Leia rose to her feet with deliberate slowness, one hand still pressed against her ribs where Zaeryn's hook had landed. But the wince of pain had already vanished, replaced by something far more dangerous: cold, crystalline fury.

The crowd remained frozen in shocked silence, the kind of stunned quiet that followed the impossible. He'd humiliated her. Actually hurt her. Made her knee buckle. Forced her to stumble, to show weakness in front of dozens of witnesses who would carry this story through every corridor and common room in the academy.

The anomaly wasn't just talking anymore. He was adapting.

And despite the white-hot rage burning in her chest, despite the bruise already forming beneath her training uniform, a small part of her, a part she would never, ever acknowledge, found it almost... impressive.

"Smart move, fighting on your own terms," Leia conceded, her voice dropping to a low, dangerous growl that promised retribution. "I'll give you that."

She rolled her shoulders, her crimson aura flaring brighter.

"But you're sloppy."

With that, Leia stopped playing his game. Stopped waiting for him to make the first move, stopped testing him with measured strikes.

She exploded forward.

Her speed was still purely athletic no Vitae enhancement burning through her reserves but this time it was utterly relentless, a storm given human form.

Zaeryn's eyes widened. Oh shit. She's really coming at me now.

She didn't throw a single, telegraphed power-punch. Instead, she unleashed a flurry: rapid-fire jabs aimed at his face, elbows targeting his temple, low kicks snapping at his legs like a striking serpent. Each strike wreathed in those dark flames, each movement forcing him backward across the mat.

Zaeryn tried to activate Kinetic Acceleration, to create distance, to breathe

But Leia was on him. There was no space to burst away, no room to maneuver. She'd closed the gap and now she was suffocating him with proximity and pressure.

He desperately tried to form a shield, golden light beginning to coalesce between his hands

Her kick snapped out with brutal precision, shattering the barely-formed construct before it could even solidify. The golden fragments scattered like broken glass.

She was that strong. It was becoming painfully, undeniably apparent.

"You're a one-trick anomaly!" she snarled, slipping inside his clumsy, desperate block with practiced ease.

This time, she didn't aim for his ribs.

She drove her palm crackling with those dark, life-draining flames straight into his solar plexus.

WHUMP.

The impact was devastating.

Zaeryn's world went pure, blinding white. The cold didn't just sap his strength; it stole his breath, his balance, his very sense of up and down. He doubled over, gasping for air that wouldn't come, and that was all the opening she needed.

Before he could even begin to fall, Leia spun with liquid grace, sweeping his legs out from under him with a textbook-perfect technique.

Zaeryn crashed hard to the mat, the impact rattling his teeth and driving what little air remained from his lungs.

'Damn. She's not playing anymore,' he thought distantly, the world spinning. She's taking this seriously now.'

But the pain was secondary. His new Combat Instincts, were screaming at him. Danger. Movement. Vulnerability. Get up. Get up NOW.

He ignored the ache spreading through his body, rolled with the momentum of his fall, and used his raw strength to surge back to his feet.

But he didn't charge. Didn't engage close-quarters where she clearly dominated.

Instead, he brought his hands together, fingers interlacing.

The crowd gasped collectively.

Golden light solidified between his palms into something entirely new. An intricate, glowing bow materialized, elegant and deadly, its curves perfect and impossible. An arrow of pure condensed energy appeared on the string, humming with potential. Zaeryn drew. Aimed. Fired.

The glowing projectile shot across the mat like a bolt of lightning, leaving a trail of golden light in its wake.

Leia dodged with that same superior athleticism, her body bending at an angle that shouldn't have been possible. But she didn't give him time to reload, and didn't let him establish range. She charged through the arrow's dissipating trail and leaped, her body spinning mid-air for a devastating axe kick aimed directly at his skull.

Zaeryn didn't try to block, blocking that much force would break whatever he used to stop it.

He dropped into a perfect combat roll, muscle memory from his new instincts taking over. The kick whistled over his back, close enough that he felt the heat radiating from her flames, close enough to stir his hair.

He came up from the roll already on one knee, bow re-drawn, another arrow of light already targeted at her, and her voice was eerily, unsettlingly calm despite her constant movement. This time, she didn't dodge.

She thrust her free hand forward with casual confidence, and a shield of dark, necrotic flames erupted in front of her like a wall of living shadow. The golden arrow slammed into it with tremendous force and simply... dissolved, its energy siphoned into nothingness, eaten by that hungry darkness.

Zaeryn stared at the shield, lowering his bow slightly in stunned realization. "Wait, you can do that?" Before he even finished the sentence, he shook his head, mentally kicking himself for his own stupidity. "Of course you can," he muttered. "You wield flames. You're not just throwing them around; you're controlling them. Shaping them."

It was just like his Vitae Weaving, he realized. Except hers was made of necrotic fire instead of golden light. The same principle, different expression. And somehow, that made it even more terrifying.

"Took you long enough to figure that out, anomaly," Leia smirked, letting the dark shield dissolve from her hand like smoke. "This is control," she said, her voice dripping with disdain and something like pity. "It's the difference between a real Warlady and a child playing with birthday sparklers. My Vitae does what I command. Yours just... explodes prettily and hopes for the best."

She was already moving toward him as she spoke.

But not with overwhelming force this time. This was different, precise, controlled, surgical. She closed the distance in two measured steps and unleashed a combination that spoke of years of training: a feint with her left hand that drew his guard high, then a real strike with her right, flames trailing from her knuckles like ribbons of destruction.

Zaeryn tried to dodge, his body responding to his Combat Instincts

But he moved just a fraction too slow, his reserves depleted, his body pushed beyond its limits. The strike caught him across the cheek.

The pain was instant and searing. Not just the physical impact though that was bad enough but the flames themselves. They clung to his skin for a split second before dissipating, and in that horrible moment they burned. Not just the surface, but something deeper. The cold fire eating at the edges of his Vitae itself.

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