2026-05-20 05:33:35Ignis crouched low, his claws scraping lightly against the ground. A faint shimmer of mana gathered around his legs before he shot forward two meters. The movement was fast, but the landing was still rough. Ignis stumbled once before steadying himself.
[Burst Step Activated] Range: 2 meters Control: UnstableStability: Improving Primary Cost: Ignis Stamina Bond Mana Drain: 3 Knox Mana: 54/60 → 51/60 Knox felt the small tug through the bond and clicked his tongue. Ignis’s Burst Step did not use Knox’s mana the same way Echo Step did, but because the trait was still unstable, every forced activation pulled a little mana through their bond. That meant Ignis could not spam Burst Step freely either. If Ignis pushed too hard, Knox would feel the cost too. After that, Knox walked to one of the wooden training posts and placed his palm lightly against it. He did not try to activate Tremor Palm fully as that would be mana waste and stupid. Tremor Palm was different from Echo Step. Echo Step pushed mana through his legs in a burst of movement but Tremor Palm forced mana into his wrist and palm, then shaped it into an internal vibration. The problem was that Knox’s body was not strong enough to handle the rebound yet. The skill was incomplete, and his wrist had already suffered backlash once. If he forced the vibration now, he might damage the same hand he needed to hold his dagger. So Knox only pushed a thin thread of mana toward the pattern. The moment the vibration tried to form, pain flared through his wrist. Knox stopped immediately. [Tremor Palm — Partial Channel Attempt Detected] Mana Cost: 2 Activation: Cancelled Reason: Right Wrist Backlash Knox Mana: 51/60 → 49/60 [Warning] Right Wrist Backlash — Fading Repeated Tremor Palm activation may reopen injury. Possible Consequences: Grip weakness Mana-channel irritation Wrist backlash Temporary loss of palm control Knox pulled his hand back and flexed his fingers slowly. Even a partial attempt had cost him mana. That told him enough. Tremor Palm was usable, but only barely. If he used it at the wrong time, he would not just waste mana. He could ruin his hand in the middle of the fight. So he made the limit clear in his mind. Once. Not twice and not recklessly. If Tremor Palm had to be used, it would be for one opening only. Knox checked his full condition. [Status Check] Name: Knox Morales Mana: 49/60 Condition: Lower Body Fatigue — Cleared Right Wrist Backlash — Fading Mana Channels — Stable Combat Readiness — Stable Skills: Echo Step — Usable Tremor Palm — Incomplete Warning: Repeated Tremor Palm activation may reopen wrist backlash. Knox dismissed the window and looked at Ignis. [Bonded Beast Status] Name: Ignis Species: Wingless Drake Level: 1 Attribute: Gravity Condition: Stamina — Full → Slightly Reduced Burst Step — Usable Bond Response — Stable Trait: Burst Step Note: Burst Step control remains unstable during repeated use. Unstable activation causes minor mana drain through the bond. Knox was no longer at full mana, but that did not bother him. This was better than walking into a challenge blind. Now he knew the numbers. Echo Step cost six mana. Ignis’s Burst Step pulled three mana through the bond. Even touching the edge of Tremor Palm cost two mana and threatened his wrist. His body was stable, his mana pool had expanded, and his skills were usable, but none of them were cheap. If he wasted movement, he would lose. If he dragged the fight out, he would drain himself. And if he forced Tremor Palm carelessly, his own hand might fail before his opponent did. Knox tightened the wrist wrap around his right hand and walked out of the training grounds, still thinking through the numbers. He was not perfect or overpowered. But for his current level, this was the best condition he could reach without injuring himself before the challenge. Knox paused in front of the challenge board, scrolling through until he found a name that interested him. Tobin Marr Rank: 472 Beast: Hooktail Lizard Knox tapped Tobin’s name. More details appeared. Name: Tobin Marr Rank: 472 Class Access: C Beast: Hooktail Lizard Registered Beast Rank: Rare Registered Beast Level: 3 Challenge Record: Wins: 3 Losses: 2 Registered Combat Style: Defensive counterfighter Short spear user Public Beast Traits:Strong tail grip Sharp close-range turning Challenge Status:Available Knox stared at the information for a moment. He had not expected the ranking board to show this much. During the challenge hall explanation, he had only focused on ranks, challenge rules, and match windows. He did not realize the board also kept basic public records on students who had fought official matches. And it was just the kind of information any opponent could learn by watching enough matches. Still, it was useful. Tobin was a defensive fighter. He used a short spear, while his Hooktail Lizard punished anyone who rushed in carelessly. That meant Knox could not charge blindly. If he overcommitted, Tobin would only have to wait and counter. The fight was not easy. But it was readable. But then Knox paused. If Tobin’s public record was there, his own should be there too. His finger moved to his name. Knox Morales. Rank 487. He tapped it. Name: Knox Morales Rank: 487 Class Access: C Beast: Drake Registered Beast Rank: Unclassified Registered Beast Level: 1 Challenge Record: Wins: 1 Losses: 0 Registered Combat Style: Unlisted Public Beast Traits: None Registered Challenge Status:Available Knox stared at the profile. His mouth tightened. That was almost worse than an insult. Unclassified beast rank. Level 1. No public traits registered. Combat style unlisted. Anyone looking at this would think he was barely worth studying. Even his win against Venn had not been enough to make the board recognize a proper style or trait. Knox almost cursed out loud. Almost. Instead, he forced himself to breathe. The board did not know about Echo Step. It had not properly registered Burst Step. It definitely did not know about Tremor Palm. That was good. Tobin would only see an empty profile. Let him think Knox had nothing worth preparing for. Knox took a deep breath and pressed his academy sigil against the ranking board and selected Tobin Marr’s name. The board flashed. [Offensive Challenge Issued] Challenger:Knox Morales — Rank 487 Target:Tobin Marr — Rank 472 Beast:Hooktail Lizard Challenge Status: Accepted Match Window: Today — Afternoon Challenge Session Knox blinked. Accepted? That was fast. Knox walked away from the board, but his thoughts stayed on the speed of the acceptance. The immediate acceptance bothered him more than the challenge itself. Tobin Marr had a Rare-rank Hooktail Lizard, a better registered beast, a higher rank, and more official match experience. Yet he had accepted Knox’s challenge almost the moment it appeared. That was not nervousness. That was confidence. Maybe Tobin saw Knox’s empty profile and thought the fight was already decided. Maybe he believed a Drake with no registered traits could not threaten him. Or maybe he was used to lower-ranked students making desperate climbs and getting punished for it. Either way, Tobin had accepted too fast. Knox did not like that. The afternoon challenge session was still two hours away. That gave him time to eat, rest, and prepare.
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Chapter 129 — The Blackridge Report
They did it in the long tent with the map still staked to the table and the eastern half of it crossed out.Laura at the head. Mercer propped in a chair with his leg out straight and a face the colour of paper. Four officers Knox didn't know, two clerks, and Bael standing at the back because he'd refused a seat.Knox stood too. Nobody offered him one and he wouldn't have taken it.They went through it from the first horn. It took two hours and most of it wasn't about him. Company positions, the collapse of the eastern flank, the timing of the third company's front, who had ordered what and when and whether the horns had been read right. Twice a clerk read a line back and an officer disagreed with it and they argued the point down to the minute.Knox's name came into it about forty minutes in and then it didn't leave."Who called the eastern column back off the road.""Morales, sir. Captain was down.""On whose authority?""Nobody's," Bael said from the back. "Thirty-one of us came hom
Chapter 128 — What the Battle Cost
The releases were at seven.Knox hadn’t known that was a thing they did formally until Neris came and got him. Four summons were too broken to keep bound and their summoners had signed for it overnight, and there was a piece of open ground behind the medicine tents where it was done, and the custom at Blackridge was that anyone who could walk came and stood there.Knox could nearly walk. He stood.It took about ten minutes. Each summoner went out alone to their beast and put a hand on it and said whatever they said, and then the light took it apart, and the summoner walked back and somebody else went out. Nobody talked. A boy from the third company got halfway through and couldn’t finish and a sergeant went out and stood next to him until he could.Ignis watched all of it from where he lay.They can’t call them again.No.Ever.No.The drake put his head down.Then it’s the same as dying.It’s not the same, Knox said, because it wasn’t, and then he stopped, because he wasn’t sure the
Chapter 127 — The Tide Breaks
Knox never got to answer her.The field answered first.It started somewhere out past the third company and came across the whole line inside a minute — a change in the noise that Knox felt before he could name. Then a Hollowvein Stalker came out of the dust forty yards away, alone, stopped, and stood there turning its head like something that had just woken up in a place it did not recognise.Behind it, along a mile of front, the Tide stopped pushing.“Signals,” Laura said, and she was already moving. “Every horn. Now.”Knox got up because sitting down and watching it was worse.He had one arm and no mana and his ribs made a noise when he breathed, and Neris found him somewhere in the middle of it and put a hand on his chest and told him to stop, and he stopped for about ninety seconds.From where he stood he could see maybe a third of it.The controlled beasts had come apart. Not all at once and not the same way — some of them simply stopped, some of them turned round and went north
Chapter 126 — The Two-Spike Falls
Knox walked the last forty feet because he couldn't run them.【 Mana: Critical 】He'd been ignoring that panel for a while. It sat in the corner of his vision and stayed there and there was nothing he could do about it, so he stopped reading it.The Vorul was on one knee in the dirt with black around both legs and one arm, fighting it, and winning slowly.Knox could see the restraints thinning where the shoulder worked against them. Nyxarion was holding, and Nyxarion had never held anything for longer than two seconds before today, and the cold coming off the bond had gone tight in a way Knox didn't have a word for.How long.Not long enough for you to walk."Ignis."The drake came up beside him on three legs, dragging the fourth, breathing wrong.Its stance, Knox said.It's kneeling. It hasn't got a stance.It's got one knee and one arm holding it up. Take the arm.Ignis put four fixed points down the length of that arm from the shoulder to the wrist.【 Pressure Control: 74% 】【 Fixe
Chapter 125 — Nowhere to Run
It went north-east and it went fast.Knox couldn't catch it. He knew that before he'd taken four steps — his left arm was dead weight, his ribs were grinding, and there was not enough left in him for Echo Step twice in a row. Half a mile of open ground and it was moving on a ruined knee faster than he could move on two good legs.Ignis couldn't catch it either. The drake got up and went three strides and the bad foreleg went out from under him and put him down on his chest.Don't chase him, Knox said. Look at the ground in front of it.I can't reach—You don't have to reach it. Put it where it's going.Ignis got his head up.【 Distribution: Four Fixed Points 】The ground buckled forty yards ahead of the Vorul, four separate lines sinking under pressure in ground the thing was already committed to. It came down into that and its knee folded and it went over hard and slid.It was up again in under two seconds.But it was two seconds.Knox turned to the shadow.Nyx.I heard him.I'm not
Chapter 124 — Cut the Connection
Knox couldn’t go.That was the whole problem and it took him about a second to work it through. The moment he pulled Ignis and Nyxarion off it, the Vorul would either finish the drake or walk into the wider battle and be gone, and Knox had no way to find it again in four hundred acres of dust and no way to make anybody believe him if he did.So it had to be somebody else.He got behind Ignis long enough to turn his head and find the western edge of the reserve ground.“Bael!”The man was fifty feet back with a broken company reforming around him — twenty-odd on their feet, six or seven summons up, most of them somebody else’s.“Morales—”“There’s a relay north-east. Past the third company front, up on the rise.” Knox pointed with the arm that still worked. “It’s feeding the thing. Every time it pulses, the wounds close.”Bael looked at him for about as long as it took to breathe in.“How far past the front?”That was all he asked.He didn’t ask how Knox knew, or what a relay was doing
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