The air inside the Bhutala Amphitheatre quivered, a low hum thrumming beneath the ruins. Ash drifted like snowfall. Steel groaned. The smoke had thinned just enough to show the man standing in its wake—barefoot, his cloak torn, veins lit faintly with threads of white aether.
Siddharth.
Every soldier froze. Even the drones above stuttered mid-air, their targeting lenses flickering at the surge of raw energy bleeding through the cracks in the arena floor.
Virak smiled, faintly.
"So the ghost finally crawls back." His tone was calm, almost casual, yet his words carried a blade's edge. "You've been running long enough, Siddharth. I almost missed this."
Siddharth said nothing. His eyes, white and depthless, fixed on him like moonlight through fog.
"Running?" His voice was steady. "No. I was preparing."
Virak laughed. A deep, guttural sound. "For this? You think you can still outpace the storm you helped create?"
Around them, Aryan lay against a fractured pillar, chest heaving, blade broken in half beside him. Abhi's sword arm trembled, blood trailing from his palm. Vigil leaned against the half-toppled stage, his mind still racing from the shockwave that had brought the amphitheatre to silence.
Ahan's voice broke through the tension, harsh and breathless. "If you're going to talk, finish it quick. Because when he's done with you—he's coming for us."
Virak turned to him with a grin that almost felt kind. "I'll keep that in mind, little mind-bender."
He turned back to Siddharth, his boots cracking through the ash. "You know this ends one way."
Siddharth's aether began to stir. Not as flame, not as light, but as motion—slow, fluid, almost like breath escaping the earth. His aura shimmered, colorless, and the very air bent away from him.
"Perhaps," he said quietly. "But not the way you believe."
The ground beneath them fractured.
A pulse.
Then another.
White aether spiraled up from Siddharth's feet, rippling outward in a circle of distorted air.
Virak answered with black aether that bled like oil, the two energies pressing against one another in a soundless war of pressure.
"Everyone stand back," Aryan managed to whisper, though none needed the warning.
When their fists met, the amphitheatre shook.
The first clash wasn't grand—no explosions, no blinding light. Just a crack, a sound like bone meeting stone, and the ground shattering under the weight of impact. Siddharth's movements were deliberate—measured—his body flowing like water. Virak countered with pure aggression, every motion heavy enough to split air.
A block. A twist.
Siddharth ducked beneath a blow that carved a line through the wall behind him. His counter came sharp, palm striking Virak's chest, sending him skidding backward through a haze of dust.
"Still the monk," Virak said, rubbing the point of impact, his grin widening. "You never learned how to hit to kill."
Siddharth stepped forward, slow. "You never learned when to stop."
They vanished into motion.
The next series of strikes blurred—hands, elbows, knees, every angle of contact compressed into a storm of motion. Each impact flashed with etheric sparks; white and black clashed like fireflies in a storm.
The audience—soldiers, survivors, even Vigil—couldn't track the fight. Only the aftershocks, the ripples in air, the craters appearing out of nowhere.
A final exchange sent them both reeling back—Siddharth sliding across the ground, Virak landing in a crouch.
For a heartbeat, there was silence.
Then Virak straightened, grinning wider. "Enough warming up."
Black tendrils of aether coiled around him, crawling up his arms and neck. The arena floor darkened under his feet, as if the light itself fled.
Siddharth exhaled slowly, his hand tightening into a fist. His aura expanded—pure white, radiant but cold, pulsing once like a heartbeat through the smoke.
Two storms faced each other, equal and opposite, each one tethered to something ancient.
The air bent.
The ground cracked.
And when they charged again—
—the balance fractured.