The battlefield was no longer an arena.
It was a graveyard waiting to be filled.
The Black Moon assassins moved with terrifying efficiency, cutting down students like wheat before the scythe.
Screams echoed across the ruined plain.
Magic clashed against steel.
Dust and blood filled the air.
Kaelen's heart hammered, but his mind remained cold, clear.
Focus.
He raised his blade, mana flaring around him.
Eren and Selina stood back-to-back with him, eyes fierce.
"Form up!" Kaelen barked. "Guard Selina. Don't get separated. They're hunting healers first."
Eren grinned through bloodied teeth.
"Good. Let 'em try."
Selina, hands trembling but steady, began weaving a complex barrier spell around their trio — thin layers of mana, shimmering like glass.
Just in time.
Three assassins broke from the chaos, sprinting toward them, blades flashing under their cloaks.
The first assassin leapt — twin daggers aimed for Selina's throat.
Kaelen moved faster.
Arcane Step — a blur through the air.
He appeared mid-leap and smashed the assassin downward with the flat of his sword, a crash of magic-enhanced impact.
The assassin crumpled, stunned.
One.
The second assassin fired a blast of dark energy — cursed mana meant to rot flesh.
Eren roared, swinging his massive axe in a spinning arc, cleaving the curse apart before it could reach them.
He charged, reckless but precise, slamming the assassin to the ground with a thunderous tackle.
Two.
The third assassin was smarter.
She circled wide, weaving stealth magic, vanishing into the dust clouds.
Kaelen narrowed his eyes, reaching deep into his mana pool.
The System pulsed:
[Tactical Fusion Available.]
[Skill Merge: Arcane Step + Arcane Disruption Aura + Arcane Breaker = "Sovereign's Combo Strike."]
Kaelen smiled grimly.
Let's end this.
He closed his eyes for a heartbeat.
Felt the flow of mana — the life force of the world — moving around him.
He breathed it in.
And became the storm.
He stepped forward — but this time, when he moved, the world around him fractured like broken glass.
Arcane Step ignited his body with light.
Arcane Disruption Aura shredded illusions and stealth magic.
Arcane Breaker charged his blade with pure annihilation.
The hidden assassin gasped, suddenly visible again as her stealth shattered.
She had no time to react.
Kaelen struck — a perfect, devastating arc of energy and steel.
Sovereign's Combo Strike.
The impact hurled her twenty feet into a stone pillar, knocking her out cold.
Silence.
For a moment, in the eye of the storm, Kaelen stood alone — glowing faintly with burning mana, a living avatar of power.
Students all around the field froze, staring.
Some with awe.
Some with terror.
But the battle wasn't over.
Screams rose again.
Kaelen turned sharply just in time to see a dagger sink into the back of a boy — a first-year he barely knew — a kid who had just surrendered moments earlier.
The assassin grinned as he pulled the blade free.
The boy collapsed, blood pouring from the wound.
Dead.
Instantly.
Kaelen's blood turned to ice.
He moved without thinking, Arcane Step launching him forward.
One blow — a clean, brutal strike — took the killer's head from his shoulders.
The body crumpled. The head rolled across the dirt.
Kaelen dropped to his knees beside the fallen boy.
There was nothing he could do.
No potion.
No spell.
Too late.
He stared at the boy's empty eyes.
Another dream.
Another life.
Snuffed out.
For nothing.
Kaelen rose slowly.
Something changed inside him.
A fire ignited — hotter, harder than any rage he had ever known.
A vow etched itself into his bones.
No more.
Not while I still breathe.
Not while I still stand.
He turned to Eren and Selina — to the few students still fighting for survival.
His voice rang out, low and iron-hard:
"Form ranks. Hold the line. Protect each other."
"Anyone tries to kill another — we bury them. Together."
Eren roared in agreement, raising his axe high.
Selina wiped tears from her cheeks and stood firm.
Around them, other students rallied — broken, bleeding, but not beaten.
A fire caught in their hearts.
Because Kaelen Drayce — the boy once called talentless — now stood at their front, sword burning with the light of a Sovereign yet to be crowned.
And they would not fall.