The horn's blare was like a thunderclap.
In an instant, Sinco Salvatore vanished. He erupted into a prismatic explosion. A blinding flash of light consumed his position, and then, multiple versions of the Strategoi burst outward. Each copy was a different hue—ruby red, sapphire blue, emerald green—tearing across the sand in jagged, lightning-fast streaks.
"Luminal Fracture!" Devon screamed, his voice nearly lost in the roar of the crowd.
Wraith didn't hesitate. He appeared directly in the path of a golden streak. His hand lunged out, his fingers clutching at the exact space where Salvatore's heart should have been.
But his hand passed through nothing but warm air and shimmering particles. The golden image shattered like glass, dissolving into a trail of fading sparks.
The arena was no longer a pit of sand; it was a kaleidoscope of violence. The colored "fractures" moved at extreme speeds, crisscrossing the space, their boots kicking up plumes of dust that turned into glowing clouds in their wake.
Wraith was a ghost in the machine. He phased into existence—left, right, then high into the air, his shackled arms reaching for shadows. Every time he manifested, the air groaned from the sudden displacement of pressure.
Orion pressed his face against the iron bars. The sheer amount of kinetic energy being thrown around the arena was overwhelming. To his eyes, the battlefield was nothing but a chaotic blur of shifting colors and the intermittent, silent silhouette of the executioner.
The fractures multiplied until the arena was a storm of glowing silhouettes, each one moving with the force of a falling star. Suddenly, three of the light-clones slammed into Wraith's chest simultaneously, the impact sounding like a hammer hitting an anvil.
Sekar chuckled. "That cheeky bastard," he muttered.
"What is it?" Orion asked, his eyes straining to follow the chaos.
"He's not just trying to hit him," Sekar explained, "He's limiting Wraith's omnipresence. If every square inch of the arena is occupied by a light beam or a fracture, there's no empty space for Wraith to flicker into. He's trapping a ghost in a box made of light."
Wraith stumbled back, his feet carving deep grooves in the sand as more copies hurled themselves at him. He looked less like a god-killer and more like a man drowning in a sea of neon.
Then, his shackled hand shot out, grabbing a massive iron mooring chain bolted to the arena wall.
With a violent, unnatural jerk, he tore the heavy links from the stone, sparks flying as the masonry shattered.
Instantly, the arena wasn't just filled with Sinco's light; it was choked with darkness. Countless copies of Wraith appeared simultaneously across the sands, each one gripping a segment of the heavy iron chain.
They all began to swing.
The arena was no longer a battlefield; it was a meat grinder. The bright, prismatic storm of Salvatore's fractures was swallowed whole by a deafening, screeching whirlwind of countless spinning chains.
The air turned black with rusted iron, the noise unbearable as the chains shredded the light-clones into nothingness.
Devon went silent, his mouth hanging open. The roar of the crowd died instantly, replaced by the terrifying industrial scream of the metal storm.
"SINCOOO!" Devon's voice was a desperate raw tear in the air.
Orion felt the color drain from his face as he watched the carnage. "There are so many of them," he whispered.
"It's only one," Sekar said, his voice strangely calm as he exhaled a thick cloud of smoke. "There is only one Wraith, and there is only one chain. If there were more, they would have knotted or shattered against each other by now."
Orion blinked, trying to make sense of the blur. "How?"
"Speed," Sekar answered. "Wraith is teleporting between those different positions at unimaginable speeds. To our eyes, there are hundreds of him. To Wraith, he's just multitasking—moving through a sequence so fast he exists in several places at once. That was the 'omnipresence' Salvatore was trying to jam. He failed."
Suddenly, the screeching of the chains was drowned out by a high-pitched, harmonic hum. A single, concentrated beam of pure, white light erupted from the center of the grinder. In a flash that seared the boys' retinas, the iron links were sliced through simultaneously, the heavy metal segments glowing red-hot where they had been severed.
The hundreds of Wraiths vanished instantly, leaving only one standing in the center of the sands.
The severed chain segment, still whistling with lethal momentum, flew directly toward the entrance tunnel. It slammed into the iron bars with a bone-jarring CLANG.
"Get down!" Orion shouted, grabbing Devon by the collar and tackling him to the humid floor of the tunnel just as sparks and stone chips rained down where their heads had been seconds before.
Out on the sands, the light faded. Salvatore hit the ground hard, his light armor scorched and his chest heaving. A thin trail of blood ran down his forehead, staining his light pink hair a dark, jagged crimson.
In the sudden, ringing quiet, the only sound was Salvatore's ragged, wet breathing. The light was gone. The spectacle was over.
Before he could even grip his sword, the air displaced. Wraith appeared directly in front of him, looking as though he hadn't moved a single inch since the start of the match. His expression was a mask of cold stone, his golden-eyed opponent reflected in his dark, hollow gaze.
"You yield," Wraith said. It wasn't a question. His voice was low and deep, vibrating through the sand and the bars of the tunnel alike.
Sinco didn't answer. The silence was heavy.
Without a word, Wraith raised his foot high above his head. He brought it down in a thunderous stomp that should have crushed Salvatore's skull.
Instead, the ground beneath his white clogs shattered, and the pink-haired man dissolved into a shimmering mist of fractured light.
Wraith's eyes widened for a fraction of a second—the first crack in his stone-cold mask.
He teleported instantly, his silhouette flickering out of existence just as the real Sinco Salvatore pierced the space he had occupied. Sinco's blade driven deep into the sand where the executioner's heart had been a heartbeat before. The Strategoi gasped for air, his muscles trembling from the strain.
"I Would Rather Die!" he yelled, his voice echoing with a raw, desperate pride.
The crowd erupted. The noise was no longer just a cheer; it was a physical force that shook the arena walls.
Cloaking, Orion thought, his heart hammering against his ribs. He recognized the subtle dampening of presence, the way Sinco had hidden his weight just long enough to bait the executioner into a killing blow.
Sinco dipped instantly, Wraith's arm snapping into existence above him, clawing at the space where his heart should have been.
He swung his sword with everything he had left. Wraith vanished into the void again, but as he disappeared, a single, crimson line appeared on his forearm.
A small cut.
"Hahaha!" Devon laughed, his voice high and hysterical.
But Sinco wasn't finished. He didn't wait to see the result of his strike. He accelerated, his body turning into a blinding beam of light once more. He began reflecting off the arena walls like a trapped star, bouncing at impossible angles.
Wraith was no longer standing still. He was appearing and reappearing in dozens of positions, his dark silhouette chasing the golden flash across the sands, a shadow trying to catch the light.
"Holy..." Devon breathed, his eyes barely able to track the golden streaks. Sinco's speed hadn't just increased; it had doubled.
"Unlike most fighters who use brute force, Sinco is actively decreasing his own frequency," Sekar explained, his gaze sharp. "He's shedding his mass, effectively riding the waves of light. His Aegis is the only thing maintaining his physical cohesion and perception at those speeds. But he's a glass cannon. The moment Wraith catches him, it's game over."
In the arena, Wraith seemed to grow weary of the hunt. He suddenly vanished, not just to a different spot, but entirely.
A split second later, a massive rift tore open in the sky. From it emerged Wraith's own forearm, grotesquely enlarged, the shackled metal stretched to impossible scale. His fist followed, descending until it filled the arena, the air screaming beneath its weight.
The impact was cataclysmic. A shockwave of pulverized sand and compressed air blasted through the bars of the tunnel, throwing Orion and Devon backward onto the damp stone.
When the dust finally began to settle, the fist was gone. Wraith stood in the center of a massive crater, his eyes scanning the hazy air for any sign of his opponent.
Suddenly, a single star ignited in the twilight sky. It wasn't a star—it was Salvatore. He descended like a falling comet, his blade pointed directly at the top of Wraith's skull. Wraith flickered a single pace to the side, his hand flashing out with fingers extended to pierce Salvatore's chest as he landed.
Wraith's fingers sank into the pink-haired man's ribs—and passed right through.
"NOOOO!" Devon screamed, scrambling back toward the bars.
The image of Salvatore dissolved into sparks. Simultaneously, a blade erupted through the center of Wraith's chest from behind.
The real Sinco was sitting on the sand behind the executioner, his breath coming in ragged, bloody gasps, his hand still gripping the hilt of the sword buried in Wraith's back.
"I... won," Sinco croaked.
The stadium exploded. Devon and Orion were screaming, jumping, and hugging each other in the shadows of the tunnel. Even the air seemed to celebrate. Sekar, however, didn't cheer. He simply let out a long, slow cloud of cigar smoke.
Without a word, Wraith delivered a brutal back-punch. The force sent Sinco flying across the arena, his body slamming into the stone wall with enough power to leave a human-shaped hole.
Wraith reached back and pulled the sword from his own chest with a sickening metallic slide. He didn't bleed. The gaping hole in his heart didn't knit together like flesh; instead, the edges of the wound simply blurred and reset, as if reality itself was being edited to erase the damage.
Wraith looked back at Sinco.
"You still owe me rum," he said.
Sinco huffed a weak, humorless breath. "Not a chance."
Wraith let out a small, tired sigh.
He dropped the sword into the sand, his expression cold and empty. Then, he vanished.
A team of arena staff in muted grey tunics rushed onto the blood-stained sands, lifting the broken form of Sinco Salvatore onto a hovering stretcher. They vanished through a side gate as quickly as they had arrived.
"Will he be alright?" Devon asked, his voice trembling as he watched his hero being carried away like a piece of discarded equipment.
"Most likely," Sekar answered, his voice devoid of any real pity. He leaned against the wall, watching the gates close. "He's probably taken worse beatings before. The real problem isn't the broken ribs, it's the unproportional acceleration of his perception. He's essentially aging his mind years beyond his body every time he goes that fast. Other than that? He'll be mostly fine."
Orion didn't hear the rest of Sekar's explanation. A strange, cold flicker of hope had ignited in his chest. He used Cloaking, Orion thought, his mind replaying the moment Sinco baited Wraith. A Strategoi used the same trick I use for stage shows. It worked on Death.
The arena went eerily silent as the crowd waited for the next spectacle.
"Well," Sekar said, tossing his half-finished cigar under his heavy boot and crushing it into the damp stone. "It's our turn."
Before Orion could ask what he meant, the iron bars in front of them groaned and retreated upward into the ceiling.
"Where are our tools?" Orion asked, looking around for the mops and buckets Sekar had promised. "How are we supposed to—"
Sekar didn't answer with words. He reached out with two massive hands, grabbing Orion and Devon by the back of their red coats. With a grunt of effort, he swung his arms and pitched both boys out onto the arena sands.
They hit the ground hard, rolling through the grit and blood. Orion scrambled to his feet, spinning around just in time to see the iron bars slam back down with a final, heavy thud.
"What...?" Orion whispered, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. Sekar stood behind the bars, his face unreadable in the shadows, simply watching them.
"Heyy! What are you doing?!" Devon yelled, kicking the bars.
From the opposite side of the arena, a different gate began to rise. A sound erupted from the darkness—a deep, chest-vibrating roar that made the sand at their feet dance.
Slowly, the Shocktaur stepped into the light.
It was a monstrosity of muscle and fur—half-bull, half-human, standing nearly nine feet tall. Its massive horns weren't bone; they were a translucent, pulsing blue. As it lowered its head, jagged arcs of electricity began to dance between the tips, sparks flying as a massive electrical discharge formed within the curve of its brow.
The crowd, which had been celebrating the elite fighters only minutes before, began to scream again—this time in a mixture of horrified fascination and bloodlust.
The blue arcs leaping between the beast's horns finally met with a deafening crack.
A jagged bolt of lightning shot toward the two kids, scorching the air and leaving a sizzling trail behind it.