Everyone around us pulls back. A wide circle forms in the central plaza in front of the dorm building—a makeshift arena drawn by retreating feet.

"Awfully confident for a dirty rat that was running for his life a few days ago."

"Don’t take it the wrong way, Freya. That wasn’t submission. It was caution."

"Caution? You showed no caution when you were murdering my friends in the battle royale."

I let out a long breath.

Set aside how personal this is becoming. Set aside the heroine I used to see in her in my past life. I patterned myself on her once. Maybe by tampering with the timeline I twisted that personality into facing me. A question I’m never going to get the answer to.

"I really did admire you. Up close, all I see is hypocrisy."

"Hypocrisy?"

Her eyes narrow. I can see her calculating the weight of my next answer.

"You finished first alongside me. Are you really going to tell me you didn’t kill anyone? That you just made every enemy give up on their own? I know you didn’t. Impossible. It was kill or be killed."

Freya pulls the rapier from her hip and slips it into her inventory. The rapier was a toy. A polite formality. A skewer she carried around to remind people what shape sharp things have.

She rolls her neck twice. Loosens her shoulders.

Steps back thirty feet.

"You asked for this, Dryden Sands."

She materializes her real weapon.

A massive scythe. The blade is carved from pure ice—impossibly sharp and translucent—shaped like a sharp waning crescent moon. The shaft, however, is heavy metal, intricately adorned in gold.

She spins the massive weight as if she were flicking a pen between her fingers. Two rotations, three, and it locks firmly against her side.

Memories I’d buried surface uninvited.

Today, Freya Gunnulf. Pinnacle of Rank C. Class Order S.

Seven years from now, Freya Gunnulf will die in the trenches as the heroine of District 8, not long after she finally becomes the Rank S she had always dreamed of being.

She made headlines for three days. They erect a statue. The first Diver to be called a heroine, who brought back enough WaterStrands to single-handedly rewrite an entire district’s economy.

She drew too much attention.

The official story said a Leviathan-class sea serpent killed her.

That story was a lie.

She was stabbed in the back by a rogue. I was there. I saw it happen. I watched my heroine fall and the world rewrite the cause of death the same week because the truth would have hurt the wrong people. I don’t even need to say who did it.

And here I am. Drawing my sword on her.

In this life, I have to prove to her with steel what I can’t prove with words. I hope her blade hears mine and gives me the smallest measure of respect. Words have run out of road.

I just didn’t expect her to take me as an enemy this fast.

Damned rivalry instinct, Freya.

I look at Veric. The look says everything without a word: cover my back. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

He nods.

Let’s see how much I’ve grown.

Freya stands like a sculpture carved from her own element. Almost upright. Slight lean onto her base leg. Her right hand holds the [Scythe of Eternal Ice] at hip level—her growth relic, sister in concept to my Eventide.

I touch Eventide on my belt clip. I don’t ignite it.

I let my body talk for itself. Instinct carrying the conversation.

The calm before the blast...

My center of gravity drops. My left hand rotates to the belt clip holding Eventide, adjusting the angle, while my right hand rests on the hilt like a predator coiled to spring.

The weight shifts to my lead leg, bent and braced, while the opposite heel barely grazes the floor—a human spring wound tight.

Between the thumb that releases the clip and the strike that will cleave the air, there would be only a flash of shadows and the sound of muffled thunder.

For a few seconds the plaza goes mute. The silence sits so heavy that breathing becomes a mindful act. Every conversation in the crowd dies. The wind that always moves through the dorm courtyard stops. Even the lanterns on the building’s lower floor seem to dim a fraction, refusing to interfere.

My eyes lock onto Freya’s. The world narrows down until only the two of us remain.

Snowflakes begin to fall.

Perfectly formed. Suspended on the air between us, drifting. They look like cherry blossoms in a frozen spring—pale petals turning slowly through a pocket of cold she didn’t ask to summon.

Her passive skill doing what her passive skill does. Beautiful in a way that doesn’t belong in the same scene as the weapons we’re holding.

Nobody calls it. Nobody starts the fight. No bell. No shout. No referee with a raised hand. Two warriors feel each other across the distance, and the distance answers on its own.

Freya launches.

A dash that crosses thirty feet faster than my eye should allow, the scythe drawn back behind her body, hidden in the line of her shoulder.

My hip pivots in sync with the thumb pushing the guard, transforming every drop of accumulated tension at the base of my stance into a single arc of shadow—instantaneous, lethal.

Eventide meets the Scythe of Eternal Ice.

The collision detonates.

Shadow against frost.

The shockwave punches the snow out of the air around us in a perfect ring, vapor flashing into mist, the petals scattering all at once. The plaza floor cracks under both our planted feet—a hairline fracture spreading outward in a circle.

The sound that comes out isn’t a clash. It’s a sentence. A long, ringing line of meaning carried through the impact.

I read everything she sends me through the contact. Anger, yes. But under it: the question she hasn’t been able to ask out loud.

What are you? What did you do to me? Why does the world feel different since you arrived?

I send back what I can.

I’m not your enemy. Listen.

Two warriors who have never spoken honestly with each other are finally talking. With the only language that doesn’t lie.