I think your a better novelist than you might think. I would just offer a few minor suggestions.

It's not necessary to lapse into summary and slow down the story when you do: You're better than that. Imagine Star Wars Episode V: Just as the star destroyer appears and attacks the ship, the frame freezes: a voice-over than says: Oh, by the way, the little white ship belongs to a princess Leia and inside the bigger ship is the mean, ruthless individual called Darth Vader who has these powers which mess people up by choking them, and so on and so on. This goes on for twenty minutes, then the scene when storm troopers invade the ship takes place.

This is what reading your writing is like, and it's not necessary because you do have the skill to do it the right way. #2 Why should I read this: I was looking for the story problem. I know you introduce one in the beginning, but it's not the real problem. The closest I could find is... Let me rewrite and pitch to you what I would have kept on reading...

"I heard you're called the soft prince, Beto' Ba' tran?" "There's nothing soft about me," said Yul. In the room beyond the much older bearded man were twelve others. He knew them to be his siblings and his mortal enemies.

The bearded man shook his head. "The eyes would say differently. I see a desire to please."

Yul tensed up, jutting his head towards the others. "There named after a hurricane? I'm a storm unto myself."

"A storm prince?"

A glimmer in the man's eye, Yul perked up on this, thinking it a taunt, but there's was something more to it. His lips tightened round his mouth. Yul nodded and brushed past the instructor. Walking towards the twelve who would be his main competition.

"We'll see how much is left in you after the twenty rounds, storm prince," the man said behind him.

Now in a rewrite, I would make that scene even faster, to get the story moving. But that's a reasonable hook for me. The one you provided wasn't strong enough, though I understood it. (In case you didn't know, scenes are made of sequences: actions sequences and dialogue sequences. Summary: though not always use some form of the verb to be, are passive.) Best of luck, mate.