What the hell is wrong with Calla?
No—seriously. I blinked once, twice, like maybe my eyes were glitching, like this was just another illusion layered on top of an illusion. First she kissed Seraphim Ascendant—kissed him—and now she was bouncing around like she'd just pulled an S-rank artifact out of a vending machine.
And her eyes.
Her eyes weren't her eyes anymore.
That soft, pale brown I'd known for over a year was gone. In its place was gold—sharp, bright, predatory. Not reflective like light magic. Not calm. It looked like something that burned.
"What did you do…?" I muttered under my breath.
Calla lifted her hand slowly, turning it back and forth like she was examining a new toy. Her expression wasn't smug. It wasn't cruel.
It was curious.
"This is what it feels like," she said, almost wonderstruck.
That was worse.
She looked at Seraphim again and smiled—not the shy, awkward smile she usually wore, but something crooked. Unbalanced.
"We should play," she said lightly. "If you don't want to…"
Her head tilted.
"…then you'll die here."
My stomach dropped.
That wasn't Calla talking.
I didn't even need my eyes to see it. Her mana patterns—those subtle flows I'd memorized over time—were wrong. Darker. Denser. Like ink bleeding through water. They didn't move like illusion mana anymore.
They coiled.
Seraphim hadn't moved, but I saw it then—the tension in his wings, the way his light flared defensively around his core.
That's it, I realized.
Light users feel it more.
Dark mana doesn't just oppose light—it offends it.
Then it got worse.
Fragments appeared above Calla's head—jagged, broken pieces of something halo-shaped, orbiting her slowly like shattered glass caught in zero gravity. Her golden eyes deepened, crimson bleeding into them, like molten suns cracking open.
"Oh. That's new," I whispered.
She vanished.
Not teleported—launched.
Seraphim reacted instantly.
His construct wings burned away, replaced by something real.
Six wings.
Not light shaped like wings—wings made of light. Vast, layered, impossibly bright. His halo solidified, radiant and whole, hovering above his head. His eyes turned pure silver, glowing with something ancient and absolute.
An angel.
A real one.
Their collision cracked the air.
Calla's fist slammed into one of his wings, stopped dead by divine light. He countered with another wing, sweeping toward her like a blade—but she twisted back, flipping through the air, laughing as she landed.
She actually laughed.
"If you can do that," she sang, pointing at his form, "then so can I."
"You are not a gift of God," Seraphim said, voice cold, disgusted. "Imitating this is—"
"Never say never."
The spike of mana nearly knocked me off my feet.
Black lightning ripped through the sky, tearing downward and into Calla. Her body arched midair as four wings tore free from her back—black-violet, veined with crimson, jagged at the edges like they'd been ripped out instead of grown.
Fallen.
That was the only word that fit.
Where Seraphim's form was radiant and awe-inspiring, Calla's was wrong in a way that made your skin crawl. Beautiful, yes—but like a cathedral built from bones.
She laughed again, higher this time.
"Well?" she asked, hovering easily now. "What do you think, Mr. Angel?"
Seraphim stared at her like she was blasphemy given shape.
"Fallen angel," he spat.
Around us, people had gone silent.
Juno. Rhea. Their classmates. Teachers. Pro heroes.
Everyone was staring.
Because this wasn't possible.
Calla had an illusion affinity. That was it. No secondary gift. No latent awakening. Nothing even close to this.
So what did she take?
And what did it cost?
Calla rose higher into the sky, looking down at Seraphim with open fascination.
"So this is what you see," she said softly. "When you fly."
"Yes," he answered.
The sky changed.
Weapons filled it.
Blades of pure light formed around Seraphim, radiant and precise—divine instruments waiting for judgment.
Opposite them, violet constructs gathered around Calla—spears, chains, fractured swords, all wrong, all hungry, all orbiting her like a storm waiting to break.
I swallowed.
Whatever Calla had done—whatever she'd become—
This wasn't a trial anymore.
The battle was about to begin.
* * *
Weapons screamed.
That was the only way to describe it.
Light crashed into violet, blade against blade, explosions blooming midair like shattered stars. Hundreds—no, thousands—of summoned weapons collided, shattered, reformed, and clashed again. And yet, the ones who summoned them didn't move an inch.
They just stared at each other.
Calla and Seraphim hovered in the sky like two opposing myths, testing control rather than strength. Every sword that drifted even slightly off course was corrected instantly. Every weapon that faltered was replaced. This wasn't a fight of speed.
It was dominance.
Then Calla moved first.
She spread her wings wide.
Feathers tore loose—black-violet, sharp-edged, humming with dark mana—and for a heartbeat they just hung there, beautiful and wrong.
Then they launched.
They screamed toward Seraphim like artillery, shredding through his floating swords, detonating them one by one. He reacted instantly, flaring his wings and releasing his own feathers—pure white-gold, radiant, precise.
They collided.
That was his mistake.
The moment his feathers intercepted hers, Calla's feathers detonated, bursting into a thick black fog that swallowed him whole.
"Ohhh," Calla chimed happily. "That worked."
She forged two jagged swords on the fly and dove straight into the fog, slashing downward with reckless enthusiasm.
A blast of light erupted.
The fog was torn apart as Calla was blown backward, spinning through the air before catching herself with her wings. Seraphim emerged from the light, already forming a bow in his hands—long, elegant, carved from condensed radiance.
He pulled the string back.
And then—he prayed.
In the middle of a fight.
The air trembled as his mana spiked, the bow glowing brighter and brighter until it hurt to look at. When he released, the arrow split mid-flight—five streaks of divine light screaming toward Calla.
"Whoa—!"
She reacted on instinct.
One sword deflected the first arrow. She twisted, slicing the second in half. Her wings snapped shut around her body, blocking two more—
The fifth punched through.
It tore into her left shoulder, spinning her violently through the air.
I sucked in a breath.
Before she could even scream, Seraphim was already there.
A massive golden hammer formed in his hands, swinging toward her stomach with enough force to level a building.
Calla grabbed the handle with her right hand, stepped onto the hammer mid-swing, and spun.
She kicked him square in the face.
He went flying.
And then everything exploded.
Dozens of violet weapons crashed into him midair, detonating one after another, burying him in fire and debris. Calla hovered, panting, then reached up and yanked the arrow out of her shoulder with a wince.
She looked at it like it was annoying.
"Tch. That hurt," she complained, then grinned brightly. "So? What do you think?"
She tilted her head.
"You're gonna lose now, you know? Mr. Angel's just a flying chicken."
The smoke cleared.
Seraphim stepped out of it.
His wings were scorched. His armor cracked. Blood ran down his temple.
But he was smiling.
"Before today," he said calmly, wiping the blood away and staring at it with faint disbelief, "I had never been hit. I had never seen the colour of my own blood."
Calla blinked.
"Eh?" she said. "You're human. What did you expect?"
That made him laugh.
Actually laugh.
"Perhaps," he admitted. "I underestimated all of you."
He straightened, light gathering in his palm, denser and denser until the air around it began to hum.
"So," he continued, eyes locking onto Calla, "in honor of making me bleed… I will show you something worthy of remembrance."
Calla's eyes lit up.
"Ooooh," she breathed, clapping her hands once. "Show me! Show me fast!"
That was when everything went wrong.
I felt it before I understood it.
My legs gave out.
I hit the ground hard, every ounce of strength draining out of me like someone had pulled a plug. My vision swam as Fortune's Gambit stood nearby, his dice-patterned eyes glowing—every face showing a perfect six.
"Sorry," he said lightly. "Gambler's Eye. I chose the outcome where we win."
He turned to me, eyes narrowing slightly.
"And this?" he added. "Luck Siphon."
I couldn't even curse.
He stepped past me, walking calmly toward the bomb. "I took your luck. Your stamina followed. Don't take it personally."
I laughed weakly, staring up at the sky.
"Argent won't let that happen," I muttered.
He paused, then smiled.
"She won't move," he said. "She wants to see this too."
And he was right.
Calla was hovering there, staring at Seraphim like a kid watching fireworks.
Seraphim raised his hand higher, mana condensing into a shape that made my skin crawl.
"Have you ever heard of a holy sword?" he asked her.
Calla tilted her head, wings fluttering.
"Uh-huh!" she said cheerfully. "Stories! Legends! Fake things!"
Seraphim's light flared.
"Then witness one," he said. "And prepare yourself."
Calla's grin widened.
"Okaaay!"
The sky screamed and it broke.
That wasn't metaphor. It didn't darken or shift—it split, like reality itself had hit a hard fault line and failed. Gold-white light poured through the fracture, blinding, overwhelming, holy in a way that made my chest ache.
Seraphim Ascendant rose with it.
The heavens answered him.
A sword descended.
Not summoned but bestowed.
It was enormous, longer than he was tall, forged from condensed divinity. Runes burned along its length, each one etched in golden-white flame that hummed like a choir holding a single note.
Seraphim held it with reverence.
"Holy Sword—Durandal."
The name alone made the air vibrate.
Calla froze.
Actually froze.
Her mouth fell open, wings twitching, golden eyes reflecting the blade like a child staring at fireworks for the first time.
"Woooah…" she whispered. "That's… shiny."
Seraphim turned the sword toward her.
"With this blade," he said, voice steady, absolute, "I will strike you down. Here and now."
Calla blinked.
Then smiled.
"Oh?" she said brightly. "Okay!"
She pulled in mana—too much mana. The pressure made my skin crawl as dark energy condensed in her hands, forming a massive sword of violet-black light. It was crude compared to Durandal. Heavy, unrefined and outmatched.
Seraphim looked at it once and shook his head.
"Block with everything you have," he told her.
Calla planted her feet in the air like it was solid ground and raised her sword with both hands.
"Bring it on!"
Seraphim inhaled.
"Holy Cleave."
He swung.
The world ended in front of Calla.
A wave of divine energy tore through the sky, a golden arc that erased clouds, vaporized debris, and crushed everything in its path. Calla didn't dodge.
She met it.
Her sword slammed into the wave, and the impact detonated outward. Dark thunderbolts exploded around her, electricity cracking violently as the pressure forced her back inch by inch. The air screamed. The ground below shattered further.
And through it all—
She smiled.
"This is fun!" she laughed, teeth clenched.
But I could see it.
Her sword was cracking.
Fractures spiderwebbed through the violet blade, chunks breaking off and dissolving into sparks. Calla noticed too. She clicked her tongue.
"Rude…"
Feathers ripped from her wings and wrapped around the sword, hardening, reinforcing it with raw dark mana. For a moment, it worked.
Then she coughed.
Blood sprayed from her mouth.
Her wings began to dissolve midair, black-violet fading into smoke. The fallen angel form unraveled, piece by piece, like it had never been meant to exist in the first place.
Still—
She didn't stop smiling.
"Heeey," she muttered, blood dripping from her lips. "That's not fair…"
With a final scream of effort, Calla twisted the blade—not against the wave, but with it—redirecting the divine energy upward.
The sky exploded.
Golden light detonated high above us, a silent sun blooming and then collapsing in on itself. The pressure vanished and Calla fell.
Her wings were gone. Her body reverted mid-drop, clothes torn, skin scorched. Only her eyes remained wrong—still glowing faintly gold.
She hit her knees hard.
"Damn it," she hissed, then laughed weakly. "Good game…"
And collapsed.
Silence.
Pure, absolute silence.
Then the announcer's voice cracked through the square, shaking, unsteady.
"—V-Voltstrike's team is the winner!"
A pause.
"They… they won two minutes ago."
No one had noticed.
Then the crowd erupted.
Cheers. Screams. Applause that shook the city. Medics flooded in, stretchers everywhere, sirens wailing. Heroes. Villains. Students. Teachers. Everyone bleeding, smiling, shaking.
This fight would be remembered.
And Calla—Argent—had just rewritten her position in the academy's hierarchy without saying a word.
When the Hero Festival ended, the questions would be relentless.
But that was tomorrow's problem.
As the medics reached me, exhaustion finally won.
I closed my eyes, the image of a broken sky and a smiling monster burned into my mind—and I let myself fall asleep.