Fifty-three seconds.
That's how long Kai needed to fight for.
And that's how long Kai fought.
Fifty-three seconds of hell, of overwhelming heat, of blistering pain and deafening adrenaline. It felt like hours. Each second stretched like a blade, ready to break or cut.
Tarnil had become something else.
He was no longer a man.
He was a living furnace.
The heat wasn't just emanating from his body.
It saturated the arena.
The stone tiles glowed. Half of them were deeply scarred and melted.
The very air rippled and shimmered, turning the battlefield into a distorted mirage.
Tarnil's clothes were long gone. Every piece of armor and cloth had either melted away or burst into flame, reduced to ash mid-movement. All that remained was a blinding haze of heat, cloaking his body like a second skin. If it weren't for the constant distortion veiling him, the entire arena would see everything. Kai might've laughed in another life.
