Seth was running a six person setup against him and calling it a family gathering. That was either stupid or confident and Seth wasn’t stupid.

Orion filed this under confident because he has something I haven’t seen yet and kept his expression neutral.

"We’ll start with basic assessment," Seth said, stepping into the organizer role with the ease of long practice. "Individual summon display, then a paired exercise."

He looked at Orion last. "I thought we’d begin with you. Given the recent developments." 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

Of course you did.

Orion stepped into the center circle.

Luna dropped to the ground beside him and stood there, and the temperature of the training ground changed slightly the way it always did when she was properly present and paying attention.

He looked at Seth. "Just a display?"

"Show us what you’ve got," Seth said pleasantly.

"That’s vague."

"I trust your judgment."

The two secondary branch figures by the edge were watching carefully. Calder Voss had taken a position slightly separate from everyone, off to the left, arms still crossed.

Orion thought about what to show.

Not Luna’s full capabilities. That was still a card he hadn’t fully played and he wasn’t playing it here. Not the cultivation, that was invisible at Stage One anyway. Not Copy, the cooldown hadn’t cleared yet.

What he had was Combat Instinct, Shadow Step at seventy nine percent, and whatever the Sovereign Reinforcement was building to at three percent progress.

He had enough.

He turned to Luna. "Tag system. You call the approach, I handle the response."

Her ears perked up. "Hehe. Yes master."

She moved.

Not all out. Controlled. A fast arc to his left, and he was already pivoting before she’d committed, the Combat Instinct reading the intention in the motion and feeding it back to him before his eyes had processed it. He shifted weight, brought his arm up, and as she came within range he activated Shadow Step.

He disappeared.

The reaction from the watching group was immediate. Several people stepped back involuntarily. Mira made a sound.

He reappeared behind Luna, one hand on her shoulder, the endpoint clean and controlled.

Seventy nine percent compatibility.

It felt almost right.

Luna turned and looked at him with her silver eyes warm. "Clean," she said.

"Cleaner," he corrected.

He turned to face the group. Seth’s expression was controlled but the hands at his side were doing something involuntary, fingers slightly flexed, the microresponse of someone recalibrating under social pressure.

Celia was watching with genuine focus now, the performance of assessment dropped for something more real.

Calder Voss had turned from his separate position and was looking at Orion directly for the first time with both eyes.

"Shadow Step," Celia said. "That’s a displacement skill. Mana intensive. And you used it cleanly."

"Reasonably cleanly," Orion said.

"Where did you learn it."

"Around."

Her expression said she knew he wasn’t going to elaborate and she was filing the question for later.

Seth recovered. "Impressive," he said, and the word was doing a lot of work covering over things that weren’t impressed. "Though I wonder how it holds up against a proper opponent." He glanced at the two secondary branch figures. "Renn. Your turn."

The taller of the two stepped forward.

He was older. Seventeen at least, broader built than Orion, and the way he moved into the circle said he’d been in actual combat situations and not just training exercises. He called his summon without announcing it, a summoning circle snapping open under his feet, and what came out was a large canine beast, dark fur, Gold ranked from the energy signature.

Not a pushover.

The Gold ranked beast circled immediately, the training ground’s reinforced perimeter doing what it was for as the thing moved with a predatory low-body posture that ate up ground fast.

Orion noted several things rapidly.

The beast was Gold but its movement pattern was straightforward, aggressive and direct, no feinting. Renn was standing back, directing from range, not a front-line type. The two of them hadn’t trained together long enough for the coordination to be seamless, there were micro-delays between Renn’s hand signals and the beast’s response.

Gaps.

The beast charged.

Orion moved left, not back, left, cutting across the charge angle, and activated Shadow Step halfway through the movement. He displaced to the right side of the beast’s trajectory, let the thing overshoot him completely, and landed with one hand briefly on its flank as it passed.

Contact. Clean.

The beast spun, confused. Renn’s signal came half a second late.

Orion was already on the other side.

The beast charged again, and this time Orion didn’t use Shadow Step. He waited, timed the footfall pattern, stepped inside the arc of the thing’s leading paw and redirected his body around it, using the beast’s own momentum to swing himself clear.

No mana cost.

Just movement.

The beast stopped. Looked at him. Looked at Renn. Did the animal equivalent of I don’t know what to do with this person.

Orion looked at Renn.

Renn looked back.

"Recall your summon," Orion said, not unkindly. Just flat.

A pause. Then Renn did.

The training ground was quiet for a moment.

"He’s not fighting the beast," Calder Voss said from his separate position. His voice was neutral but there was something in it that hadn’t been there before. "He’s fighting the summoner through the beast."

Nobody answered that.

Seth’s jaw was doing the tight thing again.

Orion looked at him. "Who’s next."

Seth looked back. Something moved behind his eyes that Orion didn’t have enough information to read yet. A decision being made.

"Me," Seth said.

And called his summon.

The circle that opened under Seth’s feet was not Bronze. Not Silver. Not even Gold. The runes were a deep, burning platinum, and what came through was not a boar.

It was a serpent.

Enormous. Black-scaled, with a body as thick as a tree trunk and a length that filled half the training ground when it extended, its head rising to twice Orion’s height before it settled, its eyes the color of molten metal looking down at him with the flat patience of something that had never needed to hurry.

Platinum ranked.

Seth’s real summon. The one he’d apparently never bothered showing before.

The training ground got very quiet in the specific way that happened when everyone present was doing individual threat assessments and arriving at similar conclusions.

Luna stepped forward.

Orion put his hand out. "Wait."

She stopped. The look she gave him was complicated. Protective and questioning and the particular frustration of someone who could solve a problem and was being asked not to.

"I’ve got this," he said.

"Master." Quietly. "That’s Platinum."

"I know what it is."

The serpent’s head lowered slightly, tasting the air, its attention fixed on Orion with the complete focus of something that had been pointed at him and understood directions.

Seth was watching from behind it. The warmth was completely gone now. "I did tell you," he said, and his voice was very calm, "that things would get complicated."

Orion looked at the serpent.

Looked at the space around it. The way it occupied the training ground. The thickness of the body, the weight of it, the way it had settled into a coiled position that prioritized speed over stability.

He looked at Seth.

"You know what your problem is," Orion said conversationally, hands in his pockets, completely still.

"Enlighten me," Seth said.

"You prepared for the version of me from three days ago." He tilted his head slightly. "I’ve had a busy week."

Seth’s eyes narrowed.

The serpent lunged.

It was fast. Platinum ranked fast, the kind of speed that didn’t look like it came from something that size, the whole body moving as one continuous weapon from coiled position to full extension in less than a second.

Orion activated Shadow Step.

Not away from it.

Toward it.

He displaced inside the strike arc, into the blind spot that existed for exactly one moment when a serpent fully committed to a lunge, the space just below and behind the jaw where the body hadn’t caught up to the head yet.

He was there for less than a second. Just long enough to place both hands on the scales and push, hard, redirecting the head downward and to the right.

The serpent’s momentum did the rest.

Its own strike carried it into the ground at an angle it hadn’t intended, the impact reverberating through the stone, and for two full seconds the thing was tangled in its own body, reorienting.

Two seconds was enough.

Orion was already clear. Standing fifteen feet away. Breathing controlled. The Shadow Step had cost him, he could feel the mana drain sitting in his chest like a fist, but he was upright and undamaged and the serpent was reorienting from a position it hadn’t wanted to be in.

The training ground was silent.

Seth’s face had done something that Orion suspected it hadn’t done in a very long time.

It had gone blank.

Not controlled blank. Actually blank. The performance had just stopped working for a moment.

Calder Voss made a sound that was almost but not quite a laugh.

Luna’s tail was doing the complicated conflicted thing again, simultaneously proud and viscerally annoyed that he’d done it without her.

Orion looked at the serpent as it reoriented. Looked at Seth.

"Recall it," he said.

Seth said nothing.

"You’ve seen what you came to see," Orion continued, and his voice stayed even. No heat. No performance. Just direct. "Recall your summon, Seth. We’re done here."

The serpent waited for Seth’s command.

Seth looked at Orion for a long moment.

Then he made the recall gesture.

The serpent dissolved back into its circle and the training ground exhaled.

Mira was gripping her chair with both hands. Doran was watching Orion with something on his face that wasn’t hostility. Celia had her arms crossed and an expression of someone who was done pretending she wasn’t paying full attention.

Calder Voss had uncrossed his arms.

"Well," Voss said, to no one specific.

He looked at Orion with the first fully genuine expression he’d worn since arriving.

"I think I know whose potential I’m here to observe."

Seth turned and walked out of the training ground without another word.

Luna appeared at Orion’s side and threaded her arm through his with the proprietary ease that he’d somehow completely normal