Rex addressed the improvisation in two seconds. The improvised attack, while brilliant in its design, was still a predictable sequence of human muscle fibers and momentum.

To Rex, it was like watching a child throw a pebble at a fortress wall; the intent was clear, but the impact was meaningless.

What followed was not a fight. It was a systematic dismantling.

For forty-five seconds, the training hall became a chamber of violence. Rex moved through Theo’s defenses like a scalpel through silk, but his strikes carried the force of sledgehammers.

A kidney shot that left Theo gasping for air; a brutal sweep that sent him crashing into the stone; a precise, bone-jarring palm strike to the sternum that sounded like a crack of thunder.

Each movement was calculated to neutralize without killing, but each impact left a mark of absolute dominance.

Finally, it ended.

Theo lay sprawled on the cold stone floor, the polished surface now smeared with droplets of his own blood. He didn’t move and he didn’t cry out.

He simply lay there with the hollow, flat expression of a man who had asked the universe for proof of his own worth and had been met with an answer that shattered his entire reality.

The question had been, "Am I enough?"

The answer, delivered in broken ribs and bruised pride, was a devastating No.

The silence that descended upon the hall was absolute. It wasn’t the silence of respect; it was the silence of shock, the kind that follows a sudden, violent amputation.

Rex stepped back, his breathing unchanged, his posture as relaxed as if he had simply finished a routine drill. His eyes remained fixed on the broken prince.

Theo stared up at the vaulted ceiling. For three agonizing seconds, his eyes traced the intricate carvings of the Nightwing ancestors.

Rex watched him, understanding instinctively what was happening. Theo wasn’t looking at the stone; he was staring into the void where his identity used to be.

The ceiling gave his eyes something to focus on while his mind collapsed inward, trying to process the fact that everything he believed about his lineage and his own capability had been proven false in less than a minute.

From the shadows of the observer’s platform, a voice cool, detached, and almost clinical pierced the quiet. "The Nightwing heir."

It wasn’t an insult. It was worse.

It was a statement of fact. The speaker was one of the Twelve, the legendary guardians whose authority was absolute.

Beside her, Aurelia, the woman who had stood as the last bastion against the initial onslaught, made a sound. It wasn’t a sigh of agreement, nor was it a dismissive scoff.

It was a sound of profound, aching grief.

Theo heard it. Rex saw the way Theo’s pupils dilated, the way his fingers twitched against the blood-slicked floor.

The wound to his body would heal, but the wound to his soul had just been torn wide open.

Then, something snapped.

Theo didn’t just get up; he erupted. He scrambled to his feet, his movements jerky and uncoordinated, fueled by a sudden, volcanic surge of adrenaline and humiliation.

His face was a mask of bloodshot fury, spittle flying from his lips as he screamed at the rafters.

"I’m still standing!" Theo shrieked, his voice cracking with raw, unfiltered rage. "Do you hear me? I’m still here! I haven’t fallen! Again!"

"Let’s go again!" He stumbled forward, reaching for a training sword that wasn’t there, his hands clawing at the empty air. "I can do it! I can prove you wrong!"

"Mother, tell him! Fight me again!"

"Enough, Theo!" Aurelia’s voice rang out like a whipcrack.

She stepped forward, her face pale but her eyes commanding. "It is over... The challenge is concluded."

"Stand down before you break yourself completely."

"No! It’s not over!" Theo turned his rage toward his mother, his chest heaving. "You can’t stop it now!"

"Not after this humiliation! I need to finish it!"

"Theo, stop this madness," Aurelia commanded, her voice softening with a desperate plea. "You have shown your courage."

"Now show your dignity... This is enough."

"It’s not enough for me," Theo spat, tears of rage streaking through the blood on his cheeks.

"Actually," Rex’s voice cut through the chaos, calm and terrifyingly steady. "It’s not."

Every head turned toward Rex. The man stood like a statue of obsidian.

"He’s not finished," Rex said, stepping back into the center of the ring. "You say you want to be the heir, Theo?"

"Then learn the most important lesson of the Nightwing: survival isn’t about when you fall."

"It’s about what you do when you’re bleeding out on the floor and your enemy is still standing."

Rex’s eyes locked onto Theo’s with a predatory intensity. "This is part of the training."

"If you can’t handle the lesson, you’ll never handle the war."

"Get up. Again."

Theo’s eyes widened. The fury in them twisted into something even more dangerous: a desperate, suicidal resolve.

"You want to break me?" he whispered, his voice trembling with a terrifying mix of hatred and hope. "Then try."

Theo didn’t wait for another word. With a guttural roar that sounded more like a wounded animal than a noble prince, he charged.

His movements were no longer measured or ceremonial; they were the frantic, flailing strikes of a man trying to claw his way out of a grave.

’Pathetic,’ Rex thought, his mind already three steps ahead of the boy’s desperation. ’This isn’t courage... This is a tantrum dressed in silk.’

Theo swung a wild, desperate haymaker. Rex didn’t even retreat.

He stepped into the strike, the air whistling past his ear, and delivered a lightning-fast counter to Theo’s solar plexus.

THUD.

The sound was like a mallet hitting wet clay. Theo’s breath left him in a pathetic wheeze, but Rex wasn’t done.

He grabbed Theo’s wrist, the one that had just swung so uselessly, and twisted.

CRACK.

The sound of tendons stretching to their limit echoed through the hall. Theo screamed, a high, piercing sound that grated against the nerves of every noble present.

’You’re not just failing the House, Theo,’ Rex mused as he drove a knee into Theo’s ribs.

CRUNCH.

’You’re failing the very concept of competence.’

’From this moment on, every time someone looks at you, they won’t see an heir.’

’They’ll see the boy who screamed on the floor while a mercenary taught him how to bleed.’

"Fight me properly!" Theo gasped through blood-flecked teeth, staggering backward, his left arm hanging limp at his side. "You... you bastard... you think you’re better than--"

WHAM.

Rex’s boot connected with Theo’s stomach before he could finish. The force sent the prince skidding across the stone floor like a broken doll, leaving a crimson streak behind him.

"I don’t think I’m better than you, Theo," Rex said, his voice carrying effortlessly through the stunned silence. "I know I am."

"There is no debate... There is only the reality of the flesh."

Theo scrambled up, his eyes wild, pupils blown wide with shock and agony. He launched a desperate kick aimed at Rex’s temple.

Rex ducked with feline grace and caught Theo’s leg mid-air. With a contemptuous twist, Rex drove his own elbow into Theo’s thigh.

SNAP.

The sound of the femur protesting under the pressure was nauseating. Theo collapsed to one knee, his face contorting into a mask of pure, unadulterated agony.

Blood began to seep from his nose where Rex’s earlier strike had split the cartilage.

’I’m going to dismantle you,’ Rex thought, a cold, dark satisfaction settling in his chest. ’I’m going to make sure that every time you try to stand, you remember this moment...’

’I’m going to ruin your reputation before the sun sets tonight.’

’You’ll be the Nightwing disappointment, the broken heir who couldn’t even survive a lesson from a common soldier.’

"Please..." Theo choked out, the word slipping past his lips before he could stop it.

His pride was hemorrhaging as fast as his blood.

"Please what?" Rex asked, stepping closer until his shadow engulfed the kneeling boy. "Please stop? Please forgive you?"

"There is no forgiveness in the pit, Theo. Only results."

Rex grabbed Theo by the hair, forcing his head back to expose his throat. "Look at them, Theo."

"Look at your mother... Look at the Twelve..."

Theo’s tear-blurred eyes flickered toward Aurelia. She looked horrified, not of Rex, but of what her son had become in this moment.

The humiliation was absolute.

"They aren’t seeing a warrior," Rex hissed into his ear. "They’re seeing a victim."

Rex released his grip and delivered a brutal uppercut to Theo’s jaw.

CLACK.

Theo’s head snapped back with enough force to send him sprawling backward again. His teeth clattered together audibly, and a spray of blood painted the floor.

"Again," Rex commanded, though there was no challenge left in the room, only a sickening sense of execution. "Get up, ’Prince.’ Show me that Nightwing spirit everyone keeps talking about."

Theo tried. God help him; he tried.

He pushed himself up with shaking arms, his breath coming in ragged, wet gasps. His left arm was useless, his ribs were shattered, and his leg was screaming in protest, but he forced himself upright. He looked less like a man and more like a corpse animated by pure spite.

’Look at you,’ Rex thought, watching the boy’s pathetic struggle with clinical detachment. ’A walking monument to failure...’

’From now on, every time you close your eyes, you’ll feel my fist.’

’Every time you hear the word ’Nightwing,’ you’ll taste this blood.’

’I won’t just beat you, Theo... I’ll haunt you.’

"Come on then," Theo whispered, his voice raw and broken. "Finish it."