LIAM'S POV:
The atmosphere within the imperial gardens had undergone a violent transformation. What had begun as a celebration of the Empress Dowager’s birth had morphed into a predatory theater of power. As the first pair of combatants stepped onto the elevated battle ring, a heavy, almost suffocating silence fell over the gathered nobility. The air was thick with the scent of night-blooming jasmine, expensive floral perfumes, and the underlying metallic tang of suppressed spiritual energy.
Two youths, both roughly twelve years of age, faced each other in the center of the ring. Jesper Von Rynald and Gale of the Frozen Sea Breeze Sect did not merely look at each other with dislike; they viewed one another with a mutual, structural disdain that felt like a physical weight. It was a pheno
