Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 115: The Vampire Tournament (7)

Chapter 115: The Vampire Tournament (7)

The healers rushed toward Rizork, white silhouettes cutting through the burning mist, their long immaculate robes floating around them like scraps of ectoplasm. They looked like benevolent specters emerging from the depths of the temple, tasked with bringing back to life a giant struck down by fate.

One of them, the youngest, lifted his head with almost paternal care, and slowly poured between his parted lips a vial of purified blood. A rare essence, alive, still pulsing as if it had refused to die. Another traced, with the tips of his fingers, a complex spell whose glyphs vibrated with a pale green light, weaving over his wounds a net of healing energy, soft but firm, like slow rain on fractured earth.

And under the effect of their gestures, the burns closed. Quickly. Almost too quickly for wounds that severe. His skin slowly regained its natural tone, the nerves reconnected, and his breathing, first ragged, became steady again. His chest rose with greater force. His gaze, clouded, sharpened.

He was alive.

And already... he was returning.

His strength rose faster than the arena itself, which was only just beginning to recover from the destruction wrought.

But I was no longer watching Rizork.

Lysara was walking toward me.

Not as a conqueror. Not as a warrior hungry for recognition.

She walked with the sure slowness of someone who no longer needs to prove anything. An inner light radiated from her silhouette, not through magic, but through certainty. Radiant. Yes. But without seeking to dazzle.

She had won.

And though some still whispered that it was thanks to her armor... they didn’t understand. She didn’t wear it. She didn’t hide behind it. This armor wasn’t a tool. It was an extension. An incarnation. It clung to her skin, to her soul, to her thoughts. She breathed its pulses. She didn’t activate it: she resonated with it.

That black, burning, seductive and lethal shell was nothing but the exact reflection of her name — the Daughter of Lust. Not a title. A state. A radiance.

She stopped at my side, silent.

I turned to her, a wide smile on my lips. A true one. Not political. Not strategic. A smile of a proud man, moved, complicit.

— Magnificent, I whispered.

She inclined her head slightly, but in her eyes shone a soft, almost amused glint.

I continued, my voice lower, almost theatrical:

— You led that fight like a tragedian. You let him believe he had a chance... You guided him, gently, patiently, toward that final desperate strike. And when at last he thought he’d reached you... his sword broke.

She tilted her head slightly, a smile forming on her lips.

— A play, I murmured. A masterpiece of staging.

I laughed, sincerely amused, carried by the precision of the execution.

— It gave me chills.

And she laughed with me. A pure laugh. Light. Sharp. Almost childlike in its sincerity. It didn’t sound cruel, nor triumphant. It was... alive.

And that moment, that simple exchange between us — a few words, a few looks, a few bursts of restrained joy — had more impact than any official declaration.

Around us, in the stands, the first murmurs rose.

— The Daughter of Lust...

— It’s her, isn’t it?

— She broke him... without even sweating.

They didn’t shout.

Not yet.

But already, her name was spreading. Like a wave. Like an underground legend still seeking its form. It crept through the cracks of silence, through the shadows of the columns, through the hollows of tightened throats.

Lysara.

Not yet shouted.

But whispered with that strange vibration unique to names that disturb. Fear. Fascination. And a troubled desire, hard to name, but impossible to ignore.

Her fame was being born.

Not in the light.

But in the corners.

And it would grow.

Inexorably.

Repairs took longer than usual.

And it was no surprise.

Lysara’s fight had been, without question, the most devastating since the start of the tournament. The ground still bore its scars — deep crevices, torn rocks, burned residues that refused to fully cool. Even the master-builders, though trained to restore the arena between battles, moved with a newfound caution, as if the earth itself hesitated to take shape again.

A smile slipped onto my lips.

Yes... She was truly my daughter.

And deep within me, a discreet but vibrant pride took root. Not a loud pride, not the kind you display for admiration — another kind. Older. More intimate. The kind that comes when what you’ve passed on exceeds your own expectations. When the student no longer imitates, but transcends.

But already my thoughts were drifting.

I couldn’t stay here.

Not in this in-between.

The next match was approaching.

My semifinal.

Against Orphéa.

I let my gaze lose itself for a moment in the shifting shadows of the rebuilding arena. Each repositioned stone, each regeneration spell cast echoed within me like a heartbeat that was not yet mine.

She was waiting for me.

And I... I was beginning to enter that particular calm I knew so well. The one before the storm. The one where you no longer think in words, but in trajectories, in rhythms, in instincts.

This would not be a battle of strength.

It would be something else.

A duel of invisible forms.

Of mental structures.

Of magic... and choices.

Rizork had shown what he was capable of.

A rock. A wall. A presence.

In a direct clash, without trickery, without trapped terrain, without calculation or masks, he would likely have crushed a mage like an overripe fruit in the palm. Pure strength. Honest, almost — in his way of demolishing everything. He didn’t need to feint: his power spoke for him.

But this tournament...

This tournament was not a field of honor.

It was not a war.

It was a game.

A theater.

A selection mechanism, oiled by desire, strategy, politics, shadows. Here, one didn’t simply seek to win. One sought to appear. To mark. To influence the gaze of the powerful. Each strike was just a letter in a larger speech. Each victory, a line in a play others were silently writing.

And in that theater... another question now haunted me.

Did Orphéa deserve for me to lose?

Not for her to win.

No.

To be chosen.

To take the final spotlight, while I, voluntarily, stepped aside. Toward the shadows. Toward the third place. Where one observes. Where one decides.

The idea was not vain. Nor shameful.

It wasn’t cowardice.

It was strategy.

Power, sometimes, is not seized through triumph. It is shaped in the margins. In the choice of what one gives up willingly, to better guide what follows.

And the question, simple, bare, posed itself to me with relentless clarity:

Is she worth the final?

The answer... would be given to me.

Not by her alone.

But by fire.

By confrontation.

By what she would force me to choose — or to sacrifice.

The arena was finally rebuilt.

More stable, denser, each slab sealed by deep, slow magic, imbued in the stone like a memory of past chaos. Invisible enchantments ran beneath the surface, reinforcing the foundations, as if the ground itself had learned to be wary of what was about to strike it again.

I left my seat.

Silently. Slowly. Unhurried.

I descended the steps of the stands one by one, without greeting, without responding to glances, without even paying attention to the murmur that, I could feel, began to stir behind my back. Each step brought me closer to that central circle — the heart of the arena where everything is decided, everything unmasked.

And when I finally stopped on the invisible line where battle begins, my gaze rested on her.

Orphéa.

Nothing had changed.

She was still there, upright, motionless, impenetrable. Her slender figure, encased in that black vampiric maid outfit, evoked more a priestess of silence than a fighter. She exuded neither threat nor ambition. Just a kind of calm, ancient authority, entirely contained in the perfect axis of her posture.

Her grimoire rested between her hands, closed for now, but alive. One could feel, in the way her fingers embraced it, that it was not a mere tool. It was an extension of herself, a matrix of silent power, ready to open like a wound or a prophecy.

Should I yield her the first place?

I didn’t yet know.

I had considered it. Measured it. But the uncertainty remained. Floating. Present.

So I decided to let the fight answer for me.

It would tell me what neither rumor nor name had been able to settle.

I spoke first.

My voice was simple. Devoid of stakes, of pomp, almost bare:

— Lukaris.

She answered immediately.

Not a second of hesitation. No theatrics. Just one word, perfectly delivered:

— Orphéa.

And it was Ornée, true to herself, who sealed the moment.

Her voice rose like a hammer on the anvil of fate, clear, final:

— Let the battle begin.

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.