced on planks of rising air, juggling molten spheres that never quite burned. And the bells—those ever-distant, ever-haunting bells—chid softly from high above the cathedral arches, marking each phase of dusk as it gave way to full fla-night.
"Do you rember the last festival?" Aurelian asked idly, glancing at Selphine as they passed a row of glass-blown masks being sold from a floating cart. "When they released phoenix motes over the river?"
Selphine rolled her eyes faintly.
"I don't. And you were not there, rember."
"Yes, well," Aurelian said, undeterred by Selphine's flat denial, "I may not have technically been there, but I heard about it in such vivid detail that it's almost the sa."
Selphine snorted. "You make it sound like you personally negotiated with the phoenix to borrow its feathers."
"Not feathers," Aurelian replied with mock solemnity. "Motes. Blazing, golden motes that rained down over the river like fire tears. Whole sky lit up like a divine tapestry."
"They were lanterns with illusion runes and mist spells," Selphine corrected dryly. "Half of them malfunctioned and caught on the fishing nets."
"Elowyn," Aurelian turned toward her, scandalized, "You see this? You see how history gets butchered in real ti?"
Elara's eyes had drifted upward, toward the flickering stream of lanterns dancing above their heads. The play of color across her cheekbones made her expression hard to read—part-warm, part-distant.
"What are phoenix motes, exactly?" she asked, half-curious, half-amused.
Aurelian straightened imdiately. "Rare magical phenona—at least in festival lore. Said to appear when the imperial line is strong and the land is at peace. Symbolic, you know. Beauty born from fire."
Selphine rolled her eyes. "They're decorative spell constructs. Copper threads, ambient fla mana, and a bit of incense. He just likes anything that floats and glows."
"They represent rebirth and endurance," Aurelian insisted, lifting a hand. "You'd know if you ever paid attention to the symbology lectures."
"I was busy paying attention to the ones that didn't include glitter and bedti stories."
Elara smothered a laugh, shaking her head as she walked a step ahead of them, hands folded lightly behind her back. The familiar rhythm of their banter, dry and oddly affectionate, had beco one of the few things in the city that felt like solid ground.
The streets were crowded, yes, but not frantic. It was that lovely in-between state—where festival energy humd but hadn't yet boiled over. Where even the strangers around you felt like participants in sothing shared.
They had left their inn earlier, mostly because the Candidate Trials had grown stale. The first night had been chaos—so of it beautifully so, with strange creatures from failed runic rifts roaming the outer quadrants of the trial space, candidates fending off both illusions and very real threats.
But since then?
Not much.
Now, even the illusion broadcast pillars in the square had grown quieter, surrounded mostly by idle festival-goers glancing up between bites of roasted apple or sips of spiced cider.
"I'm telling you," Aurelian muttered, as they passed another illusion feed displaying a group of candidates arguing over territory. "The whole thing's stalled. It's like watching noble children try to play war in a garden."
"Give them a break," Elara murmured. "They've survived two rounds of the most brutal trial format the Academy's ever used."
"They should at least make it interesting," Aurelian shot back.
And that's when they noticed it.
The shift.
The tension.
Like a ripple beneath music.
The street noise hadn't changed, not exactly. But there was a different kind of buzz ahead—more concentrated. People moving with purpose toward sothing, drawn like iron filings to a lodestone.
"What is going on?" Aurelian asked, his tone sharpening as he nudged closer to the cluster of murmuring watchers.
The three of them slipped through the edge of the crowd, the festival's warm hum suddenly muted in this pocket of focused tension. Dozens of people had gathered around the illusion pillar now—shoulder to shoulder, eyes raised, so leaning forward as if proximity might grant them greater understanding.
Elara's gaze flicked upward.
And there it was.
The trial feed had shifted.
A new quadrant.
And at its center—
A single figure, surrounded.
Three opponents fanned out in a loose triangle around him—two with swords drawn, one bracing behind a long, rune-carved spear. Their stances were deliberate, focused, disciplined. This was no wild skirmish or desperate ambush. This was calculated. A coordinated takedown.
But the one at the center?
He didn't look concerned.
If anything, he looked delighted.
The figure was lean, wiry, with shaggy, sun-bleached hair that curled at the edges like he'd once tried to ta it and then given up halfway through the attempt. His sleeves were torn at the elbows, revealing tallic bands fastened tightly to his forearms—etched with volatile glyphwork that sparked erratically with flickers of electric-blue mana. A battered scarf was tied loosely around his neck, fluttering despite the absence of wind. Dirt smudged his jaw, and he wore the kind of grin that looked borrowed from a tavern brawl three drinks too deep.
And gods, he wouldn't stop talking.
"I an, really," his voice echoed over the scrying feed, laced with crackling static, "three on one? I'm flattered! Usually I need dinner first—maybe a little wine, so light manipulation—"
"Is he joking?" Selphine muttered.
"Looks like it," Aurelian said. "Or he's lost his mind."
"I don't think he ever had it to begin with," Elara said under her breath.
Onscreen, the three opponents were circling tighter. One lunged forward, sword arcing fast and clean.
The center figure didn't block.
He twisted, slipping just under the blade with all the grace of a circus acrobat and then, with a flick of his wrist, slamd his bracer against the ground.
BOOM.
A burst of lightning erupted outward in a ragged circle—less refined spellwork, more barely-contained chaos. The blast staggered two of his attackers, the third managing to leap backward in ti—but not before his hair stood on end from the residual charge.
"Okay," Aurelian breathed, impressed. "That's not amateur work."
"Unstable lightning core," Elara murmured, watching the way his bracers glowed. "Too raw to be standard-issue. He's channeling spell-scrolls through a fixed focus. That's risky."
"Effective," Cedric said, finally speaking.
The figure in the illusion rolled to his feet, sparks dancing around his boots, and raised his hands as if addressing an invisible audience.
"Thank you, thank you—please, hold your applause. I'll be here all trial, possibly electrocuted, possibly exploded. No guarantees!"
Another lunge. This ti from behind.
He ducked, then twisted his body in a wide spin, one bracer flaring with jagged glyphs that sent a streak of lightning arcing sideways—an erratic bolt that bent mid-air like it had a mind of its own and slamd into the spear-user's side.
The crowd in the square gasped.
"Who is this lunatic?" soone muttered nearby.
Aurelian shook his head. "No na tag showing. Must've been wiped during the last formation collapse."
"I didn't even know you could team up in this phase," Selphine added.
"Why not?" Elara replied. "There's no rule against it. Just none guaranteeing it'll last."
Back on the feed, the man—boy, really, now that you looked closer—was grinning even wider.
And talking. Always talking.
"I an, if you really wanted to impress , you could've brought snacks. Or a dragon. But nooo, just steel and grim expressions—how predictable!"
The remaining two attackers looked rattled. One charged again, more desperate now.
He let the blade co within inches of his chest before shifting sideways and grabbing the edge of it with a glyph-etched glove that should not have been able to catch it.
The spell-glyph ignited at contact. There was a flash, a hum, and then—
The sword was ripped from the wielder's hands, flung backwards by a magnetic burst that scorched the surrounding grass.
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