CHAPTER 44: The Forty-Forth Fracture

The air rippled.

Time didn’t stop—but it slowed.

Saaya gripped her spear.

Selkira raised her twin blades.

The arena didn’t see students. It saw forces.

A flare of light—Selkira moved first, vanishing in a trail of afterimages. Her violet blade cut horizontally, gold following half a heartbeat later from the opposite side.

Saaya’s spear spun in a tight arc—deflecting the violet, stepping into the gold. Sparks screamed as metal clashed, heat radiating from divine friction.

She parried—twisted—and retaliated with a downward strike toward Selkira’s shoulder.

Selkira blinked out of range, reappearing five feet back, skidding across stone. Her starcore pulsed once—she raised her hand.

The sky cracked.

A spear of condensed starlight fell like a comet.

Saaya raised one hand. A golden glyph unraveled beneath her feet, spiraling outward—Reverse.

The comet halted mid-fall—twitched—then reversed course, soaring back into the sky.

Selkira narrowed her eyes. “So it’s true… you can undo divine law.”

“You’re about to find out just how much.”

They collided again—a blur of footwork and fury.

Selkira struck from the right.

Saaya spun her spear along her back, deflecting both blades in a figure-eight parry. Her elbow slammed toward Selkira’s throat—caught on a silver pauldron.

The thunderous clang echoed.

Selkira pushed off and activated a radiant sigil mid-air. Constellations snapped into orbit around her—a dance of divine blades, each forged from starlight. They circled her like moons poised to strike.

“Let’s see you reverse this.”

The swords launched.

Saaya’s glyphs rotated rapidly—layer upon layer forming like golden gears across her arms. Each blade neared and slowed, momentum siphoned as though the cause of movement was unraveling.

Still, three slipped through—one grazed her ribs, another sliced her thigh.

She stumbled—but did not fall.

“She’s learning how to delay the cause,” Avalon whispered from the stands, awe soft in her voice. “Not just reverse—pause it mid-sequence.”

A second starfire blast erupted from Selkira. The arena floor quaked under the force.

Saaya rolled sideways, twisted mid-air, and planted her spear to counterbalance—then launched upward.

They met mid-flight.

Spear vs twin blades.

Their silhouettes tangled—clashing again and again like dancers caught in a cosmic waltz.

Saaya ducked beneath a scissoring strike, kicked off Selkira’s thigh, flipped overhead—then hurled her spear like a lightning bolt.

Selkira deflected it just in time—the weapon carving a glowing trench into the arena wall.

Saaya landed hard—fluidly—already tracing a glyph beneath her feet.

Selkira’s expression shifted. Not fear. But concern.

She charged.

Their weapons reconnected in a blazing storm of gold and violet.

Sparks rained like stardust.

Each strike was a sentence—every clash a rebuttal.

Selkira’s blades carved radiant arcs; Saaya’s spear flowed like water through cracks in starlight.

“She’s not just surviving,” Yuuka said softly, now standing. “She’s studying her.”

Selkira roared—her halo erupting into a spiral galaxy of energy.

“I am the descendant of the First Light!”

She drove both blades into the ground.

The arena trembled as pillars of divine judgment exploded upward beneath Saaya.

Saaya didn’t move.

She pressed her palm to the stone—and erased the cause.

The beams fizzled mid-burst, as if the very idea of ignition had been voided.

Selkira’s eyes widened. “You reversed a divine trigger?”

“I reversed the moment it became inevitable.”

Selkira exploded forward—her blades spinning like a stellar maelstrom.

But Saaya was ready.

What followed was brutal.

Selkira’s strikes were faster, wilder. She blurred between planes, blades carving from impossible angles.

Saaya bled.

Lines across her arms, her ribs, her side. Her spear trembled in her grip.

Selkira raised both blades—ready to cleave downward.

But Saaya stepped in.

Too close.

She let one blade cut deep into her shoulder—just enough—and drove her knee into Selkira’s gut.

The divine warrior gasped—air leaving her lungs.

Saaya spun, caught her spear mid-twist, and activated her final glyph.

This wasn’t reversal.

It was re-rooting.

The golden spiral twisted inward—rewriting causality at the source.

She struck.

The spear didn’t pierce skin.

It struck Selkira’s chest—not to kill, but to shatter the cause.

The cause of arrogance.

The divine superiority.

The belief she was untouchable.

Selkira’s aura flickered.

Her twin blades dimmed.

Her starcore unraveled—its threads scattering like shattered constellations.

She dropped to one knee, gasping—her weapons clattering beside her.

Saaya stood, panting.

Blood ran down her arm, down her leg. Her eyes still glowed.

“I don’t need to be a god,” she whispered, “to undo one.”

Silence.

Then—

Thunderous applause.

Yuuka and Avalon were on their feet, cheering.

Karna grinned.

Alric stared, stunned.

And I watched her.

Jaw clenched. Breath shallow.

“She’s grown so far,” I whispered. “She truly is… amazing.”

Lyra’s voice rang across the coliseum.

“Victory… Saaya of Fractured Light Academy.”

The dust hadn’t settled, but the cheers began to fade.

Selkira knelt in silence.

Her fingers touched the fragments of her starcore, still pulsing faintly like dying embers in the dark. Her twin blades lay beside her, dim and quiet.

She didn’t look at Saaya.

She didn’t look at anyone.

For the first time in her life, Selkira wasn’t sure who she was.

Not the heir of the First Light.

Not the divine prodigy of Seraphyne Institute.

Not invincible.

Just… a girl, clutching stardust that no longer obeyed her.

Saaya stepped forward.

Her breathing was ragged, wounds still open, golden blood trailing down her arm. But she stood tall.

Spear gripped tight.

“I didn’t fight to humiliate you,” she said softly. “But to show you that divinity isn’t superiority.”

Selkira flinched.

Her voice cracked—more disbelief than anger. “How… did you undo me?”

Saaya looked at her—not as an enemy.

But as someone who’d once walked the same path.

“You weren’t undone,” Saaya said. “You were revealed.”

Selkira’s shoulders shook. Whether from pain, fury, or shame—no one could tell.

I met Saaya halfway across the arena.

I didn’t say anything at first.

Just reached out and gently brushed the blood from her cheek with my thumb.

“Congratulations,” I said. “You were amazing out there.”

Saaya let her spear fall. Her legs buckled. I caught her before she could collapse.

I leaned in, forehead to hers.

“I told you I’d come back,” she whispered. “Took me a little longer.”

“I’m just happy you made it back in one piece.”

I held her close.

From the stands, Karna crossed his arms and smiled faintly.

Yuuka, watching the shifting crowd, frowned. “Not all of them are happy.”

Avalon nodded. “The other academies see this as sacrilege. Her Reverse Glyph rewrote a bloodline.”

“She didn’t rewrite it,” Alric muttered. “She exposed the cracks in it.”

Selkira didn’t return to her team.

She rose—stiff, unsteady—and walked toward the shattered edge of the coliseum.

A portal opened beside her: a spiral of pale light flickering with instability.

She stopped just before entering.

Then glanced back—at Saaya. At me. At the broken glyphs still glowing faintly beneath our feet.

There was no hate in her eyes.

Only silence.

And something unfamiliar…

Doubt.

She vanished.

Vodyanoy went with her, carrying Elunara.