Chapter 34 · The Champion’s Challenge

The obsidian disc of Asterfall’s Sky Arena hummed under Nora Vey’s scuffed boots, the vibration thrumming up through her calves like a faulty generator.

Above her, the stands rose in tiered rings: the lower levels packed with dockworkers and street vendors waving grease-stained rags, the upper tiers draped in silk and velvet, each box emblazoned with a noble house’s crest glowing faint gold in the late afternoon sun.

The air reeked of fried sky-lizard skewers, spiced cider, and the sharp, metallic tang of arcane barrier fumes that pricked at the back of her throat.

She flexed her left hand, the linen wrappings around her fingertips stiff and crusted with old blood from rewiring the 20-year-old Thunder Crown core contract 12 hours prior. Under the frayed leather of her work glove, the silver-blue circuit pattern of the witness mark burned like a brand, throbbing in time with the pulse of the man leaning against the stone prep pen wall beside her.

Kane Riven—his alias for the tournament, thin enough to crack if anyone looked too close—had his head tilted back, eyes closed, his jaw tight enough to grind stone.