A change is announced. His opponent has been decided.

No. No. He was- he was going to get to pick. That's how it works. That's how it always works. He needed to get to pick. Nothing works if he can't pick.

It's going to be a member of the Wei clan. Wei Jin Amon. The Wei clan's rising star. The Patriarch's grandson. He's looking at Lindon like Lindon personally spat in his food.

If Lindon loses, he's going to be lucky to leave the arena with a single unbroken limb.

Thank goodness, if it had been anyone else his plan wouldn't have worked.

As the two stand across from each other Amon whispers to Lindon, the motion disguised by a quirk of his madra. He says this is Lindon's last chance to give up. 

Lindon acts like he didn't hear anything.

His feared last intervention by the Patriarch fails to materialize. He was right. He can't be seen preventing the match, especially not with his grandson involved.

Lindon makes eye contact with Amon.

He swirls his madra around his core, gathering it from around his body, concentrating it, concentrating it, concentrating it more, his will battling against his madra's natural desire to disperse, to do anything but gather so tightly.

The announcer begins to speak. 

And then, everything changes.

The Elder looks up, confusion on his face, the sentence announcing the commencement of the match sputtering out early.

There are clouds gathering.

The Elder looks to the Patriarch, confusion and fear on his face. The Patriarch shakes his head. He isn't responsible for this. Those clouds are not an illusion. They are real.

They are darkening rapidly, farther and farther by the moment. They look nearly black, like the greatest storm of any of their lives has gathered overhead and is hovering above them all.

Waiting.

Lindon looks upwards as the Patriarch and the Elder do, as Amon does, as the stadium does. For a moment he thinks that the darkening skies are a trick played on his mind by the Patriarch, but no, everybody else is reacting. The Patriarch could not perfectly imitate the look on his father's face as he looks up at the suddenly gathered clouds, a brusque mask failing to hide his fear. He would not know to fake the look of concern on his sister's as she looks at him. 

His mother has been working on something, the last few weeks. Working with the other scriptors and soulsmiths of the Wei clan. Investigating something the Li clan has been doing. She's discussed it with him a few times. The Li clan has been purchasing strange remnants and sacred beasts. A rabbit which can blink a foot to the side. A snake which can emerge from soil different from that which it burrowed into. A remnant which strikes simply failed to connect to, always turned aside at the last moment. She'd theorized that they were trying to investigate spatial madra. Something which would allow them to invent a new path capable of some rather impressive things. She and the scriptors and soulsmiths of the clan decided they were searching for the eggs of an imaginary goose. There was no such thing as spatial madra.

As Lindon watches an ancient immortal dressed in the colours of the Li clan fly down from the gathered clouds on giant bat wings, he begins to suspect they were attempting something else entirely.

Lindon knows that it's an ancient immortal descending. How? Well, Lindon can't feel Madra. It's not until Jade that you can feel Madra.

He can feel this.

The ancient immortal lands in the center of the arena.

The badge in the centre of his chest is gold. The highest stage this primitive little valley remembers. But he's nostalgic for it. It's where he grew up.

So this is where it will start.

His new kingdom. 

It wouldn't be allowed, of course, if he'd left the world properly. But he didn't. He's been wandering the branches of the Way without ever properly ascending. As far as this world is concerned he's not even a Sage. Not that it matters, with the power of half a dozen worlds behind him. He's studied others who've left and returned to their worlds through similar methods to his. They weren't punished. So he shouldn't be either. And if he is, simply because this world is ever so important. Well, the Abidan might bend their rules to stop him, but not so far as to execute him. They like to pretend to be something more than the petty tyrants they are. What's a few centuries imprisoned to an immortal?

He pauses for a long moment to let his presence sink in. To let everyone in the crowd see the badge on his chest.