CaleBy the time the third demonstration ended, my interest had already burned itself out.Kaereth Valmor was good. Better than most. His control over wind-aligned Elementa Arcanum was clean and deliberate, every motion measured to show mastery without exposing limits. He wasn’t revealing everything, but he was revealing enough to satisfy anyone who understood what they were watching.The crowd ate it up, but it wasn’t for me. I’d seen enough real violence to not get caught up in the facsimile of it.The Ascendant Circle had grown loud in a way that had nothing to do with danger. Applause came too easily. Gasps arrived on cue. Every exchange was treated like revelation instead of performance. Skill, yes—but shaped, sanded, and presented until it was safe to consume.I leaned back slightly, letting the noise wash past me without engaging. Ellara was still watching the center dais, her eyes following footwork instead of spectacle. She hadn’t noticed that I’d already checked out.I leaned closer and kept my voice low. “I’m heading out. You want to come with me?”She blinked, surprised, then glanced between me and the arena. For a moment I could see the conflict play across her face—curiosity pulling one way, familiarity the other.She shook her head once. “I want to see how this ends.”I nodded. “Catch up later.”She smiled faintly. “Don’t disappear.”Rade was too busy cheering to notice my departure.I slipped away from the Circle and let the noise thin as I crossed the grounds. The farther I got, the more the campus returned to its normal rhythm—quiet conversations, measured footsteps, wards humming at baseline. The kind of calm that pretended it hadn’t just spent days flirting with catastrophe.That was when I felt them.A large group was approaching from the opposite direction, their presence bending foot traffic around them before anyone consciously realized why. (...)