Chapter 32 · The Second Marriage Contract

The ozone stench of scorched stone and burnt arcane wiring clung thick enough to taste in the Arena of Echoes, where the 72nd pair’s first trial match had dissolved into catastrophe barely ten minutes after the starting gong.

Kane Rhoan’s knees hit the cracked marble hard enough to send shards skittering, his arms locked around Nora Vey’s limp frame as the last of the rogue lightning he’d unleashed fizzled out across the stadium’s rafters.

His thunder, once a raging wildfire he could barely contain, now hummed quiet and tight through the contract bond wrapped around his left ring finger, anchored to the girl in his arms like a ship tied to a dock in a storm.

Her frayed canvas mechanic’s gloves were melted halfway up her fingers, the skin beneath blistered black and oozing faint golden sparks—leftover charge from when she’d ripped open the hidden service panel under the ring, rewired the arena’s core circuitry with her bare hands, and dragged every last volt of his失控 thunder into her own body to keep it from incinerating the crowd.