The Arena of Elements rose like a crown of steel and stone above the river, haloed in light.
Banners snapped in the wind. The terraces were stuffed with bodies, faces, voices, hands — a single living creature made of a thousand hearts beating in hungry sync.
Floodlights washed the central ring in cold brilliance, carving shadows into the tiers. The ring itself was a sculpture of danger: concentric platforms floating at staggered heights, slotted rails that could rise into walls or drop into trenches on command, vents set into the floor that hissed steam, a circular hazard moat of churning water around the outer boundary, and suspended metal discs — "sky coins" — swaying gently, daring acrobats to leap.
Jing Tian Ming stood at the threshold. The world narrowed to the soft weight of his water flask against his hip and the stale cloth smell of a borrowed Fire Ferrets jacket. His pulse pounded so hard it felt like his body wanted to fling itself out of his skin. He closed his eyes long enough to exhale and taste salt in the air. His mother's voice: anchor the breath first, then the tide.
"Eyes up," Roku said quietly, stepping up on Jing's right. His crimson scarf caught the light, a slice of heat. "Listen to the crowd. It'll try to drown you."
Maya's voice grounded them. "We've got positions. Inner ring for me. Roku, left. Jing, right. Don't chase. Make them come."
Jing nodded, and the three stepped onto the ring.
The roar hit like a wall. Announcers layered their voices over a drum line that made bone vibrate. Holographic glyphs spun overhead — team logos, player names, sponsor flashes. The Fire Ferrets emblem — a stylized ferret blazing through a ring — flared white. Then the opposing banner unfurled like a blade catching sun.
The Crystal Blades.
Ayame set her feet first, earth-rooted and elegant, her armor faceted like cut jade. Shiro rolled his shoulders, flames shuttering in and out from his fingertips, each spark a rehearsed flourish. Hana stood quiet, water pooling at her heels as if the arena itself had bled into her presence; when she lifted her hand, droplets crystallized in a delicate veil and then melted — a show of control as much as beauty.
They radiated polish. Jing felt the difference immediately — not just skill, but the practiced confidence of champions who had turned victory into muscle memory.
"Ladies and gentlemen, round one!" the announcer boomed. "Fire Ferrets — Jing Tian Ming, Roku, Maya — versus the Crystal Blades — Ayame, Shiro, Hana! Three rounds to glory. Platforms moving now!"
The floor hummed. Inner platforms rose like stepping stones in a pond, outer plates slid away to reveal the hazard water churning with mechanical currents, and narrow spans connected the central dais to the satellite discs. Steam vents hissed. The configuration tonight was a "spiral rise" — taller tiers nearer the center, lower platforms edging open water. It favored earth anchors and punished reckless sprints.
A horn split the noise. Round one.
Jing moved.
Maya planted first, one heel sinking a breath into the stone — literal and internal. A low wall bloomed before her like a wave of stone rolling up from the floor. Roku slid up the left, palms open, heat haze shimmering around him. Jing paced to the right, feeling the water in the hazard moat tug at him, that familiar pulse that wasn't quite sound. He kept a palm hovering near his flask, but didn't draw. Not yet.
Shiro struck first — not with a blast, but with a distraction. He flicked twin ribbons of fire up and out, arcing them so they passed wide on either side, framing the Ferrets in lines of heat and light. The crowd ooh'd. Ayame's heel chopped. Two stone pillars jutted from the floor, angling to pinch the Ferrets in a V.
"Don't bite," Maya warned.
Jing didn't. Instead, he stepped forward and flicked his fingers. A thin sheet of water peeled up from the hazard moat, skimming across the floor like a thrown silk. He snapped his wrist, and the sheet kinked into a curve, sliding under Ayame's forward foot just as she shifted weight. Not enough to topple, but enough to whisper I see you.
Hana saw him. A slim smile, then her hands moved — and the water around her clenched into bead-like knots that zipped forward. Jing raised his forearm and curved his water sheet up into a half-dome. The beads hit and exploded in cold mist, then the mist glittered. He felt the crystal beginning, the temperature drop where she wanted to freeze his shield into a cage.
He didn't resist. He yielded.
He let the dome collapse and rolled the water down, slicking his footprints while he slipped sideways, turning the freeze into slick ground that helped him flow out of the angle. He caught Roku's glance. Roku's grin was a slash.
"Cute," Roku said to Hana. "But you don't have the only artist."
Shiro went aerial — two quick steps, a hop onto a sky coin, a pivot with one foot flaring. He launched a wave of flame in a crescent, angled to kiss the top of Maya's wall and spill back onto her position. Maya took it. She let the wall drink the fire. Stone blackened, then she chucked her shoulder and the wall dropped into the floor, pulling the flame down like a smothering cloth.
"Jing!" Maya called. "Shoulder!"
Ayame's heel pistoned. A stone spear jutted from the floor toward Jing's thigh, aiming to force him to jump backward into the lower platform and the hazard zone. Jing whipped his hand. Water snapped into a narrow rope that slashed the spear's tip sideways, enough to deflect, then he took a low step, knee brushing the floor, and the spear scraped his calf — a sting, not a wound.
He felt it then — the old hunger. The fight-brain waking, the part of him that wanted to whirl and rip everything down. He pressed it with a breath. Anchor. Tide.
"Keep the pocket," Roku said, and he made one — a pocket of heat, dome-shaped, a shimmer rather than a full flame. Hana's next volley hit the air around Roku and warped, steam bursting harmlessly. Roku gestured, and the steam drifted toward Jing. Jing bent it — water whipped into a braided strand, then thinned into rain that misted the floor in front of Ayame.
Now.
Maya stomped. A small platform disc snapped upward on Ayame's flank, tilted. Ayame's stance wavered — not crumbled, just a twitch. Jing flicked his fingers and the mist shivered. It wasn't water; it was invitation. Hana thought he was trying to blind earth. She tried to freeze the air. It cost her a heartbeat.
Roku stole it. He knifed flame low, a sweeping scythe that Maya shoved with a waist twist. Stone punched that flame forward, a hybrid push. It hit the edge of Ayame's guard and rolled over, not through — defense still too clean. Shiro landed from his leap, heels scraping the platform, then flicked a line of fire across the floor — a tripwire of heat.
Jing cut water across it and the steam flash strobed. Ayame seized the beat. Her arms carved the air and the floor bucked — not a pillar this time, but a wave of stone, cresting. Maya's fists hammered and the wave split, but the split shaved Maya's ankles. Her balance checked — a whisper, a tiny freeze in the flow — and Shiro tagged her shoulder with fire. The sensor at her collar chirped. First contact. Crowd surge.
"Reset," Maya said evenly, stepping back, shaking her ankle once. "Roku, guard. Jing, flank."
Hana advanced. She didn't roar. She drew water from the hazard moat with minimal gesture, elegant skill, and floated it in limp, gentle ribbons — bait. Jing didn't attack them. He watched her breath. When she inhaled, he inhaled. When she exhaled, he let his knees soften. He could feel the chill she was weaving into the pool around his feet, subtle, precise.
He let the cold bite his toes. Then he kicked the floor inward with his heel, bending the thin water film he'd laid earlier into a window. It rolled back like a pocket door, opening a dry patch just as Hana tried to lock his stance. Her freeze hit nothing. He slid forward like a dancer and the water pocket snapped back shut, catching her own toe under a skim of slick. Her heel skidded — not a stumble, but a tap of surprise.
Roku feinted a big flame. Shiro took the bait and punched a hard counterflare. Roku dropped his flame and stepped — a small step, heel turning, palm up — and the counterflare burst into useless smoke. That was the trick: he wasn't fighting Shiro's fire with fire; he was shearing it with pressure and timing, letting the combustion slop into a dead element and then shoving the smoke where he wanted. The crowd didn't see it, but Jing did. He filed it away.
"Don't admire, fight," Roku murmured.
Jing flicked a whip at Hana's shoulder — not full force, just a check. Hana slid back and Ayame took front. Her stance lowered another inch, rooted. She was done demonstrating. The floor jolted.
Pillars sprang up front-left and front-right, cutting lanes, then flattened into plates that slid inward like doors, compressing the Ferrets' space. It was a classic arena trap: force them into a narrow zone, then tag quick hits from the flanks while Hana iced the exit.
Maya didn't move back. She moved in. One heel, then a toe. Her arms cycled, elbows close. The floor jutted a rib of stone forward, and she grabbed it like a lever. When Ayame pushed, Maya didn't compete; she guided. The plates wobbled, just enough to open a breath-wide seam.
"Jing!" Maya called. "Thread it."
He did. His water whip split into twin ribbons, then braided, then flattened into a sash that slid through the seam like silk through fingers. He felt Ayame's pressure. He didn't try to overpower it; he let his water go soft and snuck it around the edges, then snapped it hard in a vertical slap. It didn't smack Ayame's face; it smacked the plate's top lip, and the resulting vibration kicked the door's seam wider. Roku threw heat through it. Shiro caught it and grinned — then his grin flickered as the heat blew sideways into the pocket Roku had already warmed.
Shiro's fire hit the pocket and rolled. It didn't strike the Ferrets; it spilled out like a carpet and Maya stomped it down, sealing the doorway with scorched stone as if she were closing a book. The crowd's murmur tightened — a taste of what a team could do when all three moves braided.
Hana responded with elegance that made the arena gasp. She pulled water up in an arc and blew across it, freezing the outer layer into glass-thin crystal. Then, with two fingers, she cracked it, and the sheet shattered in a spray of glittering fragments that hung in the air like a halo. She bent those fragments like dust in wind, a shimmering cloud that drifted at face level.
Jing ducked, but that wasn't the move. The fragments fell soft, but their edges were wicked. He felt little scores against his cheekbone. He pulled a water dome up and the crystals pinged, chiming with tiny strikes. He had to release the dome before she froze it into a prison. He let it go, and the shards clattered to the floor — not water, not stone, just points. Ayame stomped, and thin stone slats rose under the shards, making the floor into a grater. If Jing slipped there, the crystals would bite his shins.
Roku saw the trap too late. Shiro slung a low flame across the grated floor. The heat lifted the shards into micro-thermals; tiny glittering specks rose and swirled, becoming a cloud at knee height. Hana smiled with half her mouth. She had turned the arena into a single clever machine — heat, wind, water, earth — a trap with moving parts.
"Back line," Maya commanded.
Jing didn't obey. He couldn't. His legs refused to leave that spot. He had seen this trap before — different materials, same geometry. In the South Pole village, bloodbenders had herded neighbors into narrow corridors, made them shuffle, trapped them between bodies and ice. The way the space closed — that pattern — it lit the fuse under his spine. The old hunger poured into his hands, an urge to rip their trap apart and drown the whole ring.
"Jing." Roku's voice cut in, low, not pleading. "Water bends the world. Don't let the world bend you."
Jing breathed. Anchor. Tide.
He crouched, palm hovering over the grater floor. He pulled — not a sheet this time, but a column from the hazard moat. He kept it thin, a tendon of water, and threaded it along the slats. The cloud of shards bumped it and drifted aside, following the smallest changes in pressure like dust chasing air currents. He didn't try to fight the cloud. He made the path smoother next to him and let the cloud slide that way, carving a pocket of clear air around his ankle.
Ayame moved to close the pocket. Jing snapped the tendon up, then whipped it across as a quick lash at Ayame's knee. It wasn't meant to hit flesh. It struck the stone just in front, and the shock flipped a shard into Ayame's stance. She shifted weight to avoid cutting her calf. Maya saw the weight-shift and struck. Stone knuckled — a short, low jab at Ayame's forward foot. It thumped.
A soft chime rang. Ayame's sensor lit. First tag back. Crowd surge reversed.
Shiro's snarl flashed before he laughed it off with a flourish. He spun. Fire rolled across his shoulder, down his arm, and snapped from his fingertips in a tight triple burst — three shots like sprinter steps, quick and angles varied. Roku caught the first on his palm, the second on the heel of his other hand, and let the third slip by, on purpose, into the pocket he'd warmed earlier. It flared harmlessly against nothing.
Jing threw a whip at Hana's forearm, light, and then carried the follow-through into a rising spiral that combed the shard cloud into a single stream. He tucked the stream into the hazard moat, returning crystals to water. Hana's eyes glinted. Respect? Maybe.
The horn blared — mid-round hazard change.
The platforms rotated. The central dais dropped a full meter, while two outer discs rose like teeth. A rail slid up, bisecting the ring, and the hazard moat widened. This configuration punished anchors and rewarded motion. Ayame's mouth tightened. Maya's lips did the same. Both women stepped — one flowing like a river, the other like a rolling boulder.
"Rotate high," Maya said. "We take right tooth."
They sprinted for the raised disc on the right. Hana hit them with a hard freeze: a thin layer across the narrow span leading up. Roku scorched it, but not by blasting; he held heat in a tight lens and walked it along the ice, melting a ribbon barely wider than a foot. "Single file," he said.
Shiro cut across their path in a leap, pivoted, and slammed a flame downward as if to punch their ribbon shut. Maya lifted a stone rib beneath the ribbon at the last second, making the flame spill to the sides. It licked around her calves; she didn't flinch, but Jing saw the heat bloom and bent a quick curl over the stone rib, a cooling lap. She nodded once.
They hit the tooth. The disc rocked under their weight — it was designed to tilt — and the tilt rolled them toward the hazard moat. Jing bent water up the edge, forming a lip to grab. Roku flared heat on the opposite lip to correct tilt. Maya stomped and nailed the disc's central pin with a stone spike, locking its wobble a hair tighter.
Hana and Shiro reached the opposite tooth. Ayame took the central dais, low again, pressure radiating.
"Cut the center; force Ayame to chase," Maya said between breaths.
They attacked as a braid. Roku threw heat in a low arc — not at Ayame, but across the floor in front of her, creating a shimmering barrier that bent light. Jing slung water through it, and it transformed the arc into steam — billowing, thick. Maya threw a stone knuckle at knee level into the steam, where Ayame would defend low.
Ayame didn't defend low. She stamped, and the floor under the steam bulged up and then collapsed, sucking the knuckle into a pit, then ejecting it sideways. The steam rolled, catching the bulge's heat and whipping it up like a veil. What Maya's knuckle hit instead was the side lip of the pit. Stone rang. Ayame's defense was perfect.
Jing saw the line anyway — not where the knuckle had been, but where Hana had to be. The steam wasn't random. Hana would freeze it if given a clean wall. He curled both hands and pulled. Water ripped from the hazard in twin strands and spiraled through the steam, spinning it like cotton candy and then snapping it into droplets too large to freeze quickly. Hana blew across them, and crystals burst out of the mist — but their edges were dull, too heavy to hang.
He felt the moment — the tiny advantage you earn by making an artist work twice in the same breath.
He pressed.
The tendon strands became twin whips, then a braided cable. He swung low, snagging the edge of the central dais, and yanked. It couldn't move — anchored to the mechanism — but the pull pinned Ayame's stance for a heartbeat. Maya took the heartbeat, stepped in, and slammed a stone heel at Ayame's shoulder guard. The chime sounded. Tag number two on Ayame.
Shiro went bright. His fire ramped into white core, heat sharp enough to sting Jing's eyelids at thirty paces. He threw it high — and curved. A parabolic streak of fire that fell like a meteor onto the Ferrets' tooth.
"Roku!" Jing cried.
Roku didn't flare. He closed his eyes.
He opened them with his palms out, and the heat hit an invisible dome — not a shield of fire, but a pocket of pressure and temperature that pushed the combustion gas outward. The meteor fire fluffed into a harmless petal of flame and rolled off the tooth. The crowd screamed. Even the announcer laughed. "What was that? — That was artistry by Roku! He— he just un-flamed a flame!"
Roku bowed slightly, wry. "Keep fighting," he said without looking. "They're better when we watch them."
Ayame's face didn't change, but her stance did: she stopped trying to crush lanes and began to press the rhythm. She stomped not pillars but pulses into the floor, small shockwaves that changed how your bones felt. Maya matched them — mirror pulses, slightly out of phase, making a soft wobble that cancelled Ayame's waves around the Ferrets' tooth while leaving the center ring's wave intact.
It turned into a weird dance. Maya and Ayame stomped invisible drums. Hana and Jing sculpted steam into visibility and then erased it. Shiro and Roku wrote calligraphy in flame, strokes over strokes until your eyes couldn't tell whose line had begun the letter.
Ayame darted. Stone knifed up, then down. Jing was late.
Blood memory snapped his body into something that wasn't him — a hard, ugly whip that wasn't water, wasn't bending, but a jerk his spine learned when men with cold eyes forced bodies into positions they weren't meant to take. He heard his father's ribs crack again, and rage ripped up from his gut.
"Jing!" Maya's voice, sharp. "Here — move—"
He moved, but wrong. He flung her a surge too wide. It doused the stone lip and made their tooth slick again. The disc rocked. Maya planted hard to correct, but it cost her a breath. Shiro took the breath and fired a tight lance. It kissed her shoulder sensor. Chime. Tag.
"Reset!" Maya barked, more alarm than anger. Jing swallowed the heat in his mouth. Shame pricked his throat.
Roku stepped between Jing and the world. "Breathe," he said softly. He lit a thin, constant flame in first-knuckle arcs and let Jing see its gentle cadence. Not a fire to burn, but a metronome. "Breathe with it."
Jing matched that rhythm. Inhale four counts, exhale four. The rage slid back into something he could look at. Anchor. Tide.
He nodded once. "I'm good."
"Prove it," Roku murmured, then moved aside.
The horn blared. End of round one.
The tally flashed: Fire Ferrets — two tags for Ayame. Crystal Blades — one tag for Maya. Judges showed small glyphs indicating control measures: Hana's crystal and steam manipulation earned a "style" bonus; Roku's pressure dome earned a "technical" bonus; Ayame's wave control earned a "ring control" bonus. They were points to be tallied in case tags tied. They wouldn't decide the round yet, but the crowd cheered for artistry like it was a knockout.
Round two.
The platforms reconfigured again — now a "broken bridge." Two long spans arced over the hazard moat to a central ring, but sections of each span could drop at random. The announcer howled, "It's a bridge night! Footwork for days!"
Maya grinned. "My ring."
Ayame's grin matched. "Likewise."
They stepped onto the left span; Crystal Blades took the right. The hazard water rolled, metal paddles underneath churning it into sloppy waves. Hana moved like she was at home in it, her hands floating, fingers tasting the air. Jing felt her pull — the subtle tug waterbenders used when they didn't want you to know they were tugging anything at all.
"Eyes ahead, Jing," Maya said. "Don't fight the river; ride the rock."
Shiro had no patience for bridges. He sprinted and leapt — easy. He landed on a middle section and it dropped two inches with a metallic clunk, a warning. He adjusted and threw a flat blast horizontally, skimming low and fast along the span. Roku sliced his palms downward, and the flame skated under the Ferrets' feet like a gentle wind. The audience gasped at the illusion; it looked like the fire wanted to kiss their soles and instead bowed.
Ayame stomped. A slab rose in front of Maya like a door, then flipped forward, a trap meant to slam her chest. Maya rolled under it and jabbed her heel up behind, converting the slab into a ramp. "Jing!" she shouted.
Jing ran up the ramp and launched. He reached for a sky coin and caught it with one hand — the metal bit cold, slick with condensation — then snapped his free wrist down, pulling water up from hazard and shaping it into a ribbon trailing behind him. He used it to whip momentum into a curve and landed on the next span section lightly, sliding half a step to absorb bounce.
Hana raised both hands and the ribbon shattered into beads in the air — not ice, but the geometry of a net. Jing ducked, exhaled, and let the beads brush his shoulders without cutting. He pushed the water down again, flattening it into a carpet that rolled under his feet, smoothing out the bridge's wobble. He didn't attack. He stabilized. Maya sprinted past him, using his carpet to cut clear steps through the span's instability.
Ayame didn't chase. She pressed the bridge itself. With a series of precise stomps, she made sections rise and fall randomly — not at random, but too fast for human eyes to see the pattern. The audience loved it. The span bucked like a beast. Maya planted, knees loose, and smiled. "Dance, then."
She danced. She floated between rises and dips, letting her hips do half the work and her ankles the rest, absorbing shock with micro-movements. Stone responded to her like a partner who respected consent — and only her. Ayame's stomp tried to dictate rhythm; Maya's touch negotiated it. The bridge stopped bucking at Maya's feet even as it tossed at Ayame's. The crowd erupted. The announcer screamed, "Two queens on one bridge!"
Shiro shouted, "Hana!" and tossed a flare high. Hana blew across it. The flare stretched, not brighter but longer, a tongue of fire turned into a ribbon by careful air. She froze the moisture around it into a sheath, then cracked the sheath. The flare spat sparks like fireworks that fell in a fan toward the Ferrets.
Jing whipped water up, sloppy. He corrected. He turned his whip into a funnel, caught half the sparks, pulled them through, and ejected steam at knee level to blind Ayame for a heartbeat. It worked. Maya stomped in that heartbeat — a hard jab — and a stone knuckle rose under the bridge just at Ayame's toes. Chime. Tag. Ayame grunted, not pain, but admission.
This was their flash — a quick strike team synergy moment that even Crystal Blades fans had to respect.
Shiro's face tightened. He fired a narrow lance at Jing's chest. Roku threw heat to intercept and missed by a breath.
The lance hit Jing's collar. Chime.
It didn't hurt, but it punched a hole in the part of him that wanted to be perfect. His stomach dipped. He forced breath through his nose and ignored it.
The spans moved. A section dropped under Maya's foot with no warning. She fell — not toward hazard; she fell toward the central ring — and tucked. She pulled her knee in and rolled, grabbing a stone rib as it slid past. Jing timed the pull, bent water under her to give her palm a slippery boost, and watched her stick the grab. She vaulted up and landed in the center with a grunt. Jing and Roku followed in a blur of motion, heat on one side, water on the other, stone anchoring between.
Now both teams were on the central ring. No bridges, no sky coins, just a circle wide enough for law and chaos.
"Close," Maya said softly. "We win close."
Ayame lowered her stance. Hana softened hers. Shiro rolled his shoulders and nodded once. There was a respect here even as rivalry sharpened.
They collided.
Maya and Ayame slammed forearms — stone versus stone. Their fists hammered the floor, each trying to off-beat the other's rhythm and make the ground sing to their own tune. Shiro and Roku exchanged clean strikes — flame that didn't waste motion and hands that didn't waste heat. Jing and Hana threaded around them, both carving water in shapes that looked harmless until the shapes weren't.
Hana spun a ribbon and Jing cut it at the angle, turning it into two smaller ribbons that braided themselves back together. He snapped a lash and Hana slipped under it, then flicked her fingers, freezing the tip into a spiked paintbrush that pinged off Jing's sleeve. He dropped his shoulder, and the brush scraped his sensor. It didn't chime. Barely.
He smiled. Hana did too. They were, in that breath, two artists arguing in the language of water.
Maya pressed Ayame backward with a series of short, stacked jabs. Ayame tried to pull a pillar up to break rhythm. Maya stomped on the pillar as it rose and shoved it sideways instead, turning Ayame's defense into a stumbling step. Jing saw the window and threw a low whip across Ayame's shin. It struck stone, not flesh, but the knock slivered Ayame's balance. Shiro stepped in and kicked a flame transverse to keep Maya off. Roku chopped it with a hand edge and the flame fell like a cloth.
"Tag her," Maya grunted.
Jing reached — not with hands, but with memory. Not South Pole night. Not blood. A different memory: his father teaching him to breathe in snow, carving a small hollow for a campfire, making heat gentle enough to warm water without cracking the ice. The way water loved careful heat. The way flame respected patience.
He bent the hazard moat's water up in a crescent and moved it so slow the audience didn't see it at first. He let it touch Roku's heat. The crescent warmed. He draped it across the floor like a warm cloth, thinned it until it was a breath of humidity. Ayame's stone ached under it — just enough to become soft. Maya stomped.
Ayame's stance dipped. Chime. Tag.
Hana didn't let them savor it. She froze the humidity and cracked it like glass under their feet. The ring turned into dangerous glitter. Shiro threw a low flame to melt it at his own heels, then pitched a high blast over Jing's shoulder. Roku misread its angle by a hair and the blast clipped Jing's collar. Chime. Tag.
Round two horn. End.
Scoreboard flashed: Ayame tagged twice; Maya tagged once; Jing tagged once — twice total now. Judges awarded Hana style and control, Maya ring control, Roku technical artistry. The points were balancing like a coin on a knife.
Round three.
Configuration: "Chaos carousel." The central ring rotated slowly. Outer discs moved in opposite directions at slightly different speeds. Steam vents timed with the rotation like metronomes, hissing in off-beats. It was designed to break coordination and reward instinct.
"Chaos," Roku said, smile thin. "My favorite dance."
Maya didn't smile. "Stay honest."
Ayame looked almost delighted.
The horn blared.
Everything moved.
Jing felt the floor shift under his toes like a creature wiggling. He widened his stance to root and immediately realized that rooting was a mistake; the carousel punished roots by changing friction. He softened his knees and let more weight live in his ankles, then bent a low film of water under his feet — not slick, but wet, a lubricant that responded faster than stone to unexpected shifts.
Hana did the same. Their films mirrored each other, making the ring into twin puddles you couldn't see.
Shiro threw a high arc — not a blast; a looping ribbon designed to confuse depth perception as the ring rotated. Roku didn't intercept. He let it pass and kicked its tail with a toe flick of heat, turning the loop into a knot that hung and then dropped with a pathetic plop. The crowd laughed.
Ayame stomped. The ring bucked. Maya stomped back. It smoothed — then bucked again. Ayame had found a frequency that beat Maya's pulses: the carousel's rotation, the steam vents' hiss, and the ring's friction changes all had timing, and Ayame had read the math. She pumped exactly when Maya exhaled.
Maya adjusted, but the half-second lag cost her. A stone rib rose under her foot. She caught it too late. She fell to one knee. Chime. Tag.
Roku stepped in and flared heat to clear a pocket. Shiro threw a lance and it sliced clean through. Jing heard the crowd roar like an ocean and then heard nothing; the world closed to a tunnel with his breath at one end and Hana's eyes at the other. She tried to freeze his film. He rippled it. She tried to pull more water up. He starved the moat. She smiled, not kind, but not cruel. It said: you're good.
He moved his left hand with a small twist his mother used to do when ladling soup. The film under his feet thickened for a breath, then thinned. Hana misread the thickness as a weight shift and threw a spike at his left ankle. It hit his film instead of his collar. He slid sideways, grabbed her spike with a water ribbon, and flung it into the steam vent. It hissed with a crisp note, like a dropped crystal flute.
Ayame stomped a pillar right under Jing's new step. Roku saw it a half-second late. Shiro threw a flare into the pillar's shadow. Jing ducked and whipped water up into a quick canine-tooth shape, smacking the flare sideways. It licked his ear. Heat rang inside his skull.
"Jing!" Maya called, back on her feet, breathing hard. "We break or we lose."
He looked at her. Then at Roku. Then at Hana and Shiro and Ayame. He felt the carousel under him. He felt the hazard water. He felt the vents. He felt the crowd. He felt his mother's breath.
Anchor. Tide.
He stepped forward into the ugly part of the ring — the place where rotation, vent, and friction were cruelest. He threw a whip — not at anyone, at the floor — and pulled a thin sheet of water up over the ring like he was putting a skin on a drum. He kept it so thin it was almost nothing. Hana reached to freeze it, then paused. If she froze it, the ring would become glass and everyone would die. She wouldn't do it.
Ayame stomped, and the sheet rippled. Jing matched the ripple with a counter, like musicians dampening a drumhead. The ring's worst wobble softened. It didn't disappear, but the cruelty became mere meanness.
"Now!" Maya shouted, and sprinted.
Shiro tried to intercept. Roku threw heat that wasn't a wall but a brush, painting the air with warmth so Shiro's flame felt wrong when he stepped into it. His fire bent sideways — not toward the target, toward the pocket of heat it wanted to feed. It missed Maya, hit Hana's shoulder guard with a lick. Chime. Tag.
Ayame leapt. Maya dropped. Stone shot from the floor like a straight jab and caught Ayame's hip. Chime. Tag.
The crowd went feral.
Hana froze the steam vent output for a heartbeat and cracked it, making the next hiss explode into glitter. It blinded Jing just as Shiro fired a tight lance at his collar. He felt the heat on his skin and didn't see the flame. He bent water up and caught it barely. It seared. The lance clipped his collar. Chime. Tag.
The scoreboard flashed: tags now even across both teams, artistry points balanced. It would come down to the last seconds — either a final tag or judges' control assessment. The carousel rotated, faster. The horn would blow any moment.
Ayame stomped a final rhythm, trying to throw Maya off. Maya stomped back. The ring became two drums arguing. Jing and Hana made it into an instrument instead. They dampened and tuned, two waterbenders holding the tone between stone songs and fire letters. For three seconds, the world was music.
Then Shiro shouted, "Now!" and pitched a plume at Roku's face.
Roku smiled, stepped into it, and did something that made every firebender in the arena shut up for a breath: he didn't bend the flame. He bent the air around it. He sipped heat out of the plume like drinking tea, then pushed the cooled plume aside. It broke into pale smoke and dissolved.
A single gasp moved through the crowd like a wave.
Hana saw the gap his move left — not in defense, in heart. For a heartbeat, the audience adored Roku and forgot to love anyone else. Hana made them remember her. She froze the thin skin Jing had spread — not across the whole ring, just under Maya's left foot — and cracked it. Maya's ankle slipped.
Ayame slammed a stone knuckle into Maya's shoulder. Chime. Tag.
Horn. End of round three.
Silence crashed. Then sound. The scoreboard lighting toddled through tallies while the crowd held a collective breath. Judges' glyphs flickered: ring control heavily in Ayame's favor in round three; technical artistry to Roku; style to Hana; minor bonus to Shiro for precision strikes; consistency points to Maya. Tag count: Fire Ferrets — Jing two, Maya two. Crystal Blades — Ayame three, Hana one.
The result popped across the high screen: Crystal Blades win — by control and tags.
The Crystal Blades dipped matching bows. The crowd thundered. Boos and cheers braided into a single vital roar that didn't feel like scorn. It felt like hunger — come back and feed us again.
Jing stood still long enough to feel the loss settle. It wasn't abstract. It was a bruise in the mind, a sting in the palms. He wanted to break something. He wanted to run to the hazard moat and drown his anger. He wanted to find a quiet space and breathe until the urge dissolved.
Maya touched his shoulder. "We fought," she said, calm. "We learned."
Roku hooked his scarf with two fingers and lifted it off his neck, letting cool air touch sweat. He glanced at Jing, then at Hana, then at Shiro and Ayame. He smiled like the cliff of a volcano seen from safe distance — a promise of heat to come. "They're good," he said. "We can be better."
Jing looked at Hana. She met his gaze and dipped her chin — respect. He nodded back. Shiro twirled a finger with a little flame and winked. Ayame gave Maya a look that was half challenge, half alliance. Maya's mouth tilted: I'll meet you where stone sings.
The announcer's voice filled the arena once more, bright and satisfied. "What an opening match! Crystal Blades retain their crown, but the Fire Ferrets — hello! — have a bite. Tune in next week for Storm Vipers versus Iron Titans, and a special exhibition featuring Steel Lotus!"
The lights dimmed a fraction. The ring's moving parts clicked into neutral. The hazard moat calmed. The arena became a place again instead of a beast.
Jing followed Maya and Roku off the floor, hands still buzzing. The locker room was cold, tile reflecting weak overhead fluorescents, benches lined like old soldiers. The roar outside dulled to a solid hum. Jing dropped onto a bench and tried to peel the fight off his skin by scrubbing his face with his palms.
"We had them," he muttered, the words small, directed at no one and everyone.
Roku sat opposite him, elbows on knees. "We had moments. Champions chain moments into wins."
Maya unwrapped tape from her wrists and rolled her shoulders. Her voice was low, decisive. "We lost to control. We'll learn control. And we'll keep our bite."
Jing's throat tightened. He swallowed and nodded. He wasn't fighting just to win. He was fighting for a ghost village, for a night of blood, for a mother's last surge that had gifted him breath long enough to live. He didn't need the crowd to understand his want. He needed to make the want clean.
They rose together and stepped into the service corridor. Air cooled their skin. The hum of the crowd faded behind concrete and steel.
At the exit, under the shadow of a dented sign and a broken lamp, figures peeled from the dark. Three. The one in front wore a smile like a knife sliding back into its sheath. Her eyes gleamed like water under moonlight.
Nira.
The Shadow Serpents.
"You think pro-bending will save you, Tian Ming?" she asked, voice smooth as glass over ice. "The Blood Serpent Clan never forgets. And we're closer than you think."
Lights buzzed. Somewhere above, a tram grumbled past on steel rails. The night stretched long and thin. Jing's water flask trembled against his hip.
He didn't reach for it. Not yet. He breathed. Anchor. Tide.
"Then let them come," he said softly, and the words tasted like steel and salt.
Roku's scarf burned red in the gloom. Maya stepped to his left, heel sinking a breath into concrete. The alley felt suddenly like another ring different rules, same hunger.
The world, again, wanted to drown them. Jing's hands were steady as he lifted them. The tide did not lift alone.