Kaelen's wooden sword descended like a falling branch—heavy, clumsy, and fueled by a child's arrogance. In the eyes of the other children, it was a fast, decisive strike. In Azrakar's eyes, it was moving through molasses.
He didn't move his feet. Instead, he tilted his head exactly two inches to the left. The wood hissed past his ear, missing him by a hair's breadth.
Kaelen stumbled forward, his momentum carrying him past his target. He growled, spinning around with a red-faced snarl. "Lucky rat! Stand still!"
"The first rule of combat," Azrakar said, his voice flat and instructional, "is that anger is a leak. You are pouring your Aura into your throat to scream instead of into your legs to move."
"Shut up!" Kaelen swung again, a horizontal slash aimed at Azrakar's ribs.
This time, Azrakar didn't just dodge. He reached out with a hand that looked small and delicate. Inside his arm, the Trinity Circuit flared. He didn't use Qi—that would be too visible. He didn't use Mana—that would be too strange. He used a microscopic burst of Aura, channeled through his veins to harden his palm to the density of oak.
Clack.
Azrakar's palm met the side of the wooden sword. He didn't grab it; he simply deflected the energy back into the weapon. The vibration traveled up the wood and into Kaelen's wrists.
Kaelen let out a yelp as his hands went numb. The wooden sword clattered to the dirt.
"My turn," Azrakar whispered.
He stepped into Kaelen's personal space. To the onlookers, it looked like a gentle shove. But Azrakar had placed his palm directly over Kaelen's solar plexus. He released a tiny "puff" of Qi—not enough to cause internal damage, but enough to disrupt the boy's breathing and knock the wind out of him completely.
Kaelen collapsed into the dust, gasping like a fish out of water, his eyes wide with a terror he couldn't name. He looked at Azrakar and didn't see a cousin; he saw a bottomless, freezing abyss.
"If you kick dirt on me again," Azrakar said, leaning down so only Kaelen could hear, "I will ensure that you never walk again. I don't care about your father. I don't care about the clan laws. In my world, the weak don't get to speak. Remember that."
Azrakar turned and walked away, leaving the courtyard in a stunned silence. He felt the gaze of the instructor, a scarred veteran named Captain Harl, drilling into his back.
Harl is observant, Azrakar noted. He didn't see the Trinity Circuit, but he saw the efficiency. I need to be more careful. A ten-year-old with the combat instincts of a God is a target, not a prodigy.
He returned to his room, his mind already moving past the petty squabble. He needed to refine the Trinity Circuit. The pain was still there, a dull throb in his chest and abdomen, but his body was adapting. The "Golden Era" was generous; the sheer density of the atmosphere acted as a soothing balm on his strained meridians.
"One thousand years," he muttered, sitting on his bed. "In the future, a strike like that would have cost me a week of recovery because the air was so starved of energy. Here... I'll be healed by dinner."