Primordial Heir: Nine Stars

”Ice Mirror: Phantasm.” She created three mirror-images of herself, each gliding to a different point around the cleared perimeter of the arena. All four Khiones raised their wands simultaneously. It was impossible to tell which was real.

Nero smiled, a fierce, appreciative grin. Good. This is what we need.

He stopped trying to pick the real one. He decided to challenge them all. Sheathing the lightning, he embraced the Law of Fire. Heat radiated from him in a visible wave. He slammed his palms together, then pushed them outward.

”Inferno Wave.”

A rolling, roaring wall of orange and crimson fire expanded from him in a perfect circle, rushing toward all four Khiones with equal fury. It wasn’t a precise attack; it was area denial. The three illusions winked out of existence as the superheated air disrupted their magical matrix. The real Khione, already moving, had to throw up a hasty ”Glacial Barrier” to absorb the blow. She was clever to move.

The wall of ice met the wave of fire with a cataclysmic hiss, filling the arena with a thick, blinding steam.

Nero didn’t wait for the steam to clear. He used it. With a thought, he switched laws again. Lightning crackled around his legs.

He disappeared, leaving afterimages, zigzagging through the mist not with sight, but with memory and instinct. He emerged from the cloud directly to the left of Khione’s barrier, his sword already in a downward cut, flames roaring back to life along its edge.

Khione gasped, spinning to meet him.

”Frost Shard: Volley!”

She fired a point-blank burst of needle-sharp ice from her wand, a mage’s equivalent of a shotgun blast.

It was too close to dodge. So, Nero didn’t. He committed to his strike, but at the last second, he changed its form. He let go of the sword with one hand and formed a claw of swirling fire.

”Blazing Claw.”

He swiped his fiery hand across his body, intercepting the cloud of ice shards. Most vaporized instantly, though a few sliced shallow cuts across his forearm. Ignoring the sting, his original sword strike, now slightly off its perfect angle, came down.

Khione raised her wand, not for a spell, but as a physical guard, channeling a quick

”Reinforce” into the crystal. The flaming sword struck the wand.

CLANG-SHIIIIINK!

The sound was a mix of metal and shattering ice. The wand held, but a web of cracks appeared along its length, and the force of the blow knocked it from Khione’s numbed fingers. It skittered across the stone.

She was disarmed. But she wasn’t defeated. Her ice blue eyes flashed with defiance. As Nero adjusted his grip for a final, controlled touch to her shoulder—the sparring equivalent of a winning blow—she dropped low and swept her leg at his ankles, her boot sheathed in a last-second layer of slick ice.

Nero, expecting a magical counter, was caught off guard by the physical move. He hopped back, but his footing was compromised. Khione used the moment to roll away, coming up with her hands already moving through an intricate, rapid series of seals. She was going for a spell without her wand, a difficult and draining technique.

”Absolute Zero: Lance!” she cried, her voice strained. A single, flawless spear of deepest blue ice, colder than the heart of winter, shot from her fingertips. It was her last, concentrated ounce of power, faster and sharper than anything she’d cast that day.

It was a magnificent effort. But Nero was ready. He had been tracking her energy, her patterns. He didn’t try to block it with fire, which might not have extinguished such concentrated cold in time. He didn’t try to dodge, as it was tracking him.

He met it with the Law of Lightning, refined and focused. He pointed his index finger, and a single, precise bolt of gold lanced out, not at the spear, but at its tip—the point of greatest kinetic and magical focus.

CRACK-BOOM!

The lightning bolt and the ice spear collided in a spectacular, equal-force explosion right between them. The shockwave knocked Khione off her feet. Nero, braced and expecting it, was driven back a step, but kept his footing.

The shimmering mist of ice and fading sparks drifted down. Khione lay on her back, breathing heavily, completely spent. Her wand was across the room. Her prana was empty. She had nothing left to give.

Nero walked over, the flames and lightning around him winking out. He extended a hand, his own breath coming hard. She looked at his hand, then up at his face—his normal, focused, non-red eyes. A flicker of respect, and the faintest ghost of a smile, touched her lips. She took his hand, and he pulled her to her feet.

”You’re getting faster,” he said. ”The illusions were smart. The terrain spell was smarter.”

”And you didn’t need your trump card to beat them,” she replied, retrieving her cracked wand with a wince. She looked at it, then at him. ”That’s the point, isn’t it? To win with what they expect.”

He nodded. ”Today, yes.” He put an arm around her shoulders as they walked out, both of them tired, bruised, but satisfied with this result. The training had been brutal, honest, and necessary. He had won without the eyes, using only fire and lightning, tactics and adaptation. It proved he could. And for the mission ahead, where hidden eyes might need to stay hidden, that proof was everything.

The more time they spend training, the more synchro they become.

Hopefully, they would be put into the same group for this mission outside.

Meanwhile, in another location within the academy wall, in a special manor that belong to the president of student council, Elysia Raizen’s manor, the future matriarch of the Raizen just came back from a mission outside, she went the bathroom to take a good long bath, her golden eyes were cold and calculative, she was thinking about her next move. Now that she was back at the academy and Nero was here, time to meet her half brother after a while for a long discussion.

’’Hopefully, you won’t make things hard for me little brother.’’

she smiled mischievously but her golden eyes held a dangerous glint inside them. They must have him back or nothing. No other clan should have him and elevate their rank and strength further, with his help they could become the strongest clan and rule the Rainfelt Empire and even the world. Just by imagining this, her curvaceous body shivered like she was having an orgasm, her ambition, her father’s ambition could be accomplished with Nero’s help, he would make an useful tool, she would do anything to have him, he was the key.

’’Fufufufu! Do not disappoint me!” Elysia murmured with a smile.