A few days had passed since the incident, but no one dared speak of it. It had become, without any rule ever being spoken aloud, a subject everyone avoided. No one, however, had ever seen the bandaged young gladiator again.
We must be close to a hundred in numbers, I think, and yet, within a few days, no one will even remember him.
Atlas felt no real sadness over it, even though he'd crossed paths with the boy almost daily these past weeks. It wasn't a lack of feeling. It was simply that he could no longer manage it. Some of his emotions had thinned out since his awakening, as if drawn elsewhere, redistributed among versions of himself he didn't fully control.
It must be tied to those colors. To that split in my mind.
He'd long believed Hercles, better than anyone, could help him understand the mechanism. But on that particular point, the man had never had much to offer beyond what Atlas already knew.
That leaves the figures. A shiver ran through him at the mere thought. Even Hercles, apparently, felt something strange looking at them.
He remembered Hercles' face that day, closed in a way Atlas had never seen on him before. For the first time, he'd seen doubt in that man. It didn't suit him. He knew something. He flatly refused to talk about it.
What are those things? I don't even know if they're human. Not that I know what human even means anymore, at this point.
But It was mealtime, and Atlas was hungry. No more time to dwell on the past.
The gladiators ate in silence, the mood still heavy but thinning a little more each day, proof that even the collective memory of a man seen vanishing eventually gives way to the simple exhaustion of going on living.
The toothless old man sitting across from Atlas methodically scraped the bottom of his bowl, not lifting his eyes, not a single word for the missing gladiator. There was no shame in it, no calculated cruelty. Just a man eating, because it was time to eat, and because tomorrow would still come.
Atlas hesitated, then, tired of holding the thought in, said it outright. "The gladiator. The one they took. No one talks about him anymore, even though he was your friend, wasn't he?"
The old man froze, spoon halfway to his mouth. He set it down slowly in the bowl, as if the question deserved, against all odds, to have the meal interrupted for it.
"My friend." He repeated the word with dry, almost amused contempt. "How many days you got behind you, kid?"
"About thirty."
"Thirty." The old man let out a short, joyless laugh that bared the gap in his teeth. "I've been collecting friends for ten years now. Ten years. I don't even know how I made it this far. If I started mourning every one of them, I wouldn't have room left in my skull to remember how to hold a blade."
"So it doesn't do anything to you, then."
"Didn't say that." The old man's tone hardened, just enough for Atlas to understand he'd hit something, even if clumsily. "I said it doesn't change anything. He's gone. I'm still here, eating this garbage. How long you want me to cry over it before you let me finish my meal in peace?"
No one else at the table looked up. Someone further down kept chewing without even slowing.
The old man picked up his spoon, and before dipping it back into the bowl, added, lower, almost to himself: "We're all still here, the rest of us. That's already a lot, in this place."
He's probably not wrong, Atlas thought, watching the rest of the table go back to eating as if nothing had just been said. But that's not an answer. That's a shell.
Burn-Face burst into the room without warning, cutting off whatever conversations still lingered.
"Alright, dogs." He swept the room with his eyes, the torchlight playing shadows across his scarred face. "The country of Tra is holding the investiture of its Seal. A big event. Some of you, my dogs, are going to entertain them. Understood?"
Silence filled the hall.
One gladiator, bolder than the rest, half-raised his hand. "It's not an arena fight?"
"No." Burn-Face answered almost too fast, almost distracted, his mind clearly elsewhere. "The next official match isn't for another third of a cycle."
Strange, Atlas noted. Since when is he this accommodating?
Another dared the next question, more directly. "Will it be to the death?"
Burn-Face's patience visibly snapped, clearly unused to having to provide this kind of answer himself. "I don't know. No more questions."
Why isn't Isaac the one announcing this? He's the one who's supposed to handle this kind of event, normally. Atlas studied the man's scarred, half-bare skull a moment longer, searching his body language for some detail that might explain the unease. He found nothing conclusive. Something's off. But that'll have to wait.
The meal ended without further incident.
Later, in the shared washing area, another privilege earned by survivors of their first arena match, Atlas found himself alone for a moment, facing his own reflection in a puddle of water he'd used to wash.
He stopped, caught off guard by the image staring back.
His chest had hardened, his shoulders had broadened, though nowhere near the massive build of a man like Hercles. Something between the teenager he'd once been and the man this place seemed determined to force him into. He rolled his right shoulder, watching the movement with something close to delight.
A smile slipped out, brief, almost shy.
He didn't get to enjoy it long. Burn-Face cut him off as he left the room, his footsteps heavier than usual.
"You" He jerked his chin at Atlas, not breaking stride, forcing Atlas to match his pace. "Isaac's sending you to Tra. For the Crahar."
"The Crahar?"
Burn-Face stopped dead, looking at him as if the question itself were an insult. "The arena, The one you eat in, sleep in, get beaten in every day." He spat on the ground. "The Rohar isn't a building, it's the whole system. Every arena on the continent that answers to it. Yours is called the Crahar. Now you know. Happy?"
"And Tra, what's that?" Atlas genuinely had no idea.
"Some backwater that thinks it matters because it just got a new Seal." He resumed walking, faster, as if the conversation already weighed on him. "The new one wants a celebration. A celebration means fighters to show off. You're one of them."
"Why me?" Atlas had never seen Burn-Face this talkative, almost on edge. The more the man spoke, in fact, the less Atlas understood.
"Because Isaac decided it, and it's not my place to question his choices, or yours." He spun around abruptly, close enough to Atlas's face that he caught the man's breath. "You happy they're sending you there instead of into the real arena? Then shut up."
He turned on his heel and walked off without another word, his steps still heavy, leaving Atlas alone in the corridor.
Atlas stood there a moment, thoughts churning. Isaac gone for days, and Burn-Face on edge, running the day-to-day now. I know their routines by now. And this one doesn't match any of them.
To his genuine surprise, he found Hercles not far from his own cell, sitting on the ground, back against the wall, in a posture nothing like the commanding presence he usually carried in the training hall.
"You too," he said, seeing Atlas approach.
"Me too what?"
"Tra. Isaac's sending you there. With me."
Atlas stopped, brow furrowing. "How do you already know that? I just found out myself."
Hercles shrugged, almost amused by the question. "I just asked."
"You... asked? Asked who?"
"Yeah." He scratched the back of his neck, as if the explanation genuinely struck him as unremarkable. "Saw Burn-Face heading for the cells with that face he gets when he has to announce something he doesn't like. Asked him who was going. He told me."
Atlas stared at him a moment, almost disbelieving at the sheer simplicity of the method. All this time spent piecing things together through deduction, and he just asks.
"You know who else is coming?" Hercles went on, his tone shifting, dropping lower, almost confidential.
"Who?"
"One of the three." Hercles let the silence sit a beat too long before continuing. "The ones who came back from the South."
Something flared back to life in Atlas, almost against his will. He saw again those three figures moving in lockstep through the hall, unable to get out a single word no matter what questions were thrown at them, and that question that had never stopped turning since.
"Which one?" His own voice came out more tense than he'd meant it to.
"No idea. But if he comes," Hercles said, his gaze fixed straight ahead, "maybe we'll finally get a chance to know what really happened down there."
"Maybe."
Atlas stayed quiet for a moment, watching Hercles still sitting there, back against the wall, as if he had nowhere else in the world to be.
"You planning on staying here all night?"