Aster blocks, counters, ducks. Mud sprays, Faith hisses, staff cracks against metal.

  The exchange should stay playful, technical. But it doesn’t.

  Because just as Aster finds his rhythm, staff up, tether engaged—

  A ridge of stone erupts under Rohan’s foot, throwing him off balance. His punch goes wide, just enough for Aster’s counter to land by pure reaction, staff slamming across Rohan’s ribs with a sickening crack.

  The noise that follows isn’t a cheer. It’s a hush. The kind of silence people make when something real happens by accident.

  Rohan hits the dirt, hard. He rolls, comes up on one knee, gasping, one hand gripping his side.

  The audience gasps.

  Aster turns his head toward the edge of the pit.

  Varric.

  Palm casually touching the ground, eyes alight with soft, malicious satisfaction.

  “Whoops,” he says, voice honeyed. “Stray spell. Earth’s unpredictable.”

  Rohan freezes mid-step. Confusion flickers across his face, followed quickly by humiliation that seems to cut deeper than the pain.

  Aster takes a step forward, guilt and adrenaline twisting in his gut. “That wasn’t—”

  “Don’t,” Rohan spits. “Don’t you dare.”

  His voice is ragged. His eyes burn. And when he looks up, Aster sees something he hasn’t before: the weight of years spent fighting a world that sneers first and asks questions later.

  It clicks, somewhere deep and ugly.

  This isn’t about him.

  Rohan doesn’t hate Aster. He hates what Aster represents.

  And right now, Aster looks exactly like every Legacy who ever makes his life harder.

  The crowd whispers. Varric chuckles under his breath, satisfaction radiating off him like heat from an open kiln.

  Aster feels the shift. Rohan’s hesitation hardens back into anger, not at Varric, but at him. Because of course that’s how it looks. The pampered Legacy getting “help” from his own kind.

  Aster’s stomach sinks. “Hey—”

  Rohan lunges.

  The gauntlets blaze. The first punch cracks through the air like a thunderclap. Aster brings up his staff just in time, the impact numbing his arm to the elbow. The second strike follows immediately, tighter, closer, brutal in its efficiency.

  He barely ducks under it, the edge of the blow slicing air where his jaw is a second before.

  “Stop—damn it, listen!” Aster hisses, backpedaling, but Rohan is beyond reason now.

  He moves like someone fighting ghosts. Fast, furious, precise in all the wrong ways. His strikes aren’t about winning anymore; they’re about not being humiliated again.

  Aster blocks another flurry, teeth gritted. The world narrows to motion, breath, pain.

  Aster moves with him, keeping distance, keeping control. The fight tightens, the world shrinking to the weight of steps and the rhythm of breath. He feels his focus sink inward, every heartbeat syncing to the next tether, every dodge automatic.

  Mud sprays. The crowd murmurs.

  They collide again. Staff versus fist. Will versus muscle.

  Suddenly Aster feels a sharp pull beneath his feet. The ground ripples—another Earth interference. Varric.

  The bastard is nudging the terrain again, subtle but enough to drag Rohan half a step sideways mid-swing, Rohan’s hook missing him by inches.

  But Rohan has started anticipating Varric’s interference, adjusting his posture as he unleashes a brutal uppercut.

  Pain flares white. Aster’s head snaps back. For a moment, the world vanishes into ringing.

  He hits the mud hard, rolls, spits iron and rain.

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  Varric’s laughter comes light, musical. “Your parents must be so proud. Losing against a Wanderer even with help— a Void-Cursed stays trash even if sealed away.”

  Aster lies there a heartbeat too long. The temptation to stay down whispers like an old friend. Let them laugh. Let them get it over with.

  Then he sees Rohan. Not gloating. Just breathing hard, chest heaving, eyes wild. Like someone who doesn’t want to win this way either.

  Aster’s jaw tightens.

  He pushes himself up, his tethers flickering but holding.

  The exchange that follows isn’t clean.

  It isn’t even skillful.

  It’s the kind of fight that peels back whatever polish Galamad tries to layer on its students—raw, ugly, personal.

  Rohan comes in again, swinging like a man who’s stopped caring about precision. The gauntlets howl with Faith as each strike leaves bright shock trails through the air.

  Aster parries the first, barely dodges the second, but the third catches him in the ribs, driving the breath out of him in a sharp, wet grunt.

  He stumbles, staff scraping through mud. The sound is small, but it sends a rush of heat to his face—embarrassment, not pain.

  He’s been here before. The edge of the pit, half-winded, surrounded by laughter. Different world, same script.

  He straightens, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Alright,” he mutters. “You want to dance, let’s dance.”

  He spins the staff, Faith tether lashing into place behind him, one flicker, one breath, and he bursts forward.

  The air cracks.

  Mud explodes beneath his feet.

  He appears at Rohan’s flank, staff sweeping in a wide arc. It isn’t a killing blow, not even a good one, but it connects hard enough to jolt Rohan’s balance.

  They fall into rhythm after that, two broken gears grinding their way into function.

  Rohan’s movements are jagged, improvised, like a boxer fighting through exhaustion. Aster’s are erratic but fueled by raw instinct, his Will Tethers snapping him between strikes like recoil.

  Each time Aster lands a hit, he winces more than Rohan does.

  Each time Rohan counters, his strikes carry something too heavy to be just anger.

  When Aster’s staff smashes into Rohan’s shoulder, he feels the bone complain. He spins out, pain flaring—and still hears it, the chuckle.

  Varric’s.

  Aster doesn’t have to look. He can feel the tremor beneath his boots, the tiny shifts in the soil as Varric’s Earth Aether continues to toy with the battlefield. Little humiliations for Rohan disguised as “accidents.”

  The bastard is shaping the ground again—small ridges, soft spots, enough to throw off footing, ruin angles.

  Rohan slips again mid-lunge, crashing to one knee. He growls, tries to rise, and a second bump of earth clips his other leg out from under him.

  He hits face-first into the mud, the wet slap echoing far louder than it should.

  Rohan stays there for a moment too long.

  Varric snickers as he shrugs. “Just keeping the natural order intact.” Tone light, casual, as if he is explaining the rules of a board game rather than the humiliation of a boy sprawled in the mud.

  Rohan pushes himself upright, shaking mud from his hair, blood running from a split lip, but his gaze never leaves Aster.

  He limps slightly, favoring one foot, but his eyes have gone hard—no fear left, only muscle memory and instinct. This fight isn’t over, not by a long shot.

  The expression on Rohan’s face—Aster has seen it before.

  On himself.

  Back on the Material Plane, when every authority, every cop, every smirking adult with power decides the rules are decorative.

  Aster’s hand hangs midair for a beat, Faith still faintly glowing along his palm. Then he lowers it slowly, the motion deliberate.

  “I get it,” he says quietly. “You think I’m like them.”

  Rohan’s laugh is hoarse. “I don’t think. I know.”

  The words land harder than any strike.

  Aster looks down at him—the mud, the trembling shoulders, the look of someone who has been losing long before this fight starts.

  He understands, suddenly, that nothing he says will fix it. Words are just wind to someone who has only ever been beaten by people who talk about fairness.

  So he doesn’t argue.

  He just takes a step back, squares his stance, and lifts the staff again.

  “Fine,” he says. “Then I’ll show you the difference.”

  Rohan meets his gaze—defiance and disbelief flashing in the same instant—and lunges.

  His strikes feel heavier now. Aster’s staff whistles arcs through the air, Rohan’s fists answering in staccato bursts. The rhythm is insane, both moving on instinct alone. Aster stops thinking about who is watching, about what this means, about how easily Varric could twist it all. It’s just motion, survival, the same old pattern carved into muscle from every fight he has ever been too tired to finish.

  It’s no longer student versus student. It’s something else.

  A conversation, written in pain and precision.

  He lets the next hit come close, twists with it, redirects the force before opening the Faith valve and allowing the power to course through the Scripture.

  He counters with a clean downward strike.

  The staff comes down like a hammer, the shockwave tearing the mud apart, spraying arcs of wet dirt into the air. The impact rattles bones. Rohan blocks with both gauntlets, Faith flaring crimson to counter. The clash erupts in steam, gold and red colliding, boiling the rain itself.

  For a moment, everything freezes in that locked exchange—power feeding into power, two opposing prayers screaming through the medium of mud and muscle.

  Then it breaks.

  The backlash flings them apart. Aster slides backward, boots carving twin furrows. Rohan stumbles, one gauntlet cracked along the seam.

  The crowd begins to murmur again, the tone shifting. Some whisper that Aster is “finally taking it seriously.” Others mutter about Rohan “getting out of line.”

  And through it all, Varric watches, bored, almost disappointed. Like a man who has seen his play start to drag.

  Aster catches the next blow on his staff. The impact shakes the wood, sends pain ricocheting through his arms, but before he can counter, another tremor hits.

  The ground collapses just slightly, enough to make Rohan’s follow-up punch go wide, the recoil slamming him sideways into a stone pillar with a hollow crack.

  He goes down hard, rolling into the mud again, Faith flickering out.

  The silence is suffocating.

  Even Varric’s smirk falters for a heartbeat. He hadn’t meant to hit that hard.

  He meant to humiliate, not hurt.

  Rohan groans, clutching his shoulder.

  Aster stands frozen. His chest burns. The staff trembles in his grip. Every instinct screams at him: this isn’t a duel anymore. It’s a staged beating.

  Do something.

  The instructor still hasn’t come back. The crowd waits for a reaction like wolves watching meat twitch.

  And Rohan, through the pain, is still trying to stand.

  Aster doesn’t think. Doesn’t plan.

  He just moves.