"I think it's time for me to go," Rin said.
Sosuke didn't respond—his breathing had already evened out, lost to sleep. She hesitated for just a moment, her fingers tightening around his hand. Then, without another word, she let go and walked away.
She stepped onto the battlefield, her name echoing across the arena as Kallard's voice rang through the speakers. Across the world, millions were watching. But Rin barely noticed.
Her eyes were on the metal bars as they slowly, deliberately, lifted.
From the shadows of the cage, something stepped forward.
It walked like a man—fluid, deliberate—but its body was anything but. Dark green scales, nearly black, stretched over a frame too lean to be human. Its elongated fingers twitched at its sides, claws flexing. Then it smiled, lips peeling back over jagged teeth.
"You know," it said, its voice eerily refined, smooth yet heavy with something calculated, "I let them capture me."
Its slitted eyes gleamed.
"I live for the fight. Disappointing Lord Julius is something I won't do."
Rin didn't answer.
She didn't care.
Instead, she raised her hands, letting the black flames burst forth. The heat twisted the air around her, warping the space in flickering waves.
Then she moved.
The distance vanished in a blink—one second she stood still, and the next she was already driving her fist into the lizard's ribs. A shockwave cracked through the arena, and its scales hissed as her black flames clung to them, eating into its flesh.
The blight staggered, stunned.
Rin didn't let up.
She twisted, driving her knee into its gut, then launched an uppercut that sent it hurtling skyward. She followed without hesitation, fire trailing behind her like a comet.
The lizard recovered fast—too fast—but she was faster. They clashed midair, locking arms, its claws digging into her wrist while her flames latched onto its body, eating away at its mana. Rin gritted her teeth and slammed her forehead against its skull.
It snarled. She gripped its face.
"Burn away."
Flames erupted in an instant, engulfing its head. The blight screamed. Rin wrenched herself free and kicked off its chest, flipping back to the ground as its body crashed down.
For a moment, nothing moved.
Then, impossibly, the lizard rose.
Its face was mangled, one arm burnt to a crisp, the other little more than molten flesh hanging off the charred bone.
And yet—it grinned.
The damage reversed before her eyes. Blackened scales sloughed off, replaced by smooth, unblemished ones. Limbs regrew.
It was like the fight hadn't even started.
The lizard clapped its hands, and a sigil flared into existence.
Blades of water shot forward, slicing through the air.
Rin dodged, but every time she moved closer, the blight pushed farther back, keeping just out of range. It had figured her out—her black flames drained mana on contact, but only at close range.
"Smarter than I thought you were," she muttered, shifting her footing.
Another volley came, faster this time. Rin darted low, weaving between them, and slammed her palms against the ground. "Stone Wall."
The earth rumbled. A thick slab of stone rose, shielding her from the assault.
Behind the cover, she flexed her fingers, watching the black flames coil around her hand. Sosuke used his eyes to see things differently. If I want to win, I have to do the same.
The wall crumbled under the water's force—but she was already moving.
She leaped over the collapsing stone, the blight's attacks rushing to meet her. But this time, she didn't dodge. Instead, she raised her arms, letting the water cut through the air toward her.
The moment they touched the flames, they vanished.
The blight's eyes widened.
Rin landed smoothly, the fire roaring at her back, stronger now—its dark embers pulsing with the mana it had just absorbed.
She moved.
The lizard braced.
Too late.
Rin's fist crashed into its stomach, and this time—this time—her flames didn't just burn. They detonated.
A blast of black fire tore straight through the blight's body.
It didn't have time to scream.
Its torso was shredded, blue blood splattering across the battlefield in a violent arc. The force sent its body flying back, skidding lifelessly against the arena floor.
The crowd erupted in cheers.
But Rin barely heard them.
Something felt… off.
She turned—just as the air shifted.
A deep, suffocating pressure fell over the arena.
The blight, half-destroyed, trembled. Its body convulsed, but it wasn't regenerating. No, it was doing something else.
The stage cracked beneath it as it drew in every last ounce of mana it had stored throughout the fight. The sigils formed in an instant. Not one. Not two.
Dozens.
The space around Rin warped—then, with a deafening crack, the portals split open.
Dark voids tore through the battlefield.
Hordes of blights poured into the arena, clawing at the walls and tearing through the facility.
Rin barely had time to process what had happened. Her breath came in ragged gasps, body tense, mind running through every possible response. The lizard—Cain, as he called himself—stood tall amidst the destruction, unfazed. His wounds had healed as if they'd never existed, and a second blight, smaller and hooded, now stood beside him, dark tendrils of energy coiling from its fingertips.
A healer.
Rin didn't hesitate. Her body moved before thought could catch up. One step. Two. She closed the distance in an instant, her black flames roaring as she drove her fist straight through the smaller blight's chest. The creature barely had time to react before its body split apart, incinerated from the inside out.
She turned sharply, embers trailing behind her, eyes already locked onto Cain. Her next strike was ready, but the moment she swung—
Pain.
A sickening crunch rang out as Cain's clawed hand caught her wrist, bending it in a direction it was never meant to go.
A scream tore from her throat.
Cain's grip tightened, and before she could react, his free hand wrapped around her neck. He lifted her effortlessly, her feet leaving the ground.
"You disappoint me," Cain said, voice calm, unaffected. "For a moment, I thought you'd entertain me."
Rin struggled, her flames flaring wildly, but her body wouldn't listen. The pain in her arm blurred her thoughts, and her vision darkened at the edges.
"I am no street worm," Cain continued, his tone carrying a slow, deliberate cruelty. "I am one of Lord Julius' four generals. The strongest."
Then, with a single motion, he twisted her neck.
The sound echoed across the battlefield.
The glass shattered from the High Council's viewing room.
Three figures dropped down like meteors, landing amidst the chaos. Julian Veiss, Gabriel Aurelius, and Dominic Sinclair.
The air shifted.
The waves of blights halted as if sensing the overwhelming presence of the High Council members. Then, in a blur of movement, the three tore through the battlefield, their mana signatures erupting like storms. Gabriel's spear shredded through the horde, Julian's sword danced like a flash of silver light, and Dominic's hands moved in precise, fluid gestures, conjuring waves of water that crushed and drowned anything in his path.
Cain clicked his tongue, but he didn't linger. With the High Council's arrival, the battle had already turned. He released Rin's limp body, stepping backward into a swirling black portal. The moment his figure disappeared, the remaining blights scattered, vanishing into the shadows or being annihilated where they stood.
For a brief moment, silence settled over the battlefield, heavy and suffocating. Then—
The screens around the arena flickered. The broadcast shifted, hijacked by an outside signal.
The image stabilized. A man's face appeared on every screen, his sharp features unmistakable.
Lance Sterling.
"Hello, my dear council." His voice was almost amused, yet his eyes held something far colder. "I'm afraid the location of your secret base has been revealed to me by an unknown tipper. This show is about to come crashing down."
He leaned forward slightly as if savoring the moment.
"I know the High Council is powerful. That's why I'm not just attacking this base—I'm launching a full-scale assault on your pitiful nation."
Then the feed cut, leaving only static.
The world stood still.
The moment the screens cut to black, a suffocating silence filled the remains of the arena. Smoke curled from the ruined structures, the acrid scent of burning flesh and mana lingering in the air. The once-grand coliseum was now an open grave, littered with corpses of fallen blights and shattered debris.
And at the center of it all, Rin lay unmoving.
Dominic was the first to move.
In a blur, he crossed the battlefield, his body a streak of motion faster than any had ever seen. His hands reached for Rin before she even hit the ground, catching her limp form with practiced precision. Her neck was bent at an unnatural angle, her breathing barely there—shallow, uneven.
A single moment. That was all it took for a cold fury to settle in Dominic's usually calm eyes.
Then he turned, sprinting toward the viewing room in an instant. The others barely had time to process what had happened before his voice rang out like a thunderclap.
"All of you—get off your asses and help!"
He didn't stop running. He didn't look back. He shot past the council chamber, moving straight into the halls, bound for the medical wing.
The others reacted immediately.
Ryoma, Arthur, Ren, Lyra, Milo, and Reid moved without hesitation, their bodies surging forward just as the blights continued to pour into the ruined arena. Despite Gabriel and Julian cutting through them like reapers, the sheer numbers were overwhelming. For every monster they felled, more crawled from the wreckage, snapping and clawing their way inside.
Arthur, who had been at the front of the charge, suddenly slowed.
His grip on his sword tightened, his feet frozen to the ground.
"Arthur, what are you doing?!" Lyra shouted, slashing through a blight that lunged at her side.
Ryoma glanced at him mid-strike, his fists pulverizing another monster into the dirt. His tone was calm, but there was an edge to it—an understanding.
"It's his father."
Arthur's jaw clenched. His hands trembled against the hilt of his sword, knuckles white. His father, Julian Veiss, stood at the center of the battlefield, a cold storm of silver steel cutting through waves of blights with machine-like precision. But there was no acknowledgment in his gaze—no flicker of recognition toward his son.
Arthur took a step forward—then hesitated.
Something was wrong.
⸻
Sosuke's eyes snapped open.
A rush of mana surged through him, his body reacting before his mind fully caught up. The air felt wrong. A deep, crawling tension pressed against his skull, his senses prickling with danger.
He shoved himself off the bed. His legs ached, and his body was still sore, but none of that mattered. The sounds of battle filled the hallways—distant roars, the clash of steel, the crumbling of stone.
Then he saw them.
Blights.
Dozens of them had already breached the inner halls, their twisted forms slithering through the corridors like rats in a sinking ship.
Sosuke exhaled.
Lightning cracked through the air.
He didn't even need it.
The first blight lunged at him—he shattered its skull with a single step forward. The next swung from the shadows—he ducked, grabbed its head, and slammed it into the ground with enough force to crack the stone beneath them. The creatures weren't just weak. They were pitiful.
"What the hell…" Sosuke muttered, his brow furrowing as he tore through another with a casual flick of his wrist.
This didn't make sense.
Cain, the so-called strongest general, had been here. The attack had been brutal, and overwhelming. And yet… these creatures? They weren't even worth his time.
Sosuke sprinted through the halls, cutting down anything in his way, his unease growing with every step. By the time he reached the arena entrance, the battlefield had already fallen still.
And what he saw made him stop cold.
The portals were gone.
The bodies of blights—hundreds of them—were scattered across the ruined arena. At the center stood the six who had stayed behind, their expressions grim, their weapons lowered.
They weren't relieved.
They weren't celebrating.
They looked defeated.
Lyra was the first to speak, her voice hollow.
"It was bait."
Sosuke's stomach dropped.
"What happened?" His voice was quieter than he expected.
No one answered immediately.
Then—
"Sosuke!" Ryoma's head snapped toward him, urgency in his voice. His chest rose and fell heavily, his body still tense from battle.
"Rin. She was hurt."
The words hit like a blade to the gut.