Soren attends the exhibition as an illegal healer and Talen publicly exposes forced injury concealment.
The sponsor exhibition sold standing-room tickets to watch Talen Roth look impossible. Soren entered through the laundry gate carrying a basket of rolled bandages under cabbage leaves. Mira walked beside him in an apothecary cap pulled low. "If we are arrested, I am saying you kidnapped me with ethics." "Fair." Across the arena, Talen stood beneath the ranking crystal, gold cloak bright, right knee wrapped under his boot where only a healer would see the stiffness.
Dean Corvin addressed the crowd from the sponsor dais. "Valor Academy forms champions who rise above weakness." Soren felt Lyra stiffen beside him. She had insisted on coming with a crutch and a smile sharp enough to cut posters. "He says weakness like it is an unpaid bill," she whispered. "To him, it is," Soren said. The exhibition bell rang. Talen took one step forward and limped.
The crowd murmured. Corvin's smile froze. Talen did not hide it. He limped again, slower, making the arena watch the body the academy had planned to spend. His opponent, a second-year striker, lowered her practice spear. "Are you cleared?" she asked. Talen looked at the ranking crystal. "East Infirmary cleared me under dean's exhibition order." Gasps traveled up the seats. Corvin stood. "This is misconduct." Talen lifted his trouser hem and showed the swelling. "Yes."
Soren climbed the rail before guards reached Talen. The old academy wards hit his expelled badge and sparked red. He ignored the sting. "Pulse flare in right knee, stimulant salve masking response, rupture risk under burst movement." The ranking crystal tried to stay yellow, then flickered blue as the Mercy Ledger's diagnosis found an old support-class channel in the arena stones. Medical fraud inquiry triggered. Nobody cheered. Good. Some truths entered rooms too heavy for applause.
Corvin pointed at Soren. "You are banned from these grounds." "You expelled me yesterday." "Now I mean it with guards." Mira threw the cabbage basket at the first guard's feet. Bandages rolled across the sand like pale snakes. Lyra blocked another guard with her crutch. "Careful," she said. "I am medically fragile and very public." The crowd laughed because fear needed somewhere to go. Talen sat down in the arena center before his knee could fail more dramatically and held up the dean's signed order.
The ranking crystal resisted the fraud inquiry like a rich patient resisting a cheap diagnosis. Yellow. Blue. Yellow again. Soren shouted the treatment sequence, not to convince the crowd but to force the old support channel to hear exact work: stimulant mask, tendon risk, rest order, consent disputed. The crystal flashed blue so hard every sponsor seal on the rail went pale. For one breath, the arena scoreboard valued survival over spectacle.
Talen's opponent stepped back from the duel circle and raised both hands. "I will not be the spear they use to finish your knee." The sponsor section hissed. She flushed but did not lower her hands. Soren marked her name in memory. The academy had trained fighters to chase applause; some still recognized a rigged wound when it limped at them.
Mira retrieved the scattered bandages while guards argued over jurisdiction. Every roll she saved meant one fewer strip to buy before dawn. Soren noticed because clinic math had become a second pulse in his head. Heroic moments still sent invoices.
Soren was dragged out through the old west corridor, palms scraped raw. His expelled badge, cracked by the ward, pulsed once against his chest. A door he had never seen before opened in the wall: Mercy Trial Hall, support candidates only. The guards did not notice. They were busy proving him unwelcome. Soren looked through the widening gap at dust-covered examination circles and shelves of sealed healer records. The academy had not merely forgotten support mastery. It had locked it away where expelled badges could still fit the key.