The field was a storm of banners and blood.
Dust rose in golden clouds as hooves thundered across the packed earth. The melee had begun not with ceremony, but with violence. Horns blared, steel clashed, and the roar of the crowd rolled like thunder from the stands above.
Lysaro Waters moved through it like a wraith.
His armor caught the sun in bronze flashes, his curved dagger flickering like a serpent's fang. The wire from his gloves shimmered in the air, looping and snapping with a dancer's grace. He didn't charge. He didn't bellow. He glided weaving between knights and sellswords, ducking under hammers, sidestepping spears, and striking with surgical precision.
A hedge knight from the Crownlands lunged at him with a mace. Lysaro spun, the wire tightening around the man's wrist. A twist, a pull the mace flew free, and the knight tumbled into the dirt.
"Too slow," Lysaro muttered, stepping over him.
To the north end of the field, Brienne of Tarth was holding her own. Her sword was a blur, her stance solid. She fought with the precision of a trained knight and the fury of someone who had waited her whole life to be seen. A knight of House Wylde tried to flank her she caught his blade on her pauldron, turned, and drove her pommel into his helm with a crack that echoed across the field.
Lysaro caught the moment from the corner of his eye and smiled. Not bad, Evenstar's daughter.
Around them, the melee raged.
Ser Harwin the Red was a whirlwind of brute force, his two-handed axe cleaving through shields like kindling. A pair of Myrish twins fought back-to-back with matching sabers, their movements so synchronized it was like watching a mirrored dance. A knight of House Morrigen, black-feathered and grim, fought with a cold efficiency that left a trail of groaning bodies in his wake.
Lysaro ducked into a knot of fighters, his wire-blade slicing across a man's thigh before coiling back into his hand. He didn't kill not here. But he left bruises that would last for weeks.
He caught sight of a familiar face Lord Cedric of the crooked boar, one of the Stormlords he'd charmed the night before. The man was red-faced, panting, and clearly out of his depth.
"Lord Cedric!" Lysaro called, parrying a blow from a sellsword. "Still think I'm mad?"
Cedric grunted, swinging wildly. "Mad as a hare!"
"Then stop chasing me like a hound," Lysaro said, and tripped him with a flick of wire.
The crowd roared with laughter.
From the noble stands, Lord Selwyn Tarth watched with a furrowed brow. His daughter was still standing. More than that she was thriving. He saw the way she moved, the way she held her ground. She didn't fight like a girl pretending to be a knight. She fought like a knight who had nothing left to prove.
And then there was Lysaro Waters darting through the chaos like a flame, laughing, bleeding, winning. The Evenstar didn't know what to make of him. But he knew one thing: the man had the crowd in the palm of his hand.
Back on the field, Lysaro found himself back-to-back with Brienne, blades flashing.
"Fancy meeting you here," he said, breathless.
"Don't get in my way," she replied, eyes locked on a charging knight.
"Wouldn't dream of it."
They fought together for a moment her strength and reach, his speed and misdirection until the tide of battle pulled them apart again.
The melee was far from over.
But the dance had begun.