The Arena of Elements pulsed like a living heart. Floodlights carved the ring into a bright stage, the crowd's roar surging and retreating like the tide.
On the high screens, the match card burned in giant letters: Fire Ferrets vs. Iron Titans. Underneath, the broadcasters rolled clips of Boru's earth walls, Sela's surgical flames, and Tovin's water shields swallowing attacks like a calm sea.
Jing Tian Ming stood in the tunnel with Maya and Roku. The ferret emblem stitched on his jacket felt heavier tonight.
He had slept badly and woken to the memory of a hand forcing a wrist to twist, a pulse stopping under a stranger's smile. He rolled his shoulders and shut the door on the old room. Anchor. Tide.
Roku nudged him with an elbow. "Eyes open, breath steady. Don't let them turn you into a problem you have to fix."
Maya clipped her hair back and checked her wrist wraps. "We don't play their rhythm. We make them move."
The horn sounded. The arena air changed. They stepped into the light.
The Iron Titans waited with the patience of stone. Boru stood center, solid as an anvil. He didn't posture or taunt. He planted and watched.
Sela to his left was all lines—sharp cheekbones, sharp palms, flame drawn in clean strokes. Tovin to his right held water in a simple bowl-shape between his hands; he breathed like a monk in a morning courtyard.
"Round one," the announcer boomed, voice riding a drum cadence. "Control versus flow! Strength versus speed!"
The ring hummed. Plates rose, rails slid into place, vents blinked open. Tonight's configuration was "nested lanes": three concentric paths with narrow bridges connecting them, each lane slightly higher than the last. An earthbender's map.
They met in the middle.
Boru slammed heel to stone. The floor responded with authority—two walls rose at angles, pinching the Ferrets into a funnel. Sela painted heat lines through gaps with brutal accuracy. Tovin floated water shields that swallowed stray flame and sent steam low to blind feet.
Maya didn't back up. She stepped into the pinch. Her heel dug and a rib of stone sprang from the floor at a slant, catching one of Boru's walls and rolling it like a shoulder. Jing slid right, hands open.
He felt the hazard moat's pull—steady, hungry. He didn't draw from it. He took the condensation from Sela's heat instead, thin and delicate, and pulled it into a veil.
Sela's next two strikes hit that veil and stuttered, heat turning to damp steam that drifted instead of darting. She adjusted with a grimace.
Tovin lifted a shield to counter Maya's rib, and Jing laced the veil through it, thinning it so Maya's stone could cut a notch.
"Left!" Maya called, and they slipped through the notch. The crowd's noise bent—disbelief, then delight.
Boru didn't flinch. He planted again, and the floor answered—lanes narrowed, bridges tilted. He didn't chase them. He made the ring do it.
"Don't fight him head-on," Roku warned, sliding in at Jing's flank. "Force Sela to move."
Sela obliged—precision taps aimed at sensors, fire thrown at shoulder and hip level.
Jing made his water a seam ripper, tiny cuts in the air that opened space just wide enough for the fire to pass without kissing fabric. Heat brushed his cheek. He smelled the clean, almost sweet note of Sela's fuel and let it slide by.
Tovin shifted. His water shields didn't slam or shove; they cradled. He caught Jing's whip with a soft bowl, let its force spin around the inside, then emptied it harmlessly onto the floor. Jing blinked. That was craft—refuse the collision, eat the momentum.
"Respect," Jing murmured, then attacked anyway.
He pulled the veil back and flicked it into a bead scatter. Tovin gathered the beads into a chain, freezing them lightly. Jing cut the chain's center and made it a necklace of useless glints.
Boru pressed with lanes again: the inner path lifted a full hand's height, outer path sank. The bridges leaned. Maya's stance widened, knees soft. She stepped on the high edge and made it her ground.
He stomped. A massive wall rose like a book opening toward them. Maya didn't try to stop the wall. She turned the hinge. A jab here, a twist there.
The wall swung past their shoulders and crashed against the far lane with a satisfying stone thud. The crowd loved it.
Sela shifted targets. Flames lashed at Maya's calves. Roku stepped into the gap and did something soft—no flare, no wall—just a lean of heat that changed the air feel around Sela's strike. The flame stumbled, tripped on invisible warm air, and rolled into a harmless curl.
"Roku!" a commentator cried above. "That's the hottest defense we've seen all season."
Roku didn't smile. "Jing," he said, eyes still on Sela, "make Tovin choose."
Jing made a choice for him: he bent hazard water up, thin as silk, and draped it across the lane lips.
Tovin's shields couldn't catch everything now—his bowls slipped because the ring edges were slick. He had to lift his stance, adjust his breath—tiny, but enough.
Maya took the beat. She stomped a knuckle of stone up at Boru's knee. Boru blocked with a small ridge; he gave the ridge a name: responsibility. It held.
Jing scythed water low. Sela burned it. Steam jumped. Tovin cooled it. Jing warmed it again with a flick near Roku's heat, making fog—a pocket that wasn't thick enough to hide, just enough to blur. He slid through and threw a whip at Tovin's wrist—not to tag, to tangle. Tovin turned the whip into a bracelet and dropped it, untouched. Jing grinned despite himself. "You're elegant."
Tovin's mouth twitched. "Flow is honest."
Boru stomped. The inner lane popped a pillar under Jing's step. He hit air and saw, clearly, the geometry of breaking a body. He could bend the water in his calves, twist his own muscle to catch the fall.
No.
He bent the hazard water up and caught himself on a ribbon like a tightrope. He ran along it, barefoot, and landed back in stance with the ribbon snapping into a harmless splash. The crowd woo'd. Someone shouted his name.
Sela painted three quick lines—shoulder, hip, knee—perfect. Roku caught two. The third kissed Jing's collar. Chime. Tag.
It didn't hurt; it felt like shame. He inhaled until it softened. Anchor. Tide. "My fault," he muttered.
Maya's voice cut the self-punishing thought. "Reset," she snapped, not cruel, not gentle. "We work."
They worked. They braided motion into patience, patience into opportunism. Jing turned steam into lenses; Roku warmed pockets; Maya made the ring behave like it respected them. The horn blared—end of round one.
Score flashed: Titans up by control points; tags even—one on Jing. Judges awarded Boru ring control, Sela precision, Tovin style, Maya counter-control, Roku technical finesse. Crowd buzzed with that delicious tension: undefeated veterans versus upstart artistry.
Round two. Configuration shift—"sudden scaffold." Vertical pillars rose with small platforms on top; rails slid up at waist height, then dropped. The ring became a jungle gym with murder in its geometry.
Maya's eyes lit. "High ground," she said.
Ayame would have loved this, Jing thought, and then put her out of mind. New match. New math.
Boru took center again. He raised pillars at angles that made sense only after they hurt you. Sela became a sniper—tiny flames flicking from nowhere, tagging sensors if you forgot to guard. Tovin floated water up like ropes, wrapping around rails, turning them into soft obstacles that didn't look dangerous until your ankle kissed a loop.
"Up," Maya ordered.
They climbed. Jing bent a thin film over stone to give Maya's feet a half-breath of slip for each step, removing friction spikes that could trip. Roku warmed the metal rails just enough to make Sela's flames choose different paths.
Boru stomped a pillar under Jing's platform. It rose fast. Jing's stomach dropped. He bent water down from hazard—long reach, thread-fine—and turned the pillar's top into a mirror-slick. His platform tried to throw him. He slid, turned, and let the slide become a step. It looked like choreography. It felt like survival.
Sela tagged his hip with a twitch. The chime stung. Jing wanted to hate himself. He looked at Roku instead. Roku's jaw was set. He didn't offer comfort. He offered presence.
"Work," Roku said.
Jing worked. He made mistakes and folded them into moves. He felt the old reflex twitch and kept it sheathed. He stayed honest.
Maya met Boru on high ground. Stone against stone, heel against heel. His stomp raised a slab to crush her chest. Her stomp raised a smaller slab that turned his into a ramp. The larger slab slid up and past. Maya used it to vault and landed two platforms over, smiling like a girl stealing apples.
"Tag him," she said, not to Jing, not to Roku—to herself.
Boru refused. He shifted weight and the floor obeyed, pillars changing angle to herd her back. Tovin made the rails into water-slick noodles to cut her paths. Sela painted heat lines to block her flanks. It was symphony—control music that wanted to drown them.
Jing broke the melody. He pulled hazard water up in three threads and strummed them with two fingers. The threads vibrated in visible ripples—water moving like sound. The rails' wet noodles shivered in response, their slickness turning to noisy flutter. Tovin's control had to fight the vibration. He lost exactly half a breath.
Maya took it. A stone knuckle rose under Boru's forward foot. It didn't tag. It made his stance shift. Sela adjusted and left a gap. Roku flared a quick heat slap at Sela's wrist—not to burn, to interrupt. The flame skipped. Jing snapped a whip at Sela's hip. Chime. Tag.
The crowd exploded. Precision toppled by a rope trick and a heat tap.
Boru's eyes hardened. His stomp this time had weight—a history of won fights, of drills at dawn, of a man who didn't like when art dented his order. The floor surged. A pillar rose under Jing that wouldn't be slicked; its top had gritted grooves that ate water and spit it back.
Jing laughed, a single amazed bark. "They thought of everything." Then he changed his plan.
He bent a film not on the pillar but on the air above it—a thin curtain that wasn't a shield, just texture. Sela's next flame kissed that curtain and flared early. Tovin's rope slithered and tightened at the wrong time. Boru's balance checked. Jing dropped his platform one notch, then stepped sideways off empty space—stepping onto the sound curtain as if his foot understood pressure like a hand.
He landed ragged but upright. The crowd lost its mind.
The horn blared—mid-round hazard shift. Rails dropped. Pillars pivoted. Platforms slid. The scaffold turned into a slide. A few competitors each season broke ankles here. The Titans did not. Maya would not.
"Low!" she shouted, and they threw themselves down, rolling as the world tried to take their feet. Jing bent water to a friction film his mother once taught him on a frozen lake—a skin that turned stone into something like wax just on the skin of the body, letting a roll become a glide instead of a tumble. He and Roku slid past a heat line that would have tagged hip sensors. Maya rocketed under a pillar and popped up with a grin.
Sela chased Maya with darts of flame. Roku swatted each like an old man brushing summer flies. Tovin caught Jing's whip hard and reversed it, sending water back at Jing's face. Jing ducked and turned the reversal into a ribbon around his own shoulder—dumb move saved by a clever pivot.
Boru stomped what looked like a simple square. The floor raised into a cage. Maya smiled. She stomped one square of the cage and it folded like paper under a damp finger. She had read his geometry. He had to respect hers.
The horn blared—end of round two.
Scoreboard: tags even across both teams now; artistry bonuses weirdly balanced—Roku and Tovin matching, Sela and Jing trading sparks, Boru and Maya at a war for ring narrative. The crowd salivated. The announcer's voice broke on his own excitement. "We might see an upset, folks!"
Round three. Configuration: "Split tides." The hazard moat swelled and pushed two tongues of water onto the ring that ebbed and flowed with timed pulses. Stone plates floated on those tongues, rising and falling. Steam vents fired in syncopation. It was a nightmare of timing.
Jing inhaled. This configuration sang a song he knew: the math of tide and breath. Anchor. Tide.
Boru opened with pressure—stomp, stomp, stomp, the ring answering in low hums. Sela sketched precise flames at chest height; Tovin made water into soft fists that pushed rather than struck.
Maya moved with the tide. She stepped when the tongues rose, fell when they ebbed, made earth click at the moment stone wanted to be stone and not water-carried plate. Jing followed her breath and made water do what water loved—cohere. He pulled the tongues into cleaner pulses, smoothing chop into rhythm.
Roku warmed specific pockets—small, precise, tuned to tonight's vent timing. His track across the ring looked like a constellation of invisible campfires. Sela's flames misbehaved there. She frowned, not at him, at herself.
"Now," Maya said, and they pressed.
Jing threw a low whip across Sela's shins. It didn't tag. It made her plant. Roku pitched heat at her planted heel—not to burn, to make air there hungry for flame. Sela's next attack curved into that hunger and missed Maya's shoulder by a thumb width. Maya's stone knuckle rose and tapped Sela's guard. Chime. Tag.
The crowd howled. Some threw streamers. A child screamed "FERRETS!" into the echo and cried for joy.
Boru answered with grief. Not theatrics—pressure that felt like a mountain remembering landslides. Pillars rose in a pattern that made sense only to his bones. Jing felt it anyway. He laid water film where the pillars wanted friction. He laid it thin enough to not slip. He made them sing, just a little.
Tovin met that song with a counter—he plucked water from the tongues and braided it into three ropes across Jing's lanes, each rope set to hum in opposite phase to Jing's film song. The interference beat made the floor feel wrong under Jing's toes. He almost tripped. He laughed again. "You're good," he said, breathless. Tovin dipped his chin.
Sela stopped trying to tag Jing. She tried to tag Roku. Her flame became narrow, patient, deadly. Roku did not dodge. He stepped into a plume and sipped heat out of it again, turned it to smoke. The crowd gave him a round of applause mid-fight. He ignored it like a monk ignores compliments.
Boru slammed. The tongues of water surged higher than programmed. It wasn't cheating. It was genius. He had used vent pressure timing and stone plate angle to push tongues into bigger pulses. The ring's designer would cry.
Maya stumbled. A plate slid under her foot; she caught it, then caught it too hard. Sela tagged her hip. Chime. Tag. She didn't swear. She said, "Again," and stomped the plate's angle into obedience.
Jing tasted metal in his mouth—old fear. He saw his mother's hand shoving him into gray water. The tongues surged. The plates lifted. He could ride them. He could drown them.
Anchor. Tide.
He did neither. He made the tongues honest. He pulled them into pulses that matched the breath cycles his father taught him—a four-count inhale, four-count exhale. The plates steadied, just enough.
Maya took the steadiness and turned it into a path. She ran three steps and tagged Boru's shoulder with a stone knuckle so clean the judges' glyphs flashed "control finesse" before the chime finished. Boru grunted, almost a laugh. He respected her.
Tovin bent a soft fist at Jing's sensor. Jing let it pass, then looped it around his own shoulder like a stole. He carried it two steps and tossed it into a vent's hiss. It blew away in silver smoke. Tovin's smile was real.
Sela threw a line at Roku's jaw. It should have tagged. It didn't. He bent air again. The crowd leaped up. Phones caught his hands. Someone shouted his name like a prayer.
The horn blared—final seconds.
Scoreboard flickered in a fever—tags near even, artistry points stacked and tangled like thread. It would come down to one more touch or judges' mercy.
"Break," Maya said. "Break now."
Jing bent hazard water into a crescent that draped the floor. He warmed it at the edges with Roku's heat. He thinned it where Boru stomped. He made the ring a drum skin tuned to their song. Tovin reached to freeze at the edge. He paused. It would make the floor glass. He wouldn't.
Sela aimed at Jing's collar. The flame was true. Jing didn't dodge. He bent water up in a small bowl and let the flame strike it and go out. Sela's eyes widened—she had thrown heat too clean to be extinguished by a bowl. He had made the bowl do more than be a bowl. He had made it a promise.
Maya slammed a final stone knuckle at Boru's forearm. Chime. Tag.
Horn. End.
Silence fell like snow. The scoreboard glitched a breath—too many points, too many glyphs—and then resolved with a snap.
Iron Titans win by control. Fire Ferrets lose by a hair. The crowd screamed anyway. It wasn't rage. It was hunger—come back, make us bleed, make us cry.
Boru stepped forward and offered Maya his forearm. She tapped it with her knuckles, a fighter's acknowledgment. Sela bowed to Roku without moving her eyes off his hands. Tovin approached Jing and lifted his palms, water hovering in a small orb between them.
"Flow is honest," Tovin said, voice almost lost in noise.
"Anchor. Tide," Jing replied, and the water orb flattened into a thin sheet that curled at the edges like a smile. Tovin let it drip to the floor. Respect.
They left the ring to a roar that stayed in Jing's bones. In the tunnel, the sound faded to a hum, then to quiet. Jing's lungs trembled. He shook his hands out and laughed, sudden and bright.
"We were close," he said, not to excuse, not to mope—to mark. "We were close."
Maya's jaw flexed. "Control. We'll take more of it. Next time we set the ring's rhythm sooner."
Roku wiped sweat from his jaw with the edge of his scarf. "And I'll teach you to drink heat without making smoke pretty."
Jing blinked. "That's a thing?"
Roku's grin was slow. "It will be."
They hit the locker room and the bright world of the ring shrank to tile and tape and bruises. Jing sat and felt his heartbeat catch up to itself. He thought of Nira. He thought of bloodbenders twisting limbs like marionettes. He thought of the way his hands had stayed clean tonight.
Maya squeezed his shoulder once. "You didn't break," she said, as if reading his thoughts. "You bent."
He swallowed. "I wanted to. The old way. Just for a breath."
Roku sat across, elbows on knees. "Wanting isn't doing. You made a choice. Keep making it."
The door clicked. A shadow passed the threshold. The room cooled by a degree as if someone had bent the air without bending the air. Nira leaned against the frame with a smile that tasted like frost.
"You looked beautiful out there," she said. "So honest. So clean."
Maya rose in a single motion. "Leave."
Nira's eyes flicked to Jing. "We'll talk soon."
Roku stood. Heat shimmered behind his shoulder like a low mirage. "You won't."
Nira's smile didn't change. "The Blood Serpent Clan remembers. The Iron Titans remember. The city remembers. It's what cities do."
She left before the air finished cooling. Jing stared at the door until it wasn't a door, just a rectangle of light and shadow that made no promises.
He breathed. Anchor. Tide.
"Tomorrow," he said. "We train."
"Tomorrow," Maya echoed.
Roku's scarf burned red even under the dull locker lights. "And we sharpen," he added.
Outside, the arena swallowed noise and returned it as echo. Somewhere in a box seats row, someone with money decided which team to sponsor. Somewhere in a back alley, someone with knives decided which team to ruin.
The Fire Ferrets walked into the night with their hands unbroken and their hearts alert. They had lost by control and won by story. The city had taste them. The Serpents had smelled them. The season had opened its jaw wider.
Jing felt the dented flask at his hip and did not touch it. He held breath and released it. He looked ahead until the road became a ribbon he could bend without breaking.
Tomorrow.