Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 113: The Vampire Tournament (5)

Chapter 113: The Vampire Tournament (5)

Then Ornée raised her hand. Once again. High, firm, implacable. Her voice cut through the air like a well-honed blade, without emphasis, but with that sharpness that leaves no room for doubt:

— Let the battle begin.

Immediately, the gems embedded in Nortris’ flesh blazed with a brutal flash, pulsing with a dark and threatening light, as if his very heart had awakened in his chest to beat to the rhythm of an ancient hatred. His body tensed in a shiver of raw energy, then he charged. In a single movement. Direct. Blinding. He held nothing back. His speed nearly shattered the scenery, a silent scream trailing behind his first strike — a terrible arc, a foretold impact, a shockwave ready to tear the air apart and sweep away all opposing pretension.

But the blow struck nothing.

It hit empty space.

Because I was no longer there.

I hadn’t countered. Hadn’t stepped back. I had vanished. Purely. Simply.

And Ornée, still standing, not even having returned to her seat, declared in a dry voice, almost absent, as if announcing an obvious fact:

— Third match. Winner: Lukaris.

It was as if the world stopped. A heavy, saturated silence swallowed the arena. No cheers, no boos. Just that compact, almost unreal void where even breathing seemed suspended. Then, slowly, a ripple passed through the crowd. A murmur of confusion. A whisper flowing through the stands. And all saw.

I was there.

Behind Nortris.

Both hands gently — almost absurdly gently — placed around his throat. I wasn’t squeezing. Not yet. No need. I was showing him. Offering him the raw truth, without embellishment, without detour. I was proving to him, in that vibrating silence, that his life could have ended between my fingers — a single second would have sufficed. A heartbeat. A breath. And everything would have been over.

I slowly released the grip. Then turned away. Without looking at him. As one turns from something already resolved, already surpassed.

My steps led me back to the center, then toward my bench. But before, I looked up. My gaze rose to the high box, to the man I saw there, rigid, locked in a rage too vast for his flesh.

Mikaem.

The Lord of the Forbidden Silence.

His jaws were clenched to the breaking point. His fingers trembled, gripped on the armrest as if he wanted to carve his rage into it. His pupils trembled. Not mere frustration. A deep humiliation. Incandescent. To see his chosen, his weapon, his lineage’s pride... reduced to helplessness. Humiliated not by blood, but by the very absence of combat. By me. By my name.

A slow smile, almost tender, formed on my lips.

And, unhurriedly, I turned toward her.

Anarael.

Still seated, still as inaccessible in her box of pale shadows, distant and yet so present, like a summit that chooses to whom it grants the echo of its light.

I bowed.

Slowly.

Deeply.

A deliberate, majestic bow, calculated down to the silence that accompanied it. And in that silence, my voice rose, supple, clear, charged with a respect too pure not to also be a provocation:

— The chosen of the great Anarael will always prove worthy of your greatness.

Silence could have sufficed.

But it did not last.

For, against all expectations, she replied.

Not by standing. Not by raising her voice.

Her voice slid through the air like a cold blade, barely more than a breath, yet every word resonated in the arena like a command etched into the world’s foundations:

— Do not flatter me, Lukaris. Simply live up to what you dared to claim.

Her voice carried neither approval nor anger.

But an attention. A weighing.

As if, for the first time, she acknowledged that I belonged to her — a fragment of her shadow, a piece on her chessboard.

Then, without another word, she slightly turned her face. A minute movement. But one that meant: I saw. I see you.

And that was all.

But it was enough to send a shiver through the marble beneath my feet.

Then, unhurriedly, I rejoined Lysara, who awaited me on the bench, impassive, but whose gaze told me everything. She hadn’t needed to analyze. She had understood.

Behind me, Nortris hadn’t moved. He trembled. Not with fear — but with that slower, crueler poison than blood: shame.

He no longer spoke.

He no longer moved.

He didn’t yet understand how. But he knew.

He had not been struck.

He had not been wounded.

And yet... he had lost.

And that defeat, that clean, silent defeat, without a wound to show nor an excuse to offer... for a noble like him, it was a sentence. Worse than death.

Around us, the audience hesitated. Some, too shocked, remained frozen, their expressions blank. Others whispered, heads leaning toward their neighbors, voices barely a breath. The air was thick with hesitation, discomfort, fascination too.

This was not simply a victory.

It was a message.

And all, even those who dared not yet accept it, now knew whom it was addressed to.

The final match of the first phase followed without delay, as if it had only been waiting for silence to take root. No repairs were needed this time — the arena’s surface, untouched, seemed only marked by the echo of previous clashes, a residual tension floating in the air, suspended in the stands still heavy with stupefaction. The crowd, for its part, dared neither speak nor applaud, as if something still hadn’t settled.

Then, in that dense calm, the first figure advanced.

It was a woman.

Straight. Composed. Her bearing contrasted with everything seen so far. No flamboyance, no provocation, not even that martial coldness often found among noble duelists. She walked with an almost solemn restraint, a controlled austerity, as if each step followed an ancient rite.

Her black attire, cut with rigid precision, evoked the uniforms of the maids of old vampiric courts — those silent servants, both shadows and pillars, invisible yet essential. Thick fabric, without frills, without shine, accented only by the matte gleam of a high collar and sleeves bordered with straight silver lines.

In her left hand, she held a book.

Not an ordinary grimoire — no. A heavy tome, bound in pure silver chains that barely chimed with her movements. Between the pages, glyphs floated slowly, like ancient thoughts hesitating to take form, shaping and reshaping shifting figures in a dance of dormant intelligence. Everything about her betrayed discipline, ancient knowledge, absolute mastery of form.

A mage. Scholar. Perhaps academic, but dangerously rigorous.

She stopped at the exact center of the arena. Her pace, never hurried, ended in perfect stillness. Then she bowed.

A gesture of ceremonial precision, extremely measured. Not servile, not proud. Just... impeccable. Like a bow offered to tradition itself.

And her voice rose.

Calm. Smooth. Steady. No trace of effort.

— Orphéa, chosen of Lady Ornée.

Not a word more. Not a word less.

The silence that followed was not empty. It vibrated. It carried the kind of respect that can’t be forced, that can’t be performed. An inherited silence, transmitted, ritualized.

She had nothing to prove.

Nothing to play.

Everything in her posture, her attire, her diction breathed rigor. Reverence for ancient codes. Conscious obedience to a forgotten form of vampiric elegance.

And yet, despite this sobriety, something in her gaze betrayed a cold intensity, perfectly contained. A resolve that did not shout, but would not yield either.

Orphéa had not come to fight.

She had come to represent.

Across from her, her opponent took several seconds to react. Not out of calculated caution, nor strategic posture, but as if his mind were still entangled in a dream too vast to dissipate at once.

He seemed elsewhere. Literally. His half-closed eyelids barely filtered a drowned gaze, almost absent, and his slouched posture carried the strange impression of a body still trapped in ancient sleep. His hair, disheveled, fell in lazy strands over a pale face, almost translucent, as if he had just risen from a bed the arena had no right to interrupt.

His coat, rich but wrinkled, looked hastily thrown over a body still refusing to conform. And when he finally spoke, it was without emphasis, without raising his head, without the slightest concern for decorum:

— Yuris.

One word, nothing more. Spoken like a sigh, cast into the air as if he expected everyone to already know.

I raised an eyebrow.

Yuris.

The son of Yaris. Lord of the Devouring Dreams. One of the most powerful names in the ancient vampiric sphere — respected as much as feared, though surrounded by a mystery that made his heirs as bewildering as they were unpredictable. And this one, true to the image his father had cultivated without ever claiming, seemed to float above the world with an almost insolent nonchalance.

Not a warrior.

Not a thunderous mage.

No.

Something else. Unclassifiable.

I chuckled to myself, without mockery. One had to admit: even in his name, there was that strange logic, that feigned continuity — Yaris, Yuris. Like a variation of the same dream, an echo prolonged to infinity in a closed chamber. A quiet provocation. A subtle insult to the need for differentiation.

But I didn’t lower my guard.

For those who slumber most deeply are sometimes those who, once awakened, devour without warning.

Then Ornée, still upright, still impeccable, slightly raised her hand in that precise gesture that, for her, knew neither fatigue nor hesitation. Her voice, carved from the marble of ancestral ritual, rose with that cold neutrality one could never quite classify as respect or contempt:

— Let the battle begin.

But no sooner had those words settled on the arena stone than Yuris lazily lifted his hand. Not in a show of power. Not to summon any magic.

No.

Just a vague, limp gesture, more a caress of the air than a call.

— I forfeit.

His dragging voice seemed to emerge from a bottomless well, emptied of all will, like that of a man who, even in surrender, retained the arrogance of indifference. Then he turned away. Simply. Without even meeting his opponent’s gaze. Without ceremony.

And he left.

But even "left" is too noble a word.

He did not walk.

He drifted.

He stood and slouched away — feet dragging like a condemned man who, rather than ascend the scaffold, would rather lie at the edge of the void and wait for the world to forget him. His wrinkled coat fluttered behind him without rhythm, and his back, hunched under a weariness almost conceptual, completed the transformation of his exit into a surreal painting.

In the stands, a breath slipped through. One of those ambiguous murmurs, a mix of muffled laughter, sincere perplexity, and a collective feeling hesitating between indignation and relief.

Some nobles nodded silently, dismayed.

Others let out short, dry, shameful laughs.

But Ornée, she did not move. Not even a blink. She didn’t raise an eyebrow. Didn’t take a breath.

Her voice snapped through the air like a simple administrative note:

— Fourth and final match of the first phase. Winner: Orphéa.

And that was all.

Not a word more. No judgment. Just the cold punctuation of a cycle completed.

Around the arena, a collective sigh, subtle but dense, slowly rose like emotional vapor. A sigh marking the end of a Chapter. A release mixed with amusement, contained frustration, and a hint of relief. Some would have liked to see more. Others less. But all knew something had just closed.

The first round of the tournament was over.

And the arena, emptied of its fighters, was now only a stage awaiting the next act.

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