The finalists stepped down from the ring, murmurs still echoing through the crowd like the aftermath of a storm. From the roped-off section, I watched Theoden and Constantine make their way toward the edge of the arena. It didn’t take long before their eyes found ours.

  Theoden gave the faintest nod. Constantine waved like a stage actor milking an encore.

  “Great,” Trevon muttered. “They saw us.”

  Constantine reached us first, grinning like he’d just won a bet. “You boys enjoying the show?” he asked. “Shame we couldn’t face off properly, but—” he tossed the red slip of paper into the air and caught it again, “—fate’s a funny thing.”

  Theoden arrived a moment ter, already gncing toward the central bracket board being updated by the officials. “We need to talk about strategy,” he said pinly.

  “What strategy?” Constantine shrugged. “I hit things. You hit things. Easy.”

  Theoden shot him a look. “Your swings are too wide. If I move in to guard your fnk, I’ll get hit before the enemy does.”

  “Then maybe don’t stand on my fnk,” Constantine replied, still smiling—but with an edge now.

  “You’re impossible.”

  “And you’re uptight.”

  Neither of them raised their voices, but the words cut sharp and clean—like swords drawn in warning, not war.

  Trevon leaned toward me. “Do you think they’ll actually survive the finals without killing each other?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  But I watched them. Standing side by side—bickering, yes, but not walking away.

  They’d fought before. Not just on the field, but beside each other. And I’d seen what happened when they did.

  I remembered Skyridge. Not the peaks or the freezing dawn drills—but the day Master Ba first began pairing us off for sparring.

  I’d assumed Constantine would pick Theoden. Not just because they were the same age, but because they were always together—louder, taller, and endlessly proud of it.

  It made perfect sense. If there was an opportunity to team up and show off in front of their younger brothers, of course they’d take it.

  I could already imagine it—Theoden with that calmly superior look, Constantine making every swing ten times louder than necessary. A performance disguised as brotherly duty.

  Naturally, I figured Trevon and I would be the ones stuck sparring against each other. A matching set. The younger brothers left to suffer in the background while the older ones tried to prove something.

  It would’ve been exactly their style.

  I had already mentally prepared for the embarrassment. Quietly, of course.

  But then Constantine picked Trevon. And Theoden chose me.

  That was… unexpected.

  I didn’t realize it then, but that was the beginning of something that worked.

  Constantine and Trevon fought like wildfire—fshy, unpredictable. Every strike from Constantine a sweeping decration, every response from Trevon a sharp correction. They didn’t cancel each other out. Somehow, they amplified.

  Meanwhile, Theoden and I moved like a practiced rhythm. We didn’t talk much. We didn’t need to. A nod here, a shift in stance there—his steadiness grounded me, and my timing sharpened his flow.

  Our matches often ended in draws.

  Master Ba wasn’t thrilled. To him, it wasn’t spectacur. It was expected. Predictable.

  Yes, the pairings were banced—but apparently, they were too banced.

  And since Master Ba had always been a firm believer in “growth through discomfort,” he did what he always did when things started to look stable.

  He disrupted it.

  He swapped the teams.

  That was when I witnessed, in full disastrous glory, just how poorly Constantine and Theoden worked together.

  It was like watching two musicians py different songs at the same time—loudly. Constantine stormed ahead without warning. Theoden stayed too far back. They cshed more with each other than with us.

  And yet, even in that chaos, we only managed to beat them twice. Not because we outmatched them as a team—but because either Constantine or Theoden managed to overpower us individually.

  They didn’t move as a unit. They just happened to be winning at the same time.

  I didn’t know what was worse—the fact that they couldn’t cooperate, or the fact that they didn’t need to.

  But even that thin advantage—the brute force of individual talent—couldn’t st.

  Their argument broke out somewhere between the second and third formation—loud enough that even Master Ba stopped pretending not to hear it.

  “You were supposed to follow up,” Constantine barked. “I didn’t feel like dying yet,” Theoden muttered. “You were behind me.” “Exactly.”

  It would’ve been funny—if it weren’t happening mid-fight.

  Master Ba stood at the edge of the clearing with his arms crossed, visibly aging by the second.

  By the end, they were bruised, breathless, and still bickering.

  “Do you know what you just taught your opponents?” Master Ba said, voice deceptively calm. “That your worst enemy isn’t across the ring. It’s standing next to you.”

  And then came the punishment.

  Not just for them. For all of us.

  “There is no such thing as individual excellence in a team failure,” he told us.

  So we ran drills. Repeated formations. Rewrote footwork patterns. For hours.

  I still maintain we were innocent. But Master Ba believed in collective punishment. A lesson, he said. About unity. About shared consequence.

  That day, I learned two things: Constantine and Theoden should never be on the same team— and when they are, everyone suffers.

  Now, the stakes were higher. But the pairing was the same. And a part of me wondered if this csh between oil and fire might just be what makes the finals unforgettable.

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