The smoke still covers me when I try to find the same place inside myself that answered against Freya.

It wasn’t pure rage. Rage I have to spare, but rage alone only pushes the body forward until something breaks. It wasn’t simple desire to win, either. Winning was necessary, but the fight against Freya had been different—because for a few seconds, my blade and hers had spoken a language words couldn’t reach. I wanted to understand. I wanted to be understood. I wanted to grow enough to stop depending on luck, on lies, on borrowed memory.

I wanted to keep going. I wanted to deserve every promise I’ve kept whispering to myself since I came back. I wanted, for once, to be the answer instead of the reaction.

I raise Eventide above my head.

My ribs protest before the arm finishes rising. The pain pulls the right side of my body downward, as if a hook were lodged between the bones, but I force the posture until it resembles what I used that night. Feet apart. Center firm. Shadow-blade waiting above me.

I don’t know how I cut off Freya’s wing.

That’s the ridiculous part.

I executed a strike I didn’t even understand, and now I need to repeat it against a man who just threw me into a pillar like garbage.

Cassio is on the other side of the smoke.

I can’t see every detail, only the blue glow of the Royal Sailfish leaking through the gray, but I can already picture the stance. Legs wide, knees bent, that sapphire halberd held behind the line of his body, the fingers of his left hand pointed at me like a sight.

I try to think about him.

I try to understand what makes someone like Cassio throw away so much talent for so little. He’s strong. Competent. Disciplined. Even hating every piece of his arrogance, I can’t deny that. So why? Why turn all of that into a tool for Sharma, into violence-for-the-bleachers, into a stepping stone for a crown he was never going to actually wear?

Power without reason is just greed.

Greed enough becomes pride.

And pride always finds its fall somewhere.

The thought should have left me cold, but it didn’t.

The more I try to understand Cassio, the more the rage rises. Because his face starts blending with things that don’t belong in this arena.

I remember the Deepwarden.

There’s no clearer picture of greed than that guild. Always larger than any guilt. Always hungry. Always above everyone else, as if the world had been built to feed its mouth.

I remember Valerius. The injustice that swallowed my last life without even pretending to care. I remember the necklace I tried to give Lili and how I never arrived in time. I remember Lola on the train—how she saved me when I had nothing to give back. I remember Boris. Lost Ark. My father. The child trapped inside the Gatekeeper.

I remember every face I couldn’t save the first time around. Every one I’m trying to save now, knowing the universe is rebalancing the equation against me every time I bend it.

Everything in Thirstfall seems to end in ruin if someone strong enough decides that their hunger matters more than the lives of others. And if no one strong enough exists, Thirstfall takes care of it on its own.

My aura begins to burn.

Not expand. Burn.

The heat rises beneath the skin as if my OXI had turned to embers inside my veins. The smoke around me retreats in slow waves, pushed by a pressure unlike my normal aura. It’s heavy. Golden. Dirty at the edges. For an instant, even I feel the urge to step away from myself.

"What a shit world..." I murmur.

The sentence comes out low, but too true to pass as a joke.

I hear Rhayne and Veric’s voices from afar like background noise in the bleachers, but I can’t make out what they’re saying.

But it makes other images arrive.

Rhayne smiling like she was still learning to believe she could stay close to someone without apologizing for existing. Or when she was eating like crazy and her big eyes told me that it was the most charming sight in the world. Her voice through the comm when she screamed Veric off the floor.

Oliver’s hand gripping mine with that quiet firmness only a chosen ally carries. Side picked. The retreat is no longer an option. The jerky he keeps offering me. How he saw past my answers and chose not to push when I asked him not to.

Veric trying to apologize in the most crooked way possible—hiding worry behind insult, because maybe that was the only language he had for not seeming weak. Taking three carriage strikes from Death’s Lantern on purpose, for a product launch he didn’t even need to do.

Lola... Ah... Lola...

...

The pain doesn’t go away.

The rage doesn’t either.

But something cuts through both of them.

Hope.

Of course.

"Hope is what lingers when everything concrete is gone..."

My thumb presses against Eventide, and this time the answer doesn’t come only from the hilt. Something aligns deeper. As if the Codex inside me had met the blade halfway down.

A whisper brushes my ear. It’s old, dry. Carrying the patience of an ancient thing.

"The Oathring is sacred. The cradle of gladiators cannot be violated."

Another voice follows, female, exhausted but firm. There’s grief in it, the patient sort that doesn’t pass.

"But the bearer pleads."

The last one sounds like a child’s. Small, certain, untroubled by the weight of what it’s saying.

"Hope is the highest order. We have no choice. I command."

The smoke parts.

Cassio is in exactly the stance I had pictured. The Royal Sailfish glows behind him, blue and massive, the fingers of his left hand still aligned with me. Less than ten seconds have passed, but my body feels like it crossed an entire night in thought.

I lower my breathing.

"Codex Art Number One — Hope."

The OXI begins to fall.

[OXI: 2,391 / 2,500]

[OXI: 2,111 / 2,500]

[OXI: 1,844 / 2,500]

[OXI: 1,402 / 2,500]

[OXI: 1,119 / 2,500]

Cassio launches.

In the next instant, when our weapons collide, the entire arena vanishes in a flash of golden light.