The judge drops his arms.

I don’t move.

I check my OXI before anything else.

[OXI: 2,488 / 2,500]

Almost full. Good, now I need every drop. Without Rhayne in the ring as support, every second I burn is a second I don’t get back. I still have OXI candies and the ’LDP potion,’ but I can’t drag this out too long. A Rank-C tank is far bigger than mine. Not to mention that a protracted fight against a Rank-C opponent burns my fuel and gives him time to figure me out.

I look at my own hands and guide them to my waist.

Eventide sits at the clip on my belt. The shadow-edge dormant. My fingers run lightly along the curve of the hilt—the small spiral entries the previous wielders’ grips have worn into the silk over centuries. I trace one with my thumb.

Anyone in there?

I push the thought down into the blade. Hoping to hear them again.

Cassio Veil. Rank C spearman. I have one body. I have one minute of OXI before I start running low on it. I could use the angle on the third parry. I could use the footwork from the cliff fall woman. I could use anything you have.

Silence.

The ghosts stay dormant. No voices. No layered chorus of dead swordsmen pressing into the back of my skull. The katana ghosts are not in the mood today. Or they’re saving themselves for something heavier than a Rank C? I doubt it.

Maybe they just don’t take requests.

Across the arena, Cassio hasn’t moved either. But where I’m motionless because I’m thinking, he’s motionless because he’s performing.

"Are you going to draw that splinter on your hip, or is the Uncle reconsidering?"

A loud laugh from the south bleachers.

"Maybe the child has stage fright. Maybe the heart wasn’t quite as steady as the words made it sound."

Another laugh. Bigger. The crowd is feeding him.

"You know, I’ve put down more than one fighter who got noble in his last breath. They all sound the same. Big speeches. Small wrists." He spins the spear in a slow, lazy revolution and rests the haft against his shoulder. "Come on, child. Make a move. Let me work."

I’m hearing, but I’m not listening.

I lift the back of Eventide’s hilt toward the lower edge of my vision, watching the worn white silk catch the orange-tilted light from the sky.

Anyone? Even one? I’ll take the old man with no teeth.

Nothing.

The crowd starts to boo.

I let the booing wash over me. Look up once, slowly, sweeping my gaze across the bleachers without focus. The booing dies the second my eyes pass through the section making it. Not because I look impressive. Because they can’t tell what I’m looking at. Crowds are honest like that in Thirstfall. They stop heckling the moment they think the heckle might be heard personally. No one wanna die later.

I turn back to Cassio.

"Sorry. What were you saying just now? I got distracted."

Cassio’s lazy spear stops mid-revolution.

The pale-gray eyes harden into something sharper than amusement.

"I’m going to kill you, you little bastard..."

There it is. Now we’re starting for real.

I let my own aura release.

It detonates outward from my chest in a single concentric pulse. The dust at my feet kicks outward in a perfect circle. Across the arena, his aura answers mine immediately—a wider, denser wave that pushes back, and the two pressures meet exactly halfway between us. The air between our bodies twists. Vortices of wind and grit form along the line of contact, spinning slow at first, then faster. A thin curtain of dust rises off the arena floor, drawn upward into the seam where his pressure meets mine.

Visible. The whole crowd can see it.

I feel his pressure. Heavier than mine. Broader. He’s Rank C and I’m Rank D, and the gap shows. The auras find their equilibrium and hold there—him spilling further into the ring than I am, but my pulse refusing to break.

That’s enough.

The numbers don’t matter. I just needed the crowd to see the gap.

Good. The odds just collapsed against me. Every betting board in this Oathring is going to invert in the next ten seconds. If I win this, I close the contract clauses on Rahul outright. No staged stretching. No more rounds needed.

I tap the comm at my collar.

"Are you hearing me?"

"Yes, boss." Oliver.

"Yes." Rhayne.

"Speak, you bastard." Veric always speaks in a lovely way.

"Bet every Scale you have on me. We’re getting rich."

I don’t wait for the reply. I cut the comm.

I lower my stance.

A sprinter’s coil. Front knee bent deep, back leg loaded, both hands resting against the stone at my sides. Every drop of energy I have available pours down through my legs. The OXI flow concentrates in my calves and thighs, the soles of my feet pressing through the boots and into the stone.

This is hard for low-ranks. The redistribution. You aren’t supposed to be able to channel this much OXI into a single body part below Rank C without bleeding it back out through your skin. Apparently the Drifter class is allowed to cheat. Like a surfboard, I feel my OXI glide into my muscles as if breaking the rules.

My left hand drops to Eventide. Thumb seats on the ignition guard. The blade will leave the clip the instant my front foot leaves the ground.

Eighty feet of open arena between us.

One second.

I burst out running.

A crack splits the air behind me—a small thunderclap from the displacement, the column of OXI burning out of my heels and detonating into the stone where my feet just left it. The G-force hits my face in the first instant. The skin of my cheeks pulls back against my skull. My lips peel away from my teeth. My eyes water sideways from the speed.

I cross the eighty feet in less than a heartbeat.

Eventide ignites in my left hand, the shadow-edge waking with a low, dark note. I draw on the run. An ascending lateral cut, hilt to shoulder to the line of Cassio’s chest, the blade arriving at the exact moment my body does.

I see Cassio. He is smiling.

It feels like time slows. Or the part of my brain that watches combat slows. He saw me come. He read the line of the cut before I did. The spear is already moving—his right wrist rotating impossibly fast, the leaf-blade dipping down inside the arc of my swing and angling to deflect the shadow blade upward and to my left.

The spear pivots in his hand like a thing alive.

And the next motion is already loading. The angle of his shoulder. The pull at his elbow. The counter-thrust forming before my own blade has finished missing him.

His counterattack is coming.