The Return Of The Exiled Villain

The monument sank back into the yard as if it had never been there.

In its place, the stone under their feet split along a buried seam and opened into a wide ring covered in black sand and twelve iron posts.

On each post hung a necklace of dull bone beads, simple enough that a few heirs looked insulted.

Then the puppets stood up.

They had been lying under the sand like corpses that had not finished dying.

Wood and bone and dark metal, faces smooth, joints too precise.

Vael’Zira walked the rim of the ring.

"Second test. Physique Evaluation."

Someone in the ordinary line made a sound that was not quite a laugh.

"You will wear a Bone-Ward necklace," she said.

"It will not save you from pain. It will not save you from broken ribs, split skin, or the kind of bruise that stays in the marrow. It activates only if a blow would kill you. If the strike is merely trying to ruin you, the necklace stays quiet, and you take it."

A Nethar girl flexed her fingers.

"The puppets do not use arts. They use force. Different frames, different weights, different speeds. You may block or dodge, but you may not destroy the puppet nor leave the ring. You last until the evaluator calls the mark, or until the necklace decides you were about to die."

She lifted four fingers.

"Low. Intermediate. High. Perfect."

The yard understood the shape of it immediately.

Low was still standing.

Intermediate was still standing after it hurt. High was still standing after it should have stopped being pride and started being stupidity.

Perfect was the kind of body that made instructors lean forward.

"This is not a fight for dignity," Vael’Zira said.

"This is a measure of whether your flesh can belong in a place that breaks students on purpose. If you have a house technique that paints over weakness, keep it off the sand. We are looking at the body..."

An instructor with ash-gray horns stepped into the ring and held up one of the necklaces.

"Priority line first. Same order as the bone. When your name is called, you put this on, you enter, and you do not talk. Talking wastes blood."

The Ashrend twins went in one after the other.

The first twin, top-tier, late Monarch, treated the first puppet like a servant.

He slipped two blows, caught a third on his forearm, and then the second puppet hit him in the ribs hard enough to fold him sideways.

The necklace stayed dark, and he remained on his feet. The evaluator watched until the third frame drove him to one knee and called it.

"Intermediate."

The twin looked like he wanted a different word.

He took the mark anyway.

The heavenly twin lasted longer.

He let a wooden fist crack across his jaw, spat black, and grinned through it.

The necklace flickered once when a metal joint went for his throat, and the ward shoved the killing line aside, leaving him with a collar-shaped bruise and a laugh he could not quite finish.

"High."

An instructor marked the slate. Not perfect, but good enough that the house section made a satisfied noise.

Nethar’s third daughter did not grin.

She walked into the ring, took the first hit on her shoulder, the second on her stomach, and moved only when movement would keep a bone from splitting.

The puppets sped up. She bled from the mouth and did not raise her cultivation to crush them.

When the evaluator finally lifted a hand, her legs were shaking.

"High."

Sable Fang’s young master tried to turn it into a performance and got "Intermediate" for it.

Emberveil’s claimed son went down to a low mark after the second puppet found the place under his ribs that his coat had been hiding.

The yard was already learning the difference between a realm and a body.

Vessa’s name came out of the ordinary line like a pebble thrown into a hall.

She put the necklace on backwards, corrected it, and bounced once.

"If I cry, ignore it," she told the nearest inspector, and then the first puppet knocked her off her feet.

She got up.

The second hit her in the thigh.

"Urghhhhhhhh!!!!!!"

She yelled, but got up again.

The third catch almost counted as a killing line; the beads flashed white and shoved the strike off her temple, leaving her sitting in the sand with both hands on her head.

"Low."

"Rude!"

Vessa spat sand, pointed at the puppet, and said before an inspector pulled her out.

Top-tier talent.

A body that had not caught up.... she was still in.

Cael was not called.

High talent had already sent him to the west gate. That fact sat in the Veyth section like a tooth that would not stop hurting.

Then the inspector called out the princess.

"Crimson Moon."

The princess entered the ring without looking at Gray.

The first puppet’s fist met her forearm and sounded like stone on stone.

She stepped in, took the weight, let the second frame hammer her side, and kept her spear-hand closed so no one could accuse her of turning a physique test into a duel.

The third puppet came faster.

A blow that would have caved a lesser chest hit her and only bent her stance. The necklace never lit.

The evaluator let it run until the fourth frame, heavier than the others, drove a killing line at her heart.

The beads flared.

The strike died against the ward. She was still on her feet, mouth a thin line, a dark bloom spreading under her robe.

"High."

Not perfect, but close enough that two professors wrote her name again anyway.

The princess stepped out.

Her eyes passed Gray and did not stop.

"Gray."

The whispers came back immediately...

Gray put the beads over his head, and then walked onto the black sand.

The first puppet was honest.

It did not feint.

It threw a straight wooden fist at his sternum, the kind of blow meant to see whether a body understood force.

Gray turned his shoulder and let it hit the meat instead of the bone. Pain lit down his arm. The necklace stayed dead.

Good.

The second puppet was faster.

It went for the knee.

Thud!

He dropped his weight, took it on the thigh, and felt the bruise bloom immediately.

Incubus flesh in this shape was not royal bone. It was a body built to look like temptation and still had to stand like a fighter.

The third puppet had metal in the knuckles.

It caught him across the ribs and the sound made a student at the rail hiss. Gray’s breath left him, but he remained on his feet,

The beads remained dull, which meant the blow had only wanted to break him, not finish him.

Vael’Zira watched from the rim, unreadable.

The fourth puppet came in with the killing line.

Gray saw it the way he saw most killing lines: late enough to look human, early enough to live.

He could have slipped it.

He let the ward take the throat-shot instead, because a perfect dodge in a physique ring would have looked like a technique, and the headmistress had already said she wanted the body.

THRUMM!

The white light flared, covering his body, protecting him from the blow.

The evaluator waited, then called it.

"Intermediate."

A few of the whisperers looked cheated that he had not gone down. An instructor with no wings marked the slate and did not offer him a title.

Gray took the necklace off and stepped out of the sand.

The princess’s gaze flicked to the split in his coat, then away.

Vael’Zira’s voice carried over the ring before the next name was called.

"Intermediate means your body can be taught. Low means it can be dragged. High means it can be used. Perfect means we stop pretending the puppets are the point."

Her slit-gold eyes moved once across the students still waiting.

"Those with a mark stay. Those who needed the necklace too early leave. The academy is not a hospital."

Another heir walked onto the sand. The first puppet hit him, and the yard’s attention went with the sound.

That was when the princess spoke, low enough that the guards two steps back could pretend they had not heard.

"How are you able to hide your power from Arch Dukes?"

Gray turned his head just enough to look at her, his lips curling up into a faint smile.

"I don’t know what you’re talking about."

She did not smile back.

"Do not do that. Not after Vhar’Zul, and not after that stone hesitated on your name." Her eyes stayed on the ring, as if they were only discussing the next puppet.

"Vael’Zira is an Archduke. She looked at you and called you Peak Saint like the monument had settled it. I opened a Domain on you in the street, and you still put me in the mud. Those two things do not live in the same body."

Her eyes narrowed coldly.

"When this trial ends, you will tell me what the stone almost wrote."

Gray turned back to the sand.

"I don’t know what you’re talking about."