The training hall was cleared by nine in the morning. Formation grid off. Equipment pushed to the walls. The floor was bare — just flat stone and the faint glow of the ward lines running beneath the surface.

Selene stood at the north end with her arms folded. The rest of the group lined the east wall. Cassian had claimed the best viewing spot and was sitting on a supply crate with his healing leg stretched out in front of him. Lyra stood beside him, her hands clasped tight. Iris leaned against the wall with her arms crossed. Yuelan was practically bouncing on her toes. Lin Yueying stood at the back, calm and still. Vesper sat on the floor with Mistwhisker in her lap, the void-cat’s eyes already locked on the center of the room. Even Eira was there, medical kit open beside her, ready.

Ren stood at the south end of the hall. Kaelen stood at the center.

Ten meters apart.

— • —

Selene spoke once. "Rules. Full power, current-stage techniques only. Fight until I call stop. No permanent-damage techniques. If I step in, you stop immediately. Both of you."

She looked at Ren. Then at Kaelen.

"Begin."

— • —

Neither of them moved for the first three seconds. They stood in the empty space and read each other — stance, weight distribution, energy output, breathing pattern. Everything a fighter could learn about another fighter before the first strike.

Kaelen moved first.

He closed the distance in two steps and threw a straight palm strike aimed at Ren’s chest. It was fast and heavy — Voss-style combat, built on dense energy and direct force. Ren sidestepped, felt the cold pressure of Kaelen’s energy brush past his ribs, and countered with a quick hook toward his jaw.

Kaelen blocked it with his forearm. The impact was solid — Ren felt the shock run up his arm. Kaelen’s defense was thick. Not just physical. His BPL energy ran through his body like cold armor, reinforcing his bones and muscles with the kind of dense, heavy cultivation that came from years of expensive materials and elite training.

’He’s strong,’ Ren thought. Not a surprise. But feeling it directly was different from knowing it.

They exchanged three more strikes in quick succession. Kaelen threw a knee that Ren blocked low. Ren answered with an elbow that Kaelen caught on his shoulder. Kaelen drove forward with a combination — palm, fist, palm — that pushed Ren back two steps.

The room was silent. Everyone was watching.

— • —

Thirty seconds in, Ren understood the problem.

Kaelen was stronger than him in a straight fight. Not by a huge margin, but enough. His energy output was higher, his defense was denser, and his strikes hit harder. The Voss bloodline gave him raw physical power that Ren’s peak Germination foundation couldn’t match without going past the limits he had set for himself.

If he fought Kaelen the way Kaelen wanted him to fight — power against power, standing in the center of the ring trading hits — he would lose. Slowly, but definitely.

(A/N: Before anyone asks why he is losing even with cheats, remember: he cannot openly use techniques and things unless he can explain how he got it. But don’t worry... soon, these commoners will know the true terror of a cheater.)

So he stopped fighting Kaelen’s way.

He dropped his stance lower, shifted his weight forward, and started moving. Not retreating. Circling. Using the space Kaelen wanted to fill, staying at angles instead of in front, forcing Kaelen to turn and adjust instead of driving straight ahead.

Kaelen adapted quickly. He was disciplined enough to recognize what Ren was doing and cut the angles, using his longer reach to press Ren toward the walls. But Ren was faster on the redirect, and every time Kaelen tried to pin him down, Ren slipped the trap and came back with a counter from a direction Kaelen hadn’t covered.

A strike to Kaelen’s ribs that he almost didn’t block. A low kick that clipped his knee and made him stumble half a step. A feint high that drew Kaelen’s guard up, followed by a body shot that landed clean and made the Voss heir grunt.

The first clean hit of the spar. Ren’s.

— • —

Kaelen’s eyes changed after that. The cold discipline was still there, but something sharper came behind it.

He raised his energy output. The temperature in the hall dropped noticeably — Ren could feel the cold radiating from Kaelen’s body like winter air through an open window. His strikes got heavier, faster, more aggressive. The composure was still there but it was running hot underneath, driven by the same pressure that had been building since the corridor conversation.

Ren matched the escalation. He had to — anything less and Kaelen would overwhelm him. His Version 2.0 combat techniques ran clean and fast, his reactions sharp from weeks of field fighting. He blocked a strike that would have put most students on the ground, absorbed the impact through his root channels, and came back with a two-hit combination that caught Kaelen on the shoulder and ribs.

Kaelen answered with a palm strike that broke through Ren’s guard and hit him square in the chest.

Ren went back three steps. His ribs ached. The cold energy from the strike lingered in his channels like ice water. Kaelen hit hard — harder than any corrupted beast in the Greymist Stretch.

Kaia flared. Not a warning. Something fiercer. The same heat from the Burrowing Maw fight, the same surge he had felt in the crossing zone. His seed was responding to the pressure, pushing energy outward, wanting to answer Kaelen’s cold with everything it had.

’Not everything,’ Ren told himself. ’Just enough.’

He let the energy rise. More than he had shown in any drill. More than the assessment. More than the field training. Not his full power — not even close — but enough that when he stepped back into range and threw his next strike, the impact made Kaelen’s guard buckle.

Kaelen’s eyes widened. Just for a second. Then the cold mask came back and he answered with everything he had.

— • —

The last thirty seconds were the hardest fight Ren had ever been in.

They traded strikes at a speed that the watching group couldn’t fully follow. Kaelen’s cold power against Ren’s precise efficiency, neither giving ground, neither able to put the other down. The ward lines in the floor flickered from the energy output. The air between them was freezing on one side and warm on the other.

Ren landed a clean hit to Kaelen’s jaw that snapped his head sideways. Kaelen answered with a body blow that drove the air out of Ren’s lungs. Ren came back with a knee to the midsection. Kaelen caught it, shoved him back, and closed the distance with a three-hit combination that Ren blocked but felt in his bones.

Both of them were breathing hard. Both of them were running hotter than any Germination-stage students had a right to run. Both of them were one good hit away from putting the other down.

Ren stepped forward for another exchange.

"Stop."

Selene’s voice cut through the hall like cold water. Her energy came with it — Peak Stage 4, enough to make both of them freeze mid-step. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

They stopped. Standing less than a meter apart, fists still raised, energy still running, chests heaving.

Selene walked between them. She looked at Kaelen. She looked at Ren. Her expression was unreadable.

"That’s enough."

— • —

Kaelen lowered his fists first. His breathing was rough and his left side was bruised where Ren’s body shots had landed. He looked at Ren with an expression that was not anger, not respect, and not frustration. It was something more complicated than all three — the look of someone who had gotten the answer he came for and was still processing what it meant.

"You’re not what your records say you are," he said quietly.

Ren lowered his fists. His ribs ached, his channels were still cold from Kaelen’s strikes, and his right hand was bruised from hitting Voss-grade energy armor.

"Neither are you," he said.

Kaelen held his gaze for a long moment. Then he turned, picked up his bag from the wall, and walked out of the training hall without looking at anyone else.

The door closed behind him. The room let out a breath it had been holding for three minutes.

Cassian was the first to speak. "Yeah," he said. "That was something."

Yuelan was grinning. Lyra looked like she had been holding her own fists. Iris was staring at the spot where Ren and Kaelen had been standing with an expression that said she had just recalculated something important. Lin Yueying was perfectly composed, as always, but her eyes were sharper than usual.

Ren walked to the wall, sat down, and closed his eyes. His hands were shaking slightly. Kaia was warm in his chest — settling after the surge, but still alert, still humming with the echo of what she had felt during the fight.

He had shown more than he wanted to. Selene had watched every second. Kaelen knew now that the numbers didn’t match. And everyone in the room had felt the energy output of two Germination-stage students fighting at a level that shouldn’t have been possible.

But he hadn’t lost. And he hadn’t won. And somewhere in the space between those two things, something had shifted between them.

The rivalry wasn’t colder anymore.