"You dumb bitch! What have you done?!" the announcer yelled, his voice cracking. Sweat poured down his face as he realised his life might now be dangling by a thread.
To headline the Lukan Arena was a prize men clawed and killed for, and Fyke had slithered and backstabbed his way to it over fifteen brutal years. Now, only five years into his reign, mere trash threatened to bring it all crashing down.
The man in his pompous robes hyperventilated, his hands adorned with gaudy rings, covering his face as if trying to hide from the reality before him.
"Sir… what do we do? The people are waiting for an explanation, the next match, something. We can't stay in here much longer." Shult, one of the arena thugs under Fyke, stepped forward and spoke up. "And then there's this…" He gestured toward the bloodied scene sprawled across the slave chambers' floors.
Fyke lashed out, kicking Astelle's restrained body on the floor, his hostility spilling over from the chaos she had helped create.
"Keep this under wraps for the next hour or something," he breathed.
"…I don't think that's possible, si—" one man tried to interject.
"I said do it!" Fyke barked, punctuating the order with another kick. "Damn it!"
He turned sharply. "And don't let that other bastard out of your sight."
His gaze dropped back to Astelle, cold and full of spite. "As for this woman… she's fighting next. Make sure she doesn't leave the arena alive."
---
- Arena -
Murmurs rippled through the audience, the unease from the earlier rumbling still lingering in the atmosphere. Conversations had already begun over whether the tournament would be called off, and each passing second without a statement from the management only fueled the speculation. Even the prestigious figures in the reserved booth were beginning to stir with impatience.
Fyke emerged from the tunnel, slipping on his performer face before fully revealing himself to the crowd.
"Apologies for the disturbance, good people of Lukaria," he said, the announcer persona in full swing. "There was a very minor structural issue—courtesy of one of our fighters. Brute strength, no brains. You know how they are."
The announcement sent relief through the crowd, even eliciting some snickers.
"Without any further delay, let's move on to the next bout!" he exclaimed, arms spreading wide.
He cast a glance toward the tunnel, receiving a sharp nod from Shult before turning back to the crowd.
"Three of these fighters are no strangers to this arena—veterans who've clashed time and again with the King of Combat himself, right here within these walls!"
His grin widened. "This one's bound to have you leaping from your seats!"
"Entering the arena now—Astelle! Dreer! Felkist! And Uno!"
The four emerged, though Astelle stood apart even among them. She looked visibly dishevelled and bruised, contempt carved deep into her expression as she was hauled forward.
The other three were each "quirky" in their own significant ways.
Dreer was an alarmingly scrawny man, his body marred with old, dried scratch wounds whose origins begged uncomfortable questions. As if sensing the scrutiny, he suddenly clawed into his own shoulder, tearing fresh lines into his skin.
Felkist was his opposite. Massive, round, and heavy, his sheer bulk raised the question of how he was meant to fight at all. He fidgeted with his fingers while his thick arms rested atop his wide belly, using it like a table—far too comfortable, as though this act was second nature.
Then there was Uno.
She stepped onto the field to a chorus of chants, her name rolling through the stands in waves. Dressed in glittering white and green, she looked more like a stage performer than a combatant. Yet her gaze was fixed straight ahead, serious and focused—contrasting against her general appearance.
Murmurs spread through the crowd.
"Uno's not acting like herself today."
"The others look off too…"
Fyke strode into the centre of the arena floor, signalling for the fighters to take their positions. Astelle resisted violently as she was dragged toward her corner.
"…As you can see, we've got a feisty one here," He said with a forced grin. "We're in for quite the show—to make up for the earlier inconveniences."
Astelle lunged at him, slipping dangerously close to breaking free of her handlers.
Fyke's expression darkened. "Since you're so eager," he spat through clenched teeth, "have at it."
The crowd erupted as he speed-walked off the field.
For a heartbeat, none of the combatants moved.
None, except Astelle, whose body was tightly tensed with barely restrained violence, looking like she might tear through every barrier between her and the stands.
"…We're sorry," Dreer spoke up, his voice trembling as if he were freezing. "It seems you made them pretty mad."
"What will happen here—i-it isn't personal. I promise!" He continued, his mannerisms constrained and his eyes darting around.
Without allowing room for another breath, Astelle charged. Her bare feet struck the hard stone in a rapid, sharp rhythm. She was halfway to the man when Felkist appeared at her side, impossibly fast for his size. The full weight of his fist slammed into her face, sending her flying back into the arena wall.
She pushed herself upright, shaking off the impact, eyes locked on the two men as she forced herself to slow down and assess. Felkist had been in the opposite corner of the arena—yet he'd reached her in an instant. Something was off.
Dreer stepped forward, and only then did she fully register it.
None of them had weapons.
Felkist fought barehanded and moved with speed that defied his size, but Dreer? That frail, twitching figure hardly seemed capable of doing the same. It didn't add up. Astelle dropped into a crouch and sprang forward much faster than before, aiming for the gaunt man once more.
Dreer shivered violently, the young woman's fist mere inches from his face
Then the air turned cold.
A jagged formation of ice spires erupted in front of the trembling man, his breath misting in the air, cold enough to be seen.
Astelle twisted aside just in time, narrowly avoiding being impaled, but her leg was caught—frozen solid to the stone beneath her. She strained to tear free as Felkist popped up from the ground beside her, his massive fist swinging with the full weight of his body behind it. She barely slipped past the blow, still anchored in place, when yet another abnormal phenomenon cut her off.
Bubbles drifted gently into the space around the three of them.
The sight prompted immediate retreat. Both men put distance between themselves and the floating spheres. Astelle stared at them in confusion, her gaze snapping between Felkist—now emerging from a pitch black hole in the ground several paces away—and Dreer, who had launched himself backwards atop a horizontal pillar of ice. Their eyes were wide, chests heaving from their panicked vacating of the area.
Whatever these bubbles were, the reaction alone made it clear they were dangerous.
Astelle was about to wrench herself free with more force when a light, feminine voice interrupted her.
"I don't like killing," Uno said calmly. "Unfortunately, my power is specialised for it. A curse, really." Her tone softened, almost apologetic. "But like the frozen corpse over there said—this isn't personal. For our sakes… please die."
A soft melody began to fill the arena, emanating from the bubbles surrounding Astelle as fractures spread across their surfaces. Her instincts screamed. She hauled at her trapped leg with desperate strength, pain flaring as she threatened to tear it free along with the ice.
Boom.
Explosions enveloped the purple-haired girl as the last of the bubbles' fragile shells shattered.
Not letting up, the crowd-beloved fighter placed a finger to her pursed lips, blowing out more bubbles into the smoke cloud left by her earlier attack. The siren-like song rang out once more, followed by a chain of detonations that further thickened the dark plume.
The crowd erupted into mad roars with every blast, the frenzy swelling as it became clear that Uno had no intention of stopping.
Dreer and Felkist exchanged a look before the dark pit reappeared below the larger man, and he vanished into it.
Uno's barrage was abruptly interrupted as jagged ice streaked toward her, narrowly deflected by a last-moment bubble explosion that inadvertently shot her backwards due to its proximity. Felkist appeared behind her, grabbing her and pulling her into his ability before reemerging elsewhere, tossing her directly in front of Dreer. Taking advantage of her disorientation, the scrawny man's palm made contact with her stomach, freezing her solid—save for her nose and anything above it.
Before he could fully relax, heat prickled against his skin. Turning toward its source in shock, he was caught off guard as Felkist came flying at him, crashing into his body.
From the centre of the arena, a pillar of white, ethereal light blazed outward, radiating both heat and brilliance, forcing everyone watching to squint. The light began to pulse and condense, and at its barely perceptible core, the form of a feminine figure could be made out.
The light fully wrapped around her form, its heat and energy collapsing inward until it clung only to the immediate space around its wielder. When vision finally returned, the arena fell into a hush of stunned murmurs. The fighters below stood frozen as she began to walk toward them.
Astelle—like superheated light given flesh—advanced with steady steps, the ice encasing Uno melting away as she passed by her.
"She's Gifted too?!" Felkist blurted. "They never said anything about that!"
Gifts were powers of non-human origin—a mystery that predated the great disaster and the Haze. Most who possessed them today didn't even know their source or the logic of how they functioned. They were never meant to belong to mankind, after all—and yet humanity acquired them all the same.
Even before the Haze, when the world had been whole and the paths to acquiring power were far more numerous, Gifts had been considered mythical. The presence of a single dominant Gifted made the difference between kingdoms rising or falling. To claim a gift was to open the doors to glory. Most people lived and died never seeing one.
And yet here—within the bloodstained walls of the Lukan Arena—four Gifted stood locked in battle.
Not for glorious purpose, but for spectacle. Reduced to entertainment for those who neither understood nor cared about the weight of what they were witnessing.
Dreer watched in silence as the luminous figure slowly closed the distance. When she stood mere inches from him, he barely had time to register as the heat flared, a fist flashing into existence millimetres from his face before the ground vanished beneath his feet. The black tunnel rapidly folded in on itself as Astelle's strike slammed into the arena floor instead, the impact sending a quake through the colosseum and spiderwebbing cracks across the stone.
She straightened slowly, staring at her white-hot hand as a recent memory surfaced.
"Rampage," he had said calmly. "If you can't, that's fine—but you'll probably die."
She then thought of her sister.
Astelle exhaled, hot air emanating in the process. The power that had been tightly contained around her body began to surge outward, the air warping and the stone beneath her feet glowing as heat spread several metres in every direction.
She turned toward Felkist and Dreer, who had reappeared at the far end of the arena, scrambling to put as much distance between themselves and her as possible.
"You asked me to die," she said evenly. "But I have my own circumstances too."
Raising her arms to waist height, palms facing outward, her power pulsed again.
"I'll try my best not to kill you."