The Extra's Rise - Chapter 954

954: Glasshouse Duel 954: Glasshouse Duel She brought the brand on her hand down like a hammer.

Black chains, fused by demonic power, formed a collar in midair and dropped for my neck.

If it set, the next thought I had would belong to Arakhel.

I raised my own circles, not to throw power, but to set the room’s baseline.

“The field is fair,” I said, and nine rings of blue light expanded from me, not as a wall, but as a change in the air itself.

It wasn’t a Radiant’s domain.

It was a simple statement of rules: equal friction, honest weight, no stolen endings.

The demonic collar hit the edge of the field and stalled, like an engine taking bad fuel.

I didn’t admire the work.

I attacked the place her contract needed to breathe.

Nine more circles spun into a clean, straight line of blue energy in my hand.

It was a simple spell, with no flourish, its only job to cut a binding without exploding the person wearing it.

The blade of it wasn’t steel.

It was a line that wanted to be kind, and refused to apologize for not being cruel.

I aimed it at the thin, shimmering strand of power that connected the brand on her hand to the crown of shadow on her head.

Evelyn saw it, of course.

She shoved the strand sideways with a single black rose, turning my perfect cut into a near miss.

The black rose hissed as it took the hit, then healed itself.

“Cheap,” she said.

“Safe,” I answered.

She countered with a spray of black petals, each one designed to cancel the intent inside the next spell they touched.

She threw three at once to box me in.

I answered with a short, sharp paradox-a teleport that chooses between three pre-approved safe arrivals.

The petals ate one option; the second path closed as she predicted it; I took the third and landed at her flank.

She tried to rake me with the branded hand.

I caught her wrist.

Not with strength, but with a lock of blue light that didn’t hold the bone; it held the decision to strike.

For one full second, her hand forgot that it wanted to move.

She broke the hold the next breath.

In a contest of sheer will, the one who has spent more years choosing to be hated often has the advantage.

She had.

It didn’t matter.

Her pattern was on the table now.

“Look at yourself,” I said, pushing her back.

“You still think I’m a pen for you to write with.” “You’re a pen that has learned to use longer ink,” she replied, and drew nine circles that braided with Arakhel’s oppressive power until the very air whined.

“Let’s see how much you have.” She spoke a word that wasn’t human.

The brand on her hand flashed.

Every black rose in the glasshouse opened at once.

The collar re-formed in the air above us, wider this time, lined with barbs that didn’t cut skin, but angles.

It was designed to shred possibilities.

I didn’t try to dodge it.

I didn’t try to block it.

I finished the sentence I’d been writing since I was twelve years old and too afraid to speak above a whisper.

“I am a garden,” I said.

And a garden it was.

Blue roses bloomed from the broken tiles, filling the glasshouse from ankle to waist.

There was no explosion, no grand display.

They were just… there.

The petals touched the demonic chains and wrote simple, undeniable edits on them: Hold only one thing at a time.

Don’t invent new rules.

Leave space to breathe.

The heavy, barbed collar descended into the sea of blue and faltered.

The barbs, each designed to cut a dozen angles, could now only choose one target each.

They ran out of things to cut.

The chains, meant to bind everything, could now only hold a single rose petal apiece.

Evelyn stared at the room as if it were a rude guest who had just overstayed their welcome.

“You brought a garden to a fight.” “You brought a leash to your daughter,” I said.

“Tool,” she corrected automatically.

“Not anymore,” I said, and the shift came.

Gates don’t always thunder.

Sometimes, they just click into place.

A new weight settled through my spine, a feeling of rightness, of alignment.

The air sharpened.

The blue roses closest to me deepened a shade, staying open now without my conscious attention.

The circles of magic I could weave ran smoother, louder, with more teeth.

The entire field, my statement of fairness, bent toward my Gift the way a table dips when you set down something heavy.

Mid Radiant.

It wasn’t a light show.

It was a sentence finishing itself.

Evelyn felt it.

She hid the fear perfectly, which is how I knew it was real.

“You should have remained small,” she said, and in a final, desperate move, drove Arakhel’s branded fist straight at my throat.

I conceded nothing.

I reformed the blue line in my hand.

“Sever now,” I told it.

This time, it bit.

The strand connecting Evelyn’s crown to her brand snapped like old thread.

The black crown flickered and died.

Arakhel’s voice snarled over my skin one last time and then vanished.

The chains lost the demon’s backing and fell to the floor as inert shadows.

Evelyn didn’t flinch.

She tried to swap the wound, her favorite cheat.

“Exchange,” she hissed, trying to trade her severed connection for an injury on me.

I had been waiting for it.

“Not with me,” I said quietly, and wrote the smallest, truest line of all in the air between us.

My life is not hers.

Blue ink, no flourish.

The swap spell skidded across the undeniable truth and failed.

We were close now, within arm’s reach.

Her black petals tried to eat my blue ones.

My blue petals refused to be a meal.

She threw a fan of erasing cuts; I created a paradox that split them down the middle and let them die in empty air.

She whipped a chain of shadow for my ankle; I stepped inside the loop and wrote you miss on its inner edge.

It fell harmlessly around my calf.

She aimed a thorn for my eye; I blinked and wrote after on its tip.

It arrived a moment too late.

“Stop it,” she said through her teeth.

“Stop writing over me,” I answered.

She drew her last card.

Not a spell.

A line of attack aimed at my heart.

“Arthur will die,” she said flatly, sending the words like a poisoned dart.

“And you will be alone again.” The line hit.

It always does, if you love anyone.

It didn’t divert my hands.

It hardened them.

“Then I will build something strong enough for him to stand on,” I said, and finally took her guard apart.

The finishing move wasn’t pretty.

It wasn’t meant to be.

I placed one blue rose against her sternum-the kind that only grows when you tell the truth and mean it.

Then I pushed.

The rose didn’t explode.

It bloomed inward.

Blue light filled the space between her bone and her brand, between her borrowed power and her old pride.

It wrote one thing and only one: No more.

The brand on her hand cracked down the center.

Every black rose in the glasshouse browned at the edges and turned to brittle dust.

Evelyn staggered.

She reached for her last trick, the control that comes with a name.

“Daughter,” she gasped.

“Not yours,” I said, and closed my fist.

The blue bloom finished its work.

Her knees hit the broken tiles.

Her eyes, finally clear of the veil’s shadow, stayed level with mine until the end-still calculating, still trying to find a way to turn this into a lesson I would be forced to remember.

“No more,” I repeated, softer this time, and her head bowed.

Silence took the glasshouse in a single, clean breath.

I stood still for a long time.

Then, I began to walk the room, snipping the last of the dead black vines with quiet blades of blue energy, letting the garden clear itself.

The steel ribs of the building showed again.

Wind moved through the broken panes.

For the first time in my life, the glasshouse felt like a place instead of a test.

My new rank settled, a hum like a machine that had finally found the right gear.

The blue roses around my boots stayed open, content.

I didn’t cry.

Not because I was strong, but because I had work to do with my hands-closing arcs, canceling residues, burning the last of Arakhel’s taste from the corners.

The cleanup took ten minutes.

It felt like ten years.

When I was done, I left the glasshouse and took the path I always take when I need to breathe.

The path to the terrace above the river where the first blue rose I ever grew still lives in a cracked pot.

The night was honest there.

The city hummed like a living thing.

I sat on the stone bench.

My hands shook once, and then stopped.

Footsteps.

A presence at my back that the world always leans toward.

I didn’t turn.

I didn’t need to.

Arthur’s arms slid around my ribs from behind, strong and careful.

He rested his cheek against my shoulder and said nothing.

I let my head tip back until it touched his.

The blue roses in the garden opened a little wider, turning the night a shade kinder.

That was enough.