RUST AND AETHER - The Banned Pill

The roar of the thirty thousand spectator

The roar of the thirty thousand spectators in the outer stands hit

Stage 12 in physical waves.

Down on the green basalt floor, fifty circular ring stages were humming simultaneously, their copper boundary arrays flickering with blue, red, and golden light as the first-round bouts got under way.The air was dense with the tang of ozone, kicked-up stone dust, and the sharp, metallic smell of fresh blood.Over in the shadow of the eastern spectator arch—a shaded granite nook away from the prying eyes of the proctor platforms—Cassian

Lyall stood with his hands tucked loosely into his green silk sleeves.

His face was a quiet, unreadable mask, his long dark hair falling over his shoulder in a loose wave that caught the morning light.Two meters in front of him stood

Derrick.Both senior cadets were breathing short, fast breaths.

Derrick’s right hand was tucked into his pocket, his knuckles white against his tunic.

They looked like two boys who had just stolen a purse from a blind merchant and weren’t entirely sure if the guard had seen them.”Stage

Twelve,” Cassian said softly.

His voice barely rose above the distant roaring crowd, flat and musical. “Your opponents are from

Neither has unlocked a primary node yet.

You shouldn’t even need steel to clear them.”Sean swallowed hard, his throat making a dry, clicking sound. “Then… why give us the box,

Master?”Cassian didn’t frown.

He simply looked at

Sean, his narrow dark eyes flat and empty as a winter puddle.”Because a win isn’t enough,” Cassian murmured. “I don’t need you to eke out a decision on points.

I need absolute, overwhelming violence.

East tally to skyrocket in the first two hours, so that when

Finch loses his match, every cadet on those stands sees who built their score and who broke it.”He reached out a long, manicured hand, slipping a small, square ironwood box out of his sleeve and pressing it into

Derrick’s palm.”Take them now,” Cassian commanded in a quiet whisper. “One pill each.

Water it down with tea from your flask so the proctor’s diagnostic needle doesn’t register the immediate core-flare.

By the time you step over the bronze ring, your

Aether output will match a 3-Node

Initiate.”Derrick stared at the ironwood box.

His fingers trembled slightly.

He knew the risk.

Pills were black-market contraband, boiled from toxic night-shade roots and refined demon-beast bile.

They didn’t just boost

Aether; they scorched the meridian walls, leaving behind microscopic tears that took months to heal with expensive spirit-salves.”Young

Master…” Derrick hesitated, his voice raspy. “The proctor on

He’s sharp with diagnostic pulses…””Sterling is an old bureaucrat who fears his own shadow,” Cassian cut him off, his voice dropping an octave, cold as iron. “He’s watching the

VIP stands to see if the

Elder looks his way.

He won’t check your eyes unless your pupils split.

Take the pills.

I’ll find two other boys who want a future in the

Peak.”Sean and

Derrick didn’t dare argue again.Derrick opened the ironwood box, pulled out two tiny, dark-purple spheres that smelled faintly of scorched copper, and passed one to

They popped the pills into their mouths, washing them down with long gulps of cold tea from their waist flasks.Ten paces away, standing near a heavy stone pillar supporting the second-tier benches,

Finch was leaning against the cold granite.He wasn’t trying to spy.

He had been adjusting the canvas strap on his rusted iron sword, waiting for his own match number to be called on

Stage 36.Inside

Julian’s skull, the two ancient spirits reacted instantly.”Mmm,” Vanya purred, her spirit-intent flickering near his chest like a cat scenting stale fish. “What a foul smell.

Scorched copper and night-shade.

Someone just swallowed a low-grade core-igniter.””Surge

Pills,” Kaelen noted, his tone filled with aristocratic disgust. “A cheap, filthy shortcut favoured by second-rate clans.

It forces a temporary, unnatural expansion of the primary channels by inflaming the vessel walls.

Extremely crude.

In my era, a disciple caught using such venom had his hamstrings cut and was thrown into the dung-pits.”Julian didn’t draw attention to himself.

He stayed in the shadow of the pillar, his dark pupils narrowing as he studied the two cadets standing before

Cassian.He saw

Derrick take a deep breath.It was subtle—so subtle that an ordinary spectator twenty feet away wouldn’t have noticed a thing.

Julian possessed hyper-comprehension, his senses heightened to a terrifying degree by his fused soul and his dual-core cultivation.He saw the tiny, violent twitch in

Derrick’s right temple.

He saw the way the skin around

Sean’s collarbone suddenly flushed a pale, mottled red.And then, as

Derrick turned his head to look toward

Stage 12, the morning sunlight caught the cadet’s eyes.For a fraction of a second, the whites of

Derrick’s eyes didn’t look white.

They bore a faint, unnatural purple discoloration—a network of microscopic, bruised veins radiating outward from the pupils like spiderwebs of dark ink.Purple eye-ring,

Julian thought, his mind instantly pulling up the warnings written in the margins of

Breath-Gathering

Scroll he’d bought at the black market.

The classic symptom of

Night-Shade core poisoning.Cassian

Lyall offered his two henchmen a small, elegant nod of approval, turned on his heel, and walked away toward the

VIP staging area, his green silk robes swishing smoothly against the flagstones.Sean and

Derrick wiped their mouths, adjusted their swords, and marched toward their respective ring stages, their steps noticeably heavier, their breath coming faster as the forbidden pill began its violent, artificial burn inside their chests.Caleb

Tanner walked up behind

Julian, holding a half-eaten salted pork bun. “What are you looking at,

Your match is up on

Thirty-Six in five minutes.

Red-House guy with a silver spear.”Julian kept his eyes on

Derrick’s back as the purple-eyed cadet climbed the stone steps of

Stage 12.”Are you going to tell the proctor, kid?” Vanya asked in his mind, her flame-intent giving a curious, warm flicker. “One word to the

Elder and those two vipers get dragged off in chains.”Julian stayed silent for a long moment, his thumb tracing the worn wood of his rusted sword’s guard.”No,” Julian whispered softly, his voice lost in the roaring noise of the crowd.”No?” Kaelen sounded surprised. “They are cheating to manipulate the house score and undermine your standing!””If

I report them now,

Cassian will just sacrifice two pawns and claim he knew nothing about it,” Julian thought back, his dark eyes cold and analytical. “He’ll stay clean.

The house will get penalized, and the commoner cadets who cheered for us in the mess hall will lose their ration bonuses.”He turned away from the shadow of the pillar, walking toward

Stage 36.”Let them drink their poison,” Julian muttered under his breath, a cold, quiet resolve settling into his chest. “When the time comes to break a viper… you don’t step on its tail.

You wait until it strikes, and then you crush its head on the stone.”