Redhollow: 10 shards. Deepvault: 0.
The scoreboard pulsed above the pitch, casting its faint glow across the rift-touched turf. Mana mist coiled through the beams of the floodlights like lazy dragons, thick with tension and sweat. The chant of the home crowd was a murmur at first—a vibration that rolled from the bleachers into the earth.
Fifteen minutes had passed. And Redhollow had already done the unthinkable.
Two defensive structures shattered—one through brute force, the other through surgical misdirection. Three resource channels, vital conduits of mana and movement, dismantled. Three more stolen right out from under Deepvault's sharpened nose. Every toppled structure earned 2 shards. Every disrupted or stolen resource stream, 1.
Ten shards. Two goals. Redhollow led 2–0.
In the dugout, Lain, Calyre, and Theren sat stone-still. It wasn't just disbelief—they weren't confused anymore. They were silent in the face of something undeniable. The team they once led, once carried, had shifted without them. Had found its rhythm in their absence. And the youth players? Cival. Dara. Tenri.
They weren't holding their own. They were leading.
Rowan stood at the edge of the coach's box, arms crossed, coat pinned tight against the evening chill. He hadn't taken a seat once. Not since the match began. He hadn't needed to. The work had already been done. The players knew their roles. The gambits were forged. All that remained was to keep the fire lit.
The crowd was still growing into its voice. Not quite roaring yet. But rising. Rumbling. Like something buried long ago was beginning to stir.
Aetherstone was chaos wrapped in rules. A game of elemental symmetry and strategy—a magic-infused storm of physical play, mana deployment, structural defense, and resource control. The stone was the focal point, but it wasn't the objective. Not directly. You didn't only score by crossing a line—you earned goals through conquest.
Destroying key defenses. Disrupting resource lines. Outmaneuvering, outlasting, out-fighting.
Players could use universal magic, but only in controlled bursts. Mana cores did not recharge mid-match. Burning too fast meant losing too soon. Those who overextended risked exposure—a condition where the mana system failed to regulate their output. It could cripple a player's match. Sometimes entire careers.
Substitutions could only occur after a structure fell or during an injury pause. No timeouts. No pauses unless someone was bleeding or breaking. And gambits—the tactical overlays that governed team formations and spell triggers—could be changed mid-play, but only at great cost. Clarity was key. Mistimed shifts broke rhythm and exposed flanks.
Rowan had burned his first gambit early, transitioning Revi and Cival into a mirror overlay—one pressing wide like a disruptor, the other rotating behind him like a spectral shadow. It cut through Deepvault's zone control like a scalpel.
But Deepvault wasn't second in the league by accident.
At minute 17, their wing enchanters expanded out, baiting Redhollow's defenders wider than intended. Their Elementalist began laying down dense pressure glyphs—not to strike, but to starve. Redhollow's central channels began to dry up. Their tempo stuttered.
Deepvault clawed back two shards. One from a reclaimed mana orb in a dead zone. Another from a disrupted resource pylon before it could fully activate.
10–2. Still Redhollow. But the storm had turned.
At minute 21, it cracked.
A surge burst through Deepvault's left wing—hard and fast. Their striker, all speed and no wasted movement, pierced through Redhollow's second line. Juno stumbled, his balance spell misfiring on a muddy glyph. The stone was loose.
The striker lunged.
"Tenri! Shift!"
Rowan's voice ripped through the air like a whip.
Tenri moved before thinking. Her anchor snap didn't just cut off the angle—it redirected the kinetic flow. Dara read it a half-second later, dropping a shield glyph in perfect timing.
BOOM.
The striker hit the wall. The stone skittered out of bounds.
The structure trembled. But it held.
A cheer rose. Not explosive. But genuine.
Rowan let himself grin. Just once.
Deepvault surged again. And again. The rhythm of the match changed completely. Now it was about control. Probing. Counter-probing. Bait. Trap. Recover.
Rowan burned his second gambit at minute 26—flipping his outer triangle. Dara rotated back, playing closer to the arc field. Cival stretched wider, baiting Deepvault's enchanter into overextension.
At 27:14, Revi timed a sideline intercept perfectly. A channel spell burst like glass in the air, erased before it could root.
Still 10–2.
And then came minute 30.
The final stretch of the half.
The moment that would be played on screens across the Republic for weeks.
Cival caught a rebounding stone deep in his own zone—barely in bounds. Four spell lines closed around him. Pressure glyphs, mana misdirections, movement suppressors.
He didn't break stride.
He pivoted—not a full turn, just a lean—and flicked the stone without even looking up. A blind pass. A memory pass.
Dara caught it in motion. Her boots didn't touch the glyph lines—she glided over them.
One bounce. Two. A Deepvault defender closed.
Hands up. Mirror glyph active.
Trap Sense lit behind Dara's eyes. She slowed. Just enough to bait the cast. Then surged forward.
The glyph burst behind her. Missed.
She twisted, used her momentum to drive the defender left—and spun the stone behind her, threading it through the gap.
Cival again.
This time, sprinting. Left wing. Alone.
Dara looked right. Passed left.
It wasn't a line. It wasn't a launch. It was a chip.
Low-arc. Mana-infused. Too high to sweep. Too low to leap.
The defender dove. Missed.
Cival leapt—not tall enough. Didn't matter.
His eyes flared—just once—with a glyph-echo from earlier in the match. A borrowed flick.
He caught it with the heel of his left foot. A featherweight glyph manifested on his calf.
Behind him.
Deflected down.
The stone skipped. Curved. Hit the inner coil of the arc field like it was drawn there by fate.
Flash. Crack.
The field ignited. The scoreboard updated.
Redhollow: 3–0.
And for a full second, nothing.
Then came the roar.
Not a cheer. A detonation.
Every seat in the stadium shook.
Cival dropped to his belly. Arms wide, flat across the field. Dara was already there—laughing and crying all at once.
The referee tapped the timer. Whistle. Halftime.
Rowan didn't celebrate. Didn't flinch. He just turned.
To the bench.
To the three stars who had once worn the crown.
Lain. Calyre. Theren.
They stared at the field. Pale. Silent.
For the first time—they understood.
This wasn't the team they once led.
This wasn't their kingdom.
This was Redhollow. Reborn.