Ren's fingers didn't buckle when hitting the barrier…
He had them locked the way Lin had taught him, maximum structure through the impact, no wasted flex.
And the barrier, to its credit, didn't feel like a conventional impact. The energy of his punch simply ceased at the point of contact. Absorbed, with the same indifference with which the ocean absorbs a stone dropped from the shore, not even registering it as a disturbance worth acknowledging.
Orion smiled.
Two crystals rose from his hand, one deep black, one a dark corrosive purple, spinning in separate orbits before synchronizing into a single rotation. The beam that emerged from that combination was the darkest possible color of corruption. Not the purple of a standard corrupted technique. Something below purple, something that absorbed the light around it as it moved.
It hit Ren directly in the chest.
The hall held its breath…
But Ren didn't move back.
