CHAPTER 43: The Forty-THIRD Fracture

The arena didn’t breathe.

Not the crowd. Not the stone. Not the sky.

Only the pressure remained—my will, like a collapsed star, still weighing down the battlefield, even as Lyra and Xena pulled me back.

Valkor stared from the stands, wide-eyed and unblinking.

Elunara lay at the crater’s base—unconscious, broken, or both. It didn’t matter.

Selkira held her limp form, arms trembling, lips pressed into a tight line. Not in grief. In fury.

High above, near the shattered rim of the coliseum, he stood—cloaked in pale starlight.

Tall. Refined. Wrapped in celestial robes that shimmered like dust swept from ancient galaxies. A translucent hood veiled his face, but behind it glowed two soft-gold eyes, watching everything with silent calculation.

A divine array hovered faintly behind him—fractured and incomplete. Where Elunara’s burned with order, his flickered between celestial and abyssal tones, like something broken trying to remember what it once was.

He said nothing.

As the crowd froze, sensing the storm about to erupt between Selkira and Saaya, the man turned and vanished into a portal stitched from star-twine and silence.

Only one person noticed.

Yuuka turned her head slightly, gaze narrowing.

“…That presence…”

Selkira rose slowly, eyes locked on Saaya.

Saaya knelt beside Alric, her glowing hands weaving golden glyphs across his chest.

“You dared to undo divine judgment,” Selkira said.

Her voice wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. The arena listened.

“You reversed the punishment of a god. I’ll make an example of you—and prove that a school that harbors a science user is beneath us.”

Saaya didn’t respond at first.

The glyph beneath her palms faded. Alric’s breathing steadied.

She stood.

Her once-golden hair flickered with divine glow—weightless, radiant. But it was her eyes that struck—calm, cold, and unforgiving. The gaze of one exiled by the gods.

“I did more than undo it,” she said. “I called it what it was. Cruelty. Masked as judgment.”

Selkira unclasped her mantle and let it fall.

She wore a sleek, midnight-black bodysuit etched with silver star-patterns that pulsed with each step. A flowing sash, like a torn veil of the night sky, draped from her hip, its ends trailing starlight.

One shoulder bore a silver pauldron engraved with constellations; the other was wrapped in glowing stellar threads winding down her arm like orbiting rings.

Her leggings shimmered under fractured light—flexible, balanced, unshakable.

Silver boots pressed into the stone, anchoring her like a celestial axis.

Twin short blades—one gold, one violet—hung at her sides, forged from starborn metal, quietly resonating.

Behind her, a floating halo of shifting starlight spun slowly. A starcore. Radiant and calm.

Her presence didn’t scream.

It glowed.

A living constellation.

Unblinking.

Unmoving.

Unyielding.

Saaya met her gaze.

No fear.

No hesitation.

Only inevitability.

The battlefield hadn’t even cooled, and already the next storm gathered.

A breath passed between them.

And the stars began to move again.

[Later, during repairs…]

Both sides returned to the stands as the arena slowly reconstructed itself.

Alric sat quietly, looking far better after Saaya had reversed the cause of his injuries.

I sat beside him.

“You feeling any better?” I asked.

He glanced over. “You? Worrying about me? That’s new.”

“Shut up,” I said with a smirk.

He stared at the ground.

“Seriously… I don’t get it. You stepped in to save me. I mocked you. Bullied you. Treated you like a disgrace to the academy. Why would you help me?”

I leaned back in my seat. Saaya, Yuuka, Avalon, and Karna were all watching.

I met his eyes.

“It’s obvious,” I said. “We’re friends now. Aren’t we?”

Alric blinked, then lowered his head—smiling.

“…Yeah. I guess we are.”

None of us said anything else.

But the silence said enough.

The tides were turning.

And the stars—once so distant—were drawing closer.

The final ring of the arena sealed itself into place.

Lyra’s voice echoed across the coliseum.

“Saaya of Fractured Light Academy versus Selkira of Seraphyne Institute. Step forward.”

Saaya stood.

I caught her hand before she could leave.

She turned.

I brushed a strand of hair from her cheek.

“I know you’ll do well,” I said. “Come back quickly, okay?”

She gave me the purest smile I’d ever seen.

She descended into the ring.

Selkira and Saaya stood fifteen feet apart at the arena’s heart.

Selkira’s gaze drifted past Saaya—straight to me.

“You,” she said coldly. “The so-called science user.”

I said nothing.

She stepped forward, voice sharp and celestial.

“You think what you’ve done is impressive? That you can tamper with the sacred fabric of existence using equations and metal? You’re a parasite. A failed god with broken toys.”

Saaya’s gaze didn’t leave her.

Selkira tilted her head. “And you… You align yourself with him? Does it not shame you, Saaya? To stand beside someone who mimics divinity but can never reach it?”

Saaya let the silence stretch.

Then she spoke—quietly, clearly.

“Be careful with your words, Selkira. You’re confusing fear with superiority.”

Selkira blinked. “Fear?”

“Yes. You fear him. You fear what it means if someone outside your divine lineages rises above you. You fear truth. You fear change.”

“I fear nothing.”

“Then you won’t mind losing to me.”

Selkira’s eyes flashed.

“I will erase you.”

Saaya stepped forward.

“Five gods already tried and failed. You’ll be no different.”

Glyphs beneath them began to ripple.

Selkira drew her twin blades in a whisper of starlit steel.

“I’ll make you kneel. And when you fall, I’ll show him what it means to defy the divine.”

Saaya’s hands lit with golden spirals—Reverse Glyphs coiling in her palms.

“If you want to touch him,” she said, “you’ll have to go through me.”

A crack split the center of the arena.

Above them, Lyra and Xena spoke in unison.

“Combatants ready.”

The stars trembled.

And neither moved.

Yet.

“Begin.”