I came to the central arena openly.
Guild patrol beasts hovered above the square. Marksmen stood on the roofs, and suppression cages waited at the gates. Kane had turned a school hearing into a capture operation, but an ancient truce held within the academy. While the Seal of Truth burned, neither side could start a fight outside the arena.
I left the broods in the drains three blocks away. Only Styx came in with me.
Lily waited by the steps without the academy badge on her uniform. They had already struck her from the class lists, locked her out of the dormitory and frozen her account. She could withdraw her statement and get everything back with a single message.
"It isn't too late to leave," I said.
"I've heard that already. First Kane, then the dean, now you."
Lily climbed the steps first.
Cole arrived in military uniform. His orders required him not to take part, but the sergeant had kept his insignia on. He wanted the record to show that the testimony came not from some passing hunter, but from the commander of a garrison unit.
A round table had been set up in the centre of the arena, with the white crystal of the Seal of Truth on it. It did not compel honesty. It preserved the participants' voices and pulses, along with traces of any abilities they activated, in three independent archives at once. Falsifying such a record after the hearing was almost impossible.
Kane sat opposite me. Leon was on his right with the Void Dragon. A new gold collar gleamed around the beast's neck.
The academy rector read out the charges: unlawful development of an unregistered beast, use of venom against a human, destruction of training-zone resources, appropriation of a team kill and assault on Guild fighters.
Kane did not start with the core. He set out to prove that I had no right to own Styx at all.
"This boy has already killed an officer of the credit service," he said. "Brutus's body was found desiccated. The forbidden swarm techniques of the Demon Cult leave the same signature."
My pulse flared on the Seal.
I could not deny Brutus's death. Kane had deliberately begun with the one crime that had actually happened.
"Brutus tried to sell me for my organs."
"The deceased is in no position to confirm your account."
Lily laid the scorched contract on the table.
"But the contract confirms that he worked for the Li family. Rex's debt was secured against his awakened beast."
Kane did not even look at the paper.
"A forgery obtained during an attack on a lawful debt office."
Then Lily played the recording from the Wildlands.
Above the table appeared the avalanche of beasts, the black swarm and the students on the boulder. A girl's voice called for Leon. Then the recording showed him retreating while five hundred of Styx's soldiers left the main field and engulfed the shadow leopards.
"Rex saved us," Lily said. "Leon Li took no part in killing the titanic lizard. His group was on a safe slope."
The rector warned her that false testimony would cost her the right to enrol again.
"I understand."
Lily's pulse did not change on the Seal.
Cole submitted a military crystal. Its sensors showed the swarm's growth, the lizard's position and the participants' vital signs. Leon had not approached the lord at any stage.
A command message appeared on the sergeant's bracelet: withdraw the report immediately and leave the arena.
Cole removed the bracelet and placed it beside the recording.
"I confirm Lily Lin's testimony."
For the first time, Kane tensed.
His account of a team trophy had fallen apart, but the right to Styx was still in dispute. The Guild could declare the swarm a forbidden species and seize the queen regardless of who owned the core.
Leon rose.
"Enough paperwork. If Rex claims his beast is stronger, let him prove it."
He proposed a duel under the same Seal. If Styx and the permitted thousand soldiers defeated the Void Dragon, the Li family would withdraw its claim to the core and could not confiscate the queen before the capital issued its ruling. If I lost, Styx would be placed in Guild quarantine.
"You're wagering someone else's beast," I said.
"The contract already says she's ours."
Leon wanted to repay the humiliation he had suffered in the stands. Kane wanted legal access to Styx. The rector wanted to end the scandal with a rule the whole city understood.
I looked at the Void Dragon's gold collar. The same fine lines ran across it as across the Guild's suppression seals.
Styx had noticed them too.
"Agreed. But the Seal records more than our abilities. Any outside interference means defeat for whoever uses it."
Kane smiled.
"Of course."
His pulse remained steady.
Kane had no intention of interfering from outside. The command he needed was already around the dragon's neck.
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