Oliver readies Motorhead while Animal Pact is practically on top of him.

"Come on, Oliver. Ascending strike. Launch him like a rocket to the moon." I push the command through the comm.

A target up high is a vulnerable target if you strike upward or after a clean evasion with a counterattack.

Oliver rotates his hammer. The head opens into flame like a comet drawn through the dust of the arena. But his legs look heavy. His posture is wrong. He executes the strike completely off-tempo, and the hammer passes a few inches past Animal Pact’s jaw.

"No!" I can’t keep the shout in.

But the bone blades that were aimed at Oliver’s throat also miss, at the last possible second. Animal Pact jerks erratically, as if something has disrupted him mid-motion, and the bone blade only grazes Oliver’s shoulder—opening a small lip of flesh and blood instead of taking the head.

The vacuum Motorhead created on its near-pass was strong enough to destabilize Animal Pact’s attack. Oliver steps to the right, strangely, like he half-tripped over his own boot.

’Why did Oliver miss a strike that obvious? What’s happening?’

Animal Pact rolls to the left, passing close along Oliver’s body. He tumbles across the floor of the ring, out of control after the imprecise attack.

"Oliver. Are you okay? What’s happening?"

I barely finish asking when I see Oliver’s breathing change. Visibly tired. Eyelids drooping.

"I... I don’t know... boss... everything... is heavy..." He pushes the words through the comm with effort.

"Shit! Shit! Shit!"

I murmur it to myself, searching for answers. Oliver took no clean attack. There’s no smell in the air, no visible magic on the arena floor. My mind runs in reverse, studying every step of the last two minutes.

"Oliver’s slap to the back of his own neck..."

I land on it. The motion when he was watching Animal Pact spread his arms. The disbelief gesture. It was a sneak attack by a spy.

"You were poisoned, Oliver. Drop out. Ask the judge to stop the fight."

’Damn it. A phantom fang. But where?’

Interference in the Oathring demands a price paid in blood. I sweep my eyes across the arena, trying to locate the culprit. The effects of OXI Bleeding should be active by now, but I find nothing.

Rahul is already laughing in his chair, visibly enjoying the spectacle.

Oliver begins to raise his hand to signal forfeit. A half-open palm, index finger extended, pinky finger extended, the other three folded. But the arm doesn’t rise correctly. It hangs in the air at a strange angle, the elbow refusing to lock.

The arena begins to boo in chorus. I can’t tell if it’s because of Oliver’s surrender or the clearly manipulative attitude of his rival. Oliver is visibly fading without taking a single landed blow.

I see Animal Pact recover and start running toward Oliver.

’The bastard is aiming at his back. Cowards.’

My instincts scream.

I detonate my energy. Memory of Lightwaves activates. The golden smoke rises at the corners of my vision.

’I’ll break every rule in this Oathring to save him.’

The Notoriety hit, the Ocean’s Law penalty, whatever Rahul does to me after—it can all line up and wait. Oliver doesn’t die in a manipulated bout on my watch.

But as I think about my plan, I feel an extremely strange and spiritual connection, as if my soul were being called to a place that doesn’t belong to me and returning in the same instant. Instinctively, I remember Chronia and her entirely white dimension. The sensation passes through me too quickly to name.

Duvilin, the Ancestor, appears in the arena directly behind Oliver. His bow and arrow already in his hands.

Pure blue energy. Translucent. The bone-white fire from his shoulders rolling slowly off his frame in the still air. He doesn’t take a stance. He’s already in it—weight settled, drawstring full, both feet rooted as if he’d been standing there for a thousand years.

The arrow flies. A streak of azure light cutting clean across the arena. A sound more terrifying than any shot Lola had ever fired. Not because of its scale or intensity, but due to its sheer murderous intent and danger.

The bone fang on Animal Pact’s left forearm shatters. Mid-stride.

Duvilin draws again, faster than my eye can register the motion. A second arrow. The bone fang on the right forearm explodes into white shards that scatter across the dust.

Animal Pact stumbles. His arms hang useless from the elbow down, the bone armor of his forearms in fragments at his feet.

Duvilin lowers the bow.

"As you wish, master..."

The voice comes directly into my ears, riding no air, threaded through the same channel his presence opened inside my chest. He vanishes in the same second, along with my breath and my strength, as my vision blurs.

My OXI alarms at that exact moment. I check it and catch another fright.

[OXI: 31/2,500]

’Holy shit...’

Quickly, I consume an entire Shard.

[OXI: 31 -> 2,500/2,500]

[Scale: 10003 -> 9903]

The entire arena falls silent. A translucent specter, on fire, appeared for less than three seconds, fired twice, and disappeared.

Rahul rises from his chair, visibly thrown.

Animal Pact is rolling in pain on the floor of the Oathring.

Rhayne and Veric, who heard everything through the comm, toss a white handkerchief into the ring. The system reads that we are in a group and accepts the surrender. The containment energy of the perimeter pillars has dropped.

I run into the Oathring.

I take Oliver’s weight onto my shoulder. He hooks his arm around me from the side. His body is heavy, and the whole solid mass of him is leaning against me like a man twice his apparent weight. He pulls a handful of leaves out of his inventory and starts chewing, slow but determined.

"You’re always prepared, aren’t you, my man?"

"Thanks..." Oliver mumbles through the leaves.

I saved him somehow. I still have no idea what I just did.

I check the back of Oliver’s neck and find a puncture. Small. The size of a pin. The area around it has already turned a clear, ugly purple from the venom.

"STOP!" Rahul shouts from above.

Whispers ripple through the entire Oathring, barely audible. The crowd is reading the change in the air faster than what just happened one minute ago.

Rahul jumps from his seat down into the arena. A fifty-foot drop he treats like a half-step off a curb. His coat doesn’t even wrinkle when he lands. The glass cane taps against the stone once.

He stops in front of me. His fists are clenched. The aura around him is no longer oppressive.

It’s threatening.

"What the fuck are you doing, boy?"