Chapter 138| The Last Line Before the Final Four

Crimson Ascendant’s reputation preceded them considerably by the time Fallen Crown reached the intermediate stage’s final round, five Hunters built almost entirely around a single, ferocious captain whose phoenix-affinity flame work had, according to Myria’s exhaustive research, ended every previous engagement this tournament within minutes.

"Kestrel," Myria said, spreading the woman’s combat footage across their final preparation session. "Self-sustaining flame regeneration, considerable offensive output, and a fighting philosophy that treats every engagement as something closer to spectacle than strategy. She wants to be seen. Wants every match to become the kind people remember."

"Sounds like someone I’d get along with," Irene said, grinning fiercely.

"You’ll be facing her directly," Myria confirmed. "Her fighting style specifically seeks out the opposing party’s own fire specialist. Mirror against mirror. I suspect she’s been anticipating this particular matchup since the brackets were first announced."

Irene’s expression sharpened into focused, eager anticipation, and Allen watched her turn the coming challenge over with none of her usual restless impatience, something more deliberate settling into place instead. "Then I won’t disappoint her," she said simply.

The match began the following afternoon, the expanded arena’s considerable scale once again on full display, and Allen felt the engagement’s particular energy shift the moment both parties took position — Crimson Ascendant’s remaining four members clearly built to support Kestrel’s central, dominant presence rather than operate as genuine equals, their entire formation oriented around creating space for her spectacle.

Kestrel herself stood at the formation’s front, flame already wreathing her considerable frame in slow, coiling patterns, and her gaze found Irene across the field with immediate, unmistakable recognition.

"Finally," she called, voice carrying easily across the considerable distance. "I’ve been waiting the entire tournament for a fire that might actually match mine."

"Then let’s not waste any more time waiting," Irene called back, and the countdown fell away into the engagement’s opening rush.

The battle fractured immediately into its familiar currents, Myria and Vivian moving to intercept Crimson Ascendant’s supporting members while Everlyn’s vines worked to disrupt the formation’s coordinated positioning, but Allen found his own attention drawn, again and again, toward the considerable duel unfolding at the field’s center, Irene and Kestrel meeting in an explosion of competing flame that sent visible shockwaves rippling across the arena’s reinforced terrain.

It was, immediately, the fiercest fight Allen had watched Irene undertake since Jenunl Island’s own considerable trials, Kestrel’s phoenix-affinity regeneration meaning every wound Irene managed to land simply, visibly knitted itself closed within seconds, forcing an engagement that couldn’t be won through simple attrition, only through genuine, superior technique.

"She’s not slowing down," Vivian called, having dispatched her own opponent and drifted close enough to track the central duel’s mounting intensity. "That regeneration’s letting her fight at full output the entire match."

"Irene can match her," Allen said, though something tight and worried had settled beneath the words. He watched Irene press forward with fierce, focused intensity, flames answering flames in patterns considerably more intricate than any exchange he’d previously witnessed from her, each woman clearly drawing on reserves that few opponents could have forced them to access.

The duel stretched on, and Allen felt the engagement’s wider shape begin to concern him properly — Myria and Vivian had cleared their own opponents efficiently, Everlyn’s vines had contained the formation’s remaining support entirely, but Kestrel’s considerable regeneration meant the match’s actual outcome now rested entirely on whether Irene could find some genuine, decisive advantage before her own reserves finally began to falter.

It was in the middle of that mounting tension that Kestrel, sensing the tide beginning to shift as Irene’s technique gradually, visibly outpaced her own, abandoned pure spectacle for something considerably more dangerous — a final, desperate technique that gathered her entire remaining reserve into a single, concentrated blast aimed not at Irene’s flame, which could no longer reliably absorb it, but directly at Irene herself.

Allen saw it a half-second before it launched, and felt something cold and immediate seize his chest.

He moved without conscious thought, closing distance he shouldn’t have been able to close in time, and it was only some instinctive, desperate flicker of awareness, some fractional warning his own senses hadn’t quite earned yet, that let him interpose himself at all, catching the edge of the blast rather than watching it land fully against Irene’s unprotected side.

The impact still staggered him considerably, pain flaring hot and immediate along his shoulder, but he’d absorbed enough of the attack’s force that Irene, shaken and singed but fundamentally unharmed, was able to press the resulting opening with everything her own considerable reserves still possessed, ending the engagement in a final, decisive exchange that left Kestrel, exhausted and regeneration finally spent, unable to answer.

The stadium’s roar crested into something enormous as Fallen Crown’s victory registered, but Allen barely heard it, attention fixed entirely on Irene as she rushed toward him, expression carrying fierce, frightened concern that hadn’t been present even during Kestrel’s most dangerous offensive.

"You didn’t need to do that," she said, hands hovering anxiously over his singed shoulder. "I could have—"

"I know," Allen said, managing a pained but genuine smile. "I just wasn’t willing to find out whether you could have, not when I had even half a second to do something about it instead."

Myria arrived a moment later, her own composed expression carrying real, uncharacteristic worry as she assessed his shoulder with quick, professional focus. "You’re going to be fine," she confirmed, relief evident beneath her clinical assessment. "But that was considerably too close, Allen. Half a second slower, and—"

"I know," Allen said again, quieter this time, the weight of exactly how narrow that margin had actually been finally settling in properly.

---

That evening, once the medical staff had confirmed his shoulder would heal fully within days, Allen found himself pulling up his status panel with quiet, deliberate resolve, scrolling through the Exchange’s considerable catalog until he found the entry that had, only hours earlier, seemed like an unnecessary luxury.

Ability Manifestation — Precognitive Reflex (Rare): 900,000 points. Effect: Host receives a brief, instinctive warning immediately preceding any attack carried with genuine lethal intent, granting critical reaction time otherwise unavailable to conscious perception.

"That would have made the difference today," Myria observed, watching him study the entry.

"It would have," Allen agreed, and confirmed the purchase without further hesitation, the familiar warmth of a new acquisition settling into his awareness alongside quiet, sobering resolve. "I got lucky today. I don’t want to keep relying on luck when it’s not just my own life on the line."

"None of us want that either," Vivian said softly, joining them with Everlyn close behind, Irene trailing last, her earlier fierce worry still lingering visibly in her expression.

"Final four," Myria said eventually, shifting the conversation’s weight with deliberate, gentle purpose. "We’ve earned our place there, decisively."

"Final four," Allen repeated, letting the accomplishment settle alongside the day’s harder, more sobering lesson. Four parties remained now — Fallen Crown, Fluxen Shore, the Descenders, and Edward’s own Golden Reckoning, an outcome the earlier brackets had made increasingly, inevitably likely with each passing round.

"We’re going to have to face one of them properly soon," Irene said quietly, some of her earlier fierce energy tempered now by the day’s considerable weight. "Seraphina’s discipline, or the Descenders’ precision, or—"

"Or Edward," Allen finished, the name settling with familiar, complicated weight.

Nobody offered easy reassurance to that particular possibility, the evening instead settling into quiet, thoughtful silence, five people gathered close together in the aftermath of a genuinely dangerous fight, grateful for exactly how narrowly disaster had been avoided, and increasingly aware of exactly how much more the tournament’s remaining stages still had waiting to demand of them.