"No," James said. "It doesn’t."

Ronan was quiet for a few seconds. Then: "One test."

He held up a hand before Finn could speak.

"My condition is simple. If I don’t like what I see, I walk. No hard feelings, no pressure from the Hale side, no contract clause that turns a test into an obligation."

Finn agreed before James could open his mouth.

"That’s fair," he said.

Ronan looked at Finn, then back at James.

"Who calls the shots on the floor?"

"Depends on the situation," James said.

Something in Ronan’s expression shifted slightly. Not approval, exactly. More like something that didn’t annoy him.

"When?" he asked.

"We’ll be in touch in the next two days," James said.

Ronan picked up his shield, gave them one last look, and walked back toward the fighter’s area. Lim was still on the bench with the cold pack to his jaw. He glanced up at James once, then looked back at the floor.

Getting to Cillian Ward took longer.

He was in the recovery corridor off the main tunnel, and three arena staff members and two men in guild-branded jackets had already found him before James and Finn reached the corridor entrance. One of the guild scouts was talking in that smooth, rehearsed way that meant he’d given this exact speech before. Cillian was listening with the face of someone who’d stopped taking those offers seriously about twelve months ago.

James leaned against the corridor wall.

Finn raised an eyebrow at him.

"We wait," James said.

They waited.

It took about eight minutes before the scouts ran out of things to promise and Ward gave a short answer that ended the conversation. They left. The arena staff followed a minute after. Ward sat down on a bench in the corridor and started unwrapping the combat tape from his right hand, checking the knuckles under it.

James and Finn walked over.

Ward looked up. He placed them faster than Ronan had, and unlike Ronan, he let the recognition sit on his face for a second — not with awe, but with the particular focus of someone deciding whether this was interesting or not.

"Team Zero," he said. "Didn’t expect to see you two in arena seats."

"We weren’t here for the arena," Finn said.

Ward kept unwrapping. "Recruiting."

"For Floor 15," James said.

Ward finished one hand and started on the other. "Floor 15 has killed two full parties. What makes a third attempt anything other than a third party dying?"

"The reports are wrong," James said.

Ward stopped.

He looked at James properly for the first time since they’d walked over.

"Wrong how?" he said.

"Everyone preparing for Floor 15 right now is preparing for a Dark Knight," James said. "Heavy armor. High physical resistance. A boss fight. They’ll walk in with the right gear for that fight and find out too late that the fight already started."

Ward was quiet.

"The fight starts before the boss draws its weapon," James said.

Silence in the corridor for a moment.

"That’s not in any report I’ve read," Ward said.

"No," James said. "It isn’t."

Ward looked at him carefully. "You have proof."

"Floor 14 cleared the moment we identified the actual cause," James said. "Floor 15 unlocked immediately after. The System logged it the same second." He held Ward’s gaze. "I’m not asking you to trust me on that. I’m asking you to come to one test and judge for yourself whether this team knows something the government reports missed."

Ward set the tape down on his knee. A few seconds passed.

He wasn’t saying no. James could see him thinking.

"One test," Ward said finally. "I don’t commit to the floor. I show up, I watch what you’ve got, and I make my own decision afterward."

"That’s all we’re asking," Finn said.

Ward pulled out his phone and held it out.

James added the contact and handed it back.

Ward glanced at the screen, then put it in his kit bag. "Don’t send me a recruitment package," he said. "And don’t use my name in anything public until I’ve agreed."

"We’re not doing a press announcement," James said.

Ward looked at him for a beat.

"Alright," he said.

He picked up his kit bag and walked toward the showers without looking back.

James and Finn came out of the arena through the side exit.

The doors shut behind them and cut the crowd noise by half. Outside, the night air had teeth in it. The Docklands smelled like rain and salt and diesel from the lorries on the dock road. James’s car was at the far end of the lot.

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

Finn pulled his jacket tighter while they walked.

"Ronan is what you’d want from a frontline," he said. "Holds his ground, reads the room, doesn’t grandstand. The Floor 11 stop isn’t the issue. The reason he stopped is actually useful."

"He’ll protect someone who needs protecting," James said.

"Yes."

"Ward is a different kind of problem," James said.

Finn waited.

"He’s fast. He’s got range control. He can hit at a level that matters up there." James kept walking. "But if the Saintess gets into that chamber with him—"

"He’s a man," Finn said quietly. "The shrine is built for men."

"If she marks him, he stops being an asset," James said. "And he doesn’t know about any of it yet."

Finn didn’t answer immediately.

The Iron Ring’s lights threw a yellow stripe across the car park. From inside the warehouse, the crowd went up again. Another match starting. Another D-rank bracket, clean and contained and completely unlike anything they were building toward.

"They’re both useful," Finn said. "But neither of them fixes the real problem."

"No."

"We need someone who can deal with what the shrine does before it happens," Finn said. "Resistance fields. Cleansing. Something that keeps the team in their own heads when she starts working." He paused. "That person is not in there."

James glanced back at the building once.

Fighters from the bracket were visible through the far windows, moving between tunnels in gear that had never been worn underground. Good people. Probably strong people. Not the right person.

"You said you might know someone," James said.

They reached the car.

Finn looked back at the warehouse for a second. The bracket board above the entrance was showing a new name. Someone’s record. Someone’s win count. People inside making their careers in a room with rules and a referee.

"She doesn’t fight in arenas," Finn said. "She doesn’t like guild work. She doesn’t like being approached by people who treat a support class like a tool they rent when they need it."

"Is she strong enough?"

"That’s not the question," Finn said. "Getting her to agree is."

James looked at him.

Finn stopped beside the car and looked back at the warehouse once more.

"Her name is Maeve Callahan," he said. "And before you ask — no, she does not like people like us."

James opened the car door.

"Then we should not approach her like people like us."