He looks.
One second.
Two.
Then he’s gone.
No shirt. No weapons. Just raw fury, legs already pounding toward the arena floor like a war god reborn.
Varn thinks this is a game?
He’s about to learn what happens when you threaten a gladiator’s pack.
You don’t get a warning.
You get wiped off the map.
There’sa moment—one sliver of silence—when the entire arena is holding its breath.
It’s just after the lights dim but before the announcers speak. Just after the crowd quiets down but before the drumsof spectacle begin their first thunder. It’s the inhale before the storm. And in that breath, that still, fragile heartbeat—I feel it.
Power.
I’m sitting in the arena’s old broadcast room. It smells like ozone and fried wires and too many years of recycled sweat. The chair creaks under me every time I shift. I’ve tapped into systems I wasn’t meant to touch—hooked neural bypasses and ghost-fed override keys through hacked vendor nodes just to hijack a feed that usually runs on death.
Today, though, it’ll run on truth.
The Solstice Clash is supposed to be the biggest bloodbath of the season. Full crowd. High stakes. Prime-time broadcast to every star sector aligned with the Combine. Fifty million viewers minimum.
Valtron’s in the ring.
I’ve got ten seconds until his mark.
Ripley is safe. Hidden deep in a bunker Kaelor secured, behind enough coded doors and armed guards to make a prison warden blush.
My hand hovers over the trigger line.
Valtron’s voice crackles in my earpiece. “Ready?”
“Always.”
He breathes out slow. “See you on the other side, Hart.”
The crowd screams as the lights blaze white.
And then Valtron walks out.
No fanfare. No music.
Just him.
No helmet. No weapon. No theatrics.
Just a man stepping into the center of a coliseum with the ghosts of a hundred murdered fighters in his eyes.
I hit the feed.
The crowd goes still. It’s subtle at first—confusion threading through the stands. Whispers ripple, the way lightning crawls under skin before it cracks the sky.
