Soren parried, wrist jolting as Cassian came in hard and flat, not even pretending at flair. The noise of the fight faded at the margins. It was just the two of them, Cassian's breath short and furious, Soren's hands starting to numb from the cold.

Their blades locked. Soren twisted, using all his bodyweight, but Cassian was heavier. Instead, Soren let his blade slip past guard, taking the scrape across his knuckle in exchange for a shot at Cassian's collar.

The impact was clean. Protocols dictated the round was over, but Cassian didn't lower his blade for two heartbeats, and in that time Soren saw the shift, the recalculation, the surge of intent.

"We'll do this again," Cassian breathed, as the instructors blew the whistle.

Soren shrugged. "It's not personal."

Cassian's mouth twitched, almost a smile. "It will be."

The teams reset. The twins skipped back to formation, already bleeding at the lip but grinning like they'd just won a lottery. Jannek's face flushed with the shock of not failing. Seren dusted off her blade, back to her familiar distance.

"Reset," Dane's voice bellowed over the ground. "Run it until I tell you stop."

Second cycle. Blue learned. This time, Aria and Dorelle doubled back, feinting retreat to draw out the twins, then boxed them in before Soren could close the gap.

The twins went down hard, one with a blade in the rib, the other clipped at the ear. Soren told himself the medics could glue it back just fine, but the look on the twins' faces as they dropped out was not one you could undo by bandaging.

Now it was four vs. six, and Cassian took the opportunity like a wolf on wounded haunch.

He pressed Soren direct, no tricks. Soren gave ground, backpedaled until the edge of the pool bit cold through his boots. Jannek tried to flank, was swept out by two of Cassian's. In a blink, Soren was boxed with Kale and Seren, all three back to back, waiting for the inevitable.

Cassian's approach was surgical. He used his team as clamps, isolating Soren, knowing the others would have to spend extra effort just to stay standing. Soren looked for a gap. Found nothing.

In the end, Cassian didn't beat him with a better strike. He just wore him to the wire. The final engagement lasted ten full passes, then the flat of Cassian's blade crashed into Soren's temple, knocking stars into his vision. He hit the grass, hard, and heard only the echo of Dane's whistle.

There was blood in his mouth. Not personal, Soren told himself, but the taste disagreed.

Dane called for reset. "Again."

Nobody cheered, not even Cassian's side. The wind did the heavy lifting for atmosphere.

It went on like that. Nine cycles, then twelve. By midday, both squads were a shuffled deck of human misery: shirts stained, faces blooded, hands wrapped in tape and hope.

The twins rotated in and out; Jannek kept fighting even after he lost the ability to bend his left hand. Kale threatened to murder his own knee in the fifth round, but limped through the rest, cursing the mud and the universe at large.

Every time Cassian beat Soren, the celebration was less aggrandizing. By the penultimate bout, their fight was as silent as anything Soren could remember. Pure mechanics, no performance. He liked it better that way.

On the final cycle, Soren's arm threatened mutiny: a dull ache radiating from wrist to collarbone. He heard the start bell. Forced himself up. Cassian was already in the center, watching him with a predator's patience.

They met in the rain-glazed nave, both legs barely keeping up with the script. They traded the ritual: open, parry, lock. Soren saw the tell this time, a drop of Cassian's left shoulder in the moment before he struck.

Soren baited, then spun, and for one perfect second he was behind Cassian, blade at his ribs, but the other boy was already moving, driving his elbow back into Soren's chest.

It wasn't graceful. Both ended up in the grass, Cassian's weight on Soren, Soren's blade pressed horizontal and useless at his opponent's back. They lay there, catching breath, until the whistle audit came and told them to get up.

Cassian rolled off, found Soren's face. This time the smile was honest, stripped of anything but exhaustion.

"You don't ever let up," he said.

Soren spat mud, then smiled. "Neither do you."

The instructors called the match, finally, not a minute too soon.

Later, in the triage tent, Soren let the medic tape his cut and wrap his forearm against the low-grade arterial bleed. The tent smelled of cheap cotton, sweat, and the iron tang of a hundred iterations of this exact moment.

The medic, a pock-faced third-year with more cynicism than bedside manner, snipped off the old bandage and shot a look at the slice above Soren's wrist.

"You ever think of just losing?" she said. "Heard it's less work."

"Not my expertise," Soren replied. The suture burned all the way to the elbow.

She finished and flipped his palm over, checking for grip. "You'll keep the use of it if you don't swing at the next parade, Vale. They pay you extra for that, or you just like the drama?"

He closed and opened his hand. "Couldn't say."

She set his arm back down, and he flexed it. The bleeding mostly stopped, but the dull throb promised to stick around for days. In the adjacent cot, one of the twins swore at the disinfectant, and the other sang a nonsense song, voice rising in wet, off-key intervals. Jannek, who had finally stopped shivering, stared glassy-eyed at the tent roof, mouth open as if he could taste the weather.

Outside, the sky had gone yellow. Dane's boots crunched past the tent, slow, deliberate, as if waiting for the noise to signal he could begin the next phase.

Soren found the strength to sit up. Cassian was visible through the flap, leaning against the tent pole with a wet towel pressed to his eyebrow. He looked neither victorious nor wounded, just emptied; as if every cycle, every escalation, had finally hollowed him out.

They didn't speak. Didn't even look at each other for more than a second. Soren watched the shudders in his own hand, counting the beats, matching them to the pulse in his throat.

"Next time," Cassian said quietly, "I'm bringing gloves."

Soren nodded. "Not if I cut off your hands first."

A ghost of the old smile, then nothing. Cassian let the towel drop and returned to the yard, the motion crisp, only the barest hitch in his step where Soren had caught him in the ribs.

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