The remaining time passed in silence.
Prisoners sat scattered across the armoury floor, waiting idly while preserving their strength. Some were staring at their weapons, while others looked at their pairs with worried eyes. A few simply stared straight ahead, lost in whatever thoughts those faced with death would have.
Damon noticed Elise glance at him several times, her lips twitching as if she wanted to say something. But each time, the words died before they could leave her lips.
And he knew exactly why. There was nothing to say. They were strangers bound together by luck or misfortune, waiting to kill or be killed.
Still, this silent wait annoyed him more than the idea of violence itself.
'An hour to sit around and do nothing,'
He almost hoped for someone to cause a ruckus, to do something to entertain him for that hour.
Minutes felt like hours, and hours felt like days. Each second weighted with dread, the atmosphere inside the chamber was almost suffocating. Damon found himself counting his own breaths just to have something to focus on and make the time crawl faster.
Finally, the wait had come to an end.
A loud shriek of the metal doors snapped everyone's attention back to the present.
The General lingered for a moment before stepping through, followed by two armoured soldiers. His boots struck the stone floor with sharp and deliberate clicks, which silenced those who tried to speak in his presence.
He paused just a few steps past the threshold, studying the prisoners with cold disapproval.
"Get up!"
Without a second wasted, prisoners scrambled to their feet.
A clanging sound echoed through the chambers as their weapons clattered. Even those who'd been sitting with defiant slouches straightened their backs, the General's presence was too strong for them to ignore.
Damon slowly rose to his feet, studying the crowd around him. The General's voice carried weight beyond volume, an authority that bypassed conscious thought and went straight to instinct, making people act without even thinking about it.
'It's not respect. It's fear.' He realised, tightening his grip on the short sword.
At his side, he felt Elise's small frame press gently closer to him, as if seeking shelter from the General's gaze.
"In a few moments," the General began, his voice carrying effortlessly across the chamber, "every pair will be teleported to a random location inside the arena. Once you're there, the game's on. Do what you must to survive." His lips curved into something that might have been a smile. "As I said before, only the last pair standing gets to live. But don't think you'll only face the trash you see around you. There will be three more batches of non-sorcerers from other cities teleported into the arena. And from what I've heard…"
He paused, his eyes gleaming with dark amusement.
"…you lot are the worst of them all!"
Damon's eyes widened at the words.
'Three more batches...'
His mind raced through the numbers.
'There were initially 50 of us, so if the other groups are similar, that's almost 200 prisoners... hundred pairs.'
Their odds of survival just took a plunge.
Around him, other prisoners shifted nervously, but none looked surprised.
It was as if...
"Of course..." he muttered under his breath.
They knew already. Everyone except him seemed to have known what was happening. It was only him who felt as if he was lost in a foreign world.
"Once you're there, you will hear certain announcements," the man continued. "Listen closely. They will not repeat themselves. You already know what happens to disobedience, don't you?"
He let the question hang in the air, studying the prisoners' expressions as fear rippled through the crowd.
"Well then…" The General's grin widened. "May sorcerers rise, and other filth burn."
Before Damon could even process the words, light exploded across his vision, blinding white radiance seared through his closed eyelids. The ground vanished beneath his feet. His stomach lurched as reality twisted and folded in on itself.
He was falling.
No. It was different.
It was as if he were being pulled through something, dragged across an infinite canvas that felt both endless and instantaneous.
Pressure built in his ears, his chest, and behind his eyes. Colours that had no names streaked past him. Or through him. He couldn't tell anymore.
Then, just as suddenly as it began, it ended.
THUD!
Damon slammed into the muddy ground, the impact knocked the air from his chest. He gasped and coughed, trying to force oxygen back into his lungs. His hands sank into cold, wet earth. The smell of dirt and decay filled his nose.
Beside him, Elise was already pushing herself up, recovering from the teleportation with surprising ease. She brushed mud from her clothes with methodical precision, her movements controlled despite her dishevelled appearance.
'Teleportation.'
The word felt absurd to even think about. And yet here he was, in the middle of a forest with mud on his hands.
Damon forced himself upright, wincing at the protest in his muscles. His gaze swept their surroundings, cataloguing every detail.
Ancient trees with thick trunks and gnarled roots stretched all around them. Underbrush so thick he couldn't see more than thirty feet in any direction. The canopy above blocked most of the light, casting everything in perpetual twilight.
There were no immediate threats, at least not for now.
'Seems like we got lucky with the placement,' he thought, his breathing finally steadying.
"You okay?" he asked, turning to Elise.
She stood straighter than before, noticeably straighter than she had in the armoury. Her posture had changed, shoulders back, spine aligned. The timid hunch was gone.
"Yes, I'm... I'm ready," she said, her voice firmer than before. Her right hand gripped the stiletto so tightly her knuckles turned white.
Damon studied her for a moment, noting the sudden shift.
'She looks more focused... Good. I can work with focused.'
He turned his attention back to the forest, mind already working through their options.
The thick vegetation around them was both a good and a bad thing.
On one hand, it provided excellent cover, helping them stay hidden and avoid other pairs. On the other hand, every turn was dangerous, visibility worked both ways, and they could be walking into a trap at any moment, and they wouldn't know it until it was too late.
'My plan was to survive the initial chaos, then find a good defensive spot and wait out the others,' he recalled. 'But with this terrain…'
An idea of setting a trap crossed his mind. If a single person stumbled into them, the two of them could overwhelm even a stronger opponent with surprise and numbers. But a pair? Even with a trap, could they even handle two armed prisoners?
He glanced at Elise again. She was staring into the forest with an odd intensity, her magenta eyes fixed on something he couldn't see.
"You see something?" Damon asked, his hand tightening on his sword.
"Oh." She blinked, as if snapping from deep thought. "No, I just… I've never seen a forest like this before, that's all."
Damon raised an eyebrow. "You've never seen a forest before?"
She hesitated, her gaze dropping to the ground. "I haven't been out much."
The words hung between them. They felt cryptic and incomplete. But before Damon could press further, before he could ask what she meant, a sudden, piercing scream tore through the forest.
It was close, far too close, and undeniably human.
Damon's entire body tensed as he instinctively raised his sword. Beside him, Elise's grip shifted on her knives, her eyes snapping toward the sound with a sharp focus.
The scream was abruptly cut off, leaving only the eerie silence and the thundering of Damon's own heartbeat in his ears.
For a moment, neither of them moved until their eyes finally met.
Damon saw his own tension reflected in Elise's magenta gaze, but beneath it, there was something else, a calculation.
There wasn't a need for words.
He gave a single, sharp nod, which she returned.
A mutual understanding passed between them, wordless and complete. They needed to know what they're dealing with.
They moved swiftly through the thick forest, their footsteps barely disturbing the soft carpet of grass and dead leaves below. Damon forced himself to slow his breath, controlling the adrenaline that rushed through his body.
Next to him, Elise moved with surprising grace for someone so frail, her body stayed low, her footsteps were silent and deliberate.
The forest seemed to swallow sound. Only the occasional crack of a distant branch or rustle of leaves broke the oppressive silence. But as they pushed deeper, following the direction of the scream, a new sound cut through that very silence.
Laughter. A rough and cruel laughter.
Followed by a wet sound of something, or rather someone, moving through mud.
Damon slowed, raising his hand in a stopping motion. Elise froze instantly, her reaction so immediate it almost seemed practised.
He crept forward, using a thick oak trunk as cover, and peered around its edge.
His breath caught.
Blood.
There was blood everywhere.