Chapter : 196

  He then turned his full attention to Lloyd, and the weight of his gaze was almost physical. "And you, Lloyd. You have shown… glimmers. Unexpected glimmers. Today, you will show us more. You will fight. You will demonstrate the full extent of this… awakened talent. You will prove whether these recent displays are mere fleeting sparks, or the first true flames of a worthy Ferrum heir."

  He leaned back in his chair, his expression once more an unreadable mask of ducal authority. "Let the final match commence. And let the outcome… inform us all."

  He looked across the sparring circle at Rayan Ferrum, whose earlier confident smirk had been replaced by a look of furious, frustrated determination. Rayan hadn't gotten what he wanted, but he still had a chance to prove his superiority, to humiliate Lloyd, to perhaps still sway the Arch Duke’s 'consideration'. He would be fighting with the desperation of a cornered wolf.

  Lloyd took a deep breath. The potted fern suddenly seemed like a very distant, very inadequate, hiding place. This was it. The final. No more tricks. No more subtle ankle-trips. This would be a true test. And he had a feeling it was going to be a hell of a lot harder than making rosemary-scented soap.

  ---

  The weight of Arch Duke Roy Ferrum’s pronouncements – his reassertion of Lloyd’s heirship, his subtle but undeniable challenge to both Lloyd and Rayan, his cryptic allusions to ‘future potential’ and ‘instructive outcomes’ – had left the assembled Ferrum clan in a state of breathless anticipation. The final match wasn’t just a contest of skill anymore; it was a high-stakes political drama, a public audition for the future of their house.

  Lloyd Ferrum stood near the edge of the sparring circle, trying to project an aura of calm, focused readiness while his internal monologue was currently cycling through various panic-induced scenarios, most of which involved him tripping over his own feet and accidentally setting fire to Rayan’s remarkably flammable-looking hair with an ill-timed steel spark. He could feel Rayan’s furious, predatory gaze burning into him from across the circle, a tangible pressure promising pain and humiliation. Kongor, Rayan’s obsidian bear spirit, paced restlessly beside its master, its red eyes glowing with savage anticipation, its massive fists occasionally pounding its chest in a display of brute, impatient force.

  This is it, Lloyd thought, taking a slow, deliberate breath, trying to channel the eighty-year-old pragmatist and push down the nineteen-year-old who was currently contemplating the strategic advantages of feigning a sudden, debilitating case of the sniffles. No more easy wins. No more subtle tripwires. Rayan knew about the wires now. He’d be expecting them. He’d be prepared. This was going to be a real fight. Against a stronger, more aggressive opponent, fueled by years of resentment and a burning desire for vengeance. Fun times.

  He was just mentally reviewing the weak points of a silver-backed gorilla (were there any? Besides, perhaps, a sudden, inexplicable craving for bananas?) when a figure approached him, moving with a quiet, determined grace that cut through the surrounding buzz.

  Jothi.

  His sister stopped a few paces away, her dark eyes, so like their father’s, fixed on him with an expression he couldn’t quite decipher. The earlier shock and shame of her own defeat had receded, replaced by a cool, almost analytical, intensity. She wasn't offering sympathy, nor was she radiating her usual dismissive disdain. She just… observed him. Like a particularly complex, potentially volatile, alchemical experiment she was trying to understand before it either exploded or turned lead into gold. Probably the former, in his case.

  “Brother,” Jothi began, her voice low, carefully neutral, devoid of the sharp, cutting edge it had held earlier that morning. There was a weariness in her tone, yes, but also a flicker of something else… something that might have been grudging respect, or perhaps just profound, almost weary, confusion. “You… you are in the final.” She stated it as a fact, a still-baffling, almost unbelievable, fact.

  Lloyd offered a small, wry smile. “So it would seem, little sister. Apparently, my talent for tripping people with invisible things is more… developed… than previously anticipated. Who knew? Perhaps I should open a school. ‘Ferrum’s Finishing School for Graceful Gravitational Misunderstandings’. Catchy, don’t you think?”

  Jothi did not smile. Her gaze remained fixed, probing. “How, Lloyd?” she asked, the question blunt, direct, cutting through his attempt at levity. “How have you done this? Last time I saw you, you were… you were as you always were.” (The unspoken ‘a disappointment’ hung heavy in the air between them). “Today… you defeat Kenta, Mike, others… with an ease, a control… it is not the Lloyd I know. The Steel Blood… Father says you awakened it yourself. Without the Truths. How is this possible?”

  Chapter : 197

  Lloyd sighed internally. The million-gold-coin question. The one he couldn’t answer truthfully without sounding like he’d ingested one too many of Grimaldi’s more experimental fungi. He settled for a vague, slightly mysterious, and hopefully not entirely unconvincing, deflection.

  “Perhaps, Jothi,” he said softly, his gaze meeting hers, “the Lloyd you thought you knew was… incomplete. Perhaps there were… depths… you hadn’t yet perceived.” He paused, then added, a hint of genuine vulnerability entering his tone, “Perhaps even depths I myself am only just beginning to rediscover.” That, at least, was true.

  Jothi considered his words, her dark eyes narrowed in thought. She wasn’t buying the ‘mysterious depths’ routine entirely, he could tell. She was too smart, too analytical. But the sincerity in his voice, the subtle shift in his demeanor from his usual awkwardness to this strange, quiet confidence, clearly gave her pause.

  Then, her expression shifted again, hardening slightly, the pragmatist, the fiercely proud Ferrum, reasserting itself. “It matters not how, I suppose,” she said, her voice regaining some of its earlier crispness. “What matters is now. This final match.” She looked towards Rayan, who was still pacing, radiating aggressive impatience, and a flicker of distaste crossed her features. “Rayan is strong, Lloyd. Brutally so. His spirit, Kongor, is a force of nature. He will not be easily tripped. He will not be easily deterred. He is fighting not just for victory, but for his father’s ambition, for his own pride. He will be… relentless.”

  She turned back to Lloyd, her gaze intense, almost pleading, though her voice remained carefully controlled. “You understand, Brother, what is at stake here, do you not? Beyond mere tournament victory?”

  Lloyd nodded slowly. He understood. This wasn't just about a sparring match. This was about perception. About the future of their house.

  “The honor of the main family rests on your shoulders now, Lloyd,” Jothi stated, her voice low, urgent. “My own failure today…” (he saw the flicker of shame, of frustration, in her eyes again, quickly suppressed) “…has only amplified the whispers, the doubts. Rubel’s ambition is plain. Rayan’s victory would lend it dangerous credence, regardless of Father’s pronouncements. Our allies, the King himself, they are watching. They are assessing. They need to see strength, Lloyd. Unwavering strength. From the true heir.”

  She looked at him, her dark eyes blazing with a fierce, almost desperate, intensity. The cool, dismissive younger sister was gone, replaced by a warrior, a Ferrum, demanding victory from her kin. She wasn't offering encouragement, not exactly. She was stating a non-negotiable imperative. The weight of her expectation, added to his father’s, the King’s, the entire clan’s, felt immense.

  Lloyd looked at his sister, truly looked at her. He saw the fear beneath the fierceness, the worry beneath the pride. She wasn't just concerned about family honor; she was concerned about him. About their father. About the future they all faced. The earlier sting of her words, the memory of her disdain, faded, replaced by a different, stronger emotion. A sense of shared burden. A flicker of… affection.

  Impulsively, without thinking, he reached out and gently, almost hesitantly, patted her on the shoulder. A simple, awkward, older-brotherly gesture of reassurance. “Don’t worry, Jothi,” he said softly, his voice surprisingly steady. “I understand. I won’t let you down. I won’t let Father down.”

  Jothi flinched as if his touch had been a brand of hot iron. Her entire body went rigid. She recoiled instantly, snatching her shoulder away from his hand as if it had been stung by a particularly venomous wasp. Her eyes, wide with a mixture of shock, disbelief, and something that looked suspiciously like… disgust? Or perhaps just profound, ingrained discomfort at this unexpected, unwelcome physical contact from the brother she had held at arm’s length for so long.

  “Do not touch me, Lloyd!” she hissed, her voice sharp, cutting, the earlier vulnerability vanishing in an instant, replaced by a resurgence of her familiar icy disdain. She took a hasty step back, her face flushed, her eyes narrowed. “Your… reassurances… are unnecessary. And your familiarities, unwelcome.”

  Lloyd stared, his hand still hovering in mid-air, the warmth of his impulsive gesture instantly extinguished by the arctic blast of her rejection. He felt a familiar ache, a cold stone settling in his chest. Right. Of course. He’d forgotten. The distance between them wasn't just emotional; it was physical. Years of polite detachment, of unspoken disappointments, had built walls too high, too thick, for a simple pat on the shoulder to breach. He was still, in her eyes, the awkward, embarrassing older brother, the one who had failed, the one she had to compensate for. His recent, inexplicable successes hadn't erased that. They had, perhaps, only made him more… perplexing. More… alien.

  Chapter : 198

  He slowly lowered his hand, a wry, self-deprecating smile touching his lips. “My apologies, little sister,” he said quietly, his voice devoid of bitterness, only a weary acceptance. “Old habits. From a… different time, perhaps.” He met her still-frosty gaze, a hint of his own hidden strength, his own quiet resolve, flickering in his eyes. “But the promise stands, Jothi. Regardless of… familiarities.”

  He turned away then, towards the sparring circle, towards Rayan, towards the final, daunting challenge. He left Jothi standing there, her face a mask of conflicted emotions – shock, confusion, perhaps a flicker of regret, quickly suppressed – watching him go. The brief, almost imperceptible, thaw in their relationship had refrozen, harder than before. But Lloyd knew, with a certainty that had nothing to do with soap or System Coins, that this fight, this final match, was for more than just himself. It was for his father. It was for the Ferrum name. And perhaps, just perhaps, it was also for the little sister who still, somewhere deep down, might just be hoping her disappointing older brother wouldn’t disappoint her again. He wouldn't. He couldn't. The stakes were far too high.

  —

  The murmur of the crowd, a restless sea of silks and velvets, fell to a hush as the two finalists stepped into the cleared sparring circle. On one side, Rayan Ferrum, his handsome face a mask of arrogant disdain, his powerful frame radiating aggressive confidence, Kongor, his obsidian bear spirit, a hulking shadow of brute force at his heels. On the other, Lloyd Ferrum, an enigma of quiet composure, his expression unreadable, Fang, his dark grey wolf-spirit, a coiled spring of contained lightning beside him.

  The contrast was stark. Rayan, all overt power and belligerent pride. Lloyd, an unknown quantity, a sudden, inexplicable surge of competence and hidden depths that had left the entire clan bewildered and, in many cases, deeply unsettled. The ‘drab duckling’ versus the ‘heir presumptive’ (at least in his own mind, and his father Rubel’s). This wasn’t just a tournament final; it was a referendum on the future, a clash of expectations and shattered preconceptions.

  “Well, well, Cousin Lloyd,” Rayan sneered, his voice dripping with contempt, loud enough for the entire hall to hear. He paced a slow, deliberate circle, like a predator sizing up its prey, Kongor mirroring his movements, its red eyes fixed on Fang with savage intensity. “Look at you. Actually made it to the final. Surprised you didn’t trip over your own feet on the way here. Or perhaps your… ‘dog’… carried you?”

  Lloyd met Rayan’s taunt with a calm, almost bored, gaze. He didn’t rise to the bait. He simply stood there, relaxed, yet radiating an aura of quiet, almost unnerving, self-possession. “The journey was… uneventful, Cousin Rayan,” Lloyd replied, his voice mild, almost conversational. “Though I confess, the quality of the pre-match small talk seems to have declined rather sharply.”

  Rayan’s sneer widened. “Still think you’re clever, do you? Just because you learned a few parlor tricks with wires and managed to awaken a sliver of the Steel Blood – probably by accident, knowing your usual level of competence – doesn’t make you the strongest, Lloyd. It doesn’t make you a leader. It just makes you… lucky. And slightly less pathetic than usual.” He spat onto the stone floor, a deliberate gesture of disrespect. “Don’t get any ideas. That smug, self-satisfied look on your face? It’s going to be wiped off. Permanently.”

  Lloyd tilted his head, a faint, almost pitying smile touching his lips. “Smug, Rayan? Is that what you see?” He chuckled softly, a low, confident sound that seemed to grate on Rayan’s already frayed nerves. “Perhaps you mistake ‘quiet confidence’ for ‘smugness’. Or perhaps,” his smile widened fractionally, a hint of something sharp and dangerous flickering in his eyes, “you’re just projecting your own insecurities. Understandable, I suppose, given your rather… limited tactical repertoire.”

  He paused, letting the insult land, then added, his voice dropping to a near whisper, yet carrying clearly in the sudden, tense silence, “And as for wiping anything off my face, Cousin Rayan… I’d be more concerned about not accidentally… soiling your own rather expensive trousers. When you finally witness the full extent of what this ‘slightly less pathetic’ cousin can actually do.”

  A collective gasp went through the crowd. The quiet, awkward Lloyd Ferrum, trading insults with the notoriously arrogant Rayan? Offering veiled threats? This was a new Lloyd indeed. Jothi, watching from the sidelines, felt a strange mixture of shock and fun. Her brother, for all his earlier awkwardness, was not backing down. He was meeting Rayan’s aggression head-on, with a cool, almost contemptuous, confidence that was utterly baffling, yet undeniably compelling.

  Chapter : 199

  Rayan’s face contorted with fury. The polite veneer of aristocratic disdain vanished, replaced by raw, unadulterated rage. “You insolent…!” he roared, his voice cracking. “You think you can mock me? Me?! I am Rayan Ferrum! I will crush you! I will break you! I will show this entire clan who the true power in this family is!”

  He didn’t wait for the referee’s signal. He didn’t bother with formalities. He simply exploded into motion, his Spirit Stone blazing, Kongor roaring in unison. “KONGOR! PULVERIZE HIM!”

  The massive obsidian bear spirit charged, a furry, ten-foot-tall avalanche of muscle and fury, its colossal fists raised, aiming to turn Lloyd and Fang into a pair of unfortunate floor stains. Rayan followed close behind, his practice sword a blur of aggressive, powerful strikes, his face a mask of murderous intent.

  The attack was swift, brutal, overwhelming. A display of raw, untamed Ferrum power, designed to shock, to awe, to utterly dominate. The crowd gasped, leaning forward, expecting a swift, decisive, and probably quite messy, conclusion.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  But Lloyd Ferrum did not flinch. He did not retreat. He did not even seem surprised. As the roaring behemoth that was Kongor bore down on him, as Rayan’s sword slashed towards his throat, Lloyd moved.

  And he moved with a speed, a precision, a terrifying, almost unnatural, grace that stole the breath from every onlooker.

  “Fang,” Lloyd’s voice was calm, almost serene, amidst the chaos. “Pattern Delta. Evasive dispersal. Then, target prioritization: limbs. Keep Kongor… off balance.”

  Simultaneously, Lloyd met Rayan’s furious sword assault. Not with brute force, not with desperate parries. But with an almost contemptuous ease, a fluid dance of deflection and evasion that made Rayan’s powerful strikes look clumsy, telegraphed, almost pathetically slow. Lloyd’s own hands were empty, yet he seemed to anticipate every move, every feint, every lunge. He wasn't just dodging; he was redirecting Rayan’s momentum, using his cousin’s own aggression against him, forcing Rayan to overextend, to stumble, to fight not just Lloyd, but his own increasingly frustrated rage.

  The onlookers stared, dumbfounded. This wasn't the match they had expected. This wasn't the easy victory for Rayan they had anticipated. This was… something else entirely. Lloyd Ferrum, the drab duckling, was not just surviving; he was… controlling the fight. Effortlessly. Almost contemptuously.

  “Stand still and fight me, you coward!” Rayan roared, his face flushed, sweat pouring down his temples, his attacks becoming wilder, more desperate, as Lloyd continued to evade him with that infuriating, almost insulting, ease.

  “Fight you, Rayan?” Lloyd replied, his voice calm amidst the storm of Rayan’s blows, sidestepping another furious slash that would have taken his head off. “But we are fighting. Or rather,” he added, a flicker of that dangerous, unsettling smile touching his lips, “I believe the more accurate term would be… I am leading, and you, my dear cousin, are rather enthusiastically, if somewhat clumsily, following. Perhaps a waltz next? Or do you prefer a brisk polka?”

  The sheer, unadulterated audacity of the insult, delivered with such calm precision amidst a life-or-death struggle, seemed to make Rayan’s brain short-circuit. He let out a strangled yell of pure, incoherent rage and lunged again, all pretence of skill or tactics abandoned, relying solely on brute, desperate force.

  This, Lloyd thought, his eyes narrowing, is the opening.

  He didn’t need wires this time. He didn’t need Fang’s lightning. He simply focused his will, his Ferrum Steel, his innate understanding of metal, of force, of balance.

  As Rayan’s sword arced towards him, Lloyd didn’t just dodge. He moved into the attack, his hand shooting out, not to block, but to meet the flat of Rayan’s blade with his open palm. It looked like an act of suicidal madness.

  But the moment his palm connected with the steel, Rayan felt it. A shock. Not electrical, but kinetic. A jarring, irresistible force that traveled up his sword arm, making his bones ache, his muscles seize. It felt as if he’d struck not flesh, but solid, unyielding Ferrum steel. And then, worse, the steel seemed to… flow. To adhere. To control.

  With a subtle, almost imperceptible twist of his wrist, a precise application of his Void power, Lloyd didn’t just stop Rayan’s blade; he seized control of it. He didn’t disarm Rayan in the traditional sense. He simply… took the sword. One moment Rayan was holding it, the next it was gone, Lloyd’s fingers wrapped around the hilt, Rayan’s own hand empty, tingling, numb.

  It was done so quickly, so smoothly, so utterly unexpectedly, that Rayan just stood there for a fraction of a second, staring at his empty hand, his brain struggling to process what had just happened.

  Chapter : 200

  The Grand Hall was a cathedral of stunned silence, Lloyd’s quiet, cutting taunt echoing more profoundly than any shout. Rayan Ferrum stood frozen, the confident sneer on his face curdling into a mask of pure, unadulterated fury. The crowd watched, breathless. The drab duckling hadn't just fought back; he had mocked the lion.

  Then, a sound ripped from Rayan’s throat. It wasn't a roar of rage. It was a laugh. A sharp, ugly, almost unhinged bark of sound that was devoid of all humor.

  "A waltz, cousin?" he snarled, his eyes blazing with a wild, desperate light. "An excellent idea. But it will be my lead."

  He straightened up, his earlier frustration melting away, replaced by a chilling, absolute certainty. "You think you've won because you can disarm a man holding a practice sword? You think your little wire tricks and your surprisingly fast dog make you a warrior?" He shook his head, the laugh turning into a sneer. "You are still just a bug, Lloyd. And you have just made the mistake of annoying a giant."

  Before he could even finish his word of humiliation, the practice sword flew through the air. Lloyd had tossed it, end over end, with casual, almost contemptuous disdain. It clattered to the stone floor at Rayan’s feet.

  "Pick it up," Lloyd said, his voice quiet but carrying a chilling authority that cut through the murmurs of the crowd. He stood unarmed, his hands loose at his sides.

  Rayan’s eyes blazed. The command, the sheer arrogance of it, was a physical blow. He stared at the sword on the ground, then at Lloyd’s calm, waiting expression. To refuse was to admit defeat. To obey was to accept the role of a chastened student being given a second chance by a vastly superior master. Gritting his teeth so hard his jaw ached, hate coiling in his gut, Rayan bent down and snatched the practice sword from the floor. His knuckles were white on the hilt, his entire body trembling with suppressed rage. He rose to his full height, ready to lunge, to wipe that infuriatingly calm look off Lloyd’s face.

  But as he met Lloyd’s gaze, he was met not with fear, but with a faint, pitying smile.

  "There, you see?" Lloyd said softly, his tone now laced with a kind of weary disappointment, as if explaining something to a slow child. "Even with steel back in your hand, you still look like you're about to lose. The weapon doesn't make the man, Rayan. It only reveals his desperation."

  That was it. The final, unbearable insult. The condescension, the psychoanalysis, the absolute dismissal of his strength—it was a humiliation too profound to bear.

  A strangled roar of pure, incoherent rage ripped from Rayan’s throat. With a dramatic, almost theatrical flourish, he discarded the practice sword a second time, hurling it away as if it were venomous. He would not play this game anymore. He would not be toyed with.

  His hand went not to his empty hip, but to the scabbard on his back—a scabbard holding a weapon many had dismissed as a decorative dress sword, part of his formal attire for the Summit.

  But it was no mere ornament.

  He drew another weapon. This was no blunt training tool. It was a true sword—a heavy, single-edged blade of dark, gleaming steel. Embedded in its crossguard, pulsing with a faint, angry red light, was a Spirit Stone. The air crackled as live steel was drawn in the sparring circle.

  A gasp swept through the nobles who recognized the difference. From the sidelines, Jothi shot to her feet, her voice a sharp, furious cry.

  "That's a live blade! Father, he's cheating!"

  All eyes snapped to the dais, expecting the Arch Duke to intervene, to stop this gross violation of the contest’s spirit. But Roy Ferrum did not move. He simply raised a single, commanding hand, a silent, absolute order for Jothi—and everyone else—to be still.

  His eyes, cold and calculating, remained fixed not on Rayan’s transgression, but on Lloyd’s reaction. He knew. Of course, he knew. An ornament? On his ambitious nephew? He had suspected it from the moment Rayan entered the hall. But this… this was the perfect test. A trial by fire, unscripted and real. Show me, son, the unspoken command hung in the air. Show me if this newfound power is truly enough.

  "The time for games is over!" Rayan snarled, his voice raw with hatred, emboldened by the Arch Duke's lack of intervention. He raised the live sword high, the Spirit Stone blazing with incandescent light. "Kongor! ASCEND!"

  The air ripped apart. Kongor, the massive obsidian gorilla spirit, let out a roar that was not just sound, but a concussive blast of raw power that shook the very foundations of the hall. The creature’s form began to warp, to swell. Its bestial shape contorted, growing taller, broader, shedding its fur-covered, animalistic form.

  In its place rose a new horror. A monolithic, humanoid figure easily twelve feet tall. Its body was no longer fur, but plates of what looked like rough, black iron, interlocking like crude, powerful armor. Its powerful arms and legs were thick as tree trunks, its fists the size of anvils. And atop its broad, powerful shoulders sat the same furious gorilla head, its eyes now burning with a malevolent, sentient red light. It was Kongor, but transformed—a terrifying, armored primate golem, a living siege engine of muscle and metal. This was its Ascended form.

  A wave of awe and terror washed over the crowd.

  "Ascension!" someone breathed. "He's reached the Ascension stage!"

  "By the ancestors… no wonder he beat Jothi," another nobleman muttered to his neighbor. "Her spirit is still at Manifestation! The power gap is immense!"

  The mood in the hall shifted instantly. Lloyd’s clever tricks, his surprising speed, his invisible wires… they all seemed like children’s games now, pathetic parlor tricks in the face of this overwhelming, raw power. Jothi’s victory last year, they now realized, had been against a mere 'baby' Kongor. This… this was a different beast entirely.

  "Now, cousin," Rayan hissed, a triumphant, almost mad grin twisting his face as he and his Ascended spirit began to advance in perfect, terrifying sync. "Let's see you dance."

  Lloyd’s could feel the crushing weight of Kongor’s spiritual pressure, a physical force that made the air thick and hard to breathe. He and Fang together, at their peak, might have stood a chance. But they were both drained from the earlier fights.

  Kongor charged, its iron-plated feet making the stone floor boom with each step. It swung a fist the size of a boulder, not aiming for precision, but for utter obliteration. Lloyd moved, a blur of motion, diving sideways, the wind from the passing blow tugging at his tunic. He came up, already backpedaling, as Rayan slashed downwards with his live steel, the blade whistling through the air where Lloyd’s head had been moments before.

  For a few desperate moments, he held them off. He was a shadow, a ghost, weaving between their clumsy, powerful attacks. His Void sense screamed warnings, allowing him to anticipate their moves a fraction of a second before they happened. Fang darted in and out, a flash of grey, trying to harry Kongor’s legs, but the Ascended spirit’s iron-like hide deflected its claws with contemptuous ease.

  But they were relentless. A two-pronged assault of overwhelming force. Rayan herded him, his sword slashes forcing Lloyd into predictable paths, while Kongor acted as a living battering ram, cutting off escape routes, its every stomp and swing designed to shatter, to pulverize.

  The end came swiftly. Kongor slammed a fist into the floor, not at Lloyd, but beside him. The stone cracked, a shockwave erupting outwards. Lloyd stumbled, his balance broken for a fatal instant.

  It was all they needed. Rayan was on him in a flash, the butt of his sword slamming brutally into Lloyd’s ribs. Pain, sharp and blinding, exploded in his side. He gasped, the air driven from his lungs. As he staggered, Kongor’s massive, iron-plated hand came around in a sweeping backhand. It wasn't a killing blow, just a contemptuous swat, like a giant batting away a fly.

  The impact sent Lloyd flying, tumbling bonelessly across the stone floor to land in a crumpled, broken heap. His vision swam, black spots dancing before his eyes. He heard a pained yelp as Fang, caught in the backlash of the blow, was forcibly dismissed, her spiritual form shattering.

  He was alone. Broken. The taste of blood, coppery and sharp, filled his mouth. Through a haze of pain, he saw Rayan and the monolithic form of Kongor stalking towards him, victorious, their shadows looming over him like twin death sentences.

  Rayan stood over him, panting slightly, his face flushed with triumph. “Not so smug now, are you, Cousin?” he taunted, his voice dripping with malice. “Where are your fancy wires? Where’s your clever little mutt? Looks like true power, raw Ferrum might, always wins in the end!” He raised his sword, Kongor mirroring the movement with one of its colossal, rock-like fists, preparing for the final, crushing blow. "Time to finish this. Time to show everyone who the real heir is!"

  ----

  The Grand Hall of the Ferrum Estate held its collective breath, a suffocating, palpable silence broken only by Rayan Ferrum’s ragged, triumphant panting and the low, menacing growl of his Ascended spirit, Kongor. Lloyd lay broken on the stone floor, blood staining his lips, his vision blurring, the searing pain in his side a constant, agonizing reminder of his utter, comprehensive defeat. Fang, his loyal companion, was a crumpled, smoking heap near the far wall, whimpering softly, his vibrant lightning extinguished. Despair, cold and absolute, threatened to drown Lloyd in its icy embrace. This was it. The end of his improbable tournament run, the brutal affirmation of his perceived inadequacy.

  Rayan stalked towards him, the obsidian giant Kongor a terrifying shadow at his heels, a cruel, victorious sneer twisting his handsome features. “Not so smug now, are you, Cousin?” he taunted, his voice dripping with malice. “Where are your fancy wires? Where’s your clever little mutt? Looks like true power, raw Ferrum might, always wins in the end!” He raised his practice sword, Kongor mirroring the movement with one of its colossal, rock-like fists, preparing for the final, crushing blow. “Time to finish this. Time to show everyone who the real heir is!”

  Then, something inside him snapped. Not a bone, though several felt perilously close. But something deeper. A core of stubborn, eighty-year-old, thrice-lived defiance that refused, absolutely refused, to go down like this. Not to Rayan. Not after everything. He had faced down mythological horrors, negotiated with disguised kings, started a soap empire from cow fat and existential dread. He was not going to be beaten by a glorified bully with an oversized gorilla and an ego the size of the Ferrum Duchy.

  No.

  The word was a silent, internal roar, a surge of pure, unadulterated willpower that momentarily drowned out the pain, the despair, the encroaching darkness. He didn’t have the Void power for Steel wires. He didn’t have the Spirit energy for Fang. But he had something else. Something new. Something… unexpected.

  The Black Ring Eyes.

  With a grunt of sheer, teeth-gritting effort, fueled by a desperate, almost suicidal surge of adrenaline, Lloyd didn’t try to get up. He couldn’t. But he could move. He dashed. Not physically, not with his broken body. But with his will. With his gaze. He forced his swimming, blood-flecked eyes open, and locked them, with a terrifying, preternatural intensity, directly onto Rayan Ferrum, who was just beginning his triumphant, final downward swing.

  Rayan met his gaze. And for a fraction of a second, he faltered. There was something in Lloyd’s eyes… something that wasn't there before. Something cold, ancient, utterly alien. Something that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, a primal instinct screaming at him to look away, to run.

  But it was too late.