"Haah... haah..."

  Orion's chest heaved, each breath scraping through his throat like broken glass. His left eye was useless—completely useless—the entire side of his face already swelling from the hit he'd taken. A solid punch, and the boy had looked smug doing it too, which somehow made it worse.

  Orion could taste copper. Blood, probably from where he'd bitten his tongue when his head snapped back. His legs trembled beneath him, muscles screaming protest as he tried to stay upright. Every part of him hurt. His ribs ached from an earlier spell, his knuckles were split open, and his shoulder felt like someone had driven a spike through it.

  Part of him—a very reasonable, very sensible part—wondered why he'd gotten himself into this mess in the first place.

  The answer came immediately: because that bastard had insulted Master Sael.

  Actually, no, not just insulted. He mocked him. Called him a "washed-up relic playing at relevance" and suggested that anyone studying under him was wasting their time learning "outdated tricks from a man who peaked centuries ago."

  Orion couldn't just stand there and do nothing.

  The master-apprentice relationship wasn't some casual arrangement. It was sacred. Binding in ways that went beyond contracts or formalities. When someone took you as their apprentice, they were saying you were worth their time, their knowledge, their legacy. They were investing pieces of themselves into your future.

  And when you accepted that apprenticeship, you became their successor. Their continuation. You carried their name forward, represented their teachings, embodied their reputation.

  Orion was learning from Sael the Great. The Archmage. The man who'd shaped modern magic, and created or had been involved in half the spells people used daily. He was the hero who'd saved the world they were now all leaving so peacefully in, dammit.

  That wasn't just an honor, it was a responsibility.

  So when some arrogant prick with more ego than sense had decided to run his mouth, Orion had done what any proper apprentice would do.

  He'd challenged him to settle it.

  "Listen," the boy said, brushing dust off his academy robes with exaggerated casualness. "Just say you lost and give me the staff. That's what we agreed."

  Orion's good eye focused on him. The boy was tall, probably fifth year, and carried himself like someone who'd never faced real consequences for anything. His dark hair was still perfectly styled despite the fight. His uniform was barely rumpled.

  He looked fresh and untroubled, like this had been a mild exercise rather than a proper duel.

  "I didn't lose," Orion said.

  His voice came out rougher than intended, but steady enough. The boy's eyebrow arched. "You're on your knees."

  "I'm getting up."

  And he did. Slowly, using Erwyn to lever himself upright because his legs weren't quite cooperating on their own. His vision swam—the working eye, not the useless one—and for a moment everything tilted sideways. He locked his knees, forced himself straight, and stared at the boy who'd just spent the last ten minutes beating him around the courtyard.

  Around them, the circle of students pressed closer.

  They'd formed naturally when the fight started, drawn by the commotion and the promise of drama. Now there were maybe forty of them, forming a rough arena in the academy's east courtyard. Some looked excited. Others concerned. Most wore expressions caught somewhere between the two.

  Orion's friends were in that crowd.

  Marcus stood near the front, arms crossed, face locked in that carefully neutral expression he always wore when he was actually deeply worried but didn't want to show it. His jaw was tight, though. That gave him away.

  Beside him, Sylvie had both hands pressed to her mouth, green eyes wide. She'd tried to talk Orion out of this before it started. Tried very hard. He'd ignored her, which probably hadn't helped their friendship, but he'd already committed by then.

  Theren was further back, leaning against the courtyard wall, affecting an air of disinterest that might have been convincing if his knuckles weren't white where his hands gripped his arms.

  They were all worried and they were probably right to be.

  The tall boy sighed, the sound heavy with affected disappointment. "You know, I actually respected you for taking the challenge. Showed some spine." He tilted his head. "But this? This is just pathetic. You can barely stand!"

  "Don't need to stand to win."

  "You need to be conscious, though." The boy's hand came up, crackling with gathered mana. "Last chance. Concede, hand over the staff, and we can all go about our day. Keep this up, and I'll put you down hard enough that you'll be visiting the healers for the next week."

  Orion's grip tightened on Erwyn.

  The staff hummed faintly, responding to his determination if not his actual magical competence. He could feel it, that familiar resonance, the connection between wielder and staff, the sense that the weapon understood what he needed even when he didn't quite know himself.

  "No," Orion said simply.

  The crowd stirred. Whispers rippled through the circle of students, some approving, others incredulous.

  The tall boy's expression hardened. "Your funeral."

  He moved.

  Fast—faster than Orion's battered reflexes could track. The spell discharged mid-stride, a bolt of compressed force that screamed across the distance between them.

  Orion barely got Erwyn up in time.

  The staff's defensive enchantments flared on their own, Erwyn protecting him without his input, which was something at least. She didn't hate him enough to let him die. Just enough to refuse letting him cast. A barrier of shimmering light bloomed into existence just before the spell connected and the impact still drove him backward, heels scraping against stone, arms screaming from the transferred force.

  But he didn't fall.

  The tall boy frowned, clearly not expecting the block. He came in close this time, abandoning magic for physical enhancement. His fist blurred toward Orion's midsection, trailing ribbons of augmentation magic.

  Orion twisted, barely, and the punch grazed his ribs instead of caving them in.

  He swung Erwyn in a wild arc, no technique, just desperate momentum. The staff caught the boy across the shoulder, hard enough to stagger him sideways, but sadly not hard enough to matter.

  The boy recovered instantly, his hand snapping up with gathered mana. "Enough of this."

  A blast of wind erupted from his palm, catching Orion square in the chest and launching him backward through the air.

  The crowd gasped.

  Orion hit the ground hard, rolling across the courtyard stones. His back slammed into the base of a pillar, driving the air from his lungs. Stars burst across his remaining vision. Erwyn clattered from his grip, rolling several feet away.

  "That's it!" Sylvie's voice cut through the stunned silence. "I'm getting a professor, this has gone too far!"

  "Sylvie, wait—" someone started, but she was already turning.

  Marcus and Theren moved almost in unison, pushing through the front of the crowd and stepping between Orion and his opponent.

  "Back off," Marcus said, his voice flat and hard. "It's done."

  Theren planted himself beside Marcus, arms crossed. "He's had enough. Fight's over."

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  The tall boy's expression twisted with irritation. "The fight's over when he concedes or when he can't get up. Those are the rules."

  "The rules don't include killing someone," Marcus shot back.

  The courtyard went quiet.

  "It's over," the tall boy said, his gaze shifting past Marcus and Theren to where Orion lay crumpled against the pillar. "Stay down."

  Orion's fingers clawed against the ground, searching. Found nothing but stone and dust.

  Erwyn was too far. His body wouldn't move right. Everything hurt.

  Through the gap between his friends' legs, he could see the tall boy standing there, waiting.

  "I said stay down."

  Orion's jaw clenched.

  His hand stretched toward where Erwyn had fallen, and the staff moved.

  It was not much. Just a slight roll, a small shift, like she had decided on her own to close the distance. Orion's fingers wrapped around the wood.

  "You've got to be kidding me," the tall boy muttered.

  Marcus glanced back, his expression full of exasperation. "Orion, don't—"

  But Orion was already using the staff to drag himself upright, inch by agonizing inch, until he was kneeling. Then standing. Swaying behind his friends, but standing.

  Blood dripped from his split lip onto the courtyard stones.

  "I didn't lose," he repeated.

  "You've got to be kidding me," the tall boy muttered.

  He clearly hesitated. Just for a moment, but it was there; a flicker of uncertainty crossing his face as he looked at Orion standing there, battered and bleeding but somehow still upright. His eyes moved from Orion to Marcus and Theren, then to the crowd, as if suddenly aware of how this must look to everyone watching.

  Orion's thoughts, meanwhile, were clearing in a way that felt almost unnatural given how badly he'd just been thrown around. The fog of adrenaline and pain was lifting, replaced by something sharper, and with that clarity came the creeping realization of just how monumentally stupid this entire situation was.

  He shouldn't have agreed to any of this.

  The whole thing had started so innocuously too. He'd come to the academy after classes let out, excited to find his friends and tell them about his adventure in Ashams. About the dragon king, and about how he'd finally managed to cast a spell for the first time in his life. He'd been practically vibrating with the need to share it, and have someone other than Ilsa understand what that moment had meant after years of failure.

  Marcus, Sylvie, and Theren had been in the courtyard, and Orion had launched into the story immediately, describing the tension of the descent, the moment of crisis, the way the magic had finally clicked into place. His friends had been genuinely happy for him, asking questions, congratulating him, and for a few minutes everything had been perfect.

  Then this boy had appeared. Orion didn't even know his name, he realized with a sort of distant absurdity. The boy had just... inserted himself into their conversation, all casual friendliness at first, asking about Orion's studies, expressing interest in hearing about someone learning directly from the Archmage. It had seemed polite enough, if a bit forward.

  But then the questions had started shifting. Little comments, carefully phrased observations that had grown progressively more pointed. Remarks about how unusual it was for someone so young to apprentice directly rather than going through proper academy training. Suggestions that perhaps traditional education had more merit than people gave it credit for. Questions about what exactly Master Sael was teaching him, delivered with just enough skepticism to sting.

  Orion had tried to brush it off at first. Sylvie had actually stepped in at one point, trying to change the subject, but the boy had been persistent, and each new comment had dug a little deeper under Orion's skin until finally he'd said it: that thing about Master Sael being a "washed-up relic playing at relevance," about his teachings being outdated and about how anyone studying under him was wasting their time.

  And Orion, hot-headed idiot that he was, had risen to the bait immediately.

  The challenge had come out of his mouth before he'd thought it through, and the boy had accepted with a smile that in retrospect had been far too eager. Then had come the terms: a formal duel, with stakes. The boy had suggested it almost casually. If Orion won, the boy would apologize publicly to Master Sael. If Orion lost, he'd hand over Erwyn.

  Orion should have refused right there, told the boy to go to hell and walked away. Erwyn wasn't his to bet. She was a gift from Master Sael, a staff with her own personality and will, so the idea of handing her over to some stranger because he'd lost his temper was insane.

  But he'd been angry, and he'd been proud. He'd wanted to prove something to the boy, and to his friends, and to himself. So he'd agreed, and now here he was, barely able to stand, having proven nothing except that his opponent was right about him being an idiot.

  The strange thing was that he could feel Erwyn's opinion on the matter quite clearly.

  It wasn't like hearing words exactly, more like sensing emotions and intentions that somehow translated into something close to language in his mind. He'd heard that staves had personalities, everyone knew that, they were children of the World Tree after all, fragments of a being that had been ancient and sapient beyond human understanding. But this was the first time Erwyn had actually communicated with him in any way that felt like conversation.

  And she was, in no uncertain terms, calling him an idiot.

  There was a warmth spreading through his body, starting from where his hands gripped her wood and radiating outward through his limbs. Mana, he realized, her mana, flowing into him without his direction and working to knit together the worst of his injuries. Not healing him completely—that would take more power than she was willing to spend apparently—but enough to take the edge off and keep him standing when by all rights he should be unconscious.

  Along with that warmth came a very distinct sense of her feelings about this whole situation. Indignation, primarily. How dare he bet her away like she was some object to be traded. Did he have any idea how insulting that was? She'd saved his life multiple times today, had protected him even when he was too stupid to protect himself, and this was how he repaid her? By wagering her to some pompous academy student who probably couldn't even appreciate what she was?

  There was concern there too, underneath the anger, a worry for him that felt almost maternal in its exasperation. She was taking care of him because that's what she did, The Gentle Root, but she wanted him to know in no uncertain terms that he was being phenomenally stupid and she was not happy about it.

  Orion would have laughed if his ribs didn't hurt so much.

  The tall boy's expression hardened again, the moment of hesitation passing. "Move aside," he said to Marcus and Theren, his voice taking on an edge of command. "This is between me and him. You're interfering with an agreed-upon duel."

  Marcus didn't budge. "We're not interfering with anything. We're stopping you from sending our friend to the healers."

  "The terms were clear—"

  "What terms?" Theren cut in, his casual posture straightening slightly. "Do you have some official paper? Something binding? Signed by witnesses and registered with the academy?" He gestured vaguely at the crowd. "Because from where I'm standing, this just looks like a stupid fight that got out of hand."

  The boy's jaw tightened. "We both agreed. Everyone here heard it."

  "Sure," Theren said with a shrug that was just a touch too dismissive. "But that doesn't make it binding. And honestly, we don't know you man, and we don't want trouble, so why don't you just go? Call it a draw, walk away, everyone goes home without anyone needing heavy healing magic. That stuff's expensive, you know?"

  "A draw?" The boy's voice rose slightly, genuine outrage creeping in now. "He can barely stand! He lost, and according to our agreement, that staff is mine."

  Sylvie had returned, slightly out of breath but empty-handed; apparently she hadn't found a professor yet, which wasn't surprising, since classes ended a while ago. She positioned herself next to Marcus, adding to the barrier between Orion and his opponent. "The staff isn't his to give away in the first place. It was a gift from his master. You really think an Archmage's property is something that can be wagered in a courtyard scuffle?"

  That landed, Orion could see it. The boy's expression flickered with uncertainty, but it was quickly buried under renewed determination. His hand came up again, mana gathering around his fingers in a way that made the air itself seem to thicken.

  "I'm not asking you to move again," he said quietly, dangerously. "Step aside, or I'll move you myself."

  The crowd had gone very still. Some of the students were backing away now, sensing that this was escalating beyond entertainment into something genuinely dangerous.

  Marcus's hand went to his side, where Orion knew he kept a few prepared artifacts in his belt pouch. Theren's posture shifted into something more combat-oriented. Sylvie's fingers twitched, and Orion could see the faint shimmer of defensive magic beginning to form around her.

  This was about to get very bad very quickly.

  And now, with his head clearer—unnaturally clear, actually, and he suspected that was Erwyn's doing somehow—Orion could see something he'd missed before in the heat of the fight.

  The boy's mana signature was wrong.

  Not wrong exactly, but excessive in a way that didn't make sense. Orion had fought alongside enough academy students during practice sessions to know roughly what their power levels should feel like. Even fifth or sixth years, even talented ones, had a certain... limit to their presence. Their mana felt contained, still developing, like a candle flame compared to someone like a professor who felt like standing near a bonfire.

  This boy felt like a bonfire too.

  His signature thrummed in the air around him with an intensity that made Orion's instincts scream warnings. It was the kind of presence you'd expect from someone much older, much more experienced, someone who'd spent decades building their magical capacity and refining their control. The levels didn't match up at all; this boy couldn't be more than twenty-one or two, but his mana felt like it belonged to someone pushing level two hundred or higher.

  Something was enhancing him, amplifying his power beyond what it should be. Orion didn't know what—an artifact maybe, or some kind of augmentation magic—but whatever it was, it meant his friends were about to walk into a fight they couldn't win.

  "Don't," Orion managed to rasp out, trying to step forward, but his legs weren't cooperating properly yet despite Erwyn's healing. "He's too—"

  But Marcus had already moved, releasing an enchanted chain from his pouch. Theren's hands came up, magic crackling between his fingers. Sylvie's shield solidified into visibility, a dome of shimmering force that encompassed all three of them.

  The boy's expression shifted. His gathered mana compressed, intensified, became something that made the air itself seem to distort around his hand. The crowd scattered, students running for cover as Orion felt Erwyn surge in his grip, her own power building in response to the threat.

  Everything happened at once.

  Marcus released his chain. Theren launched his attack. The boy's compressed mana exploded outward in a wave of force. Sylvie's shield flared bright enough to hurt Orion's working eye.

  And then... gently, almost tenderly, everything stopped.

  Orion felt himself lifted off his feet, moved backward by an invisible force that held him with absolute certainty but no harshness at all. Marcus, Theren, and Sylvie were similarly displaced, set down several feet back from where they'd been standing. The boy's spell simply... dissipated, the gathered mana scattering into nothing like smoke in wind. Every active magic in the courtyard—shields, attacks, enhancements—all of it cancelled simultaneously, snuffed out as easily as someone pinching out candle flames.

  The silence that followed was profound.

  Orion's heart hammered in his chest as he tried to understand what had just happened. Then he heard it; a voice, calm and measured, with just a hint of dry amusement underlying the words.

  "I think that is quite enough, children."