Chapter 42: First round [1]
The hemisphere descended with the others, controlled and precise, gliding down to settle beside them with a faint shimr that ran across its surface like a breath.
Lucas looked at it. Then at Sylvia.
"So," he said, "who’s carrying it?"
Sylvia’s expression didn’t change but sothing in it beca slightly more pointed. "Isn’t that obvious?"
"I’m just asking."
"You’re asking because you want
to say it."
She folded her arms. The teasing ca through in the tilt of her head, small and precise. "Unless you’ve decided you’re better at offense than . In which case, by all ans go ahead. I’ll take the defensive role. I’ll carry it. Happily."
"I’m carrying it," he said, already crouching down.
"Good choice."
He picked it up carefully. It wasn’t heavy that wasn’t the problem. The problem was the way it responded to every small shift in his grip, every minor adjustnt, like it was waiting to find a reason to shatter. He got his hands under it properly and stood up slowly, holding it with the careful mana control.
Around them the final pairs were locking in, the field settling from chaos into sothing organized, and then Vance’s voice ca across the ground one last ti.
"The gates are open. Enter the arena. Begin."
The barriers dissolved.
The forest took everyone in.
*****
Inside, the light changed imdiately, softer, filtered through the canopy, the sounds of the tournant ground replaced by the quiet of trees and the particular density of a space that held its breath.
Pairs split off in different directions, footsteps fading, and within minutes the forest had swallowed the crowd entirely.
Lucas walked with the hemisphere held carefully in both hands, picking his way through the roots and undergrowth. Sylvia moved beside him, slightly ahead, her steps finding the clear ground the way they always did.
A comfortable silence had settled between them.
Then Lucas shifted his grip and muttered, "This thing is annoying to carry."
"Then don’t drop it," Sylvia said.
"I’m not going to drop it."
"You just shifted your grip."
"I was adjusting."
"Adjusting is how dropping starts."
Lucas looked at the back of her head. "Are you going to critique the way I carry for the entire round?"
Sylvia didn’t answer. She stepped over a root and kept moving, her pace not changing.
Lucas opened his mouth to say sothing else and then realized sothing was different about the silence.
Not the easy kind from before. Sothing with a texture to it. He looked at her back again and couldn’t place it, but it was there — the way her shoulders were sitting, the way she wasn’t glancing back at him the way she usually did when they moved through spaces together.
’Did I say sothing wrong? I said the hemisphere was annoying. That wasn’t a cri.’ He watched her step over another root. ’She’s not saying anything. She’s walking faster than she usually does.’
He stayed quiet and kept walking.
What he couldn’t see was what was happening in front of her.
The forest moved past Sylvia’s eyes without registering. Her attention had gone sowhere else entirely. Back to the field, back to the mont before the gates opened, back to Lucas turning to Nova with a hand on his shoulder and asking the question without a second’s hesitation.
’He didn’t even think about it’
Her steps slowed by half a beat without her noticing.
’Nova was the first na he thought of. Just like that. Imdiately.’ Her fingers moved along the hem of her sleeve, pressing lightly. ’I was standing right there.’
She kept walking.
’So I wasn’t even his first thought...’ she told herself. ’Why...? Nova was the first na that ca to his mind. Why not ?’
Her fingers pressed a little harder.
’...Wait.’
She didn’t finish the thought. She didn’t need to, because it had already finished itself sowhere she wasn’t looking directly at, and the answer was sitting there in her chest doing sothing warm and inconvenient that she had not given it permission to do.
She exhaled very quietly.
’Why am I even thinking like this?’ The question arrived and she let it arrive and then she made herself look at it properly instead of moving around it.
’ Jealous...? No. That’s ridiculous. Why would I even—’ The word sat there. She looked at it from several angles.
The warmth that had been sitting in her chest moved up toward her face.
’It Can’t be..’ she thought, the realization arriving in stages like sothing that had been waiting at the door for a while and had finally been let in. ’Don’t tell
that I—’
"SYLVIA—LOOK OUT!"
She moved before the sentence finished.
Pure instinct — body dropping sideways, feet finding ground, the burst of force detonating exactly where she had been standing half a second earlier.
Dirt and leaves erupted upward. The shockwave rolled past her and she ca out of the dodge in a low crouch, one hand touching the earth, her focus snapping back to the present with the clean efficiency of soone whose training doesn’t stop just because their thoughts were sowhere else.
Lucas was already beside her. "You okay?"
"Fine." She straightened. Her voice ca out steady. Whatever had been on her face a second ago was gone.
She was fine. She was completely fine.
Her heart was doing sothing she was choosing not to acknowledge.
From deeper in the trees, a voice drifted out. Unhurried. Entertained.
"Look at that."
A second voice, lighter. "First years. Both of them."
Footsteps. Deliberate. The kind that belong to people who aren’t worried about being heard.
Two figures erged from the shadow between the trees— older, broader through the shoulders, carrying themselves with the particular ease of people who have been in this forest before and know how rounds like this tend to go. Second years. They scanned the pair in front of them the way experienced cadets scan unfamiliar opponents.
One of them let his eyes settle on the hemisphere in Lucas’s hands.
The smirk that ca to his face was not unkind. It was just certain.
"Well," he said. "Easy target."
"Ti to take that hemisphere off you little juniors."
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