The third and final year of the tournament dawned not with a trumpet blast, but with a slow, gnawing silence.
Overnight, the supply drops stopped entirely. No more glowing crates falling from the sky. No more sacks of grain, no more barrels of preserved meat, no more crates of tools and healing herbs. Even the seas went quiet—void-spawned leviathans had gutted the fish populations, leaving nothing but rot and empty nets in their wake. Famine spread across the arena realm like a creeping frost.
In the Radiant Covenant's capital, the grand market squares that had once run riot with wasted bread and trampled fruit jars were now silent. Soldiers picked at the last hard biscuits in their rations, their faces gaunt. The ones who had complained about missing jam six months earlier were now digging up roots from the castle gardens, fighting over dandelion greens. Waste had been easy when the sky rained food. Now every crumb mattered.
The high council gathered in Murong Xue's throne room, their cloaks frayed, their expressions grim. The air reeked of tension and hunger.
"Two months," she said, her voice quiet and sharp as a shard of ice. "That is all we have left. Two months of strict rationing, and then the granaries run dry."
Lord One, the dwarf thane whose sappers had been blown to ash months earlier, slammed a fist on the table. "Then we take what we need. The Tide Pact still has stores. Their fish runs are gone, but their coastal storehouses are full. We march north. We seize every sack, every barrel, every live animal they have. Let them starve first."
Murmurs of agreement rippled around the table. Most of the lords were too hungry to argue. War was better than wasting away behind walls.
Only Liora Voss, sitting silent in the back, frowned.
"And the tunnel rats?" she said.
Lord One scoffed, wiping crumbs from his beard. "The rats? They're stuck down in their holes with nothing but dirt and rocks. All those crates they stole? They burned through them months ago. They're probably too weak to dig straight by now. They'll starve down there before they ever see daylight again. Nothing to worry about."
Most of the council nodded. It made sense. No one could live underground forever on stolen crates. No one could farm in the dark. The rats had had their moment of mischief. Now they would fade away, forgotten.
Murong Xue said nothing. She stared at the map, at the vast blank stretches marking the tunnel network, and her jaw tightened. She did not believe it. The god who had outplanned them at every turn, who had poisoned a Fifth Rank crab with weeds and collapsed a cave on it, would not let her army starve in the dark. She would have planned for this. She would have been ready.
But she also knew there was no other choice. They could not sit behind their walls and wait to starve. They had to fight.
"March at dawn," she said, and the room fell silent. "We meet the Tide Pact on the northern plains. One final battle. Winner takes what's left of the food. Loser starves."
Out on the coast, Soren Shaw stood on the deck of his flagship, staring at the empty nets dragged up by his fishermen, and came to the exact same conclusion.
The sea had betrayed him. The great fish shoals were gone, eaten by void-spawned abominations that lurked in the deep. His storehouses were half-empty. His men were already on half rations. If he waited another month, they would be too weak to hold a spear.
He turned to his first mate, his face set like flint.
"Muster every soldier we have. Every trident warrior, every sea giant, every leviathan rider. We land at dawn on the northern flats. We fight the Covenant one time, all in. Winner takes the mainland. Loser goes back to the sea and starves."
His first mate hesitated. "My lord… what of the tunnel rats?"
Soren paused. He had thought of them too. It was hard not to, after what they'd done to the crab.
"They're hiding," he said at last. "Waiting for us to bleed each other dry. We don't give them the chance. We hit the Covenant fast. Hard. We win in three days. Then we turn every digger we have on those tunnels. We flood them. We bury them. We end it before they can strike from the dark."
He looked north, toward the distant plains where the Covenant's banners would soon appear.
"Only one of us walks away from this," he said. "Make sure it's us."
Deep beneath the central plains, the problem was exactly the opposite.
The great underground vaults were overflowing. Sacks of grain stacked to the ceiling. Barrels of preserved meat and pickled vegetables lined every wall. Bundles of fruit, sacks of root vegetables, even crates of fine flour taken from the Covenant granaries—all of it sat there, more than three thousand fighters could eat in ten years.
And they had run out of storage pouches.
Lirael stood on a crate of turnips, staring out at the mountain of food, and sighed the sigh of someone faced with the most inconvenient kind of wealth.
"We can't leave it," she said. "We can't waste it. That would be criminal."
Borgul leaned against a stack of grain sacks, picking his teeth with a splinter of bone. "We could dig more vaults. Store it here. Come back for it after the tournament."
"Won't work," Korg rumbled from where he sat on a barrel of salt pork. "The arena realm dissolves when the match ends. Everything left behind vanishes. If we can't carry it, we lose it."
Lirael nodded. She had already run the numbers. Every storage pouch, every sack, every crate and barrel they had brought with them was full. The slime carts were loaded to the breaking point. Even the tunnel walls were lined with hung sacks. They had more food than they knew what to do with—and no way to get it all home.
She hopped down off the crate, her boots landing softly on the packed earth.
"Then we get more bags."
Borgul blinked. "More bags?"
"More pouches. More crates. More storage of every kind," Lirael said, walking toward the war table at the end of the vault. "Both armies are marching north. They're going to fight. They're going to throw every soldier they have at each other. And they're going to leave their camps, their storehouses, their supply depots almost unguarded."
She tapped the map, right on the Covenant's capital and the Tide Pact's main harbor.
"While they're up there killing each other over the last scraps of food, we hit their homes. We take every storage pouch, every spatial bag, every rune-marked crate we can find. We load every last grain of rice, every strip of dried meat, every jar of preserves we have into them. And when the battle's over? We'll be the only ones who aren't hungry. We'll be the only ones with anything left."
Korg stood up, grinning so wide his fangs showed.
"Steal their lunch bags and their lunch. I love it."
"They'll be so busy killing each other they'll never see us coming," Borgul rumbled, nodding. "By the time they figure out what happened, their rear depots will be bare."
Lirael ran a finger along the northern battle line on the map.
"The battle will last three days, maybe four. By the time it ends, we'll have stripped every depot from here to the coast. And then?"
She smiled—a thin, sharp, satisfied smile.
"Then we wait. For the winner. Tired. Hurt. Hungry. And we see who really gets to walk away with first place."
A cheer went up through the vault. Three thousand voices, loud and confident and well-fed. They had survived famine before. They had survived the void. They had outplanned two great alliances. What was one more battle?
High in the observation spire, Headmaster Corvin stood at the great window, looking out over the arena realm spread below him. The two great armies were already on the march, winding northward like rivers of steel and scales. Somewhere under the earth, a third army moved the other way, silent as moles, heading straight for the undefended rear lines.
The examiners bustled around him, updating scores, marking movements, tracking the dwindling numbers. The end was in sight. Everyone could feel it.
"Almost over, sir," one of the senior examiners said, stepping up beside him. "Final battle in three days. Should be a spectacle. The viewers are going wild."
Corvin shook his head slowly.
"The battle isn't the end," he said, quiet. "The battle is just the last act of the old game. The real test starts when the fighting stops. When the last army stands victorious, and looks around, and realizes there's nothing left to win. And then they hear something moving in the dark behind them."
He looked down at the faint, glowing network of tunnels winding under the plains, and smiled faintly.
"Most gods think war is about swords and shields and ranks on a field. They think victory is about breaking the other guy's lines. They never learn until it's too late that wars are won with sacks of grain and full bellies and the patience to outwait everyone else."
He turned away from the window, heading for the central scoreboard.
"Get ready," he said. "The real final round is about to begin."
Somewhere far below, the first horns of the great battle blared across the northern plains.
And deep in the earth, three thousand well-fed fighters hefted their empty storage sacks, and marched south toward the unguarded storehouses.
The end was coming.
Just not the way anyone expected.