Kale turned his back on the training arena, the silence following his victory as heavy as the mana-dampening arrays embedded in the floor. Behind him, the capital's elite lay in the dirt, their pride shattered alongside their beasts' morale...
One of the female Master-rank recruits, her expensive silk tunic stained with arena dust, did not look away as the others did. Her eyes traced the lines of Kale's shoulders, a flicker of something far darker than simple resentment dancing in her pupils...
She watched him until he vanished into the archway of the central trunk, her fingers twitching near the soul-sigil on her own forehead. "So... it is him?" she whispered, the words barely more than a breath of poison that no one else heard...
Kale did not notice the gaze. He moved through the irrigation ducts with surgical efficiency, his mind already discarding the mock battle as a completed data set. It had been a necessary variable to test Neo's concealment, nothing more...
