The stage this time wasn't just outside the school. There was no marble floor for ring.
Fila looked around, towering over the seats loomed the trees of the rain forest.
The had made the next stage right in the middle of the forest, with roots in the ground and rocks making cover, even a tree was included.
Fila stood at the edge of the spectator area and looked at it properly, the way she looked at everything, taking the full shape of it before she touched any of the details. The trees rose on all sides, the Amazon canopy closing overhead in a cathedral of green that filtered the evening light into something gold and diffuse and directionally confusing. The ground was uneven, roots breaking the surface in thick cables, rocks jutting from the earth at irregular intervals, a single massive tree standing in the center of the space like it had been there for several hundred years and had not been consulted about the tournament.
No marble. No gold veining. No torches burning school colors. Just the jungle floor, lit by floating lights that the Castelobruxo faculty had placed in the canopy above, casting pools of illumination that left gaps, actual gaps, of shadow between them.
You could use the tree as cover. The rocks. The roots as obstacles or weapons or both. The uneven ground meant footwork would matter differently than on a flat surface, that someone who moved confidently in broken terrain would have an advantage that had nothing to do with spell work.
But most importantly, it was just beautiful. Not in a eye catching way, but a Ophelia Kind of beautiful. Trees, flowers, roots and vines everywhere. The smile she wore now could only be described as grim.
June beside her looked at her friend with a worried look, something that had become more and more normal. "Fila please, lets just calm down." June took the girls shoulders and pushed her down into a seat.
"But look June, everything is so perfect. Im going to be so mad if I don't get chosen." She said all that so fast and with the excitement of a five year old on Christmas.
June stared at her.
"You want to be chosen," June said. Flat. Making sure she had understood correctly.
"Look at it," Fila said, The roots, the rocks, the shadows between the light pools, the ancient tree in the center that had been growing in this specific spot since before any of them were born. "June. Look at it."
June looked at it. Then back at Fila. "I'm looking at a forest floor with tripping hazards and insufficient lighting."
"It's perfect," Fila said.
"The roots," Fila said. "The shadows. You could disappear into this ring. You could use the tree as a pivot point, apparate behind the rock cover, use the root system to direct where someone can and can't move without looking like you're doing it." She was talking faster than usual, the rasp in her voice gone animated in a way it very rarely got. "This isn't a duel. This is a conversation with an environment. And I have been having conversations with environments since I was seven."
June looked at her for a long moment.
"You're excited," June said.
"I'm excited," Fila confirmed.
And in the corner of her eye she saw the group of rough looking students started to sit down just beside her. Fila glanced over, most of them looked older than her.
One of them sat down right next to her and gave a short but polite nod.
"Hello" he said, his voice rough. And it sounded older than his age.
"Hi." Fila answered simply.
Nothing more, the boy turned to his friends, and Fila turned back to explain the goods and bads of the ring to June and Miles who had already heard it four times by now.
The boy who had sat beside her was broad, dark-haired, with the specific quality of someone who had been training seriously for several years and had the shoulders to show for it. His magic was dense, not as vast as McGonagall's, not as still as Yumi's, but competent, deliberately built. He was watching the terrain with the eyes of someone doing a tactical assessment.
She noted this and returned to the ring.
"So the tree," she was saying to June, for what was possibly the fifth time, "works as both cover and a problem. If you put it between you and your opponent you have approximately three seconds before they either go around or over, which tells you something about how they move. Do they commit to a direction or do they go up? Going up means they're comfortable with aerial casting which changes—"
"Fila," June said.
"Which changes the angle of everything because now you have to account for—"
"Fila."
"What."
June pointed. Not at the ring. At the boy beside her, who had turned back from his friends and was now looking at Fila with the expression of someone who had been listening to the tactical breakdown for approximately two minutes and had opinions about it.
Fila looked at him.
He looked at her.
"Going up is a mistake in this terrain," he said. In English, broken but good. "The canopy is too dense. A spell from above gets deflected by the branches before it arrives. Better to go around and use the shadow gaps." He paused. "But the root system is the real weapon. If you can read it before your opponent can, you control where the fight happens."
Fila looked at him for a moment.
"Yes," she said.
Something shifted in his expression. Not quite a smile. More like an acknowledgment. "You've already mapped it."
"Since I sat down," Fila said.
He looked at the ring. Then back at her. "Durmstrang," he said. Not introducing himself yet. Just the school, placed between them like a handshake.
"Ilvermorny," she said back.
"Kozlov," he said. "Aleksei."
"Grindelwald. "She said back, "Ophelia."
He studied her, he didn't seem surprised it was more of a understanding.
"Everyone at Durmstrang knows the name," Aleksei said. "We just don't all agree about what to do with it."
That was, Fila thought, the most honest thing anyone from Durmstrang had said to her yet. It was also the first thing an student from the ice cold school had said. So good start?
"What do you do with it," she said.
He looked at her directly. His eyes were dark, unhurried. "Nothing," he said. "It's your name. Not mine." A pause. "What you do with it is more interesting."
With that a sound came from the ring, as the two champions came out of their own rooms carved into the stands.
Marcus looked nervous and afraid, as he should. If he didn't, Fila would have thought he had gone insane. Yumi looked ice cold, as if she had trained for this her entire life. And knowing the school, she probably had.
The crowd cheered and waved flags and banners, even with most of the school being Castelobruxo they still supported matches and choosing who to support.
Headmistress Dourado once again walked right in the middle of them and turned to the stands. "Good evening everyone, once again we stand here to observe these two brave champions."
Once again everyone cheered and clapped, almost as deafening as last time, but the forest helped to dampen the sounds more now.
"when I walk out of the ring, its fair game to start." She said and started walking. The two champions got ready into each individual stance.
The crowd went silent.
Each of Dourado's steps brought even more tension, until her last foot crossed the border.
*Boom*
Just as she had stepped through a spell had gone out and exploded near Yumi's feet, sending charnel and debris right into the and into the stands.
The crowd ducked.
Fila didn't.
She was already leaning forward, tracking what had happened, because the spell hadn't come from Yumi's direction. Marcus had decided first. She felt something move in her chest. Pride was too simple a word for it.
The debris cloud was still settling and Yumi was already moving through it, not away from it, into it, using the cover it provided for the three seconds it lasted, and when she came out the other side she was ten feet closer to Marcus than she'd been and her wand was up and casting in the same motion.
The spell hit the rock beside Marcus's head. Stone exploded. He'd already moved, rolling left across a root system that should have caught his feet and didn't, because he knew where it was.
He came up behind the rock cover and threw two spells. One of them graced Yumi's left arm as she peeked out from her cover, the other hit her cover. And sent shockwaves into her body.
Marcus was doing well, really well.
But it changed, Yumi apparated. Right next to Marcus who haven't been trained for it, he went eyes wide and panicked. Stumbling as her tried to stand and run. Be it was too late, her spell had already left the wand.
A cutting spell right to the underside of his left foot.
The crowd reacted as if they were hit by the nasty spell, some even grabbing their own foot to see if they were okay.
Fila could see Marcus grit his teeth as he landed on his foot while running. A pain that he would remember for a very long time.
But Yumi didn't let up, throwing spell after spell as he ran. Marcus could only shot small spells backwards trying to cover his back while he found cover behind a tree.
He groaned as he stood behind it and was about to look down, but decided against it. not knowing would be for the best right now, focus on winning.
Marcus peeked around the tree on the left, making Yumi focus on the left. But she turned and spun out on the right. He shot several standard magical arrows right towards her.
One hit her leg, another her hip and the third and final her wand hand. Making her drop her wand.
"AHH" she screamed out into the air as she dropped down for her wand, but Marcus was already on it.
"DEPULSO!" he casted it and the little girl got tossed right into the rock Marcus had hid behind earlier. Her hip impacted with it first and made her roll over the rock, landing on the protected side.
But when Marcus walked forward the wand was already gone, she took it.
Fila was on her feet.
She didn't know when she'd stood. It didn't matter. This match had only been going for a few minutes and already plenty more intense than the first duel. It actually looked like Marcus would win this. Yumi had taken several big hits.
Marcus walked forward.
His left foot was leaving a mark on the forest floor with every step, not blood exactly, not yet visible from the stands.
But Fila saw it, he was walking into a trap. And when he took a final step forward the rock she was behind flew towards him.
Fila saw it impact him right in the chest, the rock wasn't small. Almost as big as himself.
A sickening crunch came from when the rock landed on him and brought him to the ground, Marcus laid underneath it.
Several people had already looked away or held their eyes closed.
And with that medics were already rushing in.
Fila looked over at the other Ilvermorny champions. Their expressions were expected. Sera cried and tried to go into the ring, while Aaron and Daniel held her back. But both also visibly upset and sad.
She then turned to Bea who sat a bit further away. She was already looking in Fila's direction.
"Merde." Fila said, in a normal tone making everyone around her hear.
Marcus was alive, she could still se it. but he wasn't going to stand or walk for a while. Even with the miracle of magical medicine.
"Can I look now?" June asked, her voice shaky and with tears hidden behind it.
Miles sighed, he looked shaken but not too much, "yeah," he said.
They had brought Marcus away, Yumi stood on that platform, with e smug expression. Fila understood that, this is the game. Its part of the duel, even written in the rules.
But the way Yumi acted like she had just done something so good made Fila feel something burn she hadn't felt in a long time. and without realizing it, she had made her hands into fists so hard that her nails had dug into her skins.
Headmistress Dourado walked up into the ring yet again, the smell of burnt still lingered in the air.
"Well done to both students." She said and clapped her hands.
The clapping wasn't returned in full as it once had, many of them still looking into the memory of what had just happened.
"A bit different result than last duel, but a victory." She snapped her finger and the board appeared.
Two white names from the same school. Yumi bowed towards her team and the spectators. And headmistress brought out the bowl yet again.
"This time," She started and looked at the crowd, "the third duel will take place, right now." She said and let it sink in. and that it did.
Many started chattering and some even didn't want to after watching a boy get crushed under a boulder bigger than him. But she reached into the bowl. And pulled a name.
Benedita looked at the name and looked at the crowd. And her gaze even stayed on Fontaine for a while. "Ophelia Grindelwald from Ilvermorny."
The name brought silence. Cold and Harsch silence.
Fila stood and took it in, her name. even if she didn't create it or tainted it in history, still brought this kind of silence only by being spoken. She shouldn't enjoy this, but she did. After seeing Marcus done in that way, she felt something else. Not the normal excitement to a duel. But a harsh and bloody way. She wanted it, the danger.
Fila stood and looked at Bea, her eyes were glossy. But she smiled. Oh that warm smile. It brought her back from the feeling she just had.
With that warm smile in her mind she made her way down. Her black pants and white shirt, with the black vest made her look… formidable.
She only stopped when she stood beside the headmistress.
Taking it all in was as trying to smell one flower in a field of summer. Noise, difference everything didn't feel right as she stood there. The sight of seeing her comrade almost crushed to death had a strange effect. Marcus and Fila were never really close, only in terms of being champions and training together. But it never went further than that.
Which made it even more odd as to why she felt so, angry.
But her anger wasn't on just anyone, but the little girl who had almost made him loose his life for a duel.
"Lara from Castelobruxo." A voice pulled Ophelia out of her own thought.
The headmistress had already drawn the next name, 'Lara?' Fila thought. She tried to remember if Beatriz had told her about this champion. But once she stood up, she didn't recognize even seeing this girl.
Fila looked towards Bea in the stands. He expression had so many feeling it made Fila unsure if she was even awake. Both sad about her standing here, and she seemed sorry that she hadn't told her about Lara. Not that it mattered.
But seeing the girl walk down the stairs made thing difficult. Letting loose would be a bit harder now. Not wanting to unleash hell on a girl from the same school as Bea, and even more so she hadn't done anything wrong.
Lara was not small.
That was the first thing Fila noted, standing beside the headmistress while the girl walked down the steps from the stands. She'd expected someone she recognized, one of the champions she'd clocked in the first week. But this one she hadn't seen. Which meant either she'd been deliberately kept back, or she'd been so unremarkable in the general noise of the week that Fila had looked past her.
Lara was tall, broad-shouldered. With light brown hair. Her magic felt like some sort of mix between blue and orange. Not very duel focused by the looks of it, more of a potion maker if anything. Noticed by the swirls in her magic.
Fila looked up at the stands more, she saw the twins and they waved at her. Professor McGonagall sat beside them, and than there was albus… wait what.
She had to double take that as she thought she was dreaming. But no, Dumbledore sat there, looking smug and cunning as he does. Even eating some candy while looking at her.
'Why wouldn't they announce that?' she thought, but didn't get to think about it. as the headmistress had started giving her before duel speech.
And just a few minutes later, the two champions stood ready at each side of the ring.
The earlier duel had slightly changed the ring. The boulder that had crushed her teammate now lays almost in the middle of the ring.
Feeling the wand rest in her hand felt, good.
Its been a while since she felt like this, not excited but fired up.
Both the champions looked at each other. The dueling ring had a strange way of just blocking out everything, no crowd, no noise. Just the two of them about to let loose trying to make the other hurt so much, so that they would yield.
"Its strange isn't it." Fila said across the ring. The girl tilted her head and raised an eyebrow. "We stand like this, but I would really like to just shot a fireball right into your face right now."
She didn't notice it but the crowd had gone silent, also listening to them.
But Lara didn't look as if the sentence was that strange. She actually gave a slight small and a little nod, "It is strange isn't. pretending like we are calm, but in just a few steps we will almost kill each other."
The headmistress had started walking, her steps almost echoed like a ticking clock to the champions standing in the ring.
"Im sorry for what im about to do to you." Fila said and raised her wand slightly, not full, not even aiming at the girl.
Lara raised her wand, a bit more aggressive. "Me too."
The two champions didn't even look at the headmistress, but both of them knew when the final step had been taken.
The final echo of Headmistress Dourado's footsteps faded beyond the boundary line.
For half a heartbeat, the jungle was perfectly silent.
Then the world exploded.
Fila moved first—not with a spell, but with the terrain. She Apparated in a sharp crack, reappearing low behind the massive central tree, using its trunk as a shield while her mind already mapped the next three moves. Lara was faster than her size suggested. A lance of bright orange fire screamed across the ring the instant the barrier dropped, thick as a man's arm and roaring like a dragon. It slammed into the tree where Fila had been standing a second earlier, charring bark black and sending a shower of burning embers cascading down.
Fila smiled in the shadow. Good. She hits hard.
She stepped out on the opposite side of the trunk and fired a silent Diffindo chain—three razor-thin cutting curses whipped through the air like invisible scythes. Lara threw up a Protego that held, but the third curse clipped the edge of the shield and sliced across her left shoulder. Blood sprayed in a hot arc, bright against the green of her Castelobruxo uniform. Lara snarled and retaliated with a Blasting Curse that detonated the ground beneath Fila's feet.
Filas ancient magic pushed air from her to repel the shrapnel away, leaving her without as mush as a bruise.
Roots tore upward like broken bones. Fila was already leaping, twisting mid-air, and Apparating again. She landed on one of the thick root cables, using it like a balance beam, and sent a hail of Oppugno stones—every loose rock within ten feet rose and hurled toward Lara like grapeshot.
Lara roared and slammed her wand down. A wave of raw force—more elemental magic than formal spell—exploded outward. Half the stones shattered mid-flight. The rest hammered into her anyway, cracking ribs and splitting skin across her forearms as she shielded her face. Blood ran down her chin from a gash on her cheek.
Fila started to push her, not wanting the advantage to disappear. But no, everything went dark.
No ring, no opponent. Just darkness.
"Hello?" She shouted out, and it echoed back to her with a higher intensity. She wiped her eyes… "Wait I have eyes?"
And after that she found herself in a very familiar room.
She looked around and on the wall he stung hung. The chair in the middle, the cold dark feeling. "Why did you bring me back here?" Fila asked.
The girl sitting in the chair, with a white dress covered in spots of blood. a bloody blindfold covered her eye-sockets.
"I didn't do anything, you did. Remember, I'm you and your me." Ophelia said from the chair.
This had happened once before, seeing herself in some sort of dream that according to the Ophelia in front of her, Ophelia created. Or herself.
"Yeah I know, but why did I bring myself here?" Fila asked as she walked around the chair, looked at the instruments on the small table, covered din dried blood. her eyes still in the glass jar.
Fila stared at them, then at the girl in the chair. At herself. At Ophelia.
"You're not supposed to be here," Fila said, voice low. "I locked this room away."
Ophelia's bloody blindfold shifted as if she were smiling beneath it. "You keep trying. But every time you taste real blood, every time the rage gets hot enough, the door cracks open again." She tilted her head, the motion too smooth, too wrong. "Marcus under the rock. That little Yumi bitch smiling like she'd done the world a favor. And now this big Brazilian cow standing in front of you… You wanted to hurt her. Really hurt her. So here we are."
Fila's fingers twitched. She could still feel the wand in her grip even though it wasn't physically there. "I was winning."
"You were playing," Ophelia corrected, voice rasping with the same damaged quality Fila's sometimes carried. "You were dancing with the environment like a good little Ilvermorny champion. But we both know what you actually wanted to do the second that rock crushed Marcus. You wanted to make Yumi scream until her voice gave out. You wanted the jungle to remember you."
The darkness pressed closer. Fila could smell old blood and wet stone, the same scent that sometimes clung to her nightmares.
Ophelia leaned forward in the chair. Fresh blood dripped from the hem of her white dress onto the floor. "So do it. Stop pretending you're better than the name. Stop pretending you're just Ophelia Grindelwald, polite little duelist who says 'I'm sorry for what I'm about to do to you.' Be honest for once."
Fila scoffed, "Easy for you to say, you're the same. and I have the right to do this. and I'm even holding back."
"Yeah, you are holding back. Like a little bitch." Fila said and stood up, she stopped right at the man on the wall. "Remember what he did to us, three weeks of straight hell, for what? For you to play stick fight with another school? Why are you holding back, do you not want to win?"
Fila's hands curled into fists. "I don't need to become a monster to win."
Ophelia laughed, the sound wet and cracking. "You already are one. You just keep putting a leash on it and calling it 'control.' Marcus is lying in the medical tent with half his ribs powder. That smug Japanese girl is smiling like she earned a medal for it. And you're still playing nice?" She stepped closer, bare feet leaving bloody prints. "Unleash it. Make the jungle drink. Make them remember why they fear the name."
"WHY? WHAT GOOD WOULD THAT MAKE?!" Fila screamed out at the bloody memory of herself.
And she responded by appearing in front of her, "It would make you strong, and able to protect her." Fila moved aside slightly and there, in the damp dark room of hell, stood Beatriz.
Her doe eyes as big as always, her hands trembling slightly. Fila bit her tongue.
"Last time you said that we shouldn't and now we should?" Fila said with tears falling down from her blindfold now, her eyes had yet again disappeared.
The bloody fila snapped her finger and Bea puffed into a cloud of smoke. "Fila, im you."
The bloody Ophelia in front disappeared, and now she was alone.
Even if that last sentence maybe didn't make much sense, it did at the same time. it meant that, she wasn't sure herself.
To this point she had only pretended to know that she was good and a perfect student. But maybe she isn't.
"…I hate you."
"I know," Ophelia whispered, almost tenderly. "I'm you."
The chair in front of her twisted and she now stood in the ring once more.
No time had passed but it all felt so slow, and easy.
Fila snapped her finger and apparated back to her starting position. Which made Lara's eyes widened. The crowd let out a audible confusing on noise.
"I have to win." Fila whispered. And snapped her finger.
The roots surged like living serpents.
Dozens of thick, ancient cables exploded from the jungle floor, all converging on Lara with savage intent. The Castelobruxo champion blasted apart the first wave with raw orange force, splintering wood and sending chips flying like shrapnel. But there were too many. One thick root whipped around her ankle with bone-crushing strength and yanked.
Lara's scream cut through the ring as she was hurled sideways. She slammed into the invisible barrier at the edge of the dueling space with a sickening thud, her shoulder dislocating on impact. She slid down the wall, gasping, blood already trickling from her mouth.
Fila stood at her starting position, breathing hard, eyes burning with a cold fire. No more apologies. No more hesitation.
She snapped her fingers again.
The ground beneath Lara erupted. Roots burst upward, wrapping around her torso, arms, and neck like living chains. They tightened mercilessly. Lara thrashed, trying to cast, but a root coiled around her wand wrist and squeezed until bones cracked audibly. Her wand dropped into the dirt.
"Diffindo.Diffindo. Diffindo."
Fila cast the cutting curse three times in rapid succession. Each one sliced deep into the roots holding Lara, not to free her, but to drive the severed, jagged ends into her flesh like wooden stakes. One pierced her thigh. Another tore across her ribs. The third ripped a long gash down her back as she struggled.
Lara's screams grew hoarse and wet. Blood poured freely, soaking the jungle floor and turning the roots dark and slick.
The crowd had gone from horrified silence to outright chaos. Some Castelobruxo students were screaming for it to stop. Others looked away. A few professors had risen to their feet.
Fila walked forward slowly through the broken terrain, She stopped a few feet away. Lara hung suspended by the roots, barely conscious, blood dripping from her chin, one eye already swelling shut.
"Yield." Fila said coldly.
Lara's lips moved soundlessly at first. Then, with a wet, broken sob: "…I… yield…"
The barrier dropped instantly.
Medics rushed in like their lives depended on it. They had to cut Lara free from the roots with careful spells because the wood was embedded too deeply. One healer took one look at the damage and immediately started casting emergency stabilization charms while another forced a Blood-Replenishing Potion down the girl's throat. Lara was unconscious before they even levitated her onto the stretcher.
Fila stood motionless in the center of the ruined ring, covered in blood — some hers, most not. Her black vest hung in tatters. The left side of her body was a mess of burns and deep gashes. She looked like something out of a nightmare.
The silence was heavier than any cheer.
Then the reactions came.
June was openly sobbing into Miles' shoulder. Several Ilvermorny students looked stunned or sick. Sera had her face buried in Aaron's chest. Bea, Beatriz stood completely still at the railing, tears running silently down her face, staring at Fila like she barely recognized her. The warm smile from earlier was gone. Only shock and heartbreak remained.
Dumbledore was still slowly clapping, that faint, inscrutable smile on his face.
Headmistress Dourado stepped into the ring, her face pale and tight with barely-contained anger. She announced Ilvermorny's victory in a clipped tone, then immediately called for more healers.
As two medics approached Fila to help her to the tent, she finally swayed. The adrenaline was crashing hard. Pain flooded every nerve. But beneath it all, Ophelia's voice whispered in the back of her mind, soft and satisfied:
Good girl.