Chapter Seventeen:

  “When Gods Bleed”

  The arena had shed its skin.

  The ground beneath them was no longer made by hands. It crawled with golden ash and glowing seams of red glass, as if the arena had been peeled open to reveal the bones of something buried beneath the world. The marble cracked and bled light. Overhead, the sky churned, dark and directionless.

  John moved to the edge of the circle, where the broken stands ended and the heart of the arena opened.

  The others followed.

  Behind them, RW watched from the shadow of a broken pillar. Her fur was flat, her ears pinned, her mouth tight. She watched in silence, her gaze sharp.

  A pressure gripped the arena like a hand around its throat, and then the Triarchs were there.

  They descended without sound, drifting from the storm like falling gods. Damarion gleamed in his armor, blade across his back. Thessala hovered beside him, her porcelain mask polished to a blinding sheen, every crack lit from within like fault lines about to split. Calix stood atop nothing at all, his crown of serpents writhing.

  “You stand on hallowed ground,” Thessala said.

  Calix smiled. “Try not to bleed too early. It ruins the floor.”

  John didn’t answer.

  He drew both katanas. Held them steady.

  Then he turned and tossed one—clean and fast.

  Roland caught it by the hilt.

  It felt heavy. Real.

  John nodded once. “Earn it.”

  Across the arena, the gods moved as one. Damarion’s hand dropped to his blade. Thessala’s mask tilted, as if listening to a prophecy. Calix extended a single finger toward the sky—and the ground answered.

  The earth trembled, and from the deepest center of the coliseum, something began to rise.

  A bell.

  Vast, black, unchained. Unearthed from the marrow of the realm. It rose until it hovered high above the arena, suspended by no visible means. Its surface was etched in names none of them could read.

  It rang once.

  And the rite began.

  The bell’s toll didn’t echo.

  It just stayed. A low, constant pressure that pressed against skin and bone, vibrating in the teeth, the ribs, the backs of their eyes.

  John rolled his shoulders and turned his blade in a slow arc, letting the edge catch the light. One left. One gone. Beside him, Roland shifted his stance, the borrowed katana gripped tight in both hands. He didn’t speak—but his eyes never left the gods.

  Rai spun her war fan once, drawing a whisper of wind that pushed the ash back from their feet. Her mouth was set in a flat line. No fury. Just purpose.

  Dorian planted his boots and raised his axe. “We’re really doing this.”

  “No turning back now,” Helen said, adjusting her grip. “Good.”

  Across the arena, the Triarchs moved apart.

  Damarion walked, each step punching cracks in the glowing stone. His blade left a smear of light as he drew it—broad, jagged, and cruel.

  Thessala floated to the right, the air distorting around her. Symbols flared at the edges of her robe—scripts of fate, some half-burned.

  Calix remained still at first. Then he tilted his head and the arena around him changed. Walls shifted. Reflections bloomed where none had been. The floor twisted underfoot, then flattened again, as if the ground was deciding what to be.

  Helen’s eyes narrowed. “They’re not wasting time.”

  “No,” John said. “They’re testing us.”

  RW’s voice came sharp from behind. “Not testing. Tasting.”

  Then the Triarchs struck.

  Damarion charged John with the weight of an earthquake.

  Thessala raised her hand, and a mirror of Helen stepped from the light.

  Calix vanished—and Rai vanished with him.

  The battle began.

  John met Damarion’s charge head-on.

  The first clash sent a shockwave down the length of the arena. Sparks carved spiral trails through the ash. John’s blade caught the god’s massive swing—but barely. His arms shuddered from the force.

  Damarion grinned. “You’re slower than I hoped.”

  John didn’t answer. He stepped in, feinted high, and lashed fire across the Butcher’s chest.

  It left a scar. A real one.

  Damarion’s grin widened.

  Elsewhere, Helen circled her double. The mirror version moved in perfect sync, every breath a half-second early—as if it knew her intent before she did.

  “Thessala,” Helen muttered. “This is your trick?”

  The masked Oracle didn’t respond. She simply raised her hand again, and a second reflection of Helen stepped forward from the light.

  Not a copy. A version of her that could’ve been—if she’d let the worst parts win.

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  Blood on her boots. Smoke in her eyes. A version that had killed without hesitation.

  Helen’s breath caught—but she didn’t slow.

  “I already buried you,” she said.

  And charged.

  Near the edge of the shifting wallscape, Roland was fighting not one, but three.

  Not Triarchs.

  Calix’s illusions.

  Keira. Chris. Rachel.

  They looked real. Sounded real.

  “Roland,” Keira whispered. “You left us.”

  He stepped back, shaking his head. “No… I—”

  Chris rushed him. Steel met steel.

  "You stole my blade and got me killed."

  "I'm sorry."

  Rachel struck low. He blocked—barely. The edge of John’s katana caught her across the chest. She flickered. Paused.

  Then attacked again.

  Roland’s heart was hammering. His breath came ragged. “You’re not them.”

  Keira stepped forward, blade raised. Her voice was raw. “Aren’t we?”

  Behind them, Calix laughed.

  “Truth is such a brittle thing,” he said.

  And vanished again.

  Somewhere above, Rai slammed back into reality—thrown from an illusion loop mid-air.

  She landed hard, warfan skidding from her grasp.

  Calix was waiting.

  “So easy to twist the wind,” he murmured, and raised a mirrored blade.

  Rai dove left, snatched her weapon, and spun—cleaving straight through Calix’s form.

  It shattered like glass.

  “Enough mirrors. Try standing still.”

  Behind her, three more waited.

  The battle raged on.

  Dorian found John by the ring of smoke and broken stone.

  Damarion had carved a crater with one strike, John’s blood marked the edges of it. He was still standing, but just barely. His left arm was twisted at the elbow, bent at an angle that no longer belonged to bone.

  Dorian stepped over the wreckage, axe in hand. “Fall back.”

  John wiped blood from his mouth. “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not. Move.”

  Damarion turned, his sword dragging sparks. “Another to meet my blade?”

  Dorian didn’t flinch. "You wish.”

  He met the god in motion, clash for clash, hammering steel into myth. Damarion was faster. Stronger. But Dorian wasn’t trying to win.

  He was buying time.

  Behind him, Helen dragged John out of the blast radius. "You good?”

  John coughed. “Peachy.”

  Dorian landed a heavy blow, axe against collarbone. It made the god stumble.

  But just once.

  Then the blade came down.

  And Dorian caught it.

  Not with steel.

  With both arms crossed and burning, he locked the edge an inch from his face. Blood poured freely. His boots dug into stone.

  “John!” he roared.

  John looked back. Eyes wide. “Dorian…”

  The blade slipped.

  It split him from shoulder to hip.

  But not before his axe hit home, burying deep in Damarion’s thigh.

  Damarion cursed and staggered, nearly falling.

  Dorian hit the ground already dead and then burst into a thousand orange lights that flickered like coals in wind. His smile lingered a moment longer, carried in the glow, before fading too.

  The Butcher bled.

  The tide turned.

  Rai saw Dorian die.

  She didn’t scream.

  She didn’t stop.

  She was already moving, air swirling around her legs, hair snapping like a banner behind her. She sprinted toward the far end of the arena, toward the fracture where reality had torn itself in half around Calix’s domain.

  The silver tongued god stood atop a twisting platform of mirrors, each one showing a different version of her. One smiled. One wept. One bled. One burned.

  Calix opened his arms. “Which one are you, little wind?”

  Rai didn’t answer. She leapt.

  The platform shattered beneath her landing, illusions bending in all directions. Wind screamed around her, not gentle, not graceful. Violent. Directed.

  She slashed through one Calix.

  It burst like vapor.

  Another stepped from a shard of glass behind her. “You can’t kill what isn’t real.”

  She turned and cut that one too.

  Then another. And another.

  The platform swarmed with them.

  But she moved faster.

  “The wind knows,” she said, voice sharp now, wind screaming with her. “It tears through.”

  Calix’s laughter echoed from every corner.

  Then one of him—maybe the real one—stabbed her.

  Not with steel, but with a lie sharpened to a point. He reached into the mirror nearest him and drew a blade made from her smile, curved and gleaming, and drove it home.

  It slid between her ribs.

  Rai gasped, but didn’t fall.

  She twisted, drove her war fan through him, and the wind caught the edges of the world.

  All of Calix’s illusions screamed.

  The mirrors exploded.

  Light crashed through the arena, tearing illusions from stone, unmaking lies.

  And then Rai fell.

  She hit the ground hard.

  No cry. No words.

  Just a final exhale, and then her body dissolved into a spiraling gust of silver-white wind.

  Gone.

  Above her, Calix stumbled, flickering, eyes wide.

  His illusions were gone.

  And now, so was he.

  Helen watched from behind a collapsed pillar, one hand pressed to the wound on her arm. She had pulled John to safety once, but this time, he didn’t let her. Blood soaked her arm. Her sword lay somewhere she couldn’t reach. All she could do was watch.

  Damarion limped across the broken field, blood darkening the gold trim of his armor. His thigh bled freely, Dorian’s axe having torn deep. But he still stood. Still moved.

  John met him beneath the fractured arch of the coliseum’s inner ring. His one sword remained in his hand. His other arm hung limp at his side. The fingers twitched, but no longer obeyed.

  Damarion struck.

  John ducked the first swing, then brought his blade around in a tight arc, landing a blow against the god’s ribs. It sparked, chipped, still not deep enough.

  Damarion backhanded him with the flat of the blade, sending him skidding across the stone.

  John coughed, rolled, and forced himself upright again. Foxfire bloomed from his blade in a flicker of blue flame.

  The god paused. “That trick again?”

  John said nothing. Just advanced.

  They clashed.

  Steel on steel. Fire against might.

  Damarion pressed forward, relentless. John gave ground, drawing him into a tight corner of the arena—where broken pillars cast long shadows.

  With his off hand, John reached into the air and twisted.

  A seal flared.

  The light took shape under Damarion’s boots.

  Too late.

  The trap ignited.

  Foxfire surged up in a column, engulfing the god.

  Damarion roared—staggered—then burst through the flames, smoke trailing from his chestplate.

  He drove his blade into John’s side.

  John gasped. Dropped to one knee.

  Damarion raised his sword for the final blow.

  But John’s hand was already moving.

  His palm glowed with light—not flame, not ice, but something pure.

  He pressed it to Damarion’s armor and whispered something the god didn’t hear.

  The seal detonated.

  A burst of raw light swallowed them both.

  When the flare faded, only ash remained.

  And in the quiet after, only a single fang katana remained, half-buried in scorched stone, still humming faintly with light.

  Smoke drifted across the arena in curling sheets.

  Helen stood alone now. Her arm was still bleeding. Her sword was still lost. But she didn’t move. Not yet. Not until it was over.

  It took her a moment to realize the tremor had stopped.

  The arena wasn’t collapsing anymore. The pillars had gone still. The blood-soaked stones beneath her boots no longer pulsed with divine pressure.

  RW emerged from the far side, fur streaked with ash, ears pinned. She padded forward slowly, each step deliberate.

  Behind her came Roland.

  He wasn’t unscathed. His lip was split, a line of dried blood trailing from his temple. His eyes were wide and his grip on the empty air where John’s blade had been was still clenched, knuckles white.

  Thessala had come for him after the others fell. No illusions, no prophecy. Just her and a silver dagger, swift and silent. He hadn’t outmatched her. She’d cut him once, nearly took his throat the second time. But he threw himself forward anyway, diving past the blade, enduring the pain, and tackled her into the broken stone. Her mask cracked, the light inside flickering and bleeding out wrong. He drove the katana through it.

  He saw Helen. And for a second, it looked like he might speak. But the words didn’t come.

  So he just nodded.

  His face was streaked with blood, not his, and his hands were shaking. But he was upright.

  He stopped a few feet from Helen, eyes searching hers.

  “They’re gone?”

  She nodded. “All three.”

  RW’s tail flicked. “Not gone. Dead.”

  A long silence passed.

  The wind had gone with Rai. Dorian was ash. John was… light burned into stone.

  “We should move,” RW said at last, her voice lower than usual. “John wouldn’t want us to stay here. To mourn them.”

  Helen finally turned.

  “Where do we go?”

  RW looked toward the broken arches above the coliseum, towards where Realmweaver lay hidden.

  “There.”

  And together, they walked.

  No music. No closing lines.

  Just the weight of what was gone.

  And what came next.

  RW slowed at the edge of the broken arch. Her paws paused over scorched stone. The katana lay half-buried there, still humming faintly with John’s last light.

  She didn’t meow. Didn’t cry.

  Just sat beside it.

  One paw reached forward—not quite touching the blade.

  "You were more than code," she said softly.

  A flick of her tail. Then she turned away, fur bristled against the wind that no longer came.