Cole didn't wait for a second invitation. He shattered, flowing through the golden grid, intending to re-form behind her and end this "training session" before it even began.

  But his movements felt stiff, jarring. The air itself seemed to grab at his trajectory, forcing him into rigid pathways. When he tried to re-form, his particles didn't flow into place. They snapped together at harsh 90-degree angles, his body reassembling according to someone else's rules. He materialized five feet to her left instead of directly behind her, like his navigation software had been overwritten mid-transit.

  "What the hell?" he muttered. His reflection in her blade showed him looking genuinely confused.

  "I have imposed a simple mathematical rule on this field," Iris's voice was calm, echoing slightly within the golden dome. "All motion must occur in straight lines. All impacts must occur at right angles. Welcome to my classroom, Cole. First lesson: in my world, disorder is just math you haven't solved yet."

  Great. He'd gone from fighter to homework problem.

  She moved, a terrifying ballet of perfect geometry. She advanced in a series of precise, ninety-degree pivots, each step landing exactly 73.7 centimeters from the last. Her massive greatsword was held in a ready stance, the red of the blade pulsing in time with the vibration of the field. Where it moved, it left traces of equations in the air, formulae that described the arc of death.

  Cole gritted his teeth and attacked. He threw one of his Fractal Blades, intending for it to curve and emerge from a reflection. Instead, the blade flew in a straight predictable line. He activated his new legs, projecting a reflective field to his right. He vanished and reappeared instantly, just as planned. But he was trapped. The grid had forced him to appear at a right angle to his jump, placing him exactly where Iris's calculations had predicted. Her sword was already moving to that spot before he materialized.

  She'd known exactly where he'd be.

  The tip of her greatsword slid past his block with ease and stopped a centimeter from his throat. Geometric sparks flared where the tip of her blade met the air. He was pinned.

  "Your probability of a successful counter-attack from this position is 0.03%," Iris stated, her voice calm, her heart rate a steady 67 BPM. "That percentage accounts for an asteroid hitting the arena. You relied on your speed, but you didn't account for the fact that I could change the rules of how speed works. In my field, I am not just a fighter. I am a fundamental law. And laws don't lose. The lesson is over."

  Cole stood frozen, the feather-light sword a palpable threat against his skin. He had been completely and utterly dismantled without her taking more than a dozen steps.

  His combat software was throwing up error messages: "MATH TOO STRONG. PLEASE REBOOT UNIVERSE."

  The golden grid dissolved around them, the glow fading, leaving only the sound of Cole’s ragged breathing in the empty stadium. And somewhere, faintly, the sound of a cleaning drone laughing. Even the maintenance equipment found his failure amusing.

  “How…?” he finally managed to ask.

  "Your strength is your unpredictability," Iris explained, lowering her sword, a hint of disappointment in her expression. "So, I created an environment of absolute predictability and forced you to exist within it. Your greatest asset became your greatest weakness."

  She pointed at him with the tip of her blade. Where it had touched his throat, a tiny equation was burned into his skin.

  Great. Mathematical hickeys. How was he going to explain that to Lia?

  It would fade in a few hours, but for now he was literally marked by mathematics. "Now then let's try again."

  "Okay," he said, taking a deep breath and resetting his stance. His ribs ached from impacts that hadn't even happened yet, his body anticipating the beating to come. "But this time, can you maybe not make me feel like a kindergartener who brought crayons to a calculus exam?"

  "That would defeat the purpose. Your future opponents won't care about your feelings. Only about murdering you."

  The golden grid snapped back into existence.

  This time, Cole didn't shatter. He remembered the lesson. Unpredictability was useless here. He needed to adapt. He activated his new legs, projecting a reflective field. The matrix in his calves generated a dome of shimmering mirrors around him. The mirrors were aggressive, turning Iris's own mathematical certainty into a thousand questions.

  If I have to play by your rules, he thought, I’ll bring my own chessboard.

  He used his own mirrors, his own controlled environment, to execute a series of rapid, short-range Reflection Steps, trying to overwhelm Iris with sheer speed within the confines of her right-angle rule. He appeared to her left, then her right, then above, his blades leaving prismatic afterimages that solidified for a split second, creating a cage of phantom attacks. This was more like it. This was his game.

  Iris simply watched, her head tilted, her math-core processor running at full capacity. As Cole teleported for the seventh time, preparing for a final, decisive strike, she spoke a single, calm equation.

  “Vector analysis complete. Optimal counter-solution found.”

  She swung her great sword at a seemingly empty point on the floor, the point where all his reflections converged, the mathematical center of his torrent. The greatsword’s Pattern Resonance ability flared, and a glowing, golden line shot out from the blade, bisecting Cole’s entire reflective field. The line hit one of his projected mirrors, and instead of shattering it, it followed the angle of reflection perfectly. It ricocheted from one mirror to the next in an instantaneous ninety-degree pattern, creating a catastrophic feedback loop of pure mathematical logic.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  The math became visible, golden equations cascading through the air like a virus, each reflection adding another layer of calculation until reality itself seemed to overflow with numbers. Cole’s reflective field exploded inward with a sound like a thousand shattering windows. The backlash threw him backward. He landed hard, the breath driven from his lungs, his own power turned against him.

  Before he could recover, Iris was there, standing over him, the tip of her sword once again at his throat. This time, she wasn't even breathing hard.

  "A commendable attempt." Her tone no different than before. Though Cole caught something, the tiniest uptick at the corner of her mouth.

  She was enjoying this. The Sadist.

  "You correctly identified that controlling the environment was key. Your error was in assuming your environment was not a subset of my own. All of your reflections still had to obey my rules. You built a beautiful, complex cage for me, but you forgot you were still inside it. It's a common mistake. Chaos Wielders make it constantly. They think disorder means freedom from rules. It doesn't. It just means the rules are harder to see. Again."

  She stepped back. The grid remained active.

  Frustration boiled in Cole’s gut. He was faster. He was a whirlwind of unpredictable violence. But here, in her world, he was a pawn. No, he was a variable in an equation she'd already solved. He got to his feet, his pride stinging more than his bruised back.

  He threw both of his Fractal Blades, stabbing them into the stadium floor on opposite sides of Iris, creating two mirror gates. The blades sang as they hit the sand, a crystalline note that harmonized with the grid. Then he charged, creating a hard-light illusion of himself that ran alongside him. At the same time, he activated his blades' recording ability, programming a simple, repeating six-strike combo. The combo was deliberately flawed, a pattern that looked like a pattern but wasn't, randomness disguised as order.

  Iris's eyes flickered, calculating. Her tattoos sped up, equations flowing across her skin like water. She saw the real Cole, the illusion, and the two mirror gates. Too many variables. Or so Cole hoped.

  He unleashed the echo. Suddenly, there were dozens of Coles. Two real ones jumping between the mirror gates, a hard-light illusion, and a swarm of mirror-echoes replaying the six-strike combo from every conceivable angle.

  She didn't even try to parse the illusions. Her eyes actually closed, shutting out the visual noise entirely. She simply planted her feet, raised her sword, and drove its tip into the ground. A wave of pure, golden energy erupted outward, a visible ripple of mathematical law. The wave had texture; Cole could feel equations passing through him, rewriting his relationship with reality.

  “Theorem invoked: All reflections are falsehoods. All echoes are noise. The original variable is the only truth.”

  Reality itself nodded in agreement, like a student accepting a professor's correction.

  The effect was instantaneous. Cole's hard-light illusion shattered. His mirror-echoes dissolved into harmless motes of light. His mirror gates fizzled and died. Even his own reflection in the sand vanished, as if he'd temporarily stopped existing in multiple states. He was left standing alone, his most powerful technique of misdirection completely and utterly negated.

  He was exposed, vulnerable, and directly in her path.

  Iris moved. Her attack was a single fast strike that followed the most efficient line her power could calculate. The air parted before her blade, creating a vacuum tunnel that pulled Cole toward his own defeat. Cole tried to parry, but it was useless. He felt her blade slide past his defense, the flat of the massive sword connecting with his chest.

  He was thrown from his feet, landing in a heap fifteen feet away, his vision filled with stars. Stars that were arranged in exact constellations, because even his concussion was being mathematically organized. The golden grid finally dissolved.

  Cole's final landing was accompanied by his diagnostic system cheerfully informing him he'd suffered "non-lethal everything damage" and suggesting immediate medical attention. It also suggested he consider a career change, possibly to something that didn't involve fighting mathematics incarnate.

  Iris walked over, her sword resting on her shoulder. She looked down at him, her expression unchanged, though her tattoos were displaying what looked suspiciously like a scoreboard. Cole: 0, Math: Everything.

  “The lesson is not about winning, Cole," she said. "Though if it was, you would be failing spectacularly. It’s about understanding the problem. You tried to force your own rules onto my equation. You must learn to stop seeing the fight and start seeing the math. Combat is just applied physics. Physics is just applied mathematics. And mathematics... mathematics is truth. You cannot defeat truth. You can only align with it or be crushed by it. Your final attempt was your best. You created enough chaotic data to overwhelm a standard opponent's predictive capabilities. But I am not a standard opponent."

  "So," he said, his voice a hoarse rasp, "what's the answer?"

  "That's what you need to figure out. Training is over for today. Given your pattern of defying probability, however, it might be worth attempting to solve while concussed. From what Senna tells me you seem to have a talent for making unlikely things happen. It's statistically fascinating and personally infuriating. Rest. We will try again tomorrow."

  Cole walked back to the hotel, every muscle in his body aching in ways he hadn't thought possible. It was the deep, cellular exhaustion of having reality's rules repeatedly rewritten on him. His neurons felt scrambled, as if someone had been playing three-dimensional chess with his synapses.

  His reflection in shop windows showed him walking at precise right angles, his body still obeying rules that had already been lifted. One reflection showed him walking normally. Another showed him as a series of geometric shapes. A third showed him as a complex equation. He decided to stop looking at reflections for a while.

  Someone passing by laughed and called out, "First time training with a Math Witch?" When Cole nodded, the man added, "Yeah, you got that 'I just learned I don't understand reality' look. It fades. Mostly... Still can't look at triangles without flinching, myself."

  He entered the room, and Lia was going over some information on a datapad. The display showed what looked like a parts inventory, but Cole recognized some of the items; they were all fireproof. She was planning ahead. She took one look at him and immediately started laughing.

  "How was it? Let me guess, she turned you into a geometry problem and then solved you?"

  Cole could only shake his head and let out a groan. He plopped face down on the bed, the mattress groaning under his weight. His body made a right angle with the mattress. Even gravity was still obeying Iris's rules around him.

  "That bad, huh?" Lia dismissed the display with a wave of her hand and turned to face him. A playful smile touched her lips. "I can still see the grid patterns burned into your retinas. They're actually quite pretty. Like you've got graph paper for eyes. She really did a number on you. Here, let me help you forget. I promise my methods involve a lot more curves than right angles."

  As she approached Cole's last coherent thought was that at least this kind of training wouldn't leave him feeling like a failed equation.

  Though given what happened last time with the bedsheets, the hotel was definitely going to need that deposit.

  Where Blood Meets Divinity

  “Some monsters are born. Others are chosen.”

  vampire beneath the shadow of prophecy, she never knew her blood carried both miracle and abomination.

  All she ever wanted… was to survive.

  Pulled between the call of sainthood and the hunger in her veins.

  Because blood and divinity were never meant to mix.

  In her hands, both may save the world… or end it.

  What to Expect:

  - Saint & Vampire dual-nature protagonist

  - Dark fantasy filled with prophecy and betrayal

  - Divine power and cursed awakenings

  - Moral struggle, transformation, and consequence