The God of Nothing.-Chapter 50: The Center Shifts

Not until it mattered.

She knew her power was great, perhaps the closest to the prince after Orien. Yet, she already had the backing of Vykrall and Stormont. Her only goal now was to spare the Stormont family the shame Vaerin had brought them.

Her gaze cut across the chaos, taking in every motion. Farren, spiraling and sharp. Braegor, brutal as an avalanche. Jorun, the slow-burn of inevitability. The heirs — once symbols of dominance — now bending, adapting, sweating.

This wasn't just a skirmish anymore. This was erosion.

She tilted her head slightly, and a faint mist rose from the crease of her glove.

Red. Not bright like flame. Not airy like steam.

Dense. Metallic. Alive.

Bloodfire.

It whispered beneath her skin now, impatient. Her mana pulsed with heat not from fury — but hunger. Every heartbeat thudded with the urge to burn. Not for spectacle. Not for show. But for the truth of her power.

Her gaze drifted — not to her allies. Not to her brother, who still hadn't returned to the field.

Her eyes locked instead on Orien Blackhall.

He stood farther back, arms still folded. Silent. Sharp. Watching.

The others still thought him a commoner with a noble-sounding alias, grown through trials for a decade to reach his current level.

She didn't.

No amount of stillness could hide that balance, that coiled precision in how he stood. There was no fear in him. No awe, either.

Only focus.

It unsettled her.

No — it offended her.

It attacked the very world view she had curated for herself.

He had humiliated her brother. Kicked him into the wall like a sack of meat, shattering the image of House Stormont in front of half the kingdom. And now he stood there, calm, cloaked in falsehoods, as if he were the one surveying the battlefield.

Who are you really, Selphira thought. Because you're not Orien Blackhall.

She could feel it.

The wrongness in his mana — not chaotic, but different.

Structured. Dense. Pure.

Fake names didn't change. And her blood could smell lies.

Another flicker of Bloodfire slipped free from her wrist and curled upward before she sealed it again.

She wouldn't move yet. Not while the heirs bled and screamed and fought each other like dogs for scraps of approval. She would wait.

Wait until the prince's eyes fell on them.

Wait until the spotlight narrowed.

Wait until all other names rose to prominence.

Then — and only then — would she burn.

Not with Purefire.

Not with composure.

Not with tradition.

She would shed the family leash and unleash herself.

Selphira Stormont, the last of Stormont standing.

The next move would not be Vaerin's.

Not Serika's.

Not Vessia's.

It would be hers.

And when it came, the arena would not survive it.

The battle still raged. But here, in the edge-shadowed mouth of the coliseum's recovery quarter, it may as well have been a different world.

Vaerin Stormont sat on a stone bench, shoulders hunched, eyes low, flame absent.

The healer standing nearby shifted nervously, hands clasped around a small bowl of glowing salve. "Your ribs are fractured. If you just lie back—"

"Leave."

His voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. The tone landed like steel on stone. The healer paused, nodded once, and stepped away, leaving him alone with the sound of everything he'd failed to stop.

He didn't need the silence. It was already loud inside his mind.

He saw it again. Over and over.

The kick.

That sudden explosion of force that wasn't just strength — it was intent. Controlled, merciless. It hadn't knocked him down. It had thrown him. Broken stone. Bent steel. A crater behind him that echoed with the silence of a stunned crowd.

His armor still bore the shape of it. Dented chestplate. Shattered pauldron. Blood-soaked linen bandages wrapped tight across his torso.

It reminded him so much so of a long-gone pain in his neck.

But the worst break wasn't bone.

It was pride.

Stormonts didn't fall in public. They didn't lose in public. And yet he'd done both, for all the kingdom to see.

He clenched his fists, nails digging into the leather of his gloves.

The arena thundered in the distance.

Farren's voice carried through the air — still laughing, still breathing.

Jorun's magma split the floor like the land itself was tired of nobility.

Braegor's spear clanged again, the deep-chested bellow of a warrior too old to bow.

And Selphira...

She hadn't moved.

She hadn't come to him when he fell.

She hadn't even looked.

Vaerin could still see her face, as cold and still as obsidian — watching everything, weighing it like a ledger. That expression hadn't held pity. Not even scorn.

Just calculation.

She'd chosen to let him fall. And now she waited, untouched, unmoved, while names he didn't know began to rewrite the narrative.

She had the power to change this situation. He'd known that since long before the tournament. He still remembered the blood, his father's horrified expression, his mother's satisfied smile.

She had a horrifying power.

She perhaps could contend with that man...

A name twisted like a thorn in his mind.

Orien Blackhall.

He turned his head, slowly, painfully, to peer past the edge of the stone archway. There he was — standing near the edge of the battlefield, posture relaxed, arms folded, completely uninjured.

Unscarred. Unbothered.

Untouched.

It didn't make sense.

He'd seen Orien's matches. His technique was too clean. Too honed. Not the rough edges of a minor noble clawing for a title — but the deadly elegance of someone trained for war.

He felt familiar. That's what bothered him most.

Like a blade he'd seen before, now hidden in a different sheath.

Vaerin's jaw tightened. He didn't know who Orien truly was — not yet — but every instinct whispered the same thing:

Something about him is wrong.

"Who the hell are you," he muttered.

He shifted forward, bracing against the pain, and stood.

The linen around his ribs constricted. His vision tilted slightly. But he didn't stop.

Each step was heavy. Not with physical weight, but with what had been taken from him.

The roars of the crowd no longer fazed him. The chaos, the flame, the shifting alliances — none of it mattered.

He wasn't here to win.

Not anymore.

He walked slowly to the edge of the arena, boots scraping dust from cracked stone.

His gaze didn't leave Orien.

He made me fall.

His breathing slowed.

I'll drag him down with me.

He stopped just short of the battlefield, still outside the ring — watching, burning, waiting.

The match wasn't over.

And neither was he.

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Caelith sat alone.

The heat of the battle pulsed across the coliseum like a second heartbeat, but here in the outer tier of the stone floor, he was still. A shallow ring of blue healing aura flickered at his feet, nearly faded now, more habit than necessity.

He no longer needed it.

His eyes were open — not just to light and shadow, but to the fabric of mana itself.

To others, the arena was a swirl of flame, noise, dust, and violence.

To Caelith, it was rhythm.

He watched Raen's frost arrows carve long, graceful arcs — every one loosed just a beat late now. He saw Vessia's flame sputtering in uneven bursts, fueled by anger, not control. He noted Serika's blade losing tempo as she adapted to Braegor's wild counters. Jorun's magma bled slow confidence. Lysara's ash burned thinner. Even Farren's lightning, still wild, had frayed at the edges.

They were all starting to unravel.

And through that chaos, Caelith saw structure.

Mana danced through the air in long threads — curling, folding, shifting — but to him it was a language now. Even its silence spoke.

Rejection isn't about dominance, he thought. It's not about crushing mana. It's about stillness. About standing where the storm passes through you — untouched.

That was the lesson he'd learned in the forest. That survival wasn't rage or strength — it was resistance without motion.

A truth the nobles never grasped.

They believed strength was always loud.

His gaze drifted. Selphira Stormont still hadn't moved.

She stood at the far edge of the arena like a judge awaiting the perfect crime. Her cloak fluttered barely at the hem. Her expression unreadable. Her presence... too quiet.

Caelith's pupils narrowed slightly.

There it was again — that ripple in her aura. Not fire. Not frost. Not ash.

Something red.

Something hungry.

It wasn't Purefire. Not even close. This was deeper. Tighter. Like a flame that had crawled into bone and nested there.

Bloodfire, he guessed. He'd read of such a thing once in a forbidden tome left unattended at Ink & Iron — a fire not fed by mana, but by vitality. A curse disguised as a gift.

Selphira was holding back. Not because she couldn't win. Because she was waiting.

His eyes moved again.

Vaerin.

Back on his feet. Wrapped in bloodstained cloth. Armor ruined, pride worse. But still standing, now near the edge of the ring. Breathing like a caged hound watching its leash fray.

He'd been disgracefully eliminated, was he perhaps trying to drag the Stormont name through the dirt?

Caelith raised an eye.

Vaerindidn't recognize Caelith yet — but the suspicion was growing.

Caelith didn't move. Not yet.

He looked back to the center — where Farren, Braegor, and Jorun held their ground.

Outnumbered. Bleeding. Laughing.

They weren't just fighting to win.

They were fighting to be seen.

Because that's what this Gauntlet really was.

Not a test of strength. Not even of merit.

It was a theater.

A stage where the prince and his whisperers took notes on who might shape the kingdom's future. Who earned attention.

Who deserved investment.

The heirs knew it.

The champions were learning it.

And Caelith?

He'd always known.

He closed his eyes for just a moment. Let the mana settle around him. Let it notice him. Let it curve — not in obedience, but in recognition.

Then, he stood.

No flash of aura. No dramatic entrance. No declaration of intent.

Just a boy rising from stillness like a needle drawing a line through silk.

And yet—

The crowd shifted. The sound dulled. The tension tilted.

Serika, mid-duel, flicked her eyes toward him.

Selphira's pupils constricted — red mist curling slightly faster from the edge of her glove.

Raen glanced.

Vessia turned halfway — startled, not by power, but expectation.

Farren, still bleeding, cracked a crooked grin. "About time."

Caelith didn't respond. He didn't need to.

The mana around him bowed subtly. Like threads pulled toward a vortex. Not violently — but insistently. Not flaring out. Folding in.

As though something ancient had quietly stepped onto the stage.

He walked forward one step.

No aura.

No blade.

Just silence.

And a wave of unease.

But every fighter in the arena felt it.

A shift.

A weight.

A new center of gravity.

And then the world fell.