A sickly green glow seeped into the air as Tiger threw a punch carrying the stolen hydrokinetic power coiling around his knuckles like a living thing.
Since there was no time to dodge, Leon's instincts took over before his mind could catch up and freed the compressed golden energy within him to burst out defensively as he crossed his arms on his face.
A dome of shimmering gold light erupted from Leon's chest and met Tiger's enhanced strike head-on without a sound.
After a few seconds, as Tiger stumbled a few steps back while the crowd's faces dulled, a thunderclap of concussive force rattled the hall's walls and sent debris skidding across the ground like broken teeth.
Leon watched with orange vision as Tiger was thrown back with smoking arms and eyes that carried fear.
Bloodied sweat traced thin lines on Leon's face as he pushed himself and stood on his trembling legs.
The single burst drained a terrifying amount of energy from Leon that he felt hollow as he tried moving a step forward, as if whatever reached out from him now scooped what was keeping him upright.
When every individual watching saw Leon standing and taking slow steps forward, their roars faded into a distant hum.
As only the remnant of the gold burst's sparks lingered in the arena's dome, a single thought crystallized in Leon's head. 'He expects me to fall back.'
Leon's legs screamed after taking three steps forward without falling, while the bones in his arms threatened to give way, yet he tightened every muscle and took in a deep breath. 'But I won't.'
When Leon uncrossed his arms and saw a small opening in Tiger's stance, he dashed forward, increasing his speed and letting the remains of the expelled power seep back into his right arm like embers refusing to die.
Dust spiraled behind Leon as the air slamming against him evaporated with every step he took. His messy jet-black hair flared like it had caught fire and rose and fell as if it had a mind of its own and was deciding where to be.
Immediately he reached Tiger unannounced, he drove his fist into the boy's chest, knocked the wind out of Tiger, and sent him stumbling a step back.
Tiger's expensive boots scrambled for purchase on the stone floor as pain dwindled through him like fire.
Silence fell over the arena like a fog.
The surprise in Tiger's eyes was already burned out and replaced by something far worse as he straightened himself slowly. His face glittered with a murderous rage that caused the air around his knuckles to harden and coil around them like a ring of compressed fury.
'How the f…k would a rat strike me this hard.' His eyes swept the audience's faces before dragging back to Leon, reading their expressions and counting the witnesses.
Though Leon had shocked everyone present, including himself, the cost of his surprise was now carved into his bones, and the hollow feeling spreading through his chest caused his body to sway sideways.
Just as Tiger positioned himself to dash toward Leon, the gong, a match-ending sound, echoed.
The fury dwelling in his chest channeled into a hellish stare when he saw the shimmering barrier slowly dissolving.
Tiger's chest smoldered from the punch Leon had laid on him as he seethed. Though he wasn't physically hurt, that single impact had done something worse than something every eye could see.
His perfect and effortless victory he had planned, the kind that would have buried the Dusthollow rat so deep that the world would forget he ever lived, had turned into a humiliation in front of every strong, weak, and undeserving student of Alchemania.
The hall remained silent as if the match were now about to start, as the crowd sat in a silence they had prepared for.
The low mechanical hum of the arena's killing system grinding beneath the platform bled through the walls and pressed hard on their ears like something alive.
They had come to see a slaughter, a predictable squashing of an insect beneath a boot. Instead, they had witnessed something they had no language for. Something that didn't fit the world they thought they understood.
The Dusthollow rat hadn't just survived. He had taken Tiger's best psychological warfare and shrugged it off like it was nothing. He had absorbed a beating that would have ended the careers and the lives of others in that arena. And then, with a power that looked nothing like the refined and classified abilities of the elites, he had not only defended himself but had actually landed a blow that sent the undefeated Kang T stumbling backward across the stone.
When the audience noise returned, it wasn't cheers and it wasn't insults, but a confusion given a voice.
"Did you see the light?"
"He actually hit him..."
"What kind of power is that?"
"He's still standing."
Hearing those words settle around him, Leon understood he was no longer a victim in this place but an anomaly with a price to pay.
A medic drone zipped into the arena and hovered before him, extending a bottle and a flat cloth-like patch in its mechanical arm.
Leon stared at them but didn't move his eyes from Tiger. "What are these?"
A mechanical voice rose from the drone. "Hydration pack. Stim-patch."
He extended his trembling hands and accepted both, while keeping his gaze locked on the boy across the stone from him.
When another drone flew to Tiger, he slammed it down and looked at Leon through the smoke with a promise of violence burning in his blue eyes, the kind that needed no words to be understood.
Although Leon lost the fight when the winner was announced, he got something no one had ever taken from Tiger.
Immediately after he finished the bottle's water, his head swayed sideways without his permission.
His vision blurred at the edges, then at the center as his body tilted forward, then backward, before the ground rushed up and struck his head.
Footsteps erupted from every direction as medics converged on Leon, while the necks of the audience rose as they stood to their feet.
Leon's vision collapsed into a thick blackness as the coldness of the floor seeped into his skin, while the noises surrounding him blurred into a storm of broken glass until they stopped reaching him entirely.
Tiger's burning stare flashed in Leon's mind for a moment before vanishing with everything.
A thin light seeped into the thick blackness. Immediately, as the light stretched, Leon saw himself as his seven-year-old self, sitting on a stained mattress in Dusthollow with a scrap of wood balanced on his knees.
The air carried the scent of paint, old wood, and the strange taste that always came whenever his father was nearby.
His father knelt beside Leon while holding a small brush with soft bristles and a worn wooden handle. He turned it slowly in his paint-stained palms before pressing it gently into Leon's small hands.
"Hold it like this," Andrew said and guided Leon's fingers. "Not too tight. The brush isn't your enemy. It is your voice, your steps, and your soul."
Leon tried. His first stroke came out as a brown smudge, shapeless and wrong. A bird that looked more like a rock someone had thrown at a wall.
The urge to hurl the brush across the room filled him instantly, frustration climbing his face before he could hide it.
Andrew laughed in a warm, unhurried tone. "Again," he said in a low tone. "Every master was once a fool. A disaster. Try again."
In the blackness of his unconsciousness, Leon's lips moved. No sound came out. But somewhere in the hollow where pain had been, the memory of a bird that never quite flew stayed with him like a hand on his shoulder.
Then slowly, the memory faded. The warmth of his father's voice faded. The paint-smudged hands surrendered to the dark.
...
After long hours that stretched almost into days, a thin thread of light began drawing itself toward his darkened vision. Muffled voices followed it, bleeding through the black in fragments.
A woman weeping, men arguing in urgent tones, and a single voice that cut through the sound like a blade. "LEON!"
White light stabbed him, sharp and merciless, followed by the smell of antiseptic as he gasped for air while his body jolted awake, gripping the material he lay on.
For a fleeting moment, Leon thought he was still in the arena as Tiger's burning stare streaked across the faces of every person he saw standing in front of him.
"Where…" he said, paused, then swallowed the dryness clawing at his throat. "Where am I?"
Every face in the room turned toward Leon and looked at him with fear in their eyes.