The morning air around the Grand Royal Combat Academy smelled of ozone and crushed pine. Built on a raised plateau above the capital, the place was less a school than a fortress that happened to teach classes in white granite spires laced with dampening runes to keep five thousand noble students from accidentally leveling each other.Leon walked the stone perimeter path with a canvas bag over one shoulder, honing oil, polishing cloths, and iron wrenches for the training dummies. Plain grey tunic, no crest, no rank. Ahead of him, students streamed through the gilded main gate in a river of silk cloaks snapping in the wind."Move aside, technician."A boot clipped his heel from behind. Leon stepped off the path without looking back, and a squad of second-years swept past, trailing wisps of fire and frost from their fingers, showing off for each other."Look what the administration's hiring now," one of them said, glancing at Leon's dusty tunic. "Doesn't even have an amplification ring.

The black-and-gold carriages stopped in the center of the Grand Plaza, ringed by two hundred black-armored knights, silver halberds humming with lightning, shields catching the noon sun.Thousands of students, instructors, and elders gathered around the edges in silence. Even the third-years kept their mouths shut for once.These weren't capital guards playing dress-up. These were the Imperial Dragon Guard, the ones who held the line against the northern Abyssal Rifts and came back with the scars to prove it.The lead carriage door opened.A tall, broad-shouldered old man stepped down, white hair cropped close, a jagged scar running from temple to jaw, a crimson General's cloak marked with seven gold stars.General Marcus. The Iron Wall of the Empire.Beside him came a young woman in silver dragon-scale armor, dark hair in a high ponytail, one hand resting on the pommel of a broadsword nearly as tall as she was. Commander Freya, Marcus's top lieutenant, one of the youngest sword maste

The workshop smelled of heated iron and damp stone. Boros sat on an overturned crate, tin mug of cheap ale in hand, his scarred face lit red by the forge.When Leon came down the last step and set his bag on the bench, Boros looked up and studied him for a long moment."You've got strange luck, kid." He took a slow drink. "Julian breaks his own arm on a dummy you're holding. Then the Dragon Guard nearly tears this cellar apart hunting a legend, and the General puts his hand right on you and finds nothing.""Luck's just being in the right place at the right time," Leon said, pulling a rusted iron wedge from the repair pile."Or the wrong one." Boros set his mug down with a thud. "You heard the General. Two weeks, and the Court drags every noble kid with a sword up to the border. When they go, they'll need dogs like us to haul wagons, patch armor, scrub blood off shields."Leon set the wedge on the anvil and picked up his hammer.Clang. Clang. Clang."You're not scared?" Boros squinted

The gorge had turned into a slaughterhouse everywhere except the small circle around Leon, where time seemed to have stopped moving at all.The Executioner raised its bone blade, a wet screech bubbling out of its split jaw. To Vane, cowering in the mud, the swing looked like lightning.To Leon, it moved like something underwater.He didn't strike a pose or draw on any borrowed power. He shifted his weight, stepped in, and swung the iron crowbar up in one motion.There was no clang of metal on bone. Just a boom of collapsing air pressure as a sliver of the restored War Crest poured into a piece of scrap iron.The ten-foot bone blade didn't break. It turned to white dust in an instant. The shockwave ran up the creature's arm, cracked its carapace, shattered its skeleton, and detonated its dark core before it even registered the hit. Its upper body burst outward into harmless black mist. The headless lower half stood a half-second longer before folding sideways into the mud.Vane's eyes

The silence that dropped over the courtyard was so sudden that the crackle of burning wagons sounded like thunder.Thousands of eyes, bleeding soldiers slumped against the keep, Freya frozen on the battlements, locked onto the one figure standing in the breached gate.Sophia, knees pressed into frozen stone, stared down in disbelief. Her mind wouldn't process it: her quiet, unassuming husband, the mana-less technician who fixed gearboxes, was walking straight into the aura of an Abyssal General."Leon?" Her breath caught. "No, get back, you'll be vaporized!"Julian, curled behind an oil barrel, let out a hysterical laugh. "The trash has lost his mind! He's going to get us all killed faster!"Above, the Abyssal General lowered his greatsword slightly, violet eyes narrowing through the gold light coming off Leon's palm."An unranked mortal?" His voice rumbled like a grinding stone. "You stand before Malakor, Commander of the Seventh Abyss, holding a stick of scrap iron?""Not scrap iron