Rhayne is pinned.

I’m already running the math on how to save her. I glance sideways at the other two for input. Veric is biting his fingernails. Oliver has his hammer ready, knees bent, prepped to vault into the ring with Motorhead the second I give the word.

Shit. What do I do?

Then I see Rhayne’s gloves drop out through a gap in the bone cage.

They land in the dirt at the King Skeleton’s feet.

And I know. She isn’t throwing the gloves as a surrender signal. The shift in the energy around her is unmistakable.

’Damn it, Rhayne. Explaining this later is going to be a headache.’

I see her eyes go black inside the den of bone, and the unmistakable ’clap’ that saved my life once before sounds again, perfectly in my ears.

"Void Monarch," she says, almost a whisper.

The bones around her start to crumble. Time corroding them, rotting everything in their lattice. The Bone Prison probably isn’t real bone in the calcium-mineral sense—it’s something derived from OXI. And Rhayne loves OXI.

The cage breaks.

She steps out and rises off the ground.

Her hands fold together at her chest, fingers interlaced—the same posture as the angel in her class tattoo. The Battle Ribbon spirals around her without anyone holding it, the metal silk-woven length moving in the air like an extension of her mind. The Black Sea Ribbon answering her thought directly.

The shadows around her edges deepen. The light passing through her body bends slightly, refracting in ways physics doesn’t sign off on. The crowd, half a second ago screaming, has gone completely silent. A primal instinct washes over every spectator at once. Like saying, "Be still. Don’t move. Don’t draw the attention of whatever just stood up inside that girl.’

The King Skeleton drops both hatchets.

He feels it. We all feel it. The energy rolling off her is too macabre, too wrong, too heavy for any Rank D body to withstand.

He falls back onto his ass and starts scrambling backward across the dirt with both hands.

Rhayne’s interlaced fingers tilt slightly toward him.

A bubble of black energy wraps around his body. Lifts him off the ground. He floats slowly upward inside it.

He doesn’t scream. He can’t. He looks like a man being suffocated by something he can’t see.

Five seconds pass.

Then Rhayne releases.

The bubble dissolves. The King Skeleton drops back to the dirt. She lands in slow motion behind him, like gravity is returning to her on its own schedule.

Silence in the arena is absolute.

The King Skeleton is unconscious.

A judge runs to him and checks his pulse. Gives a thumbs up to the bookmakers. Then walks to Rhayne and lifts her arm by the wrist, declaring her the winner.

Three seconds later, the judge staggers. His knees buckle. He drops her hand and stands there visibly dizzy, swaying, bracing on a knee.

Even the judge got consumed by her passive.

That pulls a smile out of me.

The crowd erupts. Not because they’re happy the King Skeleton survived—but because they’re celebrating Rhayne for the majestic fight she just put on, and for showing mercy to her opponent on top of it.

She went from ballerina back to saint, just like that.

’Should I tell her to put the novice’s habit back on?’

The three of us walk to the edge of the ring. We help Rhayne out, after she picks her gloves up off the ground and slides them back on.

Oliver collects the winnings and hands them over to her.

None of us takes a cut. All of it is hers. She made over 4000 Scales—the odds had been sixteen-to-one, and she came back from a Bone Prison.

Veric’s turn.

We walk back to the registration stand. The old man behind it is visibly shaken after Rhayne’s win. The lacquered black box at his elbow is still vibrating from the magnitude of what just resolved through it.

"And what is it now," he says without looking up. "Another miracle? Another little dancer who happens to be merciful?"

"Just a fighter."

"Hm." He pulls out a fresh sheet of vellum. "Same terms?"

"Same terms."

"Battle name?"

I look at Veric.

"Soline Bandit," he says.

"...What?" I have to make sure I heard him right.

"Soline Bandit. I love soline juice."

I clap a hand to my forehead. I cannot believe the stupid name Veric just chose for himself.

"Sands. I know it sounds dumb. Just trust me."

"Reasons or not, it’s still pathetic." 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

He shrugs and starts moving toward the ring to wait for his announcement.

The old man scratches the name onto the vellum. He pauses with the quill above the paper, mouths the words to himself once, then shakes his head and writes them anyway. He’s seen everything.

Between Rhayne’s fight and Veric’s, another match goes up. Two female warriors. The fight resolves fast—the woman with twin swords takes both of the other one’s arms off in a single combination, blade-and-cross-blade, both limbs coming free above the elbow.

The crowd cheers.

I don’t.

The image pulls memories I don’t want pulled.

This is like how I died.

On the floor of the Aion Sanctuary. A dozen other places where I watched limbs leave bodies and tried to stay clinical about the geometry of it would never be the same as losing both arms.

I try to ignore the feeling and turn my attention back to the ring.

The narrator-judge clears his throat.

"Death’s Lantern versus Soline... Bandit...?" He reads the page again, frowns, and reads it once more, slower. "Death’s Lantern versus Soline Bandit."

A laugh ripples through the crowd. Not at Veric—they don’t know him yet. At the name.

Veric ignores it. He walks to the left corner of the ring and starts loosening his shoulders. Tidebreaker is already ready in his body. His shield clips into place on his right forearm. The thief-like mask sits across his face. He looks ridiculous and dangerous in equal measure.

Across the ring, the right corner stays empty.

Death’s Lantern doesn’t show.

Or doesn’t want to be seen until the bell.