I lock eyes with Garen and try to communicate the urgency without saying a word.

He flicks the back of his hand at me twice. ’Go. Go.’

[Hadal Notoriety +35]

"Sorry, Mr. Azurea."

"Move, Sands."

Veric and I throw ourselves down the hall and start running. Ten minutes at full speed to reach the dorms. At the castle gate, we stop just long enough to top off OXI from a hydration station mounted into the wall. Faster than eating the Scales.

[OXI: 2,175 → 2,500/2,500]

[Scales: 19,513 → 19,500]

Hold on, Rhayne.

By the time we reach the dorms, the scene is chaos.

A crowd of hundreds has wrapped around the building like a human cordon. Nobody coming in, nobody going out. The outer ring is mostly curiosity—students drawn by the noise, pooling around an event they don’t fully understand. The inner ring is Freya’s people. Tighter posture. Closer to the doors. Watching for any move from the building itself.

Where the hell are the instructors?

I voice it to Veric.

"Where are the professors? How are they letting this happen?"

"I don’t know, Sands."

But something is wrong about the absence. Instructors don’t just vanish from a campus during a public incident. Either someone walked them away or someone told them to look the other way.

I open the comm to Rhayne.

"Rhayne. Can you hear me? Say anything."

Click. Click.

Smart girl. She remembered the Stalker code from the rope.

I read the situation.

The dorms aren’t classical architecture. They’re stacked tiers of stone and metal, four floors of dormitory rooms wrapped around a central atrium, and instead of a roof there’s an open terrace. Climbable. Accessible. Half the crowd is staring up at the terrace edge, not at the doors. Whatever is happening, it’s happening up there—and it’s loud enough that the silence following it is its own announcement.

"She’s gonna talk one way or another," somebody murmurs in the crowd to my right.

"Bet she’s already crying."

"Quiet. Just watch."

I get it now. They isolated Rhayne. They’re up there trying to extract something out of her.

The crowd is so fixated on the terrace they haven’t registered Veric and me arriving. Maybe one or two heads turning at the back. Most haven’t even blinked.

I can’t lose Rhayne too.

A cold pressure brushes the side of my neck. Freya’s energy. Coming down from the terrace.

"Veric. Even if I get expelled from the academy. I’m doing this my way."

Veric exhales hard. "I’m right behind you."

I focus every reserve I have into my throat. Burning OXI by the second.

[OXI: 2,433/2,500]

And I scream.

"FREEEEEYYYYYYAAAAAA!"

It detonates out of me like a parent siren. Impossible not to hear. Even instructors who were somewhere they shouldn’t be know now that something is happening on this campus. The sound carries off the open terrace and out across the quad, off the academy walls, all the way to the harbor district.

Silence. Absolute. Everyone turns toward me at the same time.

"Dramatic," Veric mutters. The only voice that breaks the silence.

He’s standing arms-crossed beside me, posture of a tank. To laymen he looks relaxed. But I can feel it—he’s one twitch away from full combat stance.

A few minutes pass.

"So, Sands. Are we going in?" Veric asks.

"No. We wait."

"But Miss Vesper is in trouble."

Veric is more worried than I am, but I’ve already delivered the message and nothing is going to happen to Rhayne now. If there’s one thing I remember well about Freya from the last life, it’s that she’s intelligent and controlled.

She isn’t a bad person. If she’s doing all of this, she believes we’re the villains.

Two minutes later, Freya appears at the main gate of the dorm building and walks toward me. Behind her: her five best fighters. And Rhayne, walking with them—a strip of tape across her mouth, her wrists chafed where the bindings were.

The crowd parts before Freya without her having to lift a finger.

She stops in front of me.

"Aw, Sands. I thought you’d take a little longer. You ended the game too soon."

I look at Rhayne. She looks scared.

I ask myself:

How does a girl who took on a Turtarex, danced through an assassin’s puzzle, and clipped onto a zipline like a spy fail to defend herself against these guys?

I ignore Freya. Walk past her, straight to Rhayne. Veric follows close.

I peel the tape off her mouth slowly. Her wrists are chafed raw—they untied her before they brought her down. They wanted the bruises to show.

"Are you okay?" I tilt her chin up gently, scanning her face for any other injuries.

"I... I’m... okay..." she stammers. Still visibly shaken.

"Come with me." I take her by the bare hands and pull her behind me. The OXI starts draining the moment our skin touches—slow, not deliberate like a Void Link, but painful in a different way. A sensation of dying that I push past and ignore.

I move her far enough away.

"Veric. Watch her."

"What are you going to do, Sands?"

"Just do what I tell you."

"How much longer are you going to ignore me, Dryden Sands?" Freya snaps. Visibly losing patience.

"You aren’t a priority. You never have been, Freya."

My voice comes out flat and dry.

I walk to her. Close enough that she has to understand once and for all.

"You said if I showed killing intent again, it would be a declaration of war. And then you kidnap my friend."

"Friend? You have ’friends’? You’re a—"

"QUIET."

My voice detonates. I’m at the edge of what I can hold in.

"Declaration of war? Stop being childish."

I feel ice crystals forming in the air around us.

Time to put every player back in their proper square. Cold. Surgical. Arrogance calibrated to the milligram—announcing in the same breath that I’m the only one in this room still keeping score. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

I pull a fragment of leather from my inventory—the kind we collect off monsters in Lost Ark.

"Nomine Gladiatus."

Nomine Gladiatus is a contract upheld and accepted under Ocean’s Law, where two individuals may engage in a duel without penalties: Diver versus Diver. DvD.

I trace runes across the leather with my finger, etching my name and Freya’s into the surface. When I’m done, I throw the strip flat against her chest. It hits, slaps, falls to the ground.

She picks it up.

"You’re challenging me to a Gladiatus?"

"Are you deaf, by chance?"