The battlefield shifted when I spoke.
Not dramatically.
Not like fate bending.
Just subtly—like the current of a river changing direction by a few degrees.
Rex looked at me as if I had just grown a second head.
"Suppress… the archer?" he repeated. "You say that like I do that for a living."
"You already made him move once," I said, forcing my voice to stay steady. "Do it again. Don't let him plant his feet."
Rex swallowed hard.
Then nodded.
"Okay," he muttered. "Okay. I can do moving."
He lifted his hands again.
This time, he didn't compress his fire.
He spread it.
A wide, uneven wave of heat surged upward, not aimed to strike but to fill space. The archer cursed and leapt sideways as the air around his position became unbearable. His arrow flew wild, slicing harmlessly past Seraphina instead of finding a throat.
The shield-bearer noticed immediately.
He shifted his stance, adjusting himself to place his body between the healer and both Aether and Seraphina.
Just as I'd guessed.
He was the axis of their formation.
Seraphina moved.
Not forward.
Sideways.
Her frost crept over the ground in a thin, low tide, freezing the irregularities of the terrain. The healer's boots began to slide as her footing betrayed her.
The curse caster reacted, slamming her staff down again. Dark lines surged outward, trying to disrupt the temperature gradient beneath Seraphina's spell.
Ice and shadow collided, hissing as they devoured each other.
Aether felt it.
He changed rhythm.
Instead of pressing his wounded opponent with raw force, he stepped inside his guard. Blue aura flared along his blade as he twisted his body and struck low, forcing the twin-blade fighter to backpedal awkwardly over the shifting, freezing ground.
That was when the shield-bearer made his move.
He abandoned his defensive posture.
And charged Seraphina.
Not me.
Not Aether.
The one controlling the battlefield.
His boots shattered ice as he sprinted, shield raised like the face of an oncoming wall. The healer froze in surprise for half a second—then rushed to follow, chanting under her breath.
Seraphina turned too late to intercept cleanly.
For a heartbeat, the shield-bearer was going to reach her.
And she, unlike Aether, could not afford a direct hit from that kind of momentum.
My chest tightened.
"Seraphina—!"
The curse caster completed her spell.
The shadows beneath Aether surged one final time, thicker than before, binding his feet to the ground for an instant.
Just long enough to stop him from intercepting.
The shield-bearer was almost on her.
And then Rex screamed like an idiot.
"I AIMED THAT ONE, DAMN IT!"
A firebolt crashed into the shield-bearer's side at an awkward angle—not powerful enough to break through, but just enough to knock his charge off-center.
He slammed into Seraphina's ice wall instead of into her.
The collision thundered across the field.
The wall shattered in an explosion of frost.
The shield-bearer stumbled.
Seraphina didn't retreat.
She stepped forward into the cloud of ice mist and drove her palm into the exposed side of his armor.
Cold erupted.
The sound that came out of his chest wasn't a scream.
It was the sound of air being stolen from lungs.
Frost surged across his torso in a violent wave, crawling up his ribs.
The healer cried out and poured golden light into him instantly.
The freeze halted—barely.
The shield-bearer dropped to one knee, gasping in pain but not incapacitated.
The field balanced on a razor's edge.
Rex was breathing hard.
Aether finally tore free of the shadow binding and slammed his opponent backward with a brutal shoulder strike. The twin-blade fighter skidded across the ice and struggled to rise on one arm.
The archer loosed again.
This time at me.
My body froze.
Not with fear.
With instinct.
I twisted sideways.
The arrow tore through my sleeve instead of my chest, ripping cloth and drawing a shallow line of fire across my arm.
Pain flared.
But I was still standing.
Barely.
Iron Sigil's leader watched everything with narrowed eyes.
Then he raised his hand.
Not to attack.
To signal withdrawal.
His team faltered in shock.
"We can still take it—" the curse caster started.
"No," he said flatly. "If we push, someone dies. And that ruins the board."
He looked straight at me across the ice and broken stone.
"You're a liability now," he said. "For everyone near you."
Then he smiled thinly.
"And that makes you very expensive in the long run."
The archer hesitated.
The healer clutched the shield-bearer.
The twin-blade fighter dragged himself upright.
Slowly, carefully, they began to retreat.
Aether did not pursue.
Seraphina did not stop them.
Rex slumped down beside me, flames sputtering out.
The battle… ended.
Not with victory.
Not with defeat.
But with awareness.
---
When they vanished beyond the ridge, the cold finally began to fade.
My knees buckled.
I dropped to one knee in the frost, gasping.
Rex collapsed fully on his back.
"I lived," he declared weakly. "I officially hate human battles."
Aether turned to me.
"You directed us."
My throat felt raw. "I just… said what I saw."
"That is called commanding," he replied.
Seraphina didn't speak.
She only looked at me.
Not calculating now.
Not cold.
Curious.
Dangerously so.
Far in the distance, the sky rumbled again.
More teams would come.
And now we all knew it.
Because Kyle von Blackthorn had stopped being invisible.
And the trial had finally decided to notice me.