Across the platform, at the far end, stood the Cloaked One.
No skin. No voice. Just long, layered cloth that swayed without wind, as if underwater. The air around it shimmered like heat mirage, but cold radiated off its form. Energy pulsed outward in slow, soundless waves, and Kael felt his stomach twist with each one. Not nausea—displacement. Like the universe didn't quite agree that the figure should exist.
The Knife didn't speak.
Kael whispered, "Got anything?"
Silence.
He pressed again. "Knife?"
The answer came flat and quiet. "Cannot assess. Memory fails near subject. Identity… corrupted."
Core stirred faintly in Kael's chest—a deep, inquisitive pulse—but didn't speak. Just a low beat beneath his ribs, like a single warning note struck once on a distant war drum.
Kael's eyes narrowed. "Right. So I'll file him under: don't get hugged."
A flare of light cracked the air above them. The announcer's voice boomed from the heavens—glorious, theatrical, bloodthirsty.
"FOUR ENTER. ONE LEAVES. THE BLOOD MAW TRIAL BEGINS."
A thunderclap of divine energy hit the arena like a dropped star. Runes exploded along the walls. The lava surged.
And all three opponents moved at once.
Kael did, too—but backward, retreating instantly into the shadows behind an obsidian outcropping. Not to hide.
To watch.
Because the first thing you do in a suicide bracket isn't fight.
It's figure out which bastard's going to die first.