I dropped the glass dagger, shoved his chest with both palms, and vaulted straight through his open second-story casement. My burlap habit billowed like a beige parachute before snagging on an ornamental gutter. I tore myself free, tumbled eight feet into a hedge of razor-thistle, and sprinted through the courtyard, screaming at the gargoyles. "Get thee behind me, foul tempter!" I bellowed, my voice echoing off the limestone minarets. "I am going to Mount Vepris! I am taking the vows of the Silent Hermitage! No men! No mirrors! Only turnips and frostbite!" "Tazia, wait! What about the Mid-Term Gala punch?" Fenzo popped out from behind an obelisk, clutching an armful of stolen almond tarts. "Why are your sleeves covered in hedge clippings? Did he bite you?" "He said things, Fenzo. Corrosive, unnatural things." I seized his collar, hauling him along as my boots clattered over the cobblestones. "He told me he would rather lose to me than beat anyone else. Do you grasp the spiritual depravity of that statement? He wants to hollow out my soul and wear it as an evening cape. Book the carriage. I am joining the mountaintop monks before dawn." Fenzo blinked, chewing vigorously. "Mount Vepris? The place where they eat gray moss and communicate via solemn grunts? Tazia, you throw tantrums if your morning tea isn't brewed with lavender. You won't survive forty-eight hours without a mirror to admire your cheekbones." "I have slain my vanity! I am a stone!" "Right. Naturally." Fenzo’s brow twitched. A deeply untrustworthy grin slowly split his round face. "Well, if you're truly bound for the heights of ascetic grace, you need a cleansing ritual first. An authentic meditation seminar. Deep breathing. Pure silence. Just down in the Undercroft." I hesitated. "Are there men with chiseled faces reciting poetry?" "Zero poetry. Strict code of discipline. Absolute isolation from academic politics." Two hours later, the heavy iron portcullis slammed shut behind my spine, locking us into a sunken amphitheater that smelled exclusively of sulfur, sweat, and cheap gin. "Fenzo," I whispered through gritted teeth, staring at the five hundred drunken spectators screaming from the balconies above. "Why is the meditation mat surrounded by barbed mesh?" "Welcome," Fenzo announced through a brass megaphone he produced from his robes, "to the Shard Pit! Double-elimination, tag-team brawling! Winner takes forty gold crowns and a cask of imported cider!" "You unmitigated sewer rat!" "You needed an intervention!" Fenzo dodged my swinging fist. "You're losing your mind over Volterra, and nothing cures an identity crisis like thirty minutes of therapeutic, bare-knuckle spell-slinging! Now put up your hands, because those two ogres across the sand want our kneecaps!" Across the pulverized gravel stalked the Grin-Twins: seven feet tall apiece, clad in boiled leather, their knuckles wrapped in jagged pieces of pulverized mirror-glass that crackled with toxic green ether. "Fresh meat," the left one grunted, spitting a glob of black bile onto the sand. "And one of 'em dressed as a potato sack." My blood surged with the instinct to weave a blinding flash-burst, duplicate myself thirty times, and kick them both into the ceiling rafters. The magic flared in my fingertips, begging for release. Then I remembered the Crimson Eclipse. I remembered the binding dagger. If I tapped into my core now, my light signature would flare across the city like a beacon. Zorano would know. The universe would pull that prophecy one step closer to my ribcage. I sank to my knees, squeezed my eyes shut, and folded my hands in pious supplication. "Oh, Blessed Radiance of the Chaste Sky," I chanted loudly over the roar of the mob. "Smite these heathen louts with the quiet virtue of peaceful resolution!" "What are you doing?!" Fenzo shrieked, ducking under a flying sledgehammer of viridian light that gouged a crater into the dirt. "Cast something, Moranza! Blinding hex! Refraction shield! Anything!" "I offer only patience and holy forbearance!" I shouted back, shuffling sideways on my knees to avoid a rain of razor-sharp pebbles. A stray shockwave clipped my shoulder, spinning me across the gravel. My burlap tore. My knuckles scraped raw against the grit. Humiliation burned behind my teeth, but I locked down my aura with iron will. "Strike the other cheek, you overgrown boil! I feel no wrath! Only divine pity!" "She's gone completely mad," the right twin growled, stomping toward me. He gathered an orb of pressurized, murky emerald radiance between his palms, drawing back to obliterate my skull into fine paste. "Sleep well, sister." I clamped my jaw shut. My instincts screamed to blast his jaw into orbit, but I refused to lose the bet I had made with the universe. I would die righteous before I gave Zorano the satisfaction of seeing me crack. The orb descended. A bolt of incandescent, searing silver lanced from the vaulted rafters, striking the floor with the force of an artillery shell. The concussion blew the Grin-Twins thirty feet backward, slamming them into the iron grates until the metal warped. Dust billowed. The crowd's jeers sputtered out, choked off by the sheer magnitude of power vibrating through the arena. A solitary figure stood in the crater, boots sinking into white-hot glass where the gravel had melted. His velvet coat was slung over one arm, his silk shirt unbuttoned at the throat, his posture loose yet radiating lethal intent. He didn't look at the crowd. He didn't look at the shattered brutes groaning in the debris. Zorano Volterra looked only at me, sitting battered on the floor in my tattered burlap. His chin set rigid, his gaze carrying a fury so pure it made the underground torches flicker out. "You," he said softly. The sound carried effortlessly across the silent colosseum. "You run from my quarters, refuse my words, and drag yourself into a cesspool just to let gutter-scum throw stones at you?" "I was conducting... a pilgrimage!" I wheezed, struggling to stand. "A test of faith! Which you have thoroughly ruined with your uninvited, arrogant violence!" The remaining twin stumbled out of the rubble, roaring in blind fury as he swung a jagged club of solidified emerald light toward Zorano's blind spot. Zorano didn't even turn his head. With a flick of his left wrist, a crescent of blinding, pristine diamond radiance snapped outward. It sheared through the emerald club like parchment, severed the leather straps of the man's armor, and flung the giant flat against the arena wall, pinning him there beneath three humming spears of hard light. "Stay down," Zorano murmured without glancing back. He stepped forward, closing the distance between us until the heat of his mana washed over my scraped skin. He reached out, his bare thumb brushing against a speck of grit on my cheekbone. The callused thumb rasped over my collarbone, setting off sparks under my ribs. "You want to play the martyr, Tazia?" His voice sank, rough with grating friction. "You want to pretend you're a harmless dove who doesn't hunger to burn this entire city to ash with your brilliance? Fine. Play it. But nobody touches you while you do. Not them. Not anyone." "I don't need your protection, Volterra!" I hissed, swatting at his wrist. My face felt hotter than the molten sand. "I was winning! By moral superiority!" "You were three seconds from having your skull flattened, you stubborn, impossible lunatic." "It would have been a spiritually victorious death!" Fenzo raised a hand from behind a barricade. "For the record, I think Volterra made a compelling counterpoint—" "Quiet, Fenzo!" Before Zorano could reply, the iron gates above the arena groaned. The ambient glow in the colosseum shifted, bleeding from volatile combat-light into a severe, oppressive azure. A heavy wooden staff struck the top stair, its rhythm slow, deliberate, and terrifyingly familiar. The shadows along the balcony parted, revealing the long silver beard, sharp spectacles, and regal sapphire robes of Dean Vanech Val-Grevon, headmaster of the Prism-Keep, staring down into the illegal blood-pit at his two highest-ranking prodigies.

Fenzo's Ultimate Trap