The sparring ring at the Temple of Phobos was an assault on every sense Asterion had honed.
After fifteen years defined by the Grieving Coast's bruised, greenish-grey skies and the sour, metallic taste of its Tainted Aether, the Port of Cyrene was a physical shock. The sun here was not a pale, distant disc; it was a brilliant, almost violent, gold, shining down from a sky of piercing, cloudless blue. The air didn't smell of rot, ichor, and the oily black sea; it was a rich, overwhelming wave of new spices—saffron, cardamom, and a dozen others his 33-year-old mind couldn't immediately identify. It was mixed with floral perfumes from people in bright silks, the rich scent of roasting meats, and the clean, sharp brine of a healthy, thriving ocean.
Here, the sounds were not the screams of the Tainted or the groan of fortress gates, but the cheerful, chaotic, and loud chatter of a thriving populace. The people here were soft, bright, and emotionally expressive, their concerns—the price of fish, a local romance, a bet on the next spar—so trivial they felt alien.
And in the center of it all was Cassian, the golden-haired, 20-year-old prodigy of this bright, soft world. He was the living embodiment of Cyrene: charismatic, celebrated, flawless, and, in Asterion's analytical opinion, completely untested by genuine malice. He stood in a circle of pristine white sand, a stark contrast to the grim, blood-and-sweat-soaked packed earth of the training yards at Fortitude's End.
Elian, ever the social strategist, had just finished his masterful verbal trap. He had painted them as two humble "children" from the Grieving Coast, mere Holy Knights who wished to be "taught a lesson" by Cyrene's finest. Cassian, his easy charisma faltering for the first time, was boxed in. To refuse was to be a coward, afraid of two boys. To accept and fight hard was to be a bully.
Cassian looked from Elian's sharp, knowing smile to Asterion's silent, ruby-eyed stare. His pride won out.
"Very well, 'Holy Knights'," Cassian said, his voice laced with patronizing humor as he motioned to the dueling circle. "Let us see what grim lessons the Coast has to teach. Which of you will be first?"
Asterion stepped forward without hesitation. This was a data-gathering exercise. Elian, who had just spent his social energy, stepped back to the edge of the ring, his expression one of perfect, analytical calm. He leaned against a marble pillar, looking for all the world like a bored spectator.
Asterion entered the ring, his soot-grey Grieving-Coast armor a stark, grim statement against the temple's white marble and gold leaf. The functional, scarred steel, designed to turn a Tainted's claw, looked brutal and out of place against Cassian's polished, ceremonial breastplate, which was etched with golden waves. The crowd, sensing the novelty, cheered for their champion.
"Try not to be too discouraged," Cassian said, giving his practice sword a theatrical, crowd-pleasing twirl.
"Just try to keep up," Asterion replied. His voice was flat, cold, and utterly devoid of bravado. It was a simple statement of fact, a hypothesis he was preparing to test.
The duel began.
If Asterion and Elian were forged anvils, Cassian was a flowing river. He was all fluid motion, his blade a silver flash, his smile never faltering as he played to the crowd. His spiritual attribute, "Kinetic Echo," was immediately apparent. Asterion's mind, processing the fight, dissected it instantly: It's not precognition. He's not reading my intent. He's sensing the bio-electrical initiation of my muscles and reacting a microsecond later. His Faith is in a constant, low-level 'ping' state. Reactive, not predictive. His speed is just faster than my initial twitch. A fascinating counter to a purely physical opponent.
Asterion was forced onto the defensive. His Grieving-Coast style—heavy, economical, and brutal—was designed to shatter bone and end a Tainted's existence in the fewest moves possible. Cassian's style was built to flow around such things, to parry, redirect, and humiliate. Asterion's powerful, direct lunges—the kind that would punch through a Scrapper's hide—were turned aside with effortless, flashy flicks of Cassian's wrist, making him look clumsy, like a golem trying to catch a bird. The crowd laughed at his "uncouth" lunges.
He's not just parrying, Asterion analyzed, his mind cold and detached from the crowd's noise. He's redirecting the force. My 'heavy' strikes are being used against me, pulling me off-balance. His Faith-system—the Poseidon-school—is based on flow, not static density. He's not trying to 'be' the rock; he's being the 'water' that flows around it.
"Is that all, Asterion?" Elian's clear, amused voice cut through the din from the sidelines. He wasn't just cheering; he was participating, launching his own social assault. "He's just dancing! Are you going to let him dance all over you? I thought you were a 'Monster'!"
Cassian's smile tightened. The taunt was aimed at Asterion, but it hit him.
"Don't worry, friend!" Cassian called back, parrying another of Asterion's heavy, probing strikes. "Your friend is just being cautious! It's a big stage for a boy from the frontier!"
"He's not wrong, Asterion!" Elian shouted again, his voice sharp with feigned impatience. "At this rate, the Scrappers back home will have died of old age before you land a hit! Even Kalean hits faster than that, and he's 173 years old!"
This was Elian's true attack. He wasn't just taunting Asterion; he was profiling and manipulating Cassian. He had correctly identified Cassian's arrogance, his need for the crowd's approval, and was now expertly stoking it. He was implying Cassian wasn't even worth Asterion's full effort.
It worked.
Cassian, needled by Elian's taunts and eager to show the crowd a decisive, humiliating victory, got careless. He abandoned his purely reactive defense and overcommitted to a flashy, complex, disarming lunge—a move designed to end the match with Asterion's sword flying into the crowd.
In that moment of high, sudden pressure, it happened. The screaming, eternal storm in Asterion's mind—the Curse, the memories of the farmhouse, the rage—was shoved aside by a sudden, jarring, and perfect wave of absolute cold.
His Inhuman Insight, the attribute that had remained stubbornly random and uncontrollable, triggered in a brief, perfect flash of analytical clarity.
The world went silent. The roar of the crowd, Elian's voice, the scrape of sand—it all vanished. He saw Cassian's lunge not as a threat, but as a physics problem. He saw the flawed weight distribution, the 0.2-second over-extension, the way his "Kinetic Echo" was anticipating a block, not an internal counter. He saw the opening.
Asterion didn't block. He didn't parry. He stepped inside the lunge, a move so unexpected it bypassed Cassian's attribute entirely.
His researcher's mind, guided by the flash of Insight, didn't bother with his sword. He brought the heavy, blunted pommel of his practice sword up in a brutal, short, economical arc. It was a move born of desperation, a move to stun a Tainted that had gotten too close.
He slammed it, with all his "Inner Crucible" density, into the precise point of Cassian's polished breastplate that covered his solar plexus.
The thud was sickeningly solid.
The air evacuated Cassian's lungs in a single, explosive whoosh. His eyes rolled back in his head, his "flawless" form collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, and he crumpled bonelessly to the white sand, unconscious.
The crowd, which had been roaring for their champion, went utterly, profoundly silent.
Asterion stood over him, his breathing already calm, his Inhuman Insight fading as quickly as it had come, leaving him only with the cold, familiar, pounding adrenaline of the fight.
"Well," Elian said, stepping into the ring as a temple priest in Phobos's golden robes rushed past him to heal Cassian. "That was a lesson, all right."
It took nearly an hour. The priest, a skilled healer, had to mend not only the deep, internal bruising but also Cassian's shattered pride. When the prodigy of Cyrene finally returned to the ring, the arrogance was gone. It was replaced by a sharp, focused, and dangerous intensity. He had been healed, and he had been humbled. He gave Asterion a short, sharp nod of genuine respect before turning to his new opponent.
"Elian, was it?"
"It is," Elian said. He high-lighted a new, unadorned, Grieving-Coast issue practice sword. It was a tool, not a showpiece.
"This time," Cassian said, drawing his own blade, his knuckles white, "no games."
He took a new stance. The "river" was gone. This Cassian was a drawn bowstring, his entire body humming with a new, focused energy.
The match began. Asterion, watching from the side, felt a chill. This was not the man he had fought.
Cassian was no longer just reacting. He was dominating. His movements were flawless, each parry an aggressive counter-thrust, each step a perfect, calculated acquisition of angles. This, Asterion realized, was his second, more dangerous spiritual attribute: "Weapon Affinity". It gave him an innate, perfect, almost supernatural mastery of his blade. It was the beginnings of what Kalean's journal had called a "Sword Intent".
Elian, a master of pragmatic, brutal, and opportunistic combat, was systematically dismantled. His fluid, unpredictable style—designed to kill monsters—was useless against a man who was a living, breathing textbook of perfect swordsmanship. Cassian's blade was everywhere, a steel cage that countered Elian's every move before he even completed it. Elian was, for the first time since they had left Kalean, completely and totally outclassed in this specific arena.
He's not just blocking, Elian thought, his own mind racing as he was forced to parry a blindingly fast flurry of strikes. He's herding me. Every parry pushes me onto my back foot, limits my options. He's not just a fighter; he's a duelist. He's... perfect.
CLANG!
Cassian's blade moved in a blur, a complex bind that Elian couldn't counter, and ended with a powerful, two-handed downward strike. Elian's heavy practice sword, caught at the wrong angle, shattered—the top half spinning away and clattering onto the sand.
Defeated. Disarmed.
But Elian was a creature of the Grieving Coast. Defeat was just a state of being, not an end.
The instant his sword broke, he didn't recoil. He didn't yield. He lunged forward, inside Cassian's guard, ignoring the threat of the intact blade. With a vicious snarl, he drove the jagged, broken hilt of his own sword like a dagger straight into Cassian's shoulder.
It was a brutal, shocking, and utterly pragmatic move.
Cassian cried out, a sharp, ragged sound of genuine pain, stumbling back. His perfect form, his Sword Intent, his entire lifetime of "clean" dueling—all of it was broken by a single, dirty, unexpected act of Grieving-Coast viciousness.
Before Cassian could recover, Elian had already dropped the broken hilt and raised his hands in surrender, a cold, satisfied, and utterly unrepentant smile on his face.
"I yield," Elian said, as if he hadn't just stabbed the prodigy of Cyrene. "You are, by far, the better swordsman".
Cassian, clutching his bleeding shoulder, stared at the two of them. He looked at the silent, ruby-eyed boy who had knocked him out with a single, perfect, clinical blow. He looked at the smiling, polite boy who had just shanked him with a broken sword.
He looked at the two 15-year-old monsters who had just systematically dismantled his reputation in his own temple.
And then, to Asterion's surprise, he started to laugh. It wasn't a strained sound; it was a genuine, booming laugh of pure, unadulterated respect.
"By the gods," Cassian said, wincing as the exasperated priest rushed back to heal him again. "You two are terrifying. Where in the seven hells have you been all my life?"
A bond, forged in blood, humiliation, and mutual respect, was formed. Asterion, his analytical mind replaying both fights, felt a sudden, cold chill. His "win" had been a fluke, a perfect storm of Elian's taunts, Cassian's arrogance, and a random trigger of his Inhuman Insight.
If Cassian had used that Sword Intent against him... he would have been the one disarmed and defeated in seconds.
"Come," Cassian said, slinging his good arm over Elian's shoulder, much to Elian's surprise. "You've bled me and beaten me in front of my entire city. The least you can do is let me buy you dinner. We have a lot to talk about."