The Aetherium Grounds shimmered underfoot, each rune-carved panel pulsing faintly as the arena's energy field stabilized. High above, the floating spires of Arcanum Academy cast long shadows across the skyglass, their reflections distorting with every shift of the wind.

  Dean stood at his mark, arms loose at his sides, the strap of his training tunic pulling snug across his chest with each slow breath.

  Across from him, Calen Dray adjusted the mirrored blades strapped across his back, his cloak fluttering unnaturally despite the air being dead still on Dean’s side of the field. The Wind and Light user didn’t radiate arrogance, but there was an edge to his posture—like someone used to finishing fights before they had time to settle.

  Above them, the system chimed.

  Duel Initiation Confirmed

  Arena: Aetherium Grounds – Tier 1 Open Format

  Participants: Verified

  Adaptive Metrics: Active

  The mana pressure shifted instantly.

  Glyphs embedded in the arena’s foundation flared outward, tracing swirling currents through the skyglass and forming barely visible paths of movement. Dean could feel it—the subtle tilt of the battlefield designed to favor motion, speed, adaptability.

  A perfect stage for Wind.

  A perfect trap for anyone who thought speed alone would win the day.

  Dean didn’t move.

  He let the tension coil, let the silence drag longer than it should have, until he felt even the instructors above shift slightly in their seats.

  A heartbeat passed.

  Another.

  Calen moved first.

  A flicker of light burst from the boy’s boots as he launched forward, riding a compressed stream of air. His right hand dipped low, fingers flashing as a blade of hardened light formed along his palm—bright enough to leave afterimages even in broad daylight.

  Dean watched him come.

  Didn’t blink.

  Didn’t tighten his stance.

  Instead, he let the mana around him fold inward, let the breath he held anchor to the invisible web that Phantom Shroud had already begun weaving around his body.

  No spell call.

  No dramatic flare.

  Phantom Shroud unfolded.

  The world softened.

  Sound dulled.

  Light bent—not enough to vanish him, but enough to misalign every visual cue Calen’s eyes relied on.

  Dean sidestepped as Calen’s opening slash cleaved through the space he’d just vacated.

  No burst of wind. No sound of footfall.

  Dean was simply elsewhere.

  The audience stirred—confused.

  Calen recovered instantly, pivoting into a low sweep designed to catch a stagger. His foot grazed Dean’s side—barely a whisper of contact—but even that was enough to reveal something wrong.

  Dean wasn’t just fast.

  He wasn’t just evasive.

  He wasn’t there the way normal fighters were.

  Up above, Valeen watched without a word, arms folded, her gaze sharp.

  Beside her, the Guild Watcher’s hood twitched almost imperceptibly.

  Calen spun back into guard, light pulsing stronger around him now, the wind curling tighter at his shoulders.

  Dean flexed his fingers once, feeling the Phantom Shroud ripple across his skin like a second breath.

  The duel had only just begun.

  Already, the rules were changing.

  But Calen didn’t hesitate.

  The moment his first strike missed, he adjusted—boots slamming into the skyglass with a burst of compressed air, launching him sideways. His lightblade dissipated, replaced instantly by a series of pulsing flares that he hurled outward, aiming to flush Dean into the open.

  The flares detonated midair, flooding the arena with shifting shadows and jagged light.

  A lesser opponent would have been blinded. Disoriented.

  Dean didn’t react the way Calen expected.

  There was no frantic movement. No desperate dive for cover.

  Only a ripple—like a trick of the heat rising off stone—and Dean was gone again, his presence sliding away between one breath and the next.

  Up above, a few students shifted forward in their seats, murmurs beginning to build.

  “Did he teleport?”

  “No... there's no flare pattern.”

  “How the hell—?”

  Calen narrowed his eyes, scanning the space where Dean had stood.

  He adjusted quickly, smart enough not to chase blindly.

  Instead, he opened his hands wide, conjuring a radial pulse of compressed wind—an expanding sphere designed to catch anything hiding close to the ground. A basic tracking move among Wind specialists.

  The burst spread outward, ruffling the dust along the arena’s surface. A soft hiss filled the air as mana-disturbed currents curled across the glass.

  Nothing.

  No impact.

  No resistance.

  Dean had already slipped through the pulse’s radius before it triggered.

  From the far side of the arena, Dean moved—not a sprint, not a leap. Just a slow, deliberate glide that let the natural movement of the distorted air mask his steps. Phantom Shroud didn’t make him invisible. It didn’t hide his body.

  It hid his —muddling the senses that should have been tracking him.

  Every trained instinct Calen relied on—breath pressure, sound echoes, mana presence—registered Dean’s location a half-second too late.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  In combat, half a second was the difference between defense and defeat.

  Dean circled wide, positioning himself along one of the arena’s drifting mana currents, using it to warp Calen’s perception further.

  He wasn’t hunting.

  He was waiting.

  Phantom Shroud fluttered at the edge of his awareness, tuned to the arena’s distorted flows better than even Dean’s conscious senses could track. It wasn't responding to commands anymore—it was

  Dean let it, trusting the shroud to guide his positioning.

  No system window.

  No prompts.

  Just instinct.

  Calen pivoted sharply, sending a whipcrack of Wind mana slicing across the platform—but it passed harmlessly through empty air.

  His stance tightened. Defensive now.

  Dean watched him adjust. Watched the flicker of doubt creep into Calen’s movement—the tiny hesitation before his weight shifted from one foot to the next. It wasn’t much. Barely noticeable.

  But against Phantom Shroud, even hesitation became a weapon.

  Dean moved, still slow, still deliberate.

  He let a thread of Ice mana weave between his fingertips, shaping it without fanfare into a thin, almost invisible blade.

  Not to kill.

  Not to wound.

  To force an opening.

  With a flick of his wrist, the shard launched—a single, perfect snap of motion—aimed not at Calen's body, but at the air just behind him, where the Light flares were densest.

  The shard struck the mana distortion midstream.

  The resulting implosion wasn’t loud. It wasn’t flashy.

  But the sudden vacuum of force tore the ambient currents sideways, throwing Calen’s balance off just enough.

  Enough for Dean to close the gap.

  Calen staggered half a step—and Dean was there.

  The fight was no longer even.

  Calen recovered fast.

  He didn’t panic. Didn’t flail.

  The moment his balance tipped, he adjusted, sending a blast of compressed air through the soles of his boots, launching himself backward in a defensive arc. Light blossomed at his fingertips, forming a radiant shield that bent into a dome around his body, scattering the last of the disturbed mana currents.

  Dean didn’t chase.

  He didn’t need to.

  The damage was already done.

  Every movement Calen made now—every pivot, every breath—was a beat too cautious, a step too measured. He was reacting, not dictating.

  Dean let Phantom Shroud fold tighter around him, matching the tempo of the drifting arena currents. His pulse slowed. His breathing leveled.

  He could feel it now—the rhythm of the fight.

  Not frantic.

  Not brutal.

  Calculated.

  Calen swept his arm outward, unleashing a pulse of Light—a defensive flare meant more to blind than to block—scattering brilliance across the platform in a desperate attempt to flush Dean from hiding.

  It didn't work.

  Dean didn't resist the force. He flowed with it, using the push to drift sideways, a phantom gliding along the arena’s mirrored veins.

  Calen’s blade snapped outward, tracing defensive arcs through the air—trying to predict, to force an error.

  Dean gave him nothing.

  High above, murmurs built in the observation decks.

  “He's not blinking.”

  “No mana surge... how the hell is he moving like that?”

  “That's not standard cloaking. That’s—”

  Valeen’s voice, low and unreadable, cut through the noise.

  “He’s listening.”

  Several instructors fell silent at that.

  Because they understood what that meant.

  Dean wasn’t just reacting to Calen.

  He was reading the arena itself.

  Calen planted his feet hard, gathering mana.

  Wind screamed around him, forming a spiraling wall designed to strip Phantom Shroud away through raw force.

  Dean moved before it finished forming.

  No spell call. No counter-burst.

  Just a flicker of shadow along the ground, a ripple in the mana, and Dean was inside Calen’s guard before the wind shield could stabilize.

  A single sharp strike of Ice-enhanced mana cracked against Calen’s ribs—not enough to break them, but enough to send him staggering back a full pace.

  Dean pressed the advantage.

  Phantom Shroud shifted.

  Not visibly.

  Not mechanically.

  But Dean felt it—like the shadows beneath his skin flexed with him, wrapping his movements in a margin of error so narrow it barely existed.

  He moved faster. Sharper.

  Each step flowed into the next without wasted energy, like the arena itself was tilting him forward.

  He wasn’t stronger than Calen.

  Wasn't faster, in raw terms.

  But he was inevitable.

  Calen lashed out desperately, twin blades forming again—one of light, one of compressed wind—but Dean stepped through them, angles slipping past the attacks by fractions of an inch.

  A glancing strike scored across Dean’s sleeve, but Phantom Shroud absorbed the brunt, warping his outline just enough to deflect the blade's full force.

  Calen gritted his teeth, breathing hard now, sweat shining on his forehead.

  Dean didn’t even feel winded.

  The tides of the duel had turned completely.

  And Calen knew it.

  Dean didn’t press for a finishing blow.

  He didn’t need to.

  He let Calen burn himself out, defending, retreating, trying to catch a ghost with hands bound by the wrong kind of magic.

  Dean simply kept moving, kept pressing space, kept letting Phantom Shroud guide him where resistance would be weakest.

  Far above, the Guild Watcher leaned slightly forward.

  No words.

  No obvious signal.

  Just quiet observation.

  And maybe—just maybe—the first flicker of recognition.

  Dean slid sideways around another desperate Wind slash, planting his foot carefully atop a glowing sigil marker embedded in the arena floor.

  He could feel the mana shift beneath it—just a ripple.

  He angled his next move toward it.

  Timing mattered now.

  Precision.

  Patience.

  He let Calen reset, let the Wind user steady himself for a last stand.

  Then, the moment Calen lunged forward with both blades flashing—

  Dean shifted again.

  A breath.

  A pivot.

  A heartbeat lost in motion.

  Calen’s blades cut air.

  Dean’s Ice thread snapped into place across the sigil node.

  Mana feedback lashed out in a silent burst, upending the ground under Calen’s feet.

  The Wind user stumbled, footing breaking, balance spiraling out of reach.

  For the first time in the duel—he truly fell.

  The moment Calen hit the ground, he rolled, instincts sharper than most.

  A blast of Wind mana fired from his palm mid-tumble, launching him back to his feet in a shower of scattered skyglass dust. His boots skidded against the rune-carved surface as he threw his left hand forward, unleashing a pulse of raw Light—not a shield, not a blade, just a desperate flash meant to blind whatever was hunting him.

  It was a good move.

  Instinctive.

  Quick.

  It didn't help.

  Dean didn’t charge into it.

  He didn’t need to.

  Phantom Shroud pulsed low around him, sensing the distorted mana currents before they solidified. He slipped sideways as the Light pulse burst across the arena, the flare catching only empty air.

  Calen twisted, eyes darting, searching for a threat he couldn’t find.

  Breathing hard now.

  Wearing down.

  Dean circled calmly, letting the gap between them shrink without rush. Every step tuned to the arena’s natural flows, every breath matching the mana rhythm pulsing beneath the skyglass.

  He could feel Phantom Shroud syncing tighter with each movement, weaving his presence into the cracks of perception, the gaps in logic.

  Calen’s blades shimmered into being again—one in each hand, arcs of Light and Wind swirling together in chaotic crescents. He staggered once, caught himself, and lunged forward with everything he had left.

  The final rush.

  No tricks.

  No subtlety.

  Just raw, desperate force.

  Dean waited until the last possible instant.

  Then he moved.

  A sidestep so sharp it barely registered, Phantom Shroud drawing his outline into the bend of the wind, masking even the trace of motion.

  Calen’s strike passed through the illusion of him, the afterimage cracking apart like mist.

  Off-balance.

  Vulnerable.

  Dean struck—not with a killing blow, not even a full-powered attack—but with a simple, clean snap of Ice-formed pressure aimed at the backs of Calen’s knees.

  Impact.

  Collapse.

  Calen hit the ground again, both blades clattering from his hands as the mana weaving them unraveled.

  The arena lights flickered, stabilizing.

  High above, the system chimed—not loud, not flashy.

  Just a formal, almost detached sound.

  Duel Concluded.

  Victory: Dean Everett.

  Metrics Logged.

  Dean didn’t raise his hands.

  Didn’t bow.

  Didn’t even look toward the stands.

  He simply stood where he was, breathing steadily, watching as Calen pushed himself upright with a grunt and a grimace of frustrated respect.

  The other boy met Dean’s gaze briefly, nodded once, and stepped back toward the edge of the arena, waiting for the retrieval medics to check him over.

  No rage.

  No protest.

  He knew he had been outplayed.

  The audience murmured softly, a ripple of confusion and awe blending into the high mana winds above the platform.

  Some of the students clapped—slow, unsure, uncertain if they should.

  Some just watched in silence, trading glances like they were trying to solve an equation that no longer made sense.

  High in the observer’s gallery, Valeen smiled faintly.

  Not pride.

  Not triumph.

  Something quieter.

  Something heavier.

  The Guild Watcher turned without a word and disappeared into the archways beyond the arena.

  Dean exhaled through his nose, slow and controlled.

  Phantom Shroud loosened around him, retracting back into the base layers of his mana without protest, like a second skin slipping into dormancy.

  No system alerts.

  No special rewards.

  Just that same steady pulse behind his ribs—the certainty that something inside him had shifted, even if no one else could see it yet.

  He adjusted the strap across his chest, turned without fanfare, and walked off the dueling field.