The day bled into twilight.
Lucavion stood still at the center of the ruins, the once-lush garden-temple now marred with the evidence of endless conflict. Cracked stones, broken weapons, craters gouged from desperate spellfire. The scent of scorched mana and churned soil hung thick in the air.
And bodies.
Not dead—this wasn't that kind of bloodsport. But the number of contestants who lay disqualified by his hand… well, it was beginning to look like a battlefield all the same.
More than one hundred.
He had counted loosely, somewhere between dodging a flame-slinger's barrage and snapping the mana core of a would-be champion with one thrust of his estoc.
Each wave had been the same—desperate, hopeful, vicious. Contestants drawn to the pillar's bounty, unwilling to recognize the inevitability that awaited them.
And Lucavion?
He had carved through them, one by one.
