I sucked in air, scorched and wet, and the red tried to swallow me.
Under it, something steadier lit. Blue. Not cold. Not calm. Focused.
The heat didn't widen. It narrowed. Lines drew themselves inside my chest, neat and merciless, like someone was scoring steel with a knife. Breath in, the edges brightened. Breath out, they held. The red pawed at the bars. The bear pressed its weight against them.
My vision cleared just enough to see the mage across the arena, its arms lowered, stance unbalanced.
It had spent everything.
And I was still standing.
Barely.
My fingers clenched.
And with that pain, that pressure, something else lit inside me.
The bear growled, louder this time.
It wanted control. Wanted to charge.
To finish this with fang and claws.
I stood. Slowly. Every movement a grind.
Muscles twitched under blistered skin. My burned leg protested with each step.
The bear snarled.
Fine. You can ride, I growled.
But keep your furry hands off my goddamn stick shift.
The Blue Flame burned steady. I felt it hold the red at bay, and also the bear.
I gritted my teeth and raised my axe.
My breath slowed. The pain didn't vanish, but it sharpened.
Noticed the rogue first.
It flickered in near the broken edge of a crate, crouched low, twin blades poised.
Good.
Let it come.
I didn't dodge. I stepped toward it, controlled, baiting.
It leapt.
I pivoted, caught it mid-air, one hand closing around its throat. The other caught its dagger arm.
Cartilage skittered under my palm, not right, not human. The neck flexed in my grip like a bundle of wet cables trying to wriggle free. My teeth wanted to open too wide.
The Blue said no. Fingers tightened by degrees, one, two, three, until bone creaked like old ice.
Mine.
With a grunt, I ripped.
The arm came free with a wet crunch and a spray of black fluid. The rogue spasmed in my grip. I slammed it to the stone, still holding its neck. It stabbed weakly at me with the remaining arm, dagger scraping off thickened skin.
I crushed its neck. Blue held the red flood back.
Hunger paced the cage, claws on concrete. Not louder. Closer. I let it breathe. I didn't let it choose. Focus first. Teeth later.
Count the breaths. Take the shot.
The mask cracked like old ceramic.
Its body twitched once and dissolved into ash.
Two left.
The Herald stood near the arena's center, cracked mask, one arm hanging. It had begun channeling again, hands lifted, light pooling like a resurrection script about to run.
Light leaked out of the cracks in its mask like breath on a winter night. Not warm. Synthetic. The hands moved in clean arcs, the way printers glide. No tremor. No hurry. The resurrection loop spooling up with all the empathy of a spreadsheet.
No. You don't get to fix this.
I moved.
The bear wanted a pounce. I let it help.
The mage fired, a bolt of fire from across the arena.
I saw it coming. Rolled under it. It grazed my shoulder, burned through cloth, but I didn't stop.
Three strides.
The Herald turned toward me too late.
I brought the axe down in a clean arc, no flair, no flourish.
Just force.
CRACK.
The blade split through the remaining eye-slit.
The light tried to hold shape around the wound, little hexes flowering and failing. The smile line on the mask twitched once, as if remembering the next step in a script that wasn't there. Then the body went slack, strings cut, grace turned to weight.
The Herald dropped like a mannequin, strings gone. No screams. No cheer. Just dead air.
I stood over the fractured mask.
Four down.
The arena went quiet again, just my breath and the soft tick of embers.
Then.
A sudden flare. The air boiled.
I turned, too late.
The flame-mage had repositioned, crouched low, arms raised.
A massive sigil was already half-formed in the air. Ten feet wide, pulsing with molten light.
The floor lines brightened, hairline seams glowing like solder. Heat lifted off the stones in ripples.
My sweat flashed to steam along the edges of burned skin. The sigil drank the air. It hummed in my teeth like a transformer about to pop.
Fire swirled like a hurricane above it, drawing heat from the entire arena.
Shit.
I grabbed a crate and threw it into the path of the spell.
The spell detonated early.
A firestorm ripped across the floor. My instincts screamed. I threw myself behind the shattered bulk of a downed crate, barely, as the edge of the blast caught me.
Pain exploded up my side. My vision blurred.
But I wasn't dead.
Not yet.
Not fuckingyet.
My vision pulsed, black around the rim, then narrowed to a tunnel I could walk. Skin hissed where it was cooked. The smell was coins and meat.
The Blue took the pain and stacked it in a neat little row. Not gone. Organized.
A raspy chuckle rose in my throat, dry and bitter, nearly breaking into a giggle. I sounded deranged, probably was. The spell that should have turned me into scorched meat had only half-fried me. My body steamed where the blast had seared skin, smoke curling from my shoulders and chest, but I was still breathing.
I could thank the beast inside for that.
Whatever this was, this halfway state between man and monster, it had endured. My skin was thicker now, my bones denser, and maybe the shattered barricades and burned-out knight had shielded me from the worst of it. Either way, I'd taken it, and I was still standing.
Each movement hurt. Skin cracked where it was scorched, leaking fresh blood, but even that pain was fading, transmuting into heat, into motion, into regeneration. I could feel the wounds slowly knitting themselves closed, muscle rebuilding under the skin with each hammering heartbeat. I was stronger than I had any right to be. I could take more damage than I ever could before.
But it wasn't free.
My vision dimmed at the edges, pulsing darker with every breath. The bear inside surged forward, sensing weakness, trying to climb the walls of the cage I'd forced it into. It wanted control. It had tasted it.
For a moment, I swayed where I stood, saw only red, and nearly let go.
No.
Not like this.
There was still one left.
I clenched my jaw and forced my body to move.
Smoke stung my eyes. Blood mixed with sweat on my tongue. The air tasted like old iron and burnt teeth.
My legs barely worked. My lungs clawed for breath.
But I moved anyway.
Across the wreckage, the flame-masked mage stood alone, untouched, upright, elegant in its artificial stillness. Flames sputtered low in its hands. Its mask hadn't cracked. Its robe hadn't torn.
It hadn't fought.
Not really.
It had just stood behind others and used magic.
Now it stood alone.
Pretty fire from the back line, while the front dies polite deaths.
I knew that type. Hands clean. Numbers tidy.
Let the tank starve and the healer drown and call it strategy. I rolled my shoulders. Something in my spine clicked, wanting me four-footed. I stood taller on purpose.
It didn't react. Didn't flinch. Didn't even seem to track me properly.
The System hadn't programmed it for grief. Or fear. Or what came after failure.
It was still waiting for someone else to take the hit.
Not today.
I took a step forward.
Then another.
Every inch of my body screamed. Every nerve howled. But inside the pain, beneath the blood, the Blue Flame held steady, a silent ember of focus, glowing cold and clear in my chest.
Not rage now. Not even hate.
Just the promise that I would not die here.
That I would be the one writing the ending.
I crossed the arena one dragging step at a time, past burning armor, shattered barricades, crumbling code-masks underfoot. The knight's face. The rogue's mask. The healer's starburst, split in two. The cheerleader's smile.
This was the System's ideal formation.
And I had torn it apart.
The mage finally twitched.
Its hands lifted. Flames gathered. Too slow. Too late.
The script was still loading. And I was already on the final line.
I didn't charge.
I didn't roar.
I walked through the firelight like a ghost.
And then I struck.
Not wild. Not desperate.
Just final.
I drove the axe downward, both hands, body weight behind it. The edge hit the porcelain mask dead center, slid through like glass, and kept going.
The mage arched. Twitched. Flame sputtered out mid-cast.
The light in its hands blinked out like a signal cut mid-transmission.
Its body folded around the blade. Sagged. Fell.
No scream. No data burst. No sound but the soft crunch of something burning out from the inside.
Ash sloughed inward, as if something under the robe sighed and let go. Flames guttered along the edges of the sigil and died. The hum in my teeth faded. What was left was breath and the soft tick of heat leaving metal.
Then silence.
Real silence.
The kind that settles into your bones.
The kind that says, "There's no one left to fight."
I stood in the center of what used to be a battle.
Now it was just smoke. Heat. And me.
Scorched crates. Splintered stone. The smell of blood cooked into the floor. Bits of mask scattered like shed skin.
One piece lay at my feet. The healer's.
I crushed it under my heel.
It was over.
I had won.
No pop-up. No loot chest. No cleric blowjob coupon. Bet that golden boy Tylen gets one every fight.
That Contender-tag better be worth something.
Guess I've gotta break a few more parties before the System admits I'm real.
I'm not asking for parades. Just don't file me under "miscellaneous meat."
A strange, hollow laugh slipped out of me, part triumph, part hysteria. It echoed against the stone and died somewhere in the smoke. I spat to clear the taste of blood and cinder from my mouth, wiped my face with a burned, shaking hand, and took stock.
My claws were gone now, just bloodied fingers. Fur still clung to my arms in damp, sweat-matted patches, but I could feel it receding slowly under my skin. The bear was retreating, not banished, just... watching.
Satisfied.
For now.
Half-beast. Fully bloodied. But still standing.
A subtle chime sounded at the edge of my vision, and faint text hovered there, prompts, victory notices, maybe a reward.
I didn't care. Not yet.
Instead, I looked up, toward the dark ceiling, where I imagined cameras or runes or gods or whatever the System used to watch me were silently observing.
I raised my axe, still smoking, still hot with mage-ash, and held it high.
If they had built this fight to prove something, they had.
They'd proven I wasn't easy to kill.
The last fires guttered out, shadows creeping back in.
I stood in that silence for a long moment, heart still thundering, but steadier now. The Blue Flame burned behind my ribs, not fading, not flaring. Just there.
Fur retreated in uneven patches, slow as cooling tar. My knees wanted the ground. I kept my feet. The bear breathed with me, heavy and unhappy, but it breathed.
Steady.
Mine.
When I finally spoke, it was barely more than a whisper.
"Party of one," I rasped. "Mission accomplished."
And then darkness.