The arena floor transford.
Panels in the stone slid back with a deep chanical groan, revealing compartnts beneath the surface. From those compartnts, structures rose—slowly at first, then faster, locking into place with heavy clicks that echoed across the stadium. Rails. Ramps. A central elevated platform ringed by lower sections connected by narrow bridges. The whole arrangent assembled itself in under a minute, and by the ti it finished the floor looked nothing like it had before.
The crowd watched it happen with the particular silence of people witnessing sothing they hadn’t expected.
Then the silence broke into noise.
The announcer let it build for a mont before raising the microphone.
"What you are looking at," he said, "is the Exhibition Ground." He paused. "And what you are about to watch—is not a tournant fight."
He let that sit.
"Tournant fights are for later. Tournant fights are where things get decided. What happens right now is sothing different entirely." He smiled out at the stands. "Right now—we have fun."
Six figures walked out from opposite ends of the arena floor.
Three from each side.
They weren’t dressed in academy uniforms. They wore sleek fitted gear—dark, lightweight, designed for speed rather than identity. No insignia. No nas on their backs. The crowd didn’t know who they were and that was clearly intentional—the anonymity making them sothing between athletes and perforrs, figures defined entirely by what they were about to do.
They spread across the Exhibition Ground and took their positions without instruction, each one finding a different section of the structure—a ramp, a bridge, the elevated central platform, the lower rings.
The announcer spoke.
"The rules are simple. You fall off the structure—you’re out. Last one standing takes it." He paused. "Abilities are permitted. That is all."
The crowd buzzed.
A horn sounded.
And the Exhibition Ground beca chaos.
The first exchange happened almost before the crowd could track it—two figures on the narrow central bridge colliding in a burst of motion, abilities firing imdiately, no warmup, no circling. One of them produced a shockwave from flat palms that cracked against the bridge surface and sent the other skidding toward the edge. The second figure caught the rail with one hand, swung under it, ca back up on the other side and drove forward with a shoulder strike that pushed the first figure three steps back toward the center platform.
The crowd reacted to every beat of it—gasping, laughing, shouting, surging in volu when sothing spectacular happened and dropping just slightly in the half-seconds between exchanges, breathing together like a single organism.
On the ramp at the far end, one of the figures was using sothing that looked like wind manipulation—short controlled bursts that altered trajectory mid-movent, making their path across the structure unpredictable. They ca down the ramp at speed, cut sideways using a burst, landed on the lower ring, imdiately launched upward toward the elevated platform. The figure already on the platform turned to et them and the collision was visible from every section of the stands—a full midair exchange that sent both of them in different directions, one landing cleanly, one barely catching the edge of the platform and hanging there for a mont while the crowd scread.
They pulled themselves back up.
The crowd scread louder.
The announcer watched it with the rest of them—or perford watching it, which amounted to the sa thing.
"Look at that!" he called out. "That is what ability-enhanced reflexes look like when the stakes are real—even in entertainnt!" He laughed. "These six volunteered for this, by the way. I want to be very clear about that."
More laughter from the stands.
He kept talking through the action—not over it, but beneath it, giving context and color, pointing out monts the crowd might have missed, building stakes around figures nobody had arrived with any attachnt to. By the ti the first elimination happened—one of the figures finally knocked cleanly off the lower ring by a controlled force burst, landing on the arena floor below and raising both hands to signal they were fine—the crowd reacted like they had been watching soone they cared about.
That was the announcer’s skill. That was what he was actually doing.
Five remaining.
Then four.
Between eliminations, the structure itself changed.
This was the part nobody had been told about. At irregular intervals, without warning, sections of the Exhibition Ground shifted—a bridge narrowed, a ramp steepened, a section of the lower ring retracted completely and left nothing but a gap between two platforms. The figures on the structure had to adapt in real ti, and the crowd got to watch that adaptation happen under pressure, got to see the mont soone realized the ground beneath them was no longer where they thought it was.
The figure using wind bursts nearly went out when a bridge narrowed mid-crossing. They corrected in real ti—a burst downward to arrest their sideways fall, a sharp redirect that sent them onto a different section entirely, landing on their knees and imdiately rising again. The crowd ca completely off their seats.
Three remaining.
The central platform held two of them now—the only stable section of the structure that hadn’t been altered. They were locked in close, fast exchanges, neither one able to create enough distance to use ranged abilities effectively, both of them working in a tight radius, reading each other’s movents and countering in real ti. It was less spectacular than the earlier monts but more compelling—technical, reactive, the kind of exchange that rewarded attention.
The third figure watched from the lower ring.
Waited.
Then ran straight up the connecting bridge toward the platform while the other two were occupied.
The crowd saw it before the people on the platform did.
The noise jumped to sothing enormous—not directed at any particular outco, just the pure reactive sound of people watching sothing about to happen, knowing it before the participants knew it themselves.
The running figure hit the platform and the whole dynamic changed—three people, one small surface, nobody with room to maneuver. For five seconds all three were still standing. Then one went over the edge. Then another. The third stood alone on the central platform with both arms raised, and the crowd gave them sothing that shook the stands.
The Exhibition Ground retracted.
Slower this ti—like it was taking a bow. The structures descended back into their compartnts, panels sliding back across the floor until the arena floor was flat and open again, and the single remaining figure walked off toward the exit tunnel with the crowd still going.
The announcer let it finish before he raised the microphone.
"There it is," he said simply.
He smiled.
"Consider that your warmup."
Laughter. Cheers. Soone in the upper tiers started a chant that caught and spread through three sections before dissolving back into general noise.
"We have more entertainnt coming between fights—music, demonstrations, a few surprises I am personally very excited about." He paused. "But those co later. Because first—"
He turned toward the main arena floor.
His voice dropped into sothing deliberate.
"The first match of the tournant is about to begin."
The crowd found another gear.
And beneath the stands, in the corridors where the fighters waited, Jelo heard it—felt it in the walls, in the floor under his feet.
He exhaled slowly.
It was starting.
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