The arena floor was being reset.
Not the standard between-fight reset—a full stage transition, the crew working with the specific efficiency of people who understood that what came next was different in kind from what had come before. The Class 2 championship result was logged on the bracket display. Mark's name sat at the top of the Class 2 column with the specific visual weight of a result that had been decided and was now permanent.
Below it—Class 1.
The bracket that had been waiting since the tournament began. Eight fights. The top tier. The class that contained the names the crowd had reacted to most specifically when the bracket was first revealed—Jelo, Ken, Tessa, Zarek on the Aurelius side, Zaire on the Virex side, Vaughn on the Dravenfall side. The names that had drawn the sharpest individual reactions from the sections that knew what those names meant.
The crowd wasn't leaving between stages.
Nobody was leaving.
