You ever have one of those days where you wake up and feel the universe’s hand reaching down to flick you like a cockroach on a coffee table?

  That was today.

  Cassandra Vaelwyn—our lovely, silver-haired, dead-eyed supervisor—stood before us in the training field, arms crossed, expression void of joy or remorse. Next to her? Princess Sylvaria, sipping tea like she hadn’t just authorized our public execution.

  “I believe Squad 7 and the Council should conduct a joint mock battle,” Cassandra said, her voice calm like a guillotine sliding down.

  “Excellent idea,” the Princess said, because of course she did. “Let us nurture bonds through practical experience.”

  Which transtes to: “Break them until they follow me like leashed dogs.”

  Match Setup: Welcome to the Meat GrinderSo, here we were.

  Audience? Half the academy faculty and elite css students.

  Arena? A wide, stone-lined ptform etched with runes to suppress fatal attacks. Note: Suppress, not prevent. So you could technically survive with two lungs colpsed and one eye twitching.

  “It’ll be one-on-one,” Cassandra added, smiling faintly like she enjoyed watching people get their dreams kicked in the ribs. “This is not a test. This is a demonstration.”

  Of what? Our future trauma?

  Match One: Rielle vs. Endor Rynhart, Bde Form DiscipleRielle stepped forward first, because she has this thing where fear is apparently just a suggestion.

  Her opponent, Endor, was a golden boy from the royal dueling academies. Flowing silver hair. Smug face. The type that drinks tea with his pinky raised and judges you for not knowing 14 different ways to parry.

  They bowed. Then the moment the signal fred, Rielle charged.

  And Endor just… sidestepped.

  No fancy footwork. No spells. He moved like a shadow and clipped her shoulder with the ft of his bde. Then again. Then again.

  He wasn’t overpowering her. He was reading her. Countering. Predicting.

  She swung harder. He slowed down.

  She went wild. He got quieter.

  And then she was on her knees, panting, bruised, and he stood like he hadn’t even broken a sweat.

  “Battle isn’t just about passion,” he said with a shallow bow. “It’s control.”

  Rielle spat blood and grinned. “Next time I’m stabbing your smug face.”

  Match Two: Eli vs. Serina Kaedwen, the Moonbde InitiateEli was next. Calm. Focused.

  Serina? A pale-eyed knight with an elegance that felt surgical. Like she could slice your ego in half with a gnce.

  Their duel was... poetry with consequences.

  Serina danced around Eli’s strikes, stepping within her guard without power, only precision.

  Eli countered with brute strength and sudden shifts—forcing Serina back with a parry that made sparks fly off the enchanted ptform.

  But then Serina whispered something, and her bde lit with soft silver light.

  Next thing we knew, Eli’s sword was out of her hands, and she was on the ground, winded and ughing like a lunatic.

  “Well,” Eli coughed. “She’s prettier than she looks deadly.”

  Serina blinked. “I’m standing right here.”

  Match Three: Gram vs. Cassandra VaelwynThis one? A fever dream.

  Cassandra, who usually looks like she’s mentally counting the seconds until your death, pulled out two crystalline artifacts—both floating mid-air like zy stars.

  Gram, bless his soul, walked in with a keg strapped to his back.

  “I call this potion Berserker’s Breakfast,” he said. “Might cause hallucinations.”

  Then drank the entire bottle.

  What followed was a chaos ballet.

  Cassandra unleashed arcane pulses from her constructs—each calibrated to disrupt alchemy residue. Gram dodged by rolling, tossing potions like live grenades, and screaming the names of ingredients like they were war chants.

  “Basilisk blood! Liquid regret! Hair of a drunk noble’s dog!”

  At one point, a mushroom cloud of glitter and frogs went up.

  Cassandra still won, obviously. But even she looked shaken when she walked out, soaked in some goo that hissed every time it touched stone.

  Match Four: Me vs. Veyna the Beast TamerAnd then it was me.

  Veyna smiled, cracking her knuckles.

  “You’re not allowed to use magic,” she said sweetly. “Only your summon.”

  “Oh? I see. We’re doing Pokémon battles now?”

  “Poke-what?”

  I sighed. “Right. Fantasy world. No cartoons. Fine.”

  I summoned Ember, my fire-snake, who now looked like he’d been eating protein powder and hatred for breakfast. His scales shimmered more red than orange now, and his eyes burned like coals.

  Veyna summoned her beast again. The panther. Elegant. Deadly.

  “Ready?” she said.

  I nodded. “Ember, use Fme Burst.”

  She blinked. “That’s not a real—”

  BOOM.

  Ember unched forward like a missile. The panther dodged, barely, singed at the edges.

  They cshed.

  Coils against cws. Fme against shadow.

  And then… something happened.

  The ptform trembled.

  Ember’s body glowed. Not like a spell. Like... evolution.

  “I KNEW IT,” I shouted. “YOU’RE A DAMN POKEMON!”

  No one understood me.

  Ember shed his skin mid-battle, fme spiraling around him in a firestorm. He grew—sleek, serpentine, with wings of ember-threaded light curling from his back.

  Veyna stepped back. “...What?”

  He hissed. And roared.

  The panther retreated. I didn’t bme it.

  “Ember,” I whispered, “use... Firestorm.”

  He unleashed a cone of burning pressure that sent half the field into chaos. Not fatal. Not quite. But enough to end the match.

  Veyna stared at me like I’d just rewritten the summon manual.

  “I… concede,” she said slowly. “What is that thing?”

  “My buddy,” I said, still high on disbelief. “And yes. He is now a dragon-snake.”

  Post-Match, and the AftermathPrincess Sylvaria was still sipping tea when we reassembled—bruised, smoked, beaten, and trembling.

  “Well done,” she said softly. “Each of you has... potential. But it is not yet honed.”

  I was still watching Ember fly zy loops above my head, unsure if this counted as a character arc or a nervous breakdown.

  Rielle wiped blood from her lip. “This was bonding, huh?”

  “Indeed,” Sylvaria said, and gave that sweet, terrifying smile again. “Pain is the finest glue for loyalty.”

  Cassandra stepped beside her. “Your team performed as expected. Unrefined. Untamed. But promising.”

  I wasn’t sure if we’d been trained or just publicly humiliated with fir. Probably both.

  But one thing was certain.

  We’d stood against the best. And we hadn’t crumbled.

  Much.