The Curtain Rises

The main training arena was packed shoulder to shoulder, students perched on stone ledges and stairwells, watching with gleaming eyes. The rumor had spread fast that the loudmouth first-year with the hero complex had challenged Hyuk Kim.

Andre Cruz.

He stood in the arena's center, barefoot and grinning like a madman, spinning Caliburnus in loose, dramatic circles. "Are the bards here yet?" he shouted. "I want this part sung properly, the rise of a legend!"

Hyuk Kim didn't respond. She stood across from him, bow low, breathing calm. Her eyes barely moved. Her presence was still, like a ripple waiting to become a wave.

Amari leaned against the pillar beside Hari in the crowd. "He's going to die."

"Maybe," Hari said. "But he'll smile the whole time."

The instructor raised a hand. "Begin!"

Andre charged instantly.

Not with grace, not with caution but like someone who thought destiny bent around him. Caliburnus arced high, glowing with his raw, untrained Nous. He brought it down in a massive, overhead swing.

Hyuk stepped sideways.

An arrow sang. It exploded on impact behind him, blasting a wave of pressure that sent him tumbling face-first into the dirt.

He popped up instantly, one arm out like a stage actor. "Ah! My tragic fall!" he announced. "But not defeat!"

The crowd chuckled. Hyuk said nothing.

Another arrow. This one whispered through the air and sliced across his forearm. The shadow-thread of her Wish slithered into him, Shadow Mark. It clung to his nervous system, binding phantom tension through his limbs like puppet strings.

Andre flinched. "What—? Whoa, wait, I—my legs are—"

Hyuk moved.

Each step was measured. Precise. Her bow shifted smoothly between shots, now mixing close-range wind spells and glowing glyphs that burst midair like flashbangs. Andre stumbled under the pressure, batting wildly with his sword, vision blurry.

He shouted, "You're just scared to fight me for real!"

She wasn't.

She glided in close and spun, slamming the back of her bow into his ribs. He coughed, staggered, but dropped to a knee and used the momentum to slice upward with a slash that forced her to hop back.

A near miss.

The crowd stirred.

Andre grinned through bloody teeth. "Almost gotcha that time."

Hyuk's eyes narrowed for the first time.

She launched a triple volley, one to blind, one to bind, one to strike. Andre deflected the last with Caliburnus but fell again, dust kicking up around him.

Pinned, marked, exhausted and yet still rising.

He dragged himself to his feet, blade in one hand, fist in the other.

"I can't beat her skill," he muttered, "so I'll beat her expectations."

He faked another reckless swing wild and obvious. Hyuk raised her bow to counter.

Then he grinned.

"Sike!"

With a sudden pivot, Andre dropped his sword mid-motion and lunged forward, slamming his fist directly into Hyuk's stomach with every ounce of strength he had.

Her eyes widened more from surprise than pain as the impact sent her stumbling a step back.

Andre's knuckles still pressed against Hyuk's gut, his grin wide.

"Gotcha!" he whispered, stepping back as she regained balance.

She didn't speak, but she exhaled sharply the first real sign that his antics had reached her. A shift in weight. A re-measurement. She was recalibrating.

The crowd roared. Louder than before.

Hari blinked. Something about the sound was… off.

Too loud.

He glanced around. Students on the stone ledges were clapping, cheering, some even laughing but the number of them hadn't changed. Yet it felt like the arena had swelled, like another invisible layer of spectators had emerged between breaths. Shadows where there shouldn't be shadows. Faces he couldn't quite track if he looked too long.

Amari noticed it too. "Weird…"

"What?" Hari asked.

Amari frowned. "It's like... they're reacting to him. Just him."

Andre twirled Caliburnus back into his hand like a performer resetting the stage. He raised the blade with theatrical flair and shouted to no one in particular, "Who wants an encore?!"

The crowd exploded but Hari couldn't tell if it was real.

The cheers seemed to follow Andre's rhythm, not the match.

Even Hyuk paused for half a breath before drawing her next arrow.

Andre didn't notice any of it. He was too wrapped in the moment, too convinced that he was meant to be here, too busy playing to the noise only he could fully hear.

Hari's hands clenched at his sides. The hair on his arms stood up.

A delusion everyone can see and hear.

Something deeper had stirred.

Something divine.

But before Hari could say anything, the instructor's voice rang out.

 "Round two. Begin."

And the arena exploded.

Not with attacks but with cheers.

A deafening roar, wall-shaking in force, came not from Hyuk's movement or Andre's theatrics but from the crowd. Or at least, what looked like a crowd. The entire arena seemed to pulse in time with a heartbeat that wasn't real. Hands clapped. Voices screamed. Dozens, no, hundreds of silhouettes waved from stairwells and ledges that hadn't existed seconds ago.

Hari froze.

"It's louder."

Amari's eyes scanned the arena, then squinted. "No. Not louder. Multiplied."

Down below, Andre grinned like the war god of delusions.

He spun Caliburnus overhead and struck a pose so theatrical it belonged in an opera. "Round two! The crowd demands it!" he shouted.

The roar grew not just louder, but closer. Every breath he took, the shadows cheered louder. Their movements followed him, not the flow of battle. He shifted stances, and they applauded. He grinned, and they screamed his name.

Even the real students in the stands were caught in it. Some clapped instinctively. Others looked confused, then uneasy, caught in the emotional momentum but not knowing why.

Hyuk narrowed her eyes. She hadn't spoken once since the match began but her silence now was calculating. For the first time, she seemed to truly measure him. Not just as a joke. But as something… anomalous.

She loosed an arrow.

Andre didn't block it.

He dodged, barely leaning back as the bolt whispered past his nose. "Oooh, close! But the hero never dies in Act Two!"

The crowd…. his crowd lost it.

Whistles. Screams. Chants. "ANDRE! ANDRE! ANDRE!"

It was too synchronized. Too precise. Like a stadium of ghosts choreographed to his ego.

Hyuk launched another volley with three arrows wrapped in overlapping spell circles. The first burst midair, creating a wall of blinding glyphlight. The second fired through it. The third curved, wrapped in a spiraling wind glyph designed to chase his movement.

Andre shouted, "Hero's Counterpoint!" and ducked beneath the second arrow, then sidestepped the third with a wild spin. The first caught him across the back hard, sending him stumbling forward on instinct.

He used the stumble as a pivot. Let Caliburnus drag in the dirt and launched forward with momentum.

His feet slipped, but he caught himself, and in the chaos, he shouted:

"Encore: Reprise!"

As if it was his special move.

Hyuk raised her bow.

Andre screamed, "Sike!"

Dropped the sword.

And again punched her in the stomach.

Straight on.

Raw.

Reckless.

The same move as before.

But this time, the reaction was divine.

Hyuk reeled back, not just from the blow, but from the roar that followed it.

It was too much.

The stands shook. The air warped.

The crowd was screaming. Chanting. Laughing.

Every face turned toward Andre like he was the center of their existence.

And for a moment, he was.

Hari stared down at the boy with the bloody lip and swollen hands and realized they weren't watching a spar anymore.

They were watching a performance.

Andre turned to the crowd half-visible, half-imagined and raised his arms high.

"IS THAT ALL YOU'VE GOT, LIV?!"

They screamed back. They answered him.

Hari's voice was barely a whisper. "This isn't a delusion anymore."

"Nope," Amari said. His voice was tight. "This might be his wish, but when did he meet the gods?."

Andre didn't even notice them. He was caught in the storm of it spinning, laughing, throwing feints and rolls, missing wildly but always landing just enough to keep the illusion going. Every action now fed back into the Encore. The crowd gave him energy and he gave them a show.

Hyuk tried to reassert control. She dashed forward, launching another pressure glyph into the floor. The resulting blast sent Andre airborne again, flipping wildly.

He crashed again into the dirt, coughing.

But before anyone could call it, he stood back up.

Raised one trembling arm.

And shouted:

"Give me a beat drop!"

The crowd responded.

Not with music. But with noise.

A pulse. A rhythm. A rising chant that sounded like thunder cracking the stone.

Even Hyuk paused.

Even the instructor hesitated.

It was getting hard to tell where the illusion ended. To tell what was real.

And Andre just kept going.

He staggered forward, grabbed Caliburnus again, raised it overhead, and screamed like a one-man army:

"This is my story! You're just a side quest!"

The laughter from above blurred into screaming adoration. Hands reached from the shadows. The whole arena swelled in his wake.

Hyuk fired again a clean, sharp shot.

It struck him square in the chest.

He dropped like a marionette whose strings had snapped.

The roar faltered. A half-second skip in the illusion.

Andre groaned. Pushed himself up again, trembling now. "Wait, wait— I'm not done—"

But the instructor stepped forward.

"Enough," she said, her voice stern and cracking through the echoing crowd.

Andre turned to protest. His mouth opened but something in him finally buckled. He lowered the sword.

The shadows held one last beat of applause. Then faded.

One by one.

The illusion peeled back.

The cheering died.

Only the real crowd remained hushed. Unsettled.

Andre stood alone in the dust.

His hands shook. His grin cracked. But he bowed deeply to the imaginary audience that had once screamed for him.

Hari watched from above, chest tight.

"The crowd," he whispered. "It's not just a wish. It's a stage."

Amari shook his head slowly. "Then Liv better brace for the act that comes next."

From the highest ledge of the north stairwell where shadows met sunlight in hushed communion, Anya Love watched.

Her brush rested across her back like a ceremonial blade, bristles still stained with dry, silver Nous from earlier practice. She hadn't moved in minutes. Her eyes, sharp as calligraphy strokes, tracked only one thing: the boy in the dirt below.

Andre Cruz.

Still standing.

Still bowing to ghosts no one else could see.

The last of the illusion faded like mist, but something in the air refused to settle. The cheers had stopped mostly. The real students whispered in confused awe. But the resonance still clung to the arena, like applause echoing through old stone.

Anya didn't blink. She'd felt that kind of power before.

A Wish…

A real one.

But this boy doesn't even realize it.

She extended her left hand lazily and let a thin ribbon of pale Nous spiral upward from her fingertip, forming a faint sigil, an ear, stylized and open. She listened, not with sound, but with presence.

The crowd still hummed faintly around him. Shadows that had never been real now whispered like memories stitched into the stone.

Encore.

That was its rhythm.

Not a delusion. A mechanism.

She turned her gaze toward him again. The boy's expression was fractured, not broken, not afraid, but… off. Like someone stepping off a stage too fast and forgetting where real life began.

He grinned through the pain, waved one last time, and then limped out of the spotlight. Alone.

"No divine mark," she whispered. "No glow. No memory of the encounter."

She narrowed her eyes.

So he met the gods... but doesn't remember?

Or maybe they made sure he wouldn't.

She'd studied enough to know the difference between denial and amnesia. This wasn't repression. This wasn't secrecy.

Andre genuinely believed he had no wish.

That meant one thing.

"He came up with a ridiculous wish," she said under her breath, "under conditions too unstable to preserve the memory."

Her brush twitched slightly on her shoulder, like it agreed. She reached back and slowly unslung it, letting its bristles drag across the stone railing beside her. No Nous this time. Just texture.

She liked the silence after applause.

Looking down, she studied him again. The boy who thought he was the hero. The boy whose very belief fed the illusion. Who heard cheers that weren't real and still found strength in them.

"It's not just the crowd," she murmured. "It's the script. The performance. The way the world bends to make him feel like the lead."

She traced a slow spiral in the dust with the tip of her brush, thoughtful.

His taboo must be buried in the act itself.

He can only use the Wish if he believes the show is real.

If the audience stops clapping…

She didn't finish the thought. No need.

Instead, she turned.

And then paused.

One last glance down. The boy was almost out of view now, trailing dust and delusion.

She smiled not warmly. Not cruelly. Just… knowingly.

"Keep playing, Andre," she said, lifting the brush over her shoulder like a banner. "Because when that curtain falls, we'll see if there's anything left of you offstage."

And with that, she walked away, steps soft, brush echoing gently against her spine.

Below, the arena sat silent.

Above, the gods might have been listening.