The large display overhead the arena had been running the countdown since the horn. Ash looked up to see it now read three minutes in large red digits at every tier junction Ash could see from the second-tier shaft exit.

Around them the arena had compressed from noise into cacophony. The final push of teams that had been conserving energy and were now spending it all at once. A student on the walkway above them hit the railing and went over it, caught themselves on the outer grating, and hauled back up. Two teams on the third tier’s southwest section were in a full collision, six people in a space built for three, the sound of it carrying down through the scaffolding.

Ash ran, looking downward, not checking if Alexis or Alina were following.

When he glanced up, he saw Alina already two steps ahead of him on the lateral walkway, her hand trailing the railing as she ran, reading the metal beneath her palm. Alexis moved alongside, cape streaming backward, her flat boots making almost no sound on the grating.

"On the southwest corner," Ash said through heavy breaths. There are three signatures. They haven’t moved in over ten minutes."

"How far are they?" Alina asked, keeping pace.

"Other side of the second tier." He looked over at the area he was describing. "It’s an open platform with no cover. They’re against the far wall and not going anywhere."

"Are they injured or waiting out the clock?" Alina said.

"Does it matter?"

"It matters for whether they fight back."

"If they’re injured, they won’t. If they’re waiting, they won’t want to." Ash dropped his speed to match the grating’s integrity as they crossed a warped section. "Either way this is our only chance."

"What sort of team would simply wait?" Alexis said, more to herself than either of them. "The arena demands action. To sit idle at the wall is to surrender one’s fate to—"

"Move faster," Alina yelled, kicking Alexis in the direction they needed to run to.

They hit the southwest junction and dropped to the second tier via the maintenance ladder, faster than the shaft, with Alina going first and Ash last. The second tier’s southwest platform was smaller than the others. A square landing with four grating panels and a broken railing on the west side from an earlier collision.

The three students were immediately visible, sitting against the far wall. One of the three had their arm held at the angle of a joint that hadn’t survived whatever fight had put them here.

"Leave us; we don’t have anything," one of them said in defeat. He looked like he had said this several times before they arrived.

Ash swept the platform. "There," he yelled pointing at a gap between the second and third grating panels. A single coin had dropped through and lodged itself against the support beam.

"Doth my eyes deceive me or—" Alexis began.

"Pick up the coin or I’m hurling you over the guardrails," Alina demanded.

Alexis dropped down to her stomach and crawled, reaching through the gap, her two fingers just able to close around the coin’s edge.

"The treasure," she said, lifting it into the light, "yields to the prepared hand."

"No time for this. Run," Alina said, dragging Alexis before she could say another line.

Alexis pocketed it without further comment.

They were running until Alina finally let go of Alexis. The exit was across the arena on the northern wall. It wasn’t the one they had dropped off Swetta’s team at, but the ground-level northern corridor, the main exit that opened to the transit staging area. Ash swept the route as they ran. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

"Just under two minutes," Ash said, looking up. He swallowed hard and gritted his teeth.

The fastest path ran through the second tier’s main walkway and dropped to ground level at the arena’s center shaft. There were three teams between them and the shaft on the current tier, two already in combat with each other, one stationary against the wall. The stationary team saw them coming and didn’t move. The two combat teams were too committed to their own engagement to track anything lateral.

"Run through them even if you get hit," Ash said now in the vanguard position.

As they dropped through the center shaft, they shifted positions again. Alina in the front, Ash in the back. Alexis was in the middle of them running at a speed that suggested the theatrical register had been set aside entirely. The ground level was the arena’s most damaged tier. Every wave had run through it, and the floor carried the full accumulation of that. Cracked panels, scorch marks, debris from two platform collapses on the upper tiers, and a maintenance cart someone had upended into the central corridor and left.

Alina vaulted it. "Throw her up!" She commanded

"The fairest maiden would never succumb to such brut—AAAAAAAAAAA!" she screamed as Ash threw her up for Alina to catch her.

When doing this, he saw there was a small patch on the left side where the floor was still intact and went that way.

They were all but at their destination until they saw him. Davos was at the northern corridor entrance.

He had two teammates behind him. His jacket was intact. His expression, despite the timer counting down, still remained calm. Above all, he was clean, like he hadn’t lifted a single finger so far in this event.

"You three had a good run," Davos said. He looked at the three of them, then at the corridor behind him. "Now you’re going to hand over one of those three or you won’t pass through. Call it a tax."

Davos’s Shade ran its practiced warmth, the foundation-level deception smooth as it had been on the catwalk. The bluff was in the offer. There was no enforcement mechanism behind it, no ability primed, no position that actually blocked the corridor. He was testing. He wanted to see how much they would cede before they pushed back.

Alina stepped forward.

She looked at Davos expressionless. "What’s your team’s token going to look like," she said, "if you don’t exit in the next ninety seconds?"

Davos’s expression held. Something shifted behind it.

"The rules say each team needs three coins to advance," Alina said. "You have nine between three teams. When you’ve only needed three. You’ve been standing here long enough that the math is going to stop working." She looked at his two teammates. "Are you three planning to use those coins, or are you planning to stay in the arena when the clock hits zero?"

Davos said nothing.

"We’re leaving," Alina said. "You can stand there or you can move."

She continued forward, fully intending to walk straight into whoever remained in her way.

Davos’s team moved left and right. Not retreating. Making a gap, just wide enough for a single person to pass through.

Alexis went through with her chin up. She looked directly at Davos as she passed . Not hostility. The composure of a person who had decided how this scene ended before it started. Her cape brushed his jacket.

Alina went through without looking at him at all, which was its own statement.

Ash went last.

As he passed, Davos said quietly: "I’ll remember this."

"I hope you do," Ash said, without looking at him.

He heard Davos exhale behind him.

The northern corridor ran forty feet to the exit gate. They covered it at a run.

The exit gate was staffed by two officials with a coin collection tray. They checked the team number, verified three coins, and stamped the advance marker before the team had fully stopped moving.

"Congratulations on passing with thirty seconds to spare," one of the officials said after verifying the coins were real.

The three entered the next room in front of them which looked like a recovery room. Snacks, drinks, and vacant seating on plush couches awaited them.

Alexis immediately collected whatever was in front of her, cold water bottles, and energy bars. She handed them out before collapsing on the nearest couch.

"I have," she announced, "competed."

Alina took a spot next to her. "You, him and I all completed." Her voice was different. More warmth and caring than her usual tone.

Ash sat on the other side of Alexis, "I didn’t think it would end like that."

"Do you think he passed?" Alina asked.

Ash took a sip of his water. "It doesn’t matter. We face whatever is in front of us."

After several minutes of sitting, they got up to see a small display had been posted at the edge of the room.

"Our names appear," Alexis said. "On the board of advancement."

"Are they?" Ash asked, looking over her shoulder.

"We are listed among those who have—" She stopped herself. " We made it," she finished, at normal volume, and Ash could hear that she meant it.

They left the recovery area for the academy corridors, the movement back toward the residential block carrying the fatigue of a morning spent in the arena at full concentration. Alina walked without speaking. Alexis had returned to murmuring under her breath, a low ongoing address to an audience only she could see.

Ash turned the corner at the residential block’s east junction.

Phoebe was at the end of the corridor, her hair tied in a ponytail.

Ash smiled and nodded at her as they passed.

She nodded back, but she didn’t do it with a smile.