The Training Dome sat underground. Its entrance hid at the end of an unremarkable side corridor on the west side of campus. The facility—and the Crisis Access Tunnel tied to it—predated the Academy itself, built as an air-raid shelter long before the school existed, then later absorbed and rebranded into its current form.
The concrete arch pressed low overhead. The walls held a dull gray sheen polished by years of shoulders and passing carts. Cold white tubes were bolted in rows to the ceiling, producing not brightness but the tired cleanliness of a disinfected wound.
The air carried permanent moisture, metal dust, old oil. Like someone had converted a bunker into a place for “practice.” After seven on Saturday nights, only booked names were allowed in. No spectator seats. No applause. No “match atmosphere.”
Still, when Solan reached the door, his phone buzzed. An unsigned link. Another. A stream of them. The domain looked wrong—something close to an internal campus security mirror. He didn’t open it. He didn’t have to. Odds. Side bets. Mockery when bets failed. Filthy blessings when bets hit. A whole crowd trying to turn his pulse into a number.
Matt’s icon popped first, of course. “Roommate, I’m rooting for you!”
Solan put the phone back in his pocket. He felt almost nothing about the duel itself. Professor theatrics. Scratchlist ritual. Herman’s name. It all felt like someone else’s weather.
He was thinking something smaller, almost ordinary. Lately, cafeteria dinners with Clara had started happening often enough to feel routine. Too dangerous for him.
Yesterday she had dropped into the seat across from him, tray in hand, and said the next one would be her treat. The reason was absurdly plain: thanks for listening while she complained about her brother.
Solan still couldn’t decide which part felt stranger: the meal itself, or the way she now spoke to him as if continuing a conversation they had never really paused. Maybe that was the real shift. She had started handing him the small, boring pieces of her day, the kind most people filtered out.
He had not been bored.
Cafeteria trays. Steam over soup. Her lifting her eyes after setting the spoon down.
He had already started thinking about the next ranking update. Maybe he’d rise to 23. Maybe he wouldn’t.
The thought clung to the back of his tongue like sugar—too sweet, and somehow impossible to spit out. As long as the ring stayed on, he could keep winning. Keep this version of himself in place.
He stood there another second, then pushed the door open.
The lights in the Training Dome were too low.
The hemispherical ceiling sealed the outside world away, leaving only the quiet hum of the circulation system—steady, distant, like a mechanical heart beating somewhere inside the structure. Small red camera lights hung high above the arena, unmoving. The audience was elsewhere now.
Herman stood across from him, hands in the pockets of his training jacket, posture loose and unhurried.
Solan felt the familiar shape beginning to close in.
Air, light, floor, the angle of Herman’s stance—everything tilted toward a single direction. He knew that direction. He knew the line.
If the ring weren’t there, he already knew how it would go.
He would straighten up. Adjust his breathing. Accept the rhythm Herman set. And at some visible point in the near future, he would lose—cleanly enough that the world could continue moving forward without interruption.
That was inevitability.
A version of himself he had known for a long time.
The irritation returned.
Herman glanced up. “Ready?”
Solan didn’t answer. He lowered his gaze to his hand.
The ring rested on his left ring finger. A thin red vein moved slowly beneath the metal, like a blood vessel trapped inside it. It wasn’t warm. It wasn’t heavy. If anything, it felt lighter than air.
Which was exactly why it was so easy to forget what it was doing.
Herman spoke again. “I’m not like the others,” he said calmly. “My Breakfield doesn’t give people a chance to fight. Rafe’s Kamuy can already interfere with you. My draconic factor is higher than his.”
A small pause.
“You don’t have a chance.”
For a moment Solan realized he couldn’t quite remember who Rafe was. The name sounded faintly familiar, but distant. He wasn’t even sure whether this was the first time he had heard it.
To be honest, he barely cared about the duel anymore. With the ring on his finger, he could just keep winning.
So when had all of this actually started?
The thought arrived suddenly. This wasn’t about Herman. It wasn’t about winning or losing. It wasn’t even about Clara. It was about the line.
The reason he wore the ring had been small.
Don’t lose too badly. Don’t get crushed by Herman. Don’t make Matt’s work pointless.
Honestly, leaving the ring on wasn’t even a real decision.
He didn’t have to commit to it. All he had to do was pretend it wasn’t there.
Yes. That was reasonable. A harmless excuse.
Not trust. Not belief. Not the desire to win.
Just—
Whatever.
That was where the irritation came from. Not anger. Disgust. Disgust at realizing he had started saying whatever.
He knew what would probably happen if he took the ring off. The loss would be ugly. He had never liked fighting. Never liked the attention, the rankings, the eyes watching him.
He wore the ring simply to avoid embarrassment.
Then things escalated. Then the world began to orbit him. And somewhere along the way he realized something worse: He didn’t even care anymore about hating it.
Solan Elric… how the hell did you stop caring about even that?
That was the problem.
Everything had been too easy.
Ever since he put the ring on, things had started to move too smoothly. Fights resolved themselves. Outcomes arranged themselves. The world tilted in his favor before he even had to decide anything.
And he had accepted it.
Accepted that the ring could move his pieces. Accepted that the ring could finish the fight for him. Accepted that he didn’t have to carry the weight himself.
“Let’s begin,” Herman said.
The next instant, black sword-light tore open the air.
It split reality like night being dragged into shape by force. The Black Blade emerged—forcing its way into the world as if the space itself had been unwilling to contain it.
Solan’s temper snapped.
The Black Blade was different.
It was one of the few things that actually belonged to him.
The one thing he had never needed anyone else to understand.
The ring could decide whether he won or lost. But it did not get to move the Black Blade.
That was it. He should have taken the ring off back when he fought Yara.
Solan Elric—why the hell didn’t you pull it off then?
He reached with his other hand and gripped the ring.
He pulled.
The knuckle of his little finger went pale. The metal edge bit into the skin, carving a thin red line that immediately filled with blood.
The ring didn’t move.
He pulled harder.
Skin stretched, then tore. Blood slid under the metal band and smeared across his fingers, slick and dark.
Still nothing.
It clung to his finger as if it had grown there.
“What are you doing?” Herman frowned.
Solan heard him but ignored it. He drew in a breath and yanked again—hard enough that the flesh around the ring began to separate. The skin at the base of his finger peeled back under the pressure, blood running freely now.
It still wouldn’t come off.
Impossible.
He bit down on his lip. His fingernails dug into the seam of the metal as he dragged with everything he had—trying to rip the ring free even if the finger came with it.
The flesh around the band was already splitting. Tendon flashed briefly beneath the blood.
The ring didn’t move.
Instead, the red vein inside it flared.
Just once.
As if answering.
The lights in the dome dimmed half a beat. The pressure in the air thickened suddenly—like water rising to the throat in a single second.
Solan’s breathing faltered.
“That’s enough,” Herman said, impatience entering his voice.
Solan pulled again—violently now, with the blind force of someone trying to tear a part of himself off. The joint cracked. Blood spilled across his palm, the skin at the base of the finger nearly separating under the ring’s edge.
The ring stayed where it was.
Then the red light detonated.
A deep fracture boomed beneath the floor. The training platform split outward from the center in spiderweb cracks as the pale synthetic surface sagged toward the edges.
The air collapsed downward. For the first time, Herman’s expression changed.
Solan’s consciousness flipped inside out.
Red light climbed up his arm, twisting together with something colder and deeper.
The Black Blade hovered beside him. Its body swallowed the overhead light, its edges churning like smoke. The floor beneath it continued to sink as the steel structure groaned under stress.
Solan was still trying to tear the ring off. Blood ran down his hand. Red light and black vapor coiled together—two forces rejecting each other, fighting for dominance inside his body. For one last instant, he thought of dinner with someone—then stepped off that line.
Herman stepped back, finally raising his stance.
But it didn’t matter anymore.
High above them, the camera lights began flashing wildly. In the distant control room, the feed dissolved into static. Red and black currents crashed against the walls of the Training Dome. Dust burst into the air like gray mist.
Solan clenched his teeth.
“Get out.”
Black blade-aura surged outward.