Daviyi bled like a person.
That was the first lie.
The second was that it mattered.
The mist kept arriving in waves, not rolling so much as deciding where air was allowed to be. It drifted over the bone-sand in soft folds, and every fold came with a tiny delay in reality—like the world had to re-check its spelling before it could keep existing.
Qaritas pressed both hands to the railing, knuckles white under the splints' ache. His shadow hung behind him half a heartbeat late, uncertain, embarrassed.
He tried to say Ayla's name again.
His tongue touched the roof of his mouth.
Nothing.
No sound. No shape. Like the word had never been given to him in the first place.
His lungs tightened as if they were offended by the absence.
Below, Daviyi inhaled.
Deliberately.
Not panicked. Not desperate.
Like she was sampling poison to understand which part of it would kill her.
The mist hesitated around her again—longer this time.
It didn't like being watched by something that could name it back.
The Sinareth came in a loose circle, half-formed and hungry. Their bodies looked like mortals remembered wrong: arms too long, ribs too close to the surface, mouths that opened sideways as if their faces were tired of pretending they were meant for speech.
Daviyi lifted her dagger.
The script along its edge rearranged into a tight spiral, a lock looking for its own key.
"Citation," she said quietly.
The nearest Sinareth collapsed inward, folding like a paragraph removed from a manuscript.
The mist learned.
It didn't retreat.
It simply flowed around the missing space and filled the gap with something worse.
A second Sinareth formed.
Then a third.
Then a dozen.
Then—
Something moved inside the fog that wasn't a creature.
It was a concept.
A presence with no edges.
Asarlik.
The crowd roared again, but their roar arrived wrong—delayed, out of rhythm, as if even their cruelty was having trouble remembering itself.
Qaritas's stomach rolled.
He felt Eon shift inside him like a caged animal leaning toward the bars, listening.
Not for mercy.
For opportunity.
"You feel it," Eon murmured.
Qaritas didn't answer.
He didn't trust his voice.
He didn't trust the air.
Eon's tone sharpened anyway, smug despite the shackles that had reduced him to this small, furious thing.
"Asarlik isn't here to kill her," Eon said. "Not first."
Qaritas swallowed. "Then what is he doing?"
Eon giggled—small, ugly, bitter.
"He's editing her ownership."
Below, Daviyi moved again, stepping left with clean precision. Her dagger carved a symbol through the air that didn't glow.
It asserted.
A thin white line appeared at the edge of the mist like a seam being stitched shut.
The Sinareth hit it and recoiled as if they'd slammed into a wall made of correct grammar.
Daviyi's eyes flicked upward, tracking the mist as it thickened—
—and then her foot slipped.
Just a fraction.
Like the bone-sand had forgotten how friction worked.
Her balance corrected instantly.
But Qaritas saw it.
So did Hydeius.
So did Cree.
And Niriai, standing beside Komus with shackles biting her wrists, went suddenly still.
Not calm.
Frozen.
Because she recognized that tiny slip for what it was.
Not clumsiness.
Not exhaustion.
A theft.
The mist had taken something tiny from Daviyi and used it to rewrite the ground beneath her.
And then Atramenta stepped forward.
Not from the gate.
Not announced.
It unfolded from a crease in air, as if space had been hiding it behind a page.
Its mask was more cracked now, fissures crawling like fractures in porcelain. Its body moved with more confidence than before—angles cleaner, wrongness more efficient.
Noct followed like a fever taking shape.
The plague-cloud around it pulsed with those geometric motes, sharp as data, jittering like insects made of math.
Qaritas felt Niriai's breath catch.
Her hands trembled against the shackles.
"All that pain," she whispered again, voice thread-thin. "It didn't matter."
Komus's arm tightened around her shoulders like a vow made physical.
"Hey," he said rough, not gentle, "look at me."
Niriai didn't.
Her eyes stayed on Atramenta.
On Noct.
On the proof that nothing in this arena stayed dead, sealed, or ended.
Zcain's face was carved into something hard.
Not emotionless.
Controlled.
He leaned forward and said, just loud enough to carry:
"Daviyi!"
Daviyi didn't look up.
But the script on her blade twitched—like the sound of her name had reached her through the mist and anchored her for half a heartbeat.
Cree's ember-light flared.
"That's right," Cree said softly, almost fond. "Show them."
Hydeius nodded once. "She's not alone."
Qaritas heard himself say it before he could stop:
"Daviyi!"
His voice scraped out like it had to fight the air to exist.
Komus shouted next—sharp, furious encouragement:
"MAKE THEM BLEED."
Rivax, of course, couldn't help himself. "USE THE THIRD SEAL—THE ONE I—"
"Behave," Tavran said flatly, and hooked Rivax back against him like he was hauling a squirming cat. "Or I will actually put you on my lap."
Rivax went stiff and silent again.
Below, Atramenta tilted its head toward Daviyi.
"Oh," it said, voice everywhere at once. "The librarian."
Noct purred, intimate as sickness. "The successor."
Daviyi's eyes narrowed.
Qaritas felt Eon's presence tighten inside his skull.
"That," Qaritas whispered, "they know something."
Eon's laugh came out small, bitter, and smug.
"They know what she is," Eon said. "And they want to see if she's stable."
Daviyi lifted her dagger.
The script along its edge paused.
Then wrote a new line without her permission.
Daviyi's fingers tightened.
Her wrist trembled—fine, persistent, wrong.
Atramenta moved first.
Space folded into a spear-point and slammed toward Daviyi's chest.
Daviyi snapped her dagger upward.
Not blocking the spear.
Cutting the instruction behind it.
A white symbol flashed.
The spear stopped mid-flight, suspended like a sentence waiting for review.
Daviyi whispered: "Reject."
The spear rewound.
Not repaired.
Replayed backward, collapsing into itself until it was just normal air again.
Atramenta recoiled as if insulted.
Noct struck next.
Its plague didn't surge outward this time.
It sank.
The geometric motes slipped into the mist like hooks finding fabric.
The fog shivered.
Then the fog turned against Daviyi.
Qaritas's breath hitched.
The mist thickened around her lungs.
Not choking her.
Asking her a question.
Why do you deserve to breathe?
Daviyi's shoulders tensed.
She inhaled anyway.
The first Sinareth lunged.
Daviyi's dagger flicked.
A precise cut.
The creature folded inward.
A second lunged.
A third.
Daviyi moved through them like a reader skimming a text she'd already mastered.
But now the fog was watching her process.
And the moment she repeated a move—
Atramenta folded space beneath her feet.
Daviyi dropped half an inch.
Just a tiny fall.
But gravity grabbed her wrong.
She hit the bone-sand hard enough to crack something inside her shoulder.
Blood splashed dark across white script.
The crowd screamed, delighted.
Qaritas's stomach dropped.
"She's injured," he whispered.
Hydeius's voice was grim. "Good."
Qaritas snapped his head toward him. "Good?"
Hydeius didn't look away. "Now she'll stop being polite."
Below, Daviyi pushed herself up with one hand.
Her other arm shook.
The shoulder was wrong.
Not dislocated.
Edited.
Noct's voice slid through the arena like silk over a blade.
"Your body remembers pain," it purred. "But your soul remembers inheritance."
Daviyi froze.
Just for a heartbeat.
Then she laughed once—quiet and humorless.
"You don't get to speak about my soul."
Atramenta's voice chimed in delightedly: "Oh, but we do. We've read your margins."
Qaritas felt his chest tighten.
He turned inward, toward the cage in his skull.
"Eon," he hissed. "Tell me what that means."
Eon sulked for a breath longer—because he could.
Then he spoke.
And the way he spoke made Qaritas's skin crawl.
Not because it was cruel.
Because it was true.
Komus was a body waiting.
Ayla was forged from worth.
Daviyi… Eon's voice tightened. Daviyi is the daughter of the last Knowledge. The title came home.
Qaritas swallowed hard.
"And Daviyi?" he whispered.
Eon's voice dropped, almost reverent again.
"Daviyi is blood," Eon said. "She is lineage. She is succession."
Qaritas's mind snagged. "What?"
Eon sounded annoyed that he had to explain.
"Ascendant titles aren't just crowns," he snapped. "They're inheritance lines. A descendant of an Ascendant can be chosen by the title itself—if the bloodline is compatible, if the universe is desperate, if the dead Ascendant's spirit approves."
Qaritas stared down at Daviyi.
Daviyi's injured shoulder trembled as she lifted her dagger again.
"She's the daughter of the original Ascendant of Knowledge," Eon continued. "When he died, the title needed a successor. She didn't earn it by being worthy like your precious Ayla. She earned it by being born to carry it."
Qaritas's mouth went dry.
"So she's… connected to him."
Eon's laugh was ugly.
"She is haunted by him," Eon corrected. "Trained by him. Shaped by him. The original Knowledge watches through her."
Qaritas's shadow twitched, half a heartbeat late, like it didn't like hearing that.
Qaritas forced the next question out.
"If Komus and Ayla are new Ascendants… what about their children?"
Eon's voice turned sharp.
"Yes and no," he said. "If a child has dead Ascendant blood in their lineage and reaches a hundred without awakening, the title can offer succession. Training by the spirit. Rare."
A pause.
"Daviyi is not rare. Daviyi is first."
Below, Noct's plague motes tightened around the mist like a net.
Atramenta stepped in, bending geometry, trying to compress Daviyi into a smaller and smaller space.
Asarlik's fog thickened like breath becoming hunger.
Atramenta didn't strike her.
It struck her position.
The space beside Daviyi folded—quietly—so that "left" and "behind" became the same direction.
Asarlik exhaled.
The mist threaded into Daviyi's mouth.
Not choking—naming.
Daviyi spoke automatically, a defensive axiom rising on instinct—
and the mist stole the first word of it.
Her lips moved.
Nothing came out.
Noct laughed once, delighted.
Because it didn't need a plague cloud anymore.
It poured infection into the missing word.
The gap where the syllable should have been turned black.
Atramenta folded that blackness into a thin line of geometry and fired it through the path it had just rewritten.
Daviyi tried to step away—
and discovered there was no "away."
The line hit her shoulder.
Not cutting flesh.
Cutting ownership.
Her arm went numb, not with pain—
with disassociation.
Like the limb wasn't fully hers to command anymore.
They were working together now.
Not arguing.
Not posturing.
Hunting.
Daviyi's steps shortened.
Her breathing changed.
Not panicked.
Measured.
Like she'd realized she couldn't win by out-thinking a team.
Her dagger's script stuttered again.
Then wrote a new symbol—one Qaritas didn't recognize.
Daviyi looked at it.
And for the first time, her expression shifted into something like… regret.
Not fear.
Regret.
As if she'd just opened a page she'd sworn never to read again.
Cree leaned forward, eyes bright.
"Don't," Cree whispered. "Not that."
Hydeius's jaw tightened.
"He's forcing her," Hydeius said.
Komus's voice rose, rough. "Daviyi!"
Niriai's hands clenched until the shackles bit into her skin.
Her voice was soft, broken.
"Don't become like them."
Daviyi didn't look up.
She couldn't.
Because the mist was inside her now, not choking—asking questions from the inside of her lungs.
And then she did something that made the arena go quiet.
She lowered the dagger.
Not surrender.
Preparation.
She pressed her fingers against the injury in her shoulder.
Blood wet her palm.
She whispered something under her breath—not a spell.
A name.
Not a person's name.
A concept's name.
The Hellbound's air changed.
Not colder.
Not hotter.
Sharper.
Like the arena had just been corrected.
The Sinareth stopped moving.
Even Atramenta paused, mask fissures widening.
Noct's laugh died in its throat.
Ecayrous leaned forward in his throne, delighted.
Because he recognized what she was calling.
Daviyi's lips parted.
Her voice came out layered—hers, and not hers.
"Knowledge."
The word didn't echo.
It arrived.
The mist recoiled a fraction, offended.
The bone-sand under Daviyi blackened—not burned, rewritten, turned into something like wet ink.
Daviyi's skin rippled.
Qaritas's breath caught.
Her body began to change.
Not into something larger.
Something truer.
Her spine arched.
Her jaw loosened.
Her teeth lengthened—not fangs, but the kind of teeth meant for grinding bone.
Her eyes clouded white for a heartbeat, then filled with moving script, lines and lines of language crawling under her pupils like living text.
Daviyi flinched like she'd been struck.
Not by a blade.
By absence.
She opened her mouth—
and the name she'd carried since childhood wasn't there anymore.
Her father's name.
Gone so cleanly it felt like it had never existed.
Daviyi's lips parted in a soundless breath.
Then her face went blank with control.
"Acceptable," she whispered—like she was trying to convince herself.
Her scholar's robes tore—not from heat, not from force—
From irrelevance.
Beneath them, her flesh looked wrong.
Not rotting.
Annotated.
Symbols crawled across her arms like tattoos made from living memory.
Her injured shoulder popped—
Not healing.
Rewriting itself into a shape that could keep fighting.
The crowd screamed.
Some in awe.
Most in fear.
Because Daviyi did not look like a scholar anymore.
She looked like a thing the universe used when it needed to remember violently.
Eon's voice came soft, almost pleased.
"There she is," he murmured. "The reason I got away."
Qaritas's blood ran cold. "What?"
Eon's tone turned ugly.
"When I killed our mother," he said. "When the universe broke—Daviyi's kind of Knowledge is what let the pieces keep functioning. She catalogued the wound. She made it survivable."
Qaritas stared down at Daviyi's transformed body, bile rising.
"You're saying she can destroy worlds."
Eon giggled.
"With the wrong question?" he said. "Yes."
Qaritas whispered, "Will she?"
Eon didn't answer right away.
Down in the arena, Atramenta struck again—faster, folding space into a jagged blade that came from three angles at once.
Daviyi didn't dodge.
She opened her mouth—
and a stream of words poured out.
Not a chant.
A theft.
The nearest Sinareth screamed.
Not in pain.
In confusion.
Because its memories were being pulled out of it through its mouth, spilling as broken syllables and half-formed languages, letters dripping like bile.
The creature collapsed, skull hollowing as if its mind had been scooped clean.
The words didn't fall.
They flew.
They spiraled into Daviyi's chest and sank into her like ink into paper.
More Sinareth charged.
Daviyi spread her arms.
The air filled with languages.
Different scripts.
Different alphabets.
A storm of stolen knowing.
One language didn't return to her mouth.
Not later. Not ever.
The old tongue of her mother's side—gone.
She tried to shape a syllable and felt only air.
Daviyi swallowed the panic like a blade.
The title inside her didn't care what she lost.
It only cared what she could still take.
The Sinareth staggered, their hunger turning clumsy as their minds melted out through their mouths in streams of useless trivia and dying prayers.
The fog itself shuddered as Daviyi pulled knowledge from anything that had ever possessed it.
Qaritas tasted copper again.
He wasn't biting his tongue this time.
His gums were bleeding.
His body reacting to the idea of being drained.
Noct hissed, genuinely alarmed.
"She's consuming," it snarled.
Atramenta's voice sharpened. "Stop her."
Asarlik's mist tightened, pushing inward.
Not toward Daviyi's body.
Toward her name.
Daviyi's eyes flicked up for the first time.
And Qaritas saw it.
In that glance—
Daviyi wasn't just fighting.
She was hungry too.
Not for flesh.
For answers.
For completion.
For the kind of knowing that leaves nothing alive afterward.
Cree shouted, voice bright with pride and terror.
"YES!"
Hydeius's fist slammed the railing once.
"Hold!"
Komus leaned forward like he wanted to jump into the arena and rip reality apart with his hands.
"COME ON," he growled.
Niriai whispered, barely audible.
"Don't lose yourself."
Daviyi moved.
And it was not a scholar's movement.
It was predatory.
She crossed the bone-sand in a blur, not fast like Ación's flame or Rykhan's time—
Fast like a thought reaching its conclusion.
Her dagger carved a symbol into Atramenta's attack—
and the attack rewound into Atramenta's own chest.
Atramenta shrieked, offended, stumbling.
Noct released its plague, trying to rot the concept of Daviyi's "certainty."
Daviyi opened her mouth and ate the contradiction.
The plague stalled.
Not because it was blocked.
Because Daviyi had removed the question it needed to infect.
Asarlik's mist surged—
and Daviyi finally faltered.
Her breath caught.
Her eyes widened.
Because the mist wasn't trying to kill her.
It was trying to take her title.
The word "Knowledge" flickered at the edge of perception.
The word didn't just flicker.
It tore.
Like parchment catching on a nail.
For half a second, Daviyi wasn't Knowledge—
she was Hunger wearing footnotes.
The title slammed back into place with a sound like a book snapping shut.
But when she breathed, the air tasted wrong.
Like the universe didn't fully trust her definition anymore.
Like a lantern about to go out.
Qaritas felt his own stomach drop in sympathy.
If Daviyi lost that—
What would be left?
A monster full of stolen facts and no reason to organize them.
A universe-ending thing.
Daviyi's hand shook.
She took a step back.
And for the first time in the entire match—
she looked… young.
Not physically.
Spiritually.
Like the successor suddenly felt how heavy the inheritance was.
Then she bared her teeth.
And smiled.
Not humor.
Decision.
She lifted her dagger with her good arm and whispered:
"Index."
The air snapped.
Every word she'd stolen from the Sinareth spiraled outward, forming a massive ring of script around the arena floor—an index of everything present, everything attacking, everything named.
Atramenta froze mid-step.
Noct's plague motes stalled.
Even the mist hesitated—
because Daviyi had placed it inside a system.
A catalog.
A structure.
And structures were the one thing hunger hated.
Qaritas's breath came shallow.
Eon's voice came soft and ugly behind his ribs.
"She might win," he murmured. "If she stays herself."
And that was the terror.
Because the only way she could win…
was by becoming something that might not be "herself" anymore.
The ring of script tightened.
The Sinareth screamed as their remaining thoughts were pulled out of them like thread.
Noct's laugh cracked.
Atramenta's mask fissured wider.
Asarlik's mist swelled—
and then, for the first time, it recoiled.
Not retreating.
Just… pulled back, like a predator tasting something and deciding it might bite back.
Daviyi stood at the center of the ring, blood on her lips, script crawling under her eyes.
Her chest rose and fell once.
Twice.
She was still breathing.
Still named.
Still holding the title.
Barely.