Glade reforged his interior before he even began on his skin, or anything verging on his exterior form.

He started from his very core, letting the revelation resonate. “I will make my own way.”

Simple, but effective. Kalawen had urged him to draw on his hubris, hoping he’d cripple himself with a half-baked advancement, but he knew the truth lay between. He couldn’t afford complete self-deprecation—those were Nathariel’s teachings—but the opposite couldn’t be true, either.

Humility was the way forward. Creating one’s own destiny couldn’t be a foreign concept, especially not in the grand picture of the Stream and all those involved, all those who drew on it, so the chance of it being an act of hubris was…slim.

Glade didn’t believe it to be an act of hubris, at least. Making his own path didn’t mean he had to be the best. It just meant he had to do everything in his power to support those who had the weight of destiny heaped on them.

A whirlwind of sparks rushed around him, shrouding him during the reforging process. Unlike the base reforging, from Quartermaster to Master’s Mate, it wasn’t an uncomfortable process. But it was mentally rigourous and will-draining.

He moved out from his core and reforged his muscles, etching lines of Arcara through them and improving the wells his mana would pool in, improving their raw strength without bulking them up.

Next came the true boost of the enhancement—hardening his skin. Most ancient swordsmen wore thick plate armour, but he couldn’t afford such a heavy addition for such little benefit. The Shattered Moon guards’ blue jade armour was the closest one would get to effective armour in the modern day, and even then, if could only take a single hit from a God-heir’s strike before breaking.

But Glade wasn’t fighting in a massive group. A team, yes, but he wasn’t a foot soldier in an army.

He layered tough but elastic sections of skin atop each other, firming them up and strengthening them without turning them brittle. Like a sword, it had to bend with impacts. It had to block more than one hit.

He poured Arcara out into it, first turning it to glass, then through his will, alchemizing it to something akin to steel. Flesh-coloured steel.

He collapsed a moment later, once all his Arcara was spent and the sparks stopped rushing, and he lay on the ground, unmoving and panting.

He was an Admiral now.

But he couldn’t stay here forever. Soon, the Harmony would return, and he couldn’t get left behind.

He had a tournament to win.

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Myrrir sailed back to the Shattered Moon as an Admiral.

For the first time, he felt nothing from advancing a stage. Nothing. He thought he’d never know such an empty feeling, but here it was.

But when he returned to Shatterport and vaulted over the gunwale of his ship, landing in a crouch on the boards of the pier. He looked back up at the officers waiting on the quarterdeck. “Get out of here,” he said. “There’s going to be trouble and chaos, and I don’t want you guys getting caught up in it all.”

“Sir,” said the coxswain, still holding the Hyovao’s tiller, “if things go to hell, you’ll be trapped here. No way off.”

“And if I die, I don’t want any more of you getting hurt. Go.” He motioned away like he was trying to dissuade a fly, and it came out more sarcastic and frustrated than he intended. “If I don’t make it, thank you for all you’ve done.”

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After retrieving Glade, the Harmony sailed back to the Shattered Moon. Vayra clung to the forecastle’s front railing the whole way, watching for the moon and its parent gas giant to rise up over the Stream’s subtle curve.

They were almost late. She’d have liked to leave a day earlier, but they needed all the time they could get to advance to Admiral, and now, they were pushing it close to the deadline.

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She wasn’t sure how much time they had left when they sailed into Shatterport, but with how she’d been keeping track of the ship’s watches, she guessed she had anywhere from a half hour to three.

As soon as the Harmony sloshed up to its pier, she leapt over the railing and jumped down. Glade followed a moment later, hand on the hilt of his sword.

She was about to run off toward the arena when Captain Pels yelled, “Wait! Are we staying here or not?”

“Stay here and…wait for King Tallerion to return!” she called. There were still four or five Velaydian ships at their section of the pier. Not nearly as many as before, but enough that the Harmony could stick with them and not arouse any suspicions.

But if they needed a quick escape, or a ship for any purpose, it was better to have their vessel close by.

“We couldn’t have done that last time?” Pels groaned.

“Nope! Last time, there weren’t any other ships to blend in with! And we hadn’t announced our entry!”

“That was the first time! I meant after our excursion to chase Karmion!”

Vayra shook her head. “It was habit! Sorry! But you can stay now, and we’ve gotta go!”

Without waiting for Pels’s response, she took off down the pier, though she still imagined him grumbling under his breath.

Though it’d tire her out and use mana, she had no other choice. She activated the Astral Shroud and took off through the streets. Glade, riding on his swordwyrm, was fast, but not fast enough to keep pace.

But her next fight was before his. As if on purpose, they’d slotted her to confront Myrrir first—the first fight of the set.

She tucked her head and sprinted, feet landing lightly on the pavement but air blasting around her. Now, she was moving so fast the wind scraped at her skin, threatening to tear it off and burn her alive. Had she not been a half-phoenix, she might have combusted.

A cone of air accumulated around her, then it compressed into a massive boom. The nearby windows shattered, and in a flash, a wall of a building approached. She activated her internal Wards, willing herself to temporarily pass through the building, and she did. She bent the fabric of the galaxy around herself and passed through to the other side of the building without so much as a scratch—or leaving a scratch behind.

When she left the city, her path was straighter and easier to follow. She passed along the main road to the arena, ducking between wagons and swerving. As fast as she was moving, she couldn’t afford to think about it. She relied on Adair’s instincts to navigate the road, his perfect reflexes.

A journey that would’ve previously taken a fifteen minutes at the Commodore stage now only took eight. The arena rose up above the eternal autumn trees of the moon’s central continent, and she blazed right into the main foyer before deactivating the Astral Shroud and skittering to a halt. She nearly slammed into an interior wall, but she stopped just in time.

The crowd was cheering, but there weren’t any announcements yet. She was just in time.

She ran down an interior hallway, aiming for her entrance. This time, she didn’t use any abilities. Both the Astral Shroud and the internal Ward had dropped her to nearly a quarter-full of mana, and she’d need to refill before the fight. She probably wouldn’t be able to top herself up all the way with the time she had left, but anything was better than nothing.

When she reached the first entrance to the fighting floor, she charged in, panting, only to find Myrrir standing alone in the dark waiting room, his weapons sheathed. He was staring forward blankly.

“Whoops,” Vayra whispered.

She backed out, trying to return to the hallway, when Myrrir said, “Mediator! Vayra! Wait, I—”

Before he could try anything, she stepped back out into the hallway. She needed to get to the other entrance, and preferably before the fight started. It was on the opposite side of the arena.

Outside, the crowd’s roar crescendoed, and Karmion’s muffled voice slipped through the cracks in the stone walls. She couldn’t parse what he was saying, not beneath the pounding in her ears or the thudding of her footsteps, but he wasn’t introducing the contestants yet. It was just an opening introduction.

When she reached the other side of the arena, King Tallerion’s aide stood outside her waiting room with his arms crossed. “Ms. Vayra!” he exclaimed. “You had us all in knots over here, worried for your whereabouts! And over here, look, there’s another woman who wishes to speak with you!”

He motioned to the other side of the hallway, where Ameena—the lapin woman—stood.

“How much time do I have?” Vayra panted.

“Three minutes, by my reckoning,” said the aide. “My king tasked me with watching over your progress, so that is what I’ll do!”

“There’s time, Vayra,” Ameena said, pushing away from the wall and stepping toward Vayra. “You need to listen to me.”

“Right, then…” She looked at the aide and asked, “Can you get me a bucket of Stream water, please?”

“It will be done, ma’am,” he said, then dipped off into the waiting room.

“What’s happening?” Vayra asked, turning back toward Ameena.

“Nothing’s going wrong, if that’s what you mean,” she said. She’d donned her robe of white bandages and intertwined twigs again. “But I spoke with Myrrir. Well, he spoke with me, really, he intercepted me for a conversation.”

Vayra rolled her lip inward and chewed it for a second. She wasn’t sure if she should or could trust Ameena yet, but Glade did, so Vayra probably could as well. “What’d you talk about? He’s trying to pull something on me?”

“He went through me because he thought I was neutral, though…you got me out of that experiment chamber of Larra’s, and my experiences with Glade have been pleasant enough. You two aren’t…dating, are you?”

“Uh…no?”

“Sorry, got sidetracked.”

“I don’t have much time,” Vayra stressed.

“Yes, yes, so he—Myrrir—said he was planning on travelling to a world of significance to him,” she said. “In the break, I mean, trying to advance to Admiral. And he said that he wanted to seek a higher form of purpose. He wanted to prove to you that he is capable of helping you, and so, in that way, he would purposely lose this fight.”

“No!” Vayra hissed. “He can’t!”

She wasn’t looking forward to fighting him, but in this case, in this situation, when they were finally evenly matched? She was so close to getting back at him, putting those fears to rest.

“Pardon?”

“I don’t believe it,” Vayra said. “Why? Why would he do that?”

“He says he’s changed. He wants to prove it to you.”