The tournament grounds held more people than the normal training sessions ever did.
Students packed the observation rails three deep. The noise hit differently too — not the focused quiet of morning practice but something looser, charged, the energy of people who had been waiting for this and were done waiting. First years mostly, with a scattering of second years who had nothing better to do or were scouting for next year.
Lysander stood at the edge of the preparation area and read the bracket.
Swordsmanship Club versus Archery Club. First round. Should have been clean — the Archery Club ran distance fighters, poor matchup against close-quarters swords. Except two transfer students had joined their roster over the summer, both wind element, and wind-assisted archery at close range was a different problem entirely.
He was third in the lineup.
The first match went their way. The second didn't.
Their second fighter — a third year, solid, someone who had been in the club longer than Lysander had been at the academy — went down to one of the transfers in the fourth exchange. Wind correction on the arrows made the gap impossible to close cleanly. He'd tried three times and each time the shot adjusted mid-flight.
The club's preparation area went quiet after that.
Not panic. Just the specific silence of people doing new math.
Lysander stepped into the marked area for the third match.
His opponent was tall, longer reach, the bow held with the ease of someone who had been doing this since before Eclipse. Wind element humming low around him — not active yet, just present. Waiting.
They acknowledged the referee. Settled into position.
The first arrow came faster than Lysander expected.
He moved left. Felt the air shift as the wind correction kicked in — the shot adjusting, tracking. It passed close enough that he heard it cut the air beside his ear.
He started moving forward.
The second arrow was already coming. He broke his line to avoid it, lost momentum, had to reset. His opponent was good. Better than the bracket suggested. The wind correction wasn't just range extension — it was active, responsive, reading his movement in real time and adjusting every shot accordingly.
He stopped.
Stood still for exactly one second.
Then he changed direction completely — not toward his opponent, diagonal, forcing a wider angle. The third arrow came. He let it track closer than comfortable, waited until the last window before the correction could fully compensate, and moved inside it.
The arrow grazed his sleeve.
He was already drawing.
Fractured Strike. Lightning discharge on contact. His opponent's grip broke — not from pain but from the involuntary response, muscles giving out before the mind caught up — and the bow dropped.
The referee counted.
His opponent looked at the distance between them. Looked at the bow on the ground. Nodded once.
"Winner — Lysander Vale."
Taro was waiting when he came out. Arms crossed, ears slightly back — the look he got when he'd been watching something carefully and had too many thoughts about it.
"The third arrow grazed you," he said.
"Sleeve. Not skin."
"I could see that from here." He wasn't letting it go. "You let it get that close on purpose."
"Had to find where the correction stopped tracking. Only way to do it was let one get near enough to read the response window." Lysander flexed his draw hand. "It worked."
"It worked," Taro repeated, in the tone of someone who found that answer both accurate and deeply unsatisfying. "You used yourself as bait."
"I used my sleeve as bait. There's a difference."
"There really isn't."
Lysander almost said something and didn't. Taro's tail had gone still — not anger, just the particular stillness that meant he cared about something and wasn't going to make it into a scene. Which was somehow harder to respond to than if he'd just said it directly.
"Next round's harder," Lysander said.
"I know. Dueling Circuit's been running clean on the other side." Taro uncrossed his arms. "Just — next time, maybe don't let it get that close."
"I'll try."
"Your trying includes deliberately getting grazed sometimes so that's not as reassuring as you think it is."
Lysander looked at him. Taro looked back. The corner of his mouth moved — not quite giving up the serious expression, but almost.
They walked back to the preparation area together.
Valeria was already there, making notes in her narrow precise handwriting. She didn't look up when they arrived. The notes had started during his match — he could tell by how far down the page she'd gotten.
He sat down. Let the match settle.
The Dueling Circuit bracket was visible from here. Their first round had gone the way their first rounds always went — efficient, controlled, the kind of performance that made everyone else's preparation feel slightly insufficient. Harren's advanced students were in that bracket. He'd watched two of their matches from a distance. They were good.
He looked at his draw hand. Opened and closed it once.
Three rounds to the final.
He was ready for that.
Across the grounds the crowd was still buzzing from the last match — background noise, excited voices, the tournament doing what tournaments did. Normal. Loud. Alive.
He didn't know yet that it was one of the last normal days before everything changed.
He sat with his team and waited for the next round.