Lily did not leave the arena with the spectators.
While the instructors held the cracked dome together, she reached the controls of the Seal of Truth. One archive was kept at the academy, another at the Guild and the third at the capital administration. Kane could block two of them. So Lily severed the automatic transmission and routed the feed into the open teaching channels.
The screens across Skyfall City showed not an edited account of the aftermath, but the entire fight.
People saw the swarm obey the thousand-unit limit. They saw Leon lose. They saw Kane's signet ring send a command to the collar and forcibly break his own beast.
Cole reached the external node. A military scanner matched the pulse frequency to the suppression seals at the Guild.
"The interference originated in the Li family box," he said into the crystal.
Kane ordered the guards to cut the power.
The Guild assessor attending the hearing put himself between them and the switch.
"First you took someone else's core. Now you want to take the recording?"
His voice shook, but he did not move aside.
Inside the arena, Leon maintained his bond with the dragon without the family signet ring. The beast kept growing, but stopped attacking people. Every second of resistance left fresh burns on Leon's neck.
"Tell him the fight is over," I said.
"He doesn't understand words."
"Neither did Styx. Until she decided to answer."
Leon closed his eyes and stopped demanding victory. Through the bond he sent only one desire: that the beast survive.
The dragon lowered itself to the ground.
Styx severed the collar's second line, and the void collapsed, the shock wave blowing out what remained of the dome. We were hurled across the sand.
The titanic lizard's core fell from my inside pocket. A crack ran across its surface. Some of the thunder energy drained into the arena's network, holding the rupture shut.
Kane saw the core and released the Chain Basilisk.
The white serpent crossed the distance in a single lunge. The golden band around its eyes flared, and for one second my body stopped obeying me. It was like the puppet parasite, except Kane controlled not my muscles but the bond seal itself.
The basilisk tore a shard from the cracked core and returned to its master.
Styx could have caught it. But behind us, a small void rift opened again. If we did not close it now, the arena would begin disappearing piece by piece.
I chose the rift.
The soldiers surrounded the fissure. Styx channelled the last of the lightning through them, and the Void Dragon drew the rupture back into itself. Leon held the beast steady, though the family seal burned through his nerves.
Kane made it into the outer corridor with the core shard.
"Detain him!" Lily shouted to the academy guards.
No one moved. The patriarch of the Li family was still vice-president of the Guild, and one damning recording could not erase the city's chain of command.
Then Leon rose before the Seal.
The burns on his neck had already turned black. The dragon lay beside him, breathing hard.
Kane stopped at the exit.
"Son, tell them Rex lost control. We'll fix the rest."
Leon looked at his father.
He was being offered the protection he knew: the family name, the Guild and a world where any defeat could be rewritten by someone else's hand.
"Rex didn't activate the seal," he said. "Kane Li did."
The white crystal preserved his testimony.
Kane left without looking back.
The city channels had already split the residents into those who believed the recording and those who called it an attack by the Demon Cult. The Guild announced an internal investigation. Military command suspended Cole. The academy restored Lily's right to attend the hearing, but did not reinstate her as a student.
No one had won outright.
But Styx was no longer considered ownerless property. Until the capital commission reached a decision, Kane could not legally confiscate her.
When everyone had left the arena, Lily picked up the core. Losing the shard had exposed a layer inside that had not been visible before.
A small mark had been carved into the thunder bone: a circle divided by three lines.
The same mark had been inside my grey egg. I had seen it at the moment of awakening, before the shell crumbled away.
Cole cross-referenced the symbol with the storage number on the scorched page.
The entry led to a sealed research station in the Wildlands. My parents had worked there eighteen years ago.
At the bottom of the page was the name of the last employee to survive the station's closure.
Mira Shen.
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