She dropped the illusion cleanly—like a knife pulled from my chest.
The courtyard bled back into reality. Stone pillars. Bleached grass. The faint scent of ozone and sweat. I blinked once, twice. The taste of copper was gone from the back of my tongue. The heat in my bones extinguished.
Calla stood there, breathing hard, face pale but glowing faintly from exertion. Her lips were slightly parted, her eyes wide. She was trembling. Not in fear—but from the aftermath. A high. That taste of power you weren't supposed to know you could wield yet.
I let the silence hang. Then, softly:"You held that illusion for nearly thirty seconds."
Her hands were clenched. Then she loosened them. She laughed. Just once. Then it cracked.
A choked cry slipped from her throat, and she dropped to her knees. Not defeated. Just… cracked open.
"I thought I was going to die," she muttered, voice thick. "But I didn't. I didn't. I—Rhea—I actually pulled it off. I didn't even know I could do that."
Her hands flew up, gesturing wildly, animated and overwhelmed. "You felt it, right? It felt real. It was solid. It— I gave it weight. I added sound distortion. I even added reflexive feedback when you moved."
"You did better than expected," I said. "Your combat sense is… something else."
She froze. Then looked up at me, stunned. "You mean that?"
"I don't say what I don't mean."
A beat. The wind shifted.
"…Thanks," she said. Quietly. Then, "That… means a lot, coming from you."
I studied her. "Then why didn't you complain? Why didn't you try to run away like the others?"
"Oh, I did try," she said, wiping the corner of her eye with the back of her sleeve. "Juno caught me. Dragged me here an hour early and told me to suck it up. Said I could cry about it later."
"Hmph." I nodded. "That sounds like her."
She stood slowly, her limbs still trembling from the mana drain. But there was steel in her spine now. Not a girl shattered. A girl tempered.
"Get some food. Sleep. Don't cast anything tonight," I said. "You overextended."
"Okay," she nodded. "Bye, Rhea."
I watched her walk off—limping, determined, practically bouncing with some cracked version of pride.
I turned and headed back toward the dorms, the training courtyard fading behind me. The evening shadows dragged long across the stone.
But the illusion still echoed in my mind.
It shouldn't have fooled me. Not for that long. Not with my resistance and perception thresholds.
Calla had constructed an environment with layered sensory input. Environmental cues that adapted. It wasn't mimicry—it was intuition.
That wasn't just talent. That was… dangerous.
Illusion magic wasn't just light and trickery. Not at that level. You had to understand your opponent—anticipate them. Real illusionists didn't just fabricate images. They fabricated reality. And for that to hold… the user had to have a fortified mind, sharp data intake, precise mana distribution.
And that thing she did—giving the illusion mass, density? That should've eaten her alive.
To replicate weight, reaction and feedback… that requires an absurd mana pool. Normally, even older illusionists would use feedback loops to fake mass, but Calla didn't. She brute-forced it. With an unstable core.
And she held it.
So what are you?
A natural-born mana giant? A freak anomaly? Or someone who's suffered so much you built an entire mental world just to escape into?
I didn't know.
But my assessment had changed again.
Calla… was no longer just interesting.
She was a wildcard.
And if she ever decided to really play this game?
She could be the top of the class.
If she didn't break first.
—
The water burned.
Not because it was hot. Not because it scalded.
But because I wanted it to.
Steam coiled around me like smoke from a pyre, hissing against my skin, devouring the sharp fluorescent lights overhead. The dorm showers were empty this late — a silent cathedral of tile, steel and echo.
I stood beneath the downpour, motionless.
To anyone watching — if they dared — I was bruised, scraped and broken in all the right places. The price of a breakthrough, the cost of excellence.
Beneath the illusion, my body was untouched.
Not a scar. Not a bruise. Not even a scratch.
I'd practiced it for years, this little game of mirrors and mimicry — wounds painted in light and shadow. I could hold five of them at once, six if I focused. Rhea's training, though brutal, had been good for me. She was... effective. Ruthless. Obsessively precise. The kind of mentor I deserved. My muscles remembered every rep, every parry, every fall. I was stronger now — not just in mind, but in flesh.
I turned the water off and watched the illusion peel away in rivulets, dripping down my legs like war paint rinsed from a mask. A final performance.
I didn't speak to anyone on my way back to the room.
The air tasted like anticipation — static and breathless.
Tomorrow was the last day before the Hero Festival.
Before the world met her.
Before Glass Fang sank its teeth into the lie of justice.
Before Nyxshade stepped out of the shadows and became real.
I crawled into bed and let the silence take me.
* * *
I woke up — or maybe I didn't.
The line between dream and delusion blurred too easily these days.
Fog clung to my legs like a lover. Everything was pale, damp, and endless. The kind of silence that comes after screaming. I wasn't Calla anymore. I didn't have to pretend.
I was Nyxshade now.
I walked through the fog with bare feet and bare thoughts. The world felt thin here, like a canvas stretched too tight. I didn't need to speak. My presence was enough.
And then I saw her.
A child, curled in on herself, shaking. Crying.
Little fists clenched, little shoulders trembling.
I said nothing.
I only watched.
Then the dream shifted.
The fog retreated like a curtain, and I stood in a hall of broken mirrors. Each one cracked. Each one reflecting fragments of a truth I didn't want to name.
I stared into the nearest one.
And I saw her.
Not Calla. Not Nyxshade.
Her.
The girl on the other side — the original one.
Bruised. Bleeding. Crying.
She had my eyes, but they were swollen with sorrow.
She had my hands, but they trembled as they held something sharp.
A knife.
Made of blood.
She raised it slowly and wrote a single word across the mirror:
WHY?
That was all.
Why did I abandon her?
Why did I become this?
I reached up to touch my face and felt it:
I was smiling.
My mouth had curled into something... feral. I hadn't realized it. It was the kind of smile you wear when something inside you breaks in just the right way.
I bent down.
Pressed my hand to the mirror — it passed through.
Cool. Wet. Familiar.
I stepped in.
The girl didn't flinch.
I cupped her cheeks gently, as if she'd shatter.
And then I leaned close, my lips brushing her ear.
I whispered:
"The world didn't break you.
You begged it to."
Her eyes widened.
The knife clattered to the floor.
The mirrors shattered all at once.
* * *
I woke in a pool of sweat.
Breathing hard.
Hair tangled.
Heart steady.
A smile was still plastered across my lips. One eye pulsed red.
I touched it, curious.
Calla didn't expect that.
But it didn't matter.
If anything, it made my resolve sharper.
Let them cheer at their little Hero Festival.
Let them smile under fireworks and medals.
Let them believe in their righteous world.
Tomorrow, they'll meet Nyxshade.
And no one smiles forever.
—
The wind dragged dust in lazy spirals across the cracked tiles of the south courtyard.
Same time. Same place. Same silence.
I stood there again—boots scuffing the edges of the faded combat circle, cloak pulled tight against the breeze, shoulders aching from two days of being pushed past what I thought were my limits.
But today, I couldn't focus. Not really.
Rhea stood across from me, arms crossed, gaze sharp as ever.
"Ready?" she asked.
No. I nodded anyway.
The duel began. A flick of her wrist and my feet left the ground—gravity magic compressed around my chest like a vice.
I barely had time to inhale before I was slammed into the stone.
"Shit!" I gasped.
Pain radiated from my spine. My head spun. A groan clawed up my throat as I tried to roll over.
"What the hell, Rhea?"
She stood above me, completely still. Her mouth didn't move at first. Then—quietly:
"I didn't slam you that hard. You're distracted."
I winced. "Distracted doesn't mean nearly caving my ribs in."
"I pulled it," she said curtly. "But yeah. You're off. You weren't even shielding properly. That could've been worse."
I sat up slowly, arms bracing behind me. "Can we not do the 'I nearly killed you for your own good' routine?"
She knelt a few feet away. Her expression was unreadable. "What's going on with you?"
"It's nothing."
"Liar."
I blinked. She wasn't teasing. She was just… looking at me. Expecting something.
And suddenly, everything in me tensed. My shoulders curled inward like armor.
"It's stupid," I muttered.
"Say it anyway."
I didn't want to. I hated how tight my throat felt, how my voice cracked when I finally said, "It's the festival."
She tilted her head.
"I've never been in it. Never even stood on the field. I always got 'sick' when it came around, stayed in the infirmary, or faked a twisted ankle. I've never stood in front of a crowd without someone laughing at me or waiting for me to fail. This time, I can't hide."
Rhea blinked. "You're scared?"
I forced a laugh. "Yeah. Terrified."
She didn't respond.
The silence stretched. I almost regretted saying anything at all.
Then she sat beside me.
Not facing me—just close enough that our shoulders nearly touched.
She picked up a loose shard of broken tile and turned it over in her hands. "I don't know what to say about fear. I've never… cared what people think. I've always just been good at this. Training and fighting. I don't get scared of the arena. But…"
She paused. Her fingers stilled. "But I get what it's like to be alone in it."
I looked at her, surprised.
Rhea kept her eyes ahead. "You're not alone anymore."
My breath caught.
She set the shard down. "You've got Juno, Ari… and me?."
I swallowed, voice thick. "You mean that?"
Her eyes met mine, unguarded for once. "Yeah. And I've seen you fight. You've got something. I don't know what it is yet, but it's there. So show them. Show them who trained you."
That was… more than I expected.
It felt like sunlight through cracked glass. Sharp, warm and fragile.
I nodded, trying not to let the sting behind my eyes show too much. "Thanks, Rhea."
She smirked. "Just don't screw it up and make me look bad."
I laughed. "I'll do my best."
"Good. Because if you cry in the arena, I'm disowning you."
"Deal."
And for the first time, Rhea didn't look suspicious of me.
She looked proud.