For a few seconds, the entire world turns white.

Not the arena. Not Cassio. Not the crowd. Just white—so absolute that even the idea of distance disappears. I don’t know if I’m still standing, if I’ve fallen, if Eventide is still in my hand, or if my body got erased along with the light.

Then sight starts to come back.

First it returns in black and white, in thick patches, as if someone had spilled ink across my eyes and tried to wipe it off in a hurry. Then blurred shapes arrive. The broken stone. The edge of the Oathring. The crowd’s silhouettes moving as one faceless mass. Color returns last, washed-out and weak, until the blue of the Royal Sailfish and the remaining gold of my own energy begin to separate from the void.

I’m a wide step ahead of where I started.

My front knee is bent, holding nearly all the weight of my body. The back leg stays extended, dragged across the stone as if it had anchored the strike at the last moment. Eventide is in my right hand alone now—dormant, no blade, hilt angled upward.

The cut wasn’t a descending one.

I changed at the last second.

A diagonal ascending cut.

I don’t remember deciding it. It was like my hand had understood something before I did, guided by a pressure too old to be only instinct. Maybe Eventide, the ghosts living between the blade and reality—the ones who only show up when I’m already too close to dying to complain.

For a few seconds, I don’t feel anything.

That’s what scares me first.

Then comes the sensation of a soul being pulled out of a body.

Something hot detonates in my back, and my breathing fails mid-cycle. The world tilts a little to the right. I try to pull air in, but it doesn’t enter the right way.

"Shit..." I whisper.

My knees hit the floor.

Eventide slips half an inch from my hand before my fingers close on the hilt again out of pure reflex. I try to look forward, try to find Cassio, try to understand if he’s still standing—but my vision begins to narrow at the edges.

I check my OXI.

[OXI: 280 / 2,500]

The number flickers.

[OXI: 240 / 2,500]

’No...’

[OXI: 210 / 2,500]

’No, no, no!’

[OXI: 190 / 2,500]

’It’s dropping too fast.’

I try to pull an OXI Candy out of the inventory, but it slips through my fingers right as an intense pain in my abdomen makes itself known.

My hand goes to my belly before I think to send it there. The touch finds a hollow where there shouldn’t be one. Horizon caught something, but not enough. The Royal Sailfish passed through more of me than my body can afford, and the stupidest part of my mind still tries to calculate whether this is bad enough to kill me before someone arrives.

The answer comes without needing the math.

I fall backward onto the stone pavement.

The arena disappears in front of me, replaced by the ocean sky of Thirstfall. It’s amber now. Peaceful in a way that almost feels offensive. Far above, enormous shadows swim through the suspended water. Leviathans, maybe. Or anything else big enough to be indifferent to whatever is happening down here.

For an instant, my first thought is admiration.

’What an absurd sky.’

Then the pain finds me properly.

"But... really... what a shit world..." I murmur, and the taste of blood rises along with the words.

The arena’s sound arrives muffled, far away, as if I’m hearing everything from underwater. Shouts. Footsteps. Maybe the judge. Maybe the crowd. Maybe someone calling my name. I can’t separate any of it.

Did I win?

Probably not.

I can’t even find Cassio.

A shadow blocks the sky. Then another.

Rhayne appears above me. Her face is pale. Her eyes are too large. Her mouth is moving fast, but I can’t hear the words. Oliver appears beside her, kneeling with an urgency that doesn’t match his usual quietness.

Rhayne’s eyes drop to my wound, and her hand goes to her mouth. Tears begin to fall before she can hold them back.

Oliver puts something into my mouth. Probably the OXI Candy that fell out of my fingers, along with other things I don’t recognize.

I don’t ask what it is. I don’t have the energy. I just swallow.

Something else comes after. Sweet. Bitter. Maybe another OXI Candy. Maybe a potion. Maybe both. A small relief returns to my limbs, faint, but enough that the system alarms turn their volume down inside my head.

My vision opens a fraction.

I turn my eyes to the side.

Near the edge of the Oathring, there’s a hand on the floor.

For a second, I just stare, unable to connect the image to anything. Then I understand. The hand isn’t attached to a body. The fingers are still slightly curled, as if the grip on something had been the last living act they performed before separation.

Well.

Maybe I didn’t win.

But I collected on the promise.

The thought tries to feel like victory and doesn’t quite make it. Something else lives next to it. Pity, almost. It surprises me by being there at all.

The senses return in pieces. First the cold of the stone against my back. Then the weight of Oliver’s hand holding my jaw, making me swallow another dose. Then Rhayne’s voice—still cracking, still distant—finally reaching me as actual sound.

Veric appears behind them.

His face is wrong. No anger. No joke. None of the panic-disguised-as-insult he wears when he wants to pretend everything is under control.

That frightens me more than the pain ever could.

I force my lips to move.

"Where... is Cassio?"

No one answers.

I swallow blood and try again.

"Did I lose?"

Rhayne looks at Oliver.

Oliver looks at Veric.

The three of them stay silent—as if the worst possible news were still choosing which of them would have the courage to deliver it.