The Library folded away like a page turned too hard.
In its place: stone, sky, silence.
A vast coliseum, impossibly wide, impossibly old, bloomed into existence around them. The floor was sand, but not the warm kind—this was the ash of burnt intentions, ground down to dust finer than bone. Ruined statues stood at the edge, their forms unrecognizable—heroes? monsters? It no longer mattered.
Above them, there was no sun. Just a dull violet sky rippling with a slow pulse, like a dying heartbeat.
In the center of it all stood a boy.
Slender. Young. Barely more than sixteen, it seemed. He was shirtless beneath a long, tattered robe, his wings transparent and iridescent like a dragonfly's, delicate and too large for his frame. His skin shimmered with faint veins of green-blue light, like vines lit from within. A fairy, clearly—Ayla recognized him first.
Komus squinted, unimpressed.
"We're meant to be terrified of a glass-winged runt?"
The boy didn't flinch. He only smiled. Soft. Off.
Daviyi stepped forward, her tone grave.
"This is only one of many you will face. Not just opponents—but echoes you will learn from. They can hurt you. They can kill you—not in body, perhaps, but in soul. And that's worse. In here, pain is not pretend."
She held up her hand.
And cut it off.
Qaritas saw it happen in slow time. Her blade—a line of pure lexicon light—sheared through wrist and bone. Her fingers hit the ground with a wet slap, and her golden-red blood spilled like ink across a page.
Niraí's mouth twitched. "Dramatic, Dav."
Cree frowned. "She's not wrong."
Hydeius nodded once. "Listen."
Qaritas stared at the blood, still pulsing from her wrist. His own hands trembled. Would I bleed like that? he wondered.
Worse, something in him whispered.
As the hand slowly began to regrow, Daviyi's voice remained steady.
"In this realm, your body resets. Pain remains. Lessons remain. But your wounds will close faster than in the waking world."
She snapped her fingers. The regrown hand flexed once, then curled into a fist.
"In reality, this injury would have taken weeks—maybe months. So don't get cocky. Don't be stupid. And above all—don't underestimate appearances."
She turned toward the boy in the center.
"This mortal once stood among the Forsaken. His true name…"
She paused.
"Is Malvorus."
The boy's feet never quite touching the ground, his movements stitched together with eerie grace—too calm for comfort.
His kindness sat too perfectly—like a mask stitched over something twitching underneath.
"Hello," he said sweetly, holding up a vial of shimmering blue liquid. "Are you one of my patients?"
He was looking at Qaritas.
Something inside him recoiled—like memory rejecting a lie.
Daviyi's voice cut in like a scalpel. "His given name was Dr. Idric Fawley. A healer. A savant. Born in the groves of Terranix."
The others exchanged looks. Terranix was a place of peace.
"He was a prodigy in natural medicine," Daviyi continued, "gifted with the language of plants and the breath of the wilds. But inside him... something waited. Something ancient. Something hollow."
Dr. Fawley twirled the vial. "I only ever wanted to help," he said. "They thanked me."
"His darker self," Daviyi said, "grew as his knowledge did. His potions cured—but poisoned. His hands soothed—but cursed. And when the Forsaken found him... they welcomed him like kin."
"If you die in here, you return—but scarred. Not just in flesh. In memory. The Library remembers how you break. And sometimes, it writes that into who you become."
Dr. Fawley's expression twitched. The smile lingered, but the eyes sharpened.
"I was sealed," he said. "So was Malvorus. Two names. One body. A tragedy. A weapon."
He looked up at Qaritas.
"But in this place... in this text... I am unbound."
A moment passed. The wind stilled.
Daviyi turned to the others. "In every book, you can fight echoes. Clones. Legends. Learn their rhythm. Study their fear. This is your chance to train—not just to survive, but to understand."
Komus stepped forward. "Then let's begin."
The coliseum went dark.
Not dim.
Dark.
A skyless, starless void swallowed them whole.
But Qaritas—child of shadow, heir of the not-empty—could still see.
He looked around. The others staggered, blind in the pitch.
"I can see," Qaritas said.
Ayla turned toward his voice. "What?"
"I can see."
For once, he wasn't the outlier. He was the guide. Not empty. Not alone.
A gift.
Their eyes darkened. Then adjusted. The void peeled back.
"Night vision," Komus whispered, blinking. "Not bad, shadow-boy."
Qaritas smiled faintly. "Then I'll be your eyes."
And in that instant, Malvorus shifted.
Gone was the boy.
What stood before them now was taller. Paler. His wings grown ragged, twitching with spores and spores and spores. Vials floated around him like moons—each glowing with a different shade of sickness.
His eyes were black now.
Not with darkness.
With emptiness.
He smiled, and every root beneath their feet writhed.
"Time for your final dose," Malvorus whispered, as the vials around him began to hum. "Let's see what poisons faster—your blood… or your belief."
Qaritas didn't blink. The dark was his. But even he felt it—that slow seep of dread behind the ribs, where belief lived.
The moment Malvorus lunged for Niraí, the air imploded.
Tendrils lashed out, thorned and slick with bioluminescence, aiming straight for her throat. She pivoted—barely—arms sparking with phoenix-fire.
But she didn't have to strike.
Space cracked with a soundless fold. One heartbeat ago, he was behind them. Now, Komus stood in front of her like a scythe risen from shadow.
Because Komus was already there.
In a blink, in a breath, he folded the space between them, stepping sideways through reality itself. One instant he was ten feet away; the next, his back was to Niraí, arm extended, Mercy already in his hand.
"You touch her," Komus said, voice colder than vacuum, "and we find out how many pieces a parasite can scream from."
Malvorus paused. All ten of his arms writhed around his form like roots tangled in gravity. The lotus of eyes on his face turned—slowly, hungrily.
"Ah," he said. "Space, made flesh. Come to sterilize me?"
Komus didn't answer. He only breathed—and threw.
Mercy ignited.
The chakram shrieked through the void, tearing through space with a sound like galaxies screaming. It vanished mid-arc—then reappeared behind Malvorus in a flicker of distortion, warping light, sound, and air as it carved straight through two of his limbs.
The tendrils dropped. The ground hissed as the severed limbs melted into spores.
"Beautiful," Malvorus whispered, undeterred. "You wound reality, Komus. I unmake it. Let's see which truth dies slower."
Komus caught Mercy as it returned to his hand—no movement wasted. With a flick, it split in two. The knives gleamed: one black as crushed void, the other radiant with newborn starlight.
He dropped into a low stance. "This is my space."
And then he vanished.
The fight became fractured.
They moved like warping equations.
Komus flickered through space in jagged vectors, each strike unfolding in stuttered bursts of motion—step, cut, fold, vanish. Mercy's void-knife passed through Malvorus's arm, leaving no blood—only unraveling, like the arm had never existed at all.
Malvorus screamed, but not in pain. In joy.
"You bleed existence!" he laughed, retaliating with a sweep of limbs. Roots shot from the ground, attempting to pierce Komus's position. But each root struck air—he was already elsewhere.
"You're fast," Malvorus hissed. "But I am everywhere."
He bloomed.
Literally.
His form erupted outward, lotus-face opening like a screaming gateway. Spores poured from his petals, laced with prismatic poison. One tendril struck Komus's shoulder—acidic light burst across the wound, eating through layers of cloth and skin.
Komus didn't flinch.
He twisted his knife into the tendril and whispered, "Collapse."
The blade pulsed—and the entire limb imploded, folding inward like a failed star.
But Malvorus only grew larger. He was laughing now, each chuckle echoing with the dying breaths of his victims.
From the edge of the arena, Ayla clenched her fists.
"Should we help?" she asked.
Daviyi shook her head. "No. Komus made this his space. Interfering would tear it. You'd unravel the duel—and yourselves."
"He's holding," Hydeius murmured, watching intently. "But Malvorus hasn't begun to split."
Cree's flames dimmed. "When he does... Komus will be fighting ten minds in one."
Back inside the battle, Komus adjusted his breathing.
His left knife flickered, revealing a shimmer of starlight through its edge. He sliced upward, opening a gash in reality itself—and stepped through it.
Malvorus turned too late.
Komus reappeared inside the monster's reach—between all ten arms—and slashed both blades outward in a perfect circle.
A ring of void and light tore through Malvorus's core, silencing half the screaming mouths across his chest.
"Mercy," Komus said, "is not forgiveness."
Malvorus staggered.
But he didn't fall.
His form peeled apart like rotten bark, and the air itself cracked with him. Not just bone—but will. Reality flinched. Malvorus split—not from injury, but intention. Three bodies emerged, each a sermon of ruin:
A cracking shriek like trees being torn apart by gravity burst across the arena as Malvorus's torso cracked into thirds, each segment forming a new face, a new voice, a new will.
"Bloom," said one.
"Ruin," said the other.
"Death," the third sneered. "You'll drown in it."
Komus stepped back, breathing hard. His shoulder burned where the spore-rot spread like ink in water.
But he didn't back down.
He flicked the knives once, and they rejoined—Mercy whole again in his grip.
"Then drown with me," Komus whispered.
He threw the chakram.
And the coliseum screamed.
Qaritas didn't breathe. Not because of fear. But because—for just a moment—he understood Komus. And it terrified him.