The stadium was dead quiet.
Every pair of eyes was locked on the broken arena floor, the silence so thick you could hear the wind through the upper stands. Instructors, seniors, people who usually watched first-year fights with bored looks, were leaning over the railings.
The big crowd did not make a sound. The cheering had stopped completely.
And why wouldn't it be quiet?
Down there, it was not just a normal training match or a simple fight between students. It was a slaughter turned into a high-level war.
Everyone knew the Aegis Academy was the most powerful institution in the world. It was a huge fortress that only took two hundred students this year out of over one hundred thousand applicants.
It was built to make the ultimate weapons, a brutal factory that filtered out the weak. Every generation had a few stars.
But this year?
