The Bully's Reincarnation

The crowd wasn't cheering.They were laughing, the kind of laughter that drips heavy and hot....like oil down the back of your neck.

Mocking and Cruel. Kai stood dead center in the combat ring, arms limp, jaw clenched so hard it ached.

His breath came shallow, uneven, like something inside him didn't want to breathe at all.

Around him, Arcadia's elite students stood like gods, polished boots, tailored coats, ancient family crests stitched into silk and then there was also wearing the same thin, ill-fitted academy uniform as the rest of Class E. Only difference was his had been handed down through six kids and still smelled like someone else's sweat.He wasn't a fighter.Hell, he barely qualified for enrollment. No sponsor. No noble blood. Just some weird flicker of magic that scored him a pity spot on the lowest rung. The others called it a scholarship.

They meant charity.

Across the ring stood Valeera Ignis.

Class A.

Ranked #3.

Hair like molten copper. Fire danced around her fists in small, eager bursts.

She smiled not wide or cartoonish. It was something worse...casual. The way you'd smile if you saw a beetle squirming under your boot.

"Try not to piss yourself," she said.

Laughter followed.

Kai didn't answer. His tongue felt thick in his mouth. His heart beat too fast. He could feel the stares hundreds of them -pressing into his back like blades. Above them, on the carved stone balcony, the bell rang once.A low, ancient sound.

The duel had begun.

She didn't hesitate. The first blast of flame shot toward him before his feet even registered the bell.He barely ducked. It singed his sleeve. Heat seared his skin.

The crowd roared.

Kai scrambled backward, boots slipping on the polished floor. His knees nearly gave out as the second shot struck just a few inches from his foot, leaving a scorched mark on the arena tiles.

"Fight back!" someone shouted.

"Coward!"

"Burn him, Valeera!"

He tried to breathe but he couldn't.

His lungs wouldn't expand fully. He stumbled behind one of the low stone barriers that dotted the ring. Not for cover - they were decorative, but they gave the illusion of safety. His fingers dug into the cracks.

Just don't die. Don't pass out. Don't scream.

Valeera stalked forward.

She wasn't rushing. She didn't need to. Her magic curled and hissed around her fingers like something alive. Eager.

Kai peeked over the edge.

She was close, too close.... He panicked and lifted a hand. Magic sputtered there, very faint, cold, like a dying ember.

He didn't know what spell he was trying, he didn't know any real ones. Not really.

But something deep inside him moved. A pressure. Then-

BOOM.

It wasn't a fire.

It wasn't light.

It was darkness. Pure, screaming, tearing darkness - shot straight from his chest like a blade. It didn't roar. It shrieked.

The blast hit Valeera square in the chest and sent her flying backward. She slammed into the wall of the arena and didn't get up.

The silence that followed wasn't just shock, it was terror.

Then someone screamed.

Kai blinked down at his hands, his heart thundering. He didn't understand what had just happened, not really, but the feeling still crackled under his skin. Like something inside him had woken up.

And then.....it began to burn right in the center of his chest. He gasped and pulled his shirt.

A mark was there.

Deep red, sharp and circular. Laced with black edges and pulsing faintly, like a heart.

Someone near the front row dropped their drink. Another student dropped their wand. Then, quietly almost a whisper, someone said the name.

"The Tyrant's Mark."

The air turned, and the arena seemed to sink into itself. The sky above grew darker. The wind whipped Kai's hair from his eyes.

Then: boots. Dozens of them. Guards flooded the stage.

Not instructors or medics, they were actual enforcers. They moved fast, well-trained, like this was a code-red emergency - like he was a bomb that had just gone off.

One of them tackled him and another slammed his hands behind his back and locked cold iron cuffs around his wrists....too tight, he bit his lip not to cry out.

A professor - someone he hadn't seen before - rushed down from the stands. He was older and pale. He stopped three feet away from Kai, staring hard at the mark. His eyes widened, he took one step forward and whispered something only Kai could hear.

"Rafe."

Kai flinched.

"What?" he said, his voice hoarse.

But the man was already gone.

Vanished.

Dragged through the crowd or pulled away. He couldn't tell. Everything was spinning.

They didn't take him to the infirmary or the headmaster. They took him underground... The tunnels beneath Arcadia were cold and wet and smelled like rot. The torches didn't light fully, flickering against old stone and iron doors.

Kai didn't fight them.

Not because he was brave he wasn't -but because he was still numb.

They threw him into a cell with no windows and a single flickering crystal light overhead. The cuffs stayed on, and his heart wouldn't stop pounding.

He couldn't stop staring at the mark on his chest, still faintly glowing beneath the tear in his shirt.

It didn't make sense, none of this did.

He'd never been special and never been strong. He wasn't... whoever this Rafe was. He wasn't a tyrant. He was just Kai.

Right?

But even as he sat there, shaking, breath shallow, hands raw from the cuffs-

A voice inside him whispered:

"You remember fire. Don't you?"

A flash.

Blood.

Smoke.

Laughter- his laughter- echoing across a burning field.

Kai snapped his head up. The light above him fizzed, then stuttered.

"No," he whispered.

The cell answered with silence.

Upstairs, the rumors were already spreading.

Some said a Class E student summoned death magic.

Others said the Tyrant had been reborn.

The mark proved it.

Only one student in Arcadia's long, bloodstained history ever bore it - Rafe Malvorn.

The Tyrant King of the Academy.

A murderer and monster. Mage without mercy that was burned alive at the gates by the entire Council twenty years ago.

And now... he is back.

Kai didn't sleep that night nor move. He sat in the dark, replaying the moment over and over. The fire, the fear, the voice and that mark... Glowing and pulsing.

Like it had been waiting for him.