CHAPTER 37: The Thirty-Seventh Fracture

We locked eyes.

“Does this look weird on me?” she asked.

“Not at all,” I said—maybe too quickly. “You look… absolutely beautiful.”

She stepped closer, hands folded behind her back, leaning in as her eyes traced over me.

“I love your new outfit,” she murmured. “It really suits you. Makes you even more handsome.”

My face warmed. She reached out and gently took both of my hands.

“Even if this is a trap to kill you, humiliate you, or mock you… I’m staying by your side until the end.”

I stared into her eyes, her voice anchoring me in a way even the ground couldn’t.

“I’m so lucky I met you,” I whispered.

Before she could answer, Alric’s voice cut through the moment like a knife.

“Yeah, that’s great, lovebirds—but we’ve got a match to get to.”

Karna floated nearby, his artifacts glowing in steady pulses. Alric gave him a sideways glance.

“Can you make them hurry up? I’d rather fight an entire academy than sit through this.”

Karna tilted slightly in the air. “I wonder what temperature the sun burns at in winter.”

Alric blinked. “Seriously, dude?”

Before anyone could reply, Lyra entered the chamber.

“Are you all don—” she started, then stopped as her gaze landed on us. A beat passed. She gave a single nod. “Good. Let’s get to the Celestia Arena.”

With a snap of her fingers, a portal bloomed open—its edges swirling with fractal light. We stepped through—

And emerged into a vast coliseum where the sky itself felt too small for the crowd. An uncountable sea of spectators filled the stands, their cheers echoing like thunder across stone and steel.

We stood at the center of the arena, Lyra beside us. Across the field, a group stepped forward.

Karna floated slightly higher the moment they appeared. Four students from the opposing academy approached, and the one at the front—blonde-haired and focused—looked completely different from before.

He wore a sleeveless, high-collared mantle of pure white trimmed in storm-gray. The fabric clung to his frame and pulsed with faint inner light. Lightning veined beneath the weave, barely restrained, crackling with every subtle motion.

His bare arms shimmered with static scars—living circuits of blue-white current that danced across his skin. The coat split into twin tails behind him, trailing sparks with every step. Obsidian-black pants flowed into integrated boots, each stride leaving behind glowing prints etched in residual energy.

No weapons. No armor. Just raw mana.

The storm lived within him.

Arcs of voltage curled at his shoulders, and a faint heat haze shimmered around him. His eyes burned with electric focus, and the very air thickened in his presence. He wasn’t casting spells.

He was the spell.

A walking voltage—thunder-bound and self-contained.

Karna turned his gaze toward the boy.

“There he is… I knew he would be here.”

The two locked eyes—Karna and Vodyanoy—and the pressure between them became so heavy it was almost physical. Even the arena crowd seemed to hold its breath.

I looked from Karna to the boy across the field.

“That’s Vodyanoy?”

Vodyanoy’s battle attire clung to him like a second skin—part liquid shadow, part cursed relic. His high-collared mantle shimmered black like oil, stitched with pulsing crimson glyphs that moved like veins. Tattered strands of kelp-like fabric drifted from his shoulders, reacting to some invisible current only he could feel.

His bare arms glowed with electric-blue markings—living tattoos of arcane circuitry that slithered across his skin. From his waist flowed a high-slit combat robe layered over serpent-scaled leggings—both elegant and deadly. His obsidian boots left behind spectral ripples and scorched prints with every step.

His presence shimmered with a stormlike distortion, as if the air around him were submerged. Behind him hovered three faint, rotating halos—symbols of corruption, voltage, and soulbinding—like drowned celestial relics. Static fog curled around him, and within the folds of his cloak, flickering spirits and drowned memories drifted like whispers from the deep.

No armor. No weapons.

Only the storm, the curse, and the will to consume.

He smirked at Karna, and Karna, still floating, casually lay back in the air and stared at the ceiling—unbothered.

The rest of us turned our attention to the other two fighters. I glanced at Lyra.

“Who are those two?”

She nodded toward the girl walking at Vodyanoy’s side. Her long black hair flowed like silk, a streak of sky-blue cutting down the center.

“That’s Selkira Aetheris,” Lyra said. “From what little I’ve gathered, she fights with dual shortblades and commands the power of the stars.”

Selkira turned to look at me and blinked—slow and deliberate, flirtatious in a way that was impossible to misinterpret.

Saaya immediately pinched my side.

“Ow! I didn’t even do anything!” I hissed.

She pouted, arms crossed. “I saw your face.”

Selkira stood radiant in a sleek, midnight-black bodysuit etched with glowing silver star patterns that pulsed with each breath. A flowing sash, like a strip of night sky, draped from her hip. One shoulder bore a silver pauldron carved with constellations, the other arm wrapped in luminous stellar thread. Her leggings shimmered subtly, and her silver knee-high boots glinted with every step. Twin short blades—one gold, one violet—hung at her sides, forged from celestial metal. Behind her floated a slow-spinning halo of stars and glyphs, orbiting like a miniature galaxy.

I pointed toward the last girl. “What about her?”

Lyra’s voice grew quieter. “That’s Elunara.”

“I have no intel on her—just that she wields the power of the heavens. No idea what that really means, but it sounds like something tied to the territory of the gods.”

I narrowed my gaze toward Elunara.

“Gods, huh? I’m so sick of that word.”

She was already staring at me.

Her eyes didn’t blink—just watched. When I spoke, she smiled and slowly licked her lips, the movement somehow elegant and wrong at the same time. The air seemed to quiet around her.

Elunara’s attire radiated divine majesty. A celestial-white breastplate, etched with golden constellations, rested over a midnight-blue bodysuit threaded with living starlight. Crescent pauldrons glowed faintly with lunar grace, while her sleeves trailed radiant energy like flowing stardust. From her waist hung a split skirt inscribed with heavenly glyphs that defied gravity with each movement. Her golden-etched boots left trails of stardust, and behind her floated a celestial array—a ring of rotating symbols and shattered constellations. A transparent cloak shimmered from one shoulder like nebulae unfolding. A delicate circlet crowned her brow, its gem shifting between sun-gold and moon-silver.

Her presence felt like the sky itself had descended to pass judgment.

Saaya’s voice erupted beside me.

“Why does every girl keep eyeing you?!”

She smacked me lightly on the arm, and I raised my hands defensively.

“I don’t know!” I said. Then I turned to her, pulled her into a hug, and added softly, “You’re the only one I have my eyes on.”

Elunara tilted her head slightly and spoke, her voice soft but twisted with amusement.

“Oh, would you look at that.”