The mist didn't enter the arena.
It arrived.
One moment the Hellbound was bone-sand and obsidian and breathless silence.
The next, the air had weight.
Not humidity. Not smoke.
A pressure that settled behind the eyes like a finger pressing down on thought.
Above the tiers, skull-lanterns flickered—then turned their flames inward, as if the light had decided it didn't want to be witnessed. The banners went limp. The chains beneath the floor dragged once, slow and uncertain…
…and stopped, like something had taken hold of their throats.
Qaritas swallowed.
The crowd's next cheer came a heartbeat late.
Like sound had to ask permission.
"Who is Asarlik," Qaritas whispered, and hated that his voice came out small.
Inside him, Eon shifted—tight, contained, still furious at the indignity of being reduced.
He didn't answer right away.
He sulked.
It was the worst kind of wrong, feeling the First Evil pout like a child in the back of his skull.
"Oh," Eon muttered, petulant. "Now you want my history."
Qaritas clenched his jaw. "Answer."
Eon huffed, then… relented.
"Zrama," he said, like the word tasted old. "Ninety-Ninth Universe. The undead dimension."
Qaritas frowned. "Undead?"
Eon giggled once.
Not a laugh he used when he was free.
A small, ugly sound. Trapped. Bitter. Still amused.
"Sinareth," he said. The mist adjusted—not in anger, but in curiosity "Creatures that breathe him and forget what hunger is supposed to be for. They go mad. They eat the living to stay alive. Not because it feeds them—because it reminds them they still have mouths."
Qaritas felt the hairs on his arms lift. "So it's a plague."
"No," Eon corrected, tone sharpening. "It's a lesson."
The mist thickened above the arena floor, refusing to become a shape. It drifted like a thought half-formed, like an unanswered question refusing to die.
Eon continued, almost conversational—too casual for what he was describing.
"First breath in the mist? You hear the hunger thoughts. Not yours. Other people's. Second breath? You start agreeing with them. Third breath?" He paused, delighted in the pause. "Your teeth ache because they're trying to become honest."
"In Zrama," Eon said, almost pleased, "time is teeth. The longer you breathe, the less of you stays edible."
"Atramenta breaks worlds," Eon murmured. "Noct rots them. Asarlik?"
He smiled.
"He convinces them they were never whole."
Qaritas's stomach turned.
Down in the arena, Daviyi stood still, dagger angled at her side, her robes dimming and reigniting like unstable ink.
The moving script on her blade stuttered.
Then started writing without her touch.
Letters crawled off the metal, not falling like sparks—assembling in the air as if the mist had given language a surface to cling to.
Daviyi's eyes tracked the glyphs automatically.
A reader caught by a page that shouldn't exist.
Qaritas's breath caught.
"She's—"
"She's being offered," Cree said softly beside him, voice tight with something like memory. Not fear. Respect.
Hydeius's gaze didn't move from Daviyi. "And she's deciding whether to accept."
Qaritas looked between them. "You're… excited."
Cree's mouth twitched. "She's not a scholar."
Hydeius nodded once. "She never was."
Inside Qaritas's skull, Eon stirred again. Not pouting now.
Listening.
"They remember her," Eon murmured, and it sounded—uncomfortably—like reverence. "Daviyi. Cree. Hydeius. Our father made them early. Before the universe learned how to lie politely."
Qaritas's shadow twitched behind him, half a heartbeat late, like it wanted to lean forward and see better.
"They are not teachers," Eon continued. "They are foundations."
Qaritas didn't like the way his chest tightened at that word.
Foundations.
Things you build on.
Things you bury under everything else.
The arena shuddered.
Ecayrous clasped his hands as if he were hosting a dinner, not an execution.
"Asarlik," he said fondly, voice settling into the Hellbound like a slow knife. "Fragment of the Ninety-Ninth Universe."
The mist turned.
Not toward Daviyi's body.
Toward the knowledge she hadn't chosen to learn.
And then—like the Hellbound couldn't stand the quiet anymore—golden light flared at the edge of the arena floor.
A gate snapped open.
Niriai stumbled through it—
—and the golden shackles snapped onto her wrists again with a sound that made Qaritas's teeth hurt.
Not a clink.
A decision.
Komus was on his feet before she fully landed.
He caught her hard, hands braced around her forearms like he was afraid she'd fall through reality again.
"You're here," he said roughly. "You're alive."
His hands shook. His voice didn't.
That scared Qaritas more than if Komus had screamed.
Niriai's breathing was wrong—too shallow, too controlled, like she'd forced her lungs to obey while the rest of her tried to break.
Zcain stepped forward, expression like carved stone.
"You did well," he said. No praise. No softness. Just truth. The kind you hand someone when they're about to collapse.
Niriai didn't look at him.
Her gaze was on the arena.
On the mist.
On the space where Atramenta and Noct had stood—and where they would stand again.
Rivax wiped his eyes, smiling too hard, too bright.
"I told you that blade would—"
"Behave," Tavran said calmly, hooking an arm around Rivax's waist and tugging him back like he weighed nothing. "Or I will put you on my lap."
Rivax went rigid.
Then silent.
Dheas made a small, satisfied noise, like order had been restored to a messy shelf.
Qaritas didn't laugh.
Because Niriai's hands were shaking now.
Not fear.
Recognition.
"They're back," she whispered.
It wasn't dramatic.
It was worse.
It was the voice you use when you open a door and see a room you thought you'd burned down years ago—still furnished, still waiting, still hungry.
"All that pain," Niriai breathed. "Dirjira. The gates. The cost…"
Her throat worked.
"It didn't matter."
Noct's voice slid through the arena like a fever returning.
"Gatekeeper," it purred. "Thank you for the practice."
Komus's arms tightened around her like a vow.
His eyes lifted toward Ecayrous with a slow, violent calm.
Qaritas felt his own shadow pull forward, reacting to Komus like it recognized something sharp.
Ecayrous raised one finger.
And Daviyi's golden shackles—only hers—dissolved midair.
Not broken.
Unlocked.
The metal recoiled like it had been insulted, then evaporated into dust that the arena refused to let touch the ground.
The crowd shifted, uneasy.
Because even monsters understood rules.
And they had just watched one get rewritten.
Cree's smile was sharp with pride. "Good."
Hydeius nodded once. "Let her move."
Ecayrous's gaze swept the Ascendant section.
"Oh—don't look so surprised," he said lightly. "You didn't think the Hellbound rewarded finality, did you?"
He leaned forward on his throne, chains curling close as if they wanted to hear.
"Any opponent defeated from the Fragment side is not removed," he said.
A pause.
"They are added."
A ripple of horror moved through the tiers like wind through dead grass.
"They learn," Ecayrous continued, almost kindly. "They adapt. They return… when the numbers grow."
His smile widened.
"Every round doubles."
The Hellbound's chains didn't rattle this time.
They purred, low and satisfied—like the arena had just been promised more meat.
Qaritas felt something cold drop into his stomach.
Niriai's fingers curled into her palm so hard the shackles bit.
Komus's jaw clenched.
Cree's fire flickered erratically under their skin, a flare of anger that didn't know where to land.
Hydeius's hands folded tighter, like he was holding a funeral in his chest.
And in Qaritas's skull, Eon smiled.
Not happy.
Hungry.
"That's smart," Eon murmured. "Evil learns from inevitability."
Qaritas didn't answer him.
He couldn't.
Because down in the arena—
Daviyi finally moved.
Not rushing.
Not reacting.
Choosing.
The mist rolled toward her like breath.
Daviyi inhaled once.
Deliberately.
And for a heartbeat, Qaritas thought—
She's taking it in.
The script on her blade flared.
Then stuttered.
Then wrote a single symbol so sharp it looked like it could cut the air just by being true.
Daviyi's eyes narrowed.
Her expression didn't change.
But her stance did.
She lowered her center of gravity, blade angled slightly forward—defensive for the first time.
"…Right," she murmured. "That's the cost."
She blinked—and for half a heartbeat, forgot what language felt like in her mouth.
The mist condensed.
Not forming a body—
refusing to—
but thickening into something that suggested intention.
Something without edges exhaled.
The first Sinareth crawled out of the fog like a mistake the world hadn't finished rejecting.
It looked almost mortal at first glance.
Almost.
Then it raised its head.
And Qaritas saw the mouth.
Not a mouth meant for speech.
A mouth meant for staying alive.
It laughed.
And the laugh wasn't a sound.
It was a question.
Why keep anything else.
The crowd began to roar again, finding courage in cruelty.
But their roar kept arriving late.
Out of sync.
Even the Hellbound couldn't keep time around the Ninety-Ninth.
Daviyi lifted her dagger.
The script along its edge rearranged.
The letters on the air-page around her tried to write themselves into her skin.
Daviyi didn't flinch.
She spoke, quiet and clean.
"Citation."
The nearest Sinareth froze.
Not because it was trapped.
Because it had been named properly.
Its limbs trembled, then folded inward, collapsing like a paragraph cut from a manuscript.
The mist didn't retreat.
It learned.
The mist hesitated—just a fraction longer around Daviyi than anywhere else.
For the first time since the Ninety-Ninth was born, the mist hesitated because it wasn't sure who was studying whom.
It slid around that absence like water around a stone and thickened again.
A second Sinareth formed.
Then a third.
Then a dozen, half-finished, drooling thought and hunger, their eyes wrong—too knowing, too familiar.
Qaritas's breath came shallow.
The scream of Ayla still lived somewhere inside him.
The mist tasted like it could find it.
Qaritas tasted copper and didn't remember biting his tongue.
His throat tightened. Not emotion—symptom.
Like the mist had tested his lungs and liked what it found.
Somewhere deep in his chest, the silence where Ayla slept answered back.
Qaritas swallowed—and realized, suddenly, that he had forgotten the type of weapon Rivax made for him.
Not the blade itself.
Just the name.
The memory didn't feel gone.
It felt filed somewhere he no longer had permission to open.
Qaritas opened his mouth to say Ayla's name—
and nothing came out.
His breath caught.
The feeling attached to her was still there.
The shape of her absence was still there.
But the name itself slid away, smooth and silent, like it had never been meant for him.
Somewhere in the stands, a god screamed—because they suddenly couldn't remember their own title.
For a terrifying instant, Qaritas couldn't remember why names mattered—only that something inside him was relieved.
Inside his skull, Eon leaned closer—not to help, not to stop it.
To watch.
"This," Eon whispered, low and pleased, "is the kind of fight that makes gods honest."
Daviyi's blade twitched in her hand.
A new glyph appeared on its edge.
One she had never learned.
And never intended to.
Daviyi stared at it for half a second.
Then smiled faintly.
Not humor.
Recognition.
The mist thickened.
The Sinareth moved.
It wanted to be breathed.
And once breathed—
it would decide what names were worth keeping.