The blood-drenched sand seemed to drink in the carnage like a thirsty beast. The air was thick, stifling, echoing with the feral roars of the crowd above, their cries of delight and mockery blending into a monstrous symphony. Benjamin's chest rose and fell with ragged breaths, each inhalation strained, each exhalation laced with pain. His limbs trembled with the exhaustion of battle, his knuckles white around the hilt of his bloodied sword.
He had killed.
Not beasts this time, not twisted creatures of the deep. People.
He stared down at his own hands as if they weren't his own, as if the blood that stained his fingers was something separate from him. His thoughts felt fractured, his heartbeat a chaotic drum pounding against his chest. The blade in his hand felt wrong, heavy and cold, a weight that threatened to drag him into the earth.
Then the final thrall lunged at him.
The boy. One of those who had attacked him, eyes wide and terrified, barely a teenager, his body emaciated, his limbs thin like twigs snapped in the wind.
Benjamin easily deflected his desperate strike. The kid's movements were sloppy, terrified, driven by nothing more than the will to survive. His blade clattered uselessly to the ground, and he stumbled backward, falling on the blood-soaked sand.
"Please… don't…" The boy's voice was hoarse, broken, the words heavy with desperation. "I just wanted to live…"
The crowd's bloodlust rippled through the air like a heatwave.
Benjamin's blade hovered, ready to fall.
"Finish it!" Boyan's voice thundered from above, cutting through the haze. "What are you waiting for, 199? The crowd is growing impatient. Show them you're not a coward!"
The crowd's hungry roars reached a fever pitch, their chants for blood rumbling like a living thing. Benjamin's arms shook. His chest tightened. And in that moment, he felt himself slipping away, his own mind unraveling under the weight of expectation.
His hands moved without his permission. His grip tightened. His breathing grew ragged. He was about to kill.
And then—
A voice.
Soft. Familiar. Barely more than a whisper threading through the madness.
"Ben… no."
The blade froze mid-swing. His gaze shifted from the boy lying at his feet to the edges of the arena where guards in black armor gripped their weapons tensely, watching for the final blow.
"Ben…" The voice was faint, so faint it could have been a trick of his own mind. But it wasn't. It was Atty.
For a moment, the world itself seemed to hold its breath. The chaos of the arena melted away. The blood on his hands was forgotten. And all he could feel was the faint brush of a presence he had thought lost forever.
He lowered his sword.
The boy in front of him scrambled backward, his body still shaking. The crowd's cheers turned to boos and howls of derision, a deafening cacophony of anger and disgust. But Benjamin hardly noticed. His head was reeling, his chest aching with something that felt almost like hope.
He couldn't be sure how he had heard Atty's voice, couldn't even be sure if it had been real or just his mind's final defense against the horror of what he had become.
But it felt real.
Real enough to shatter the darkness clinging to his thoughts.
"Ben… it's okay…" The voice was weak, fractured, but unmistakable. It was Atty. Atty who had traveled with him through the wilderness. Atty who had fought by his side against monsters and madness. Atty who had never left him.
Tears stung his eyes, his breath trembling as he closed his own mind, reaching, feeling for the faintest hint of that connection he had built through their Transference. He felt it then—a flicker, the faint glow of a soul so familiar it was like the warmth of a campfire on a freezing night.
Atty was hurt. Wounded beyond anything Benjamin could imagine. But he was there. And he was speaking.
"Just seeing you… I'm happy."
Benjamin's arms dropped to his sides, the sword's tip sinking into the sand as if the earth itself rejected the steel. To kill that boy now, to take another's life when Atty was still fighting so desperately to survive—it would be a betrayal of everything they had shared.
Even in this twisted world, even in the depths of despair, Atty had not given up on him.
How could he give up on himself?
"Enough!" Boyan's voice cut through the moment like a jagged blade, his tone laced with fury. "This is not a place for mercy, 199. You don't get to choose when the fight ends. I do."
Benjamin looked up, eyes defiant, his chest heaving with something more than rage—something raw and unyielding.
He had seen a glimmer of light. And that was enough.
Boyan's expression twisted with irritation, his fingers clenching at the railing of his observation platform. He snapped his fingers, and the guards moved forward, their weapons drawn, their expressions gleeful at the thought of beating down the boy who had dared to defy the arena's bloody creed.
Benjamin did not resist. His muscles were frayed, his breath uneven, his vision blurred from the intensity of the battle. He felt them grab him, iron grips forcing him to his knees, hands wrenching his wrists behind his back.
And then, Boyan descended.
The man's boots hit the sand with a dull thud, his dark coat rippling like the shadow of death itself. The crowd went silent. Watching. Waiting.
In Boyan's hand, held with almost casual cruelty, was Atty.
The little gryphon was limp, wings ragged and broken, fur matted with grime and blood. The white of his plumage was more blackened than clean, and his breaths were so shallow they were almost nonexistent.
But his eyes were open.
Just barely.
And they were fixed on Benjamin.
Boyan's voice was soft, almost friendly, which made it all the worse. "You disappoint me, 199. All that fight… and then you throw it away. But I'm not without mercy."
He lifted Atty by the neck, the little creature's body twitching in pain.
"Fight. Kill. And I might just let your pathetic little friend live."
Benjamin's eyes widened, his body trembling. Something in him was unraveling, fraying at the edges. His mind screamed at him to move, to do something, anything.
But all he could do was watch as Boyan squeezed.
--
The air in the arena was heavy, the stench of blood and sweat mingling with the acrid smoke from the torches. Benjamin's vision blurred, his legs buckling under the weight of exhaustion, his head throbbing with the aftermath of brutal combat.
But his heart was calm.
He found himself smiling, a bitter, hollow expression stretched across his cracked lips.
Peaceful surrender.
It was almost laughable. All his efforts, his struggles, his desperate attempts to find a way back home, to survive in this world… what had it amounted to? This? A filthy pit filled with the jeering howls of the depraved and cruel?
The truth was so absurd it made him want to laugh out loud.
He wasn't special.
He had thought he was here for a purpose. Maybe some grand destiny where he would discover the secrets of Khial and find a way to return to his own world. But the world didn't care about his dreams. His hopes. His suffering.
He was nothing but another failure, a potential hero fallen short.
And in the end, someone else would come. Another hero. Another dreamer. Someone who would succeed where he had failed.
Benjamin's shoulders sagged, his sword hanging limply at his side, the fight slowly draining from his bones.
Maybe he was meant to fall here.
And somehow… somehow, he felt peace.
The crowd's cries blurred into a dull roar, the faces of the spectators melting into a featureless mass of shadows and hunger. They were meaningless now. Their desires, their bloodlust—mere noise lost to him.
Then Boyan moved.
"Enough of this nonsense." Boyan's voice cut through the madness like the sharpened edge of a blade. His single arm flexed, the muscles straining beneath his dark coat, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction.
He dropped Atty to the ground like discarded refuse, the little gryphon's body twitching with the effort to breathe, eyes half-closed, wings twitching feebly.
But Boyan wasn't finished.
His hand reached out, clasping the boy Benjamin had spared by the throat. The kid's eyes widened, hands scrabbling uselessly at Boyan's iron grip.
"You thought you were merciful, didn't you?" Boyan's smirk was laced with contempt. "That saving this little worm would make you better than me?"
The kid tried to speak, his voice choked, nothing but strangled gasps escaping his lips.
Benjamin's body jolted into motion, but his limbs felt like lead, his muscles burning from fatigue. He stumbled forward, shouting, "Stop!"
Boyan's expression twisted into something darkly amused. "You want to be a hero, 199? Then watch."
His hand clenched.
There was a sickening crack.
The boy's body went limp, eyes rolling back as he slumped into death's embrace. Boyan let him drop to the sand, a lifeless husk crumpled at Benjamin's feet.
Benjamin's hands shook, his eyes burning. "You… monster."
"Call me what you will," Boyan said, his voice almost conversational. "You had your chance to kill him. You didn't. Mercy isn't a virtue here. It's a weakness. One I'll be sure to carve out of you before you break."
Benjamin's knees hit the ground. His breath came shallow, his vision dimming. His mind was swimming, and he could feel something inside him breaking, splintering.
"Was that the best you could do?" Boyan's words were a taunt, but they were also laced with something far more dangerous. Amusement. "You were never going to be anything more than a disappointment."
Boyan's gaze shifted, his cruel grin stretching wider as he looked down at the crumpled form of Atty.
"Maybe you'll learn to be obedient when you watch the last thing you care about be snuffed out."
He lifted his sword, his single hand steady, his gaze locked on Benjamin's trembling form.
And then the sword fell.
The blade crashed down with a cold, remorseless force.
But not on Benjamin.
It landed on Atty, the weapon's edge driving into the little gryphon's wing. Atty's weak, broken scream tore through the air, a sound so raw and agonizing it seemed to silence the entire arena.
Benjamin's body twisted, his throat raw from a cry he hadn't even known he made. His own heartbeat pounded like a war drum, his veins blazing with white-hot fury.
"Atty…" His voice was nothing but a whisper, his eyes locked on the tiny, bleeding form of his friend.
The sword was lifted once more, Boyan's face shadowed, his gaze flickering between the gryphon and Benjamin.
"Maybe I should kill you first, little beast. Your master clearly has no strength left."
Atty's eyes barely opened. His voice was so faint Benjamin could barely hear it. But he knew it was real.
"It's okay… Ben. I'm… happy."
Benjamin's mind froze. His body felt like a hollow shell, his muscles nothing but brittle clay. He looked at Atty, the one creature who had always been with him, even in the darkest moments. The one creature who had believed in him when no one else did.
"NO!" The word tore itself from his throat, a scream wrenched from the deepest part of him. His knees hit the sand, his hands pressing against the ground as if trying to force himself upright.
"I'm here, Ben…" Atty's voice was there. Even now. Even when the pain was too much.
And then Benjamin did something he hadn't done since he had arrived in Khial.
He called.
To whatever force had granted him strength. To the Source of his power. To the same power that had given him the will to rise against Malachros.
He prayed, his voice a broken plea, his words a desperate cry for something, anything to save him.
"Please… Just once… Give me the strength to save him. Give me the strength to fight back. Just once… let me have my life again."
And then, everything stopped.
The world held its breath, and Benjamin felt something within him shift.
Something deep, and powerful, and endless.