Dawn hadn't even finished breaking when the stands of the Tra arena were already filling up.
It was the official day of the ceremony, the day Renn would receive the title of Sceau, and every Sceau had full latitude over how they chose to present themselves to the world. This one had chosen blood and violence as the showcase for his rise. The Arena.
Atlas heard the crowd before he saw it, a dull hum rising through the red clay walls, thousands of voices layering over each other until they formed a single mass of sound, impatient, almost starving. A sensation he'd already known once, over a month ago now, though all of it suddenly felt unreal, time having slipped by far faster than he would have thought possible.
He'd stayed awake most of the night. Not out of fear, he wasn't even sure anymore what that word really meant, but out of that same clinical curiosity that never quite left him, trying to feel, under his skin, whether the presence curled between his chest and the back of his neck had anything to say about what was coming.
It said nothing. As always, it seemed more occupied with watching him, testing him, than answering his questions. But he'd felt, that morning, strangely calm.
"It's always the same," Hercles said, from across the cell, cinching the leather straps they'd been given around his forearms with the same quiet care he brought to everything. "People's nature doesn't change, from one region to another, one country to another, one continent to another. That noise. You think you get used to it. You never really do." He gave a smile that was already no longer quite his own. "Me, it excites me. My blood boils, just thinking about the glory of it."
Atlas had noticed, without ever daring to say it out loud, that Hercles shifted slightly as each fight approached, drifting toward someone else, prouder, more arrogant. More powerful, too.
Dran said nothing. He'd stayed sitting in his corner, knees against his chest, eyes closed, lips barely moving, as if repeating something only he could hear.
Atlas watched him a moment, without much visible pity.
He's replaying it, over and over, what happened with the Primitives. It would almost make me curious, if I bothered.
Dran wasn't fighting that morning. Tête Brûlée had been clear about that, one fight a day, and Atlas had drawn the first slot. For an event of this scale, the champion, Hercles, didn't need to impress anyone. It was a typically Rohar ritual, saving the best for last.
The guard who came to get them didn't bother with words.
"You. Your turn."
Atlas didn't resist. The guard chained his hands, an almost pointless gesture against a man armed to the teeth, but Atlas didn't bother pointing that out.
The feeling isn't the same as the first time. It's like the guilt is gone, a weight lifted off my chest. I can feel it.
I can feel the urge to prove myself. To show I'm the strongest.
His eyes, without his noticing, took on an intense shade of blue.
"Kill," he said, without having quite decided to say it.
"What?" The guard turned around.
Atlas snapped back all at once, his mind foggy for a beat too long.
"Nothing," he answered curtly, so as not to raise any more suspicion.
What was that? Like my mind drifted without my consent.
"Tch," the guard muttered, annoyed, and they kept walking.
The corridor leading to the arena was longer than Atlas would have guessed, cut straight into the red clay, its rough walls scratched by generations of hands that must have clung to them for the same reason he wanted to now, to convince themselves to walk forward instead of back. The light at the end wasn't sunlight, but something more diffuse, filtered through a haze of dust thousands of feet had already kicked up before the first fight had even begun.
Then he stepped out, and the noise hit him full force.
The sky stayed gray, as always.
The arena of Tra had nothing of the Crahar's mineral dryness. The stands rose in concentric circles, packed to bursting, a mass of faces Atlas couldn't make out individually but could feel, almost physically, turned toward him like a single starving organism. Red banners hung above the front rows, the same colors decorating the whole city, as if even violence, here, deserved its own festival decorations.
He searched the stands reserved for waiting gladiators for Hercles, and found him almost at once, motionless, arms crossed, his face as hard to read as ever.
Then he looked to the other side of the arena, and saw her.
Ilena already stood at the center of the sand circle, her tattooed forearms bare under the dusty light, a short blade in each hand. She didn't look nervous, clearly a woman used to fighting. She had, instead, the look of someone who'd been waiting for exactly this moment for a while now, without knowing who it would come from, and who felt, now, a certain satisfaction at finally knowing the name.
"Well, well. A Rohar dog," she said, a smile with no warmth in it curling her lips. "I was hoping for a little better, for my first real fight of the week. But I'll take what I'm given."
"You said we'd cross paths again," Atlas answered, surprised by how calm his own voice sounded. "Goes to show no one escapes their fate."
"Didn't think it'd be this soon. Ha. Too bad for you." She spun one of the blades in her hand, an almost absent gesture. "Does it bother you? Fighting someone with a name, this time?"
It was at that exact moment that enormous trumpets sounded, announcing something no one in the arena seemed to be expecting so soon. Silence dropped all at once. Even Ilena and Atlas turned their heads in the same direction, toward the north end of the arena, where a golden tribune stood out against the red clay, a tribune Atlas hadn't even noticed until now.
When the trumpets fell silent, a man bellowed from above. "PEOPLE OF TRA, PEOPLE OF ODYSSEY, PLEASE WELCOME YOUR HUMBLE NEW SCEAU, RENN!"
A short man appeared, slightly stocky, black haired, too far away for Atlas to make out more, but carrying with him a kind of charisma that no distance seemed able to dull.
Not a sound in the arena. No one reacted, as if something in that lack of reaction held everyone back. Then, finally, one person, alone, began clapping, hesitant. Little by little, the crowd shook off its stupor, the applause growing stronger, until everyone joined in, Ilena included. But Atlas could see it, that unease on certain faces, particularly on Ilena's, something that had nothing to do with the joy she should have felt fighting for her own Sceau. Something deeper. An obligation.
No one stopped clapping. It became almost laughable, as if no one dared be the first to quit. It went on for a good five minutes, until the Sceau himself finally deigned to raise a hand, visibly satisfied.
The instant his hand fell, everyone stopped dead, almost simultaneously, some holding their breath so as not to make a sound.
Interesting. Why are they all this afraid? Is that what a Sceau is? Atlas thought.
"People of Tra, I thank you." Renn's voice carried with unsettling ease. "I, Renn, will receive the title of Sceau in three days. To celebrate it with my people, I listened to you. We all love the arena. And because I cherish my people, and what they cherish, I personally asked an old friend to provide me with real gladiators. Seasoned. Powerful. From the Rohar itself. The kind legends are made of."
He paused, letting the crowd take in what he'd just said.
Murmurs ran through the stands. Everyone knew the legends of the Rohar, but access to its fighters cost a fortune few regions could actually afford.
Every eye turned at once toward Atlas, and the crowd started shouting again, in unison this time. "Rohar! Rohar!"
What. What is this nonsense, why did he have to say that? I'm not even a real fighter!
Atlas suddenly felt crushed under the weight of all those stares. Ilena, beside him, looked almost relieved to see the attention slide away from her, a weight lifted off her own shoulders.
Renn raised his hand again, and silence fell at once. "Good. To celebrate my ascension, I have arranged three days of combat in the arena of Tra, where the best gladiators in the region will face off. Then, the whole country will celebrate. We are headed toward immense glory, my brothers of Tra. And let blood, like the founding color of our crest, flow!"
This time the crowd roared for real, truly galvanized. Renn sat back down, and another man took his place above the stands.
"Well then. Hope you can handle the pressure, kid. I won't go easy on you, dog," he called out, a mean laugh in his voice.
A man, somewhere above the stands, raised an arm, and the crowd's roar collapsed into a silence so sudden Atlas felt it drop onto him almost physically, like a weight.
The arm fell.
Ilena didn't waste a second. She crossed the distance between them at a speed Atlas hadn't expected from someone her build, both blades tracing a low arc, aimed at his legs rather than his torso, the kind of attack you don't think to dodge until it's already too late.
Atlas dodged it anyway.
He felt his own body respond before his mind had finished processing the movement, that same kind of fluidity he'd discovered sparring with Hercles, that almost instinctive reading of a score his muscles knew better than he did. He stepped back, let both blades pass a breath from his skin, and answered with a straight punch Ilena barely managed to block with her forearm, a grunt of surprise escaping her despite herself.
"You've changed," she said, stepping back in turn, her eyes narrowed, her smile a little less certain than a moment before. "Since the other day."
"I've changed. Or maybe just what I'm showing you has changed," Atlas answered, and found nothing else to add that wouldn't sound like an admission he wasn't ready to make out loud yet.
The fight picked back up, faster now, Ilena's two blades tracing angles Atlas had to guess a fraction of a second before they closed, every dodge costing him an effort he hadn't needed to spend since his last session with Hercles. Ilena was good. Truly good, the kind of skill you only build by genuinely choosing to fight, over and over, rather than being forced into it.
She feinted toward his left flank, then reversed the blade at the last instant, aiming for his hip instead of the ribs he'd instinctively guarded. The point caught his skin, a thin, burning line that pulled a sharp breath out of him more than a cry. The crowd roared louder still, as if the blood itself had its own sound, something thousands of throats recognized before they'd even seen it fall.
Atlas answered with a combination he'd never had the chance to test, a backhand followed by an elbow strike that Ilena only half blocked, staggering back two steps under the impact, her own breath growing shorter. She pressed a hand to her jaw, closed her fingers around it, and looked at him with something that resembled, for the first time since the fight had started, genuine concern.
"Good. Let's test that," she said, and she doubled her effort, as if she no longer intended to leave Atlas any room to exist at all.
The crowd roared at every exchange, a wall of noise rising and falling with the rhythm of the blows, and Atlas felt, somewhere beneath the cold focus carrying each of his movements, that same hunger Selene had once described to Emma without either of them ever knowing it, that collective craving to watch someone bleed for real.
He didn't want to kill her, not really, but somewhere underneath, he already knew he probably wouldn't have a choice.
The thought settled into him with an almost unsettling clarity, right in the middle of an exchange, just after he'd knocked aside a blade that should have opened his throat. It wasn't pity, exactly. It was closer to a refusal, the same kind of pure refusal that had made the rust give way, the same will that had once walled an entire terror behind a wall of ice. He simply refused to let this woman die here, today, for the entertainment of a crowd that would never know her name.
He changed tactics.
Instead of continuing to dodge and counter, he began closing the distance, deliberately taking hits he could have avoided, letting a blade cut into his forearm rather than stepping back, until he was close enough that Ilena's blades lost all their advantage. She realized what he was doing a second too late. He seized her wrist, twisted sharply enough to tear the first blade from her fingers, then repeated the move on the other side before she'd had time to react to the first loss.
They ended up forehead to forehead, her disarmed, her breath short against his cheek, and for one fraction of a second, no one in all that noise knew what would happen next.
"Do it," Ilena breathed, neither pleading nor resigned, just stating a fact. "They want a body. Give them one."
"No," Atlas said.
He let her go, stepped back, and raised both hands, empty, toward the crowd.
The silence that followed lasted longer than the one before the fight had.
Then something cold and hard tore through his back.
The pain caught up to him a second later, as if his own body had needed a moment to remember how to hurt. A copper taste flooded his mouth. He looked down at his chest and saw, jutting out of the torn fabric, the rusted tip of a blade he'd never seen coming from anywhere.
He turned his head toward Ilena, searching her face for something that might explain what he'd just understood without having put it into words yet.
What he found there was no apology at all.
Her face was closed, cold, the barest smile at the corner of her lips, the smile of a woman who has just seized her chance and has no intention whatsoever of regretting it.
"I see," Atlas said, his own voice reaching him from very far away.
"You only know how to pity yourself," she said, her voice perfectly even, as if reciting something she had long since taught herself to believe. "You were never made for this world. Go quietly, to the other side."
The words hung in Atlas's mind without ever quite landing.
The other side. Dying. Me.
He couldn't make the three ideas fit together. And yet there was the blade, quite real, buried to the hilt. There was the crowd, roaring like a single drunken organism. There was even Renn, leaning forward on his golden tribune, with an interest no protocol should have allowed him to show.
"No." The word left him before he'd even finished thinking it. "I refuse."
An anger he didn't recognize in himself rose from somewhere deep inside, dull at first, then absolute. His eyes began to burn, azure giving way to that royal blue he'd already seen once, in the snow, facing a mutant that no longer existed. Except this time, the red embers that usually streaked through that shade didn't stay embers. They caught fire.
"Who are you to decide whether I live or die," he said, and his voice already no longer sounded quite like his own.
The air around him began to vibrate, a tension almost audible, like a rope pulled taut to its breaking point.
He had switched.
Ilena stepped back, her hand releasing the hilt of the blade she had so carefully planted just moments before.
"What is that thing," she breathed, her voice shaking on every word. She had expected to see him collapse, drained of blood, dying at her feet like any normal man would have. What she saw instead was advancing on her.
On his tribune, Renn had leaned so far forward that one of his guards had quietly placed a hand on his shoulder to keep him from tipping over the railing. The fight had, until now, barely entertained him. That had just changed entirely.
"What's his name?" he asked the man standing behind him.
"Rohar fighters aren't allowed to carry a name until they're judged powerful enough, my lord," the aide answered, visibly thrown by the question itself.
Renn said nothing right away, his gaze never leaving the scene below.
"Isaac," he finally murmured, a slow smile spreading across his lips. "Looks like you were far more generous with your old friend than you wanted me to believe."
What followed no longer resembled a fight at all.
Atlas surged at her with none of the technique that had carried him this far, every blow raw, unpredictable, formless, with no readable intent beyond the sheer will to keep striking. Ilena tried to fight back, to cut, to retreat, but her blades, when they found their mark, no longer seemed to meet anything but a body that had stopped listening to pain. A gash opened along his arm. He didn't even seem to notice. The blade still lodged in his back slid free of his flesh in an almost absent gesture, and the wound, before Ilena's horrified eyes, closed within seconds, a pale scar already replacing what should have been a mortal injury.
"Fuck. An Awakened." She backed away further, her legs nearly betraying her. "Why does it have to be me. This isn't even supposed to be the same league."
"Please," she screamed, her voice breaking on the last word, drowned almost instantly under the roar of a crowd far too hysterical to hear her. "This isn't fair!"
Every blow Atlas landed now came wrapped in a flash of light, royal blue streaked with red that seemed to literally unmake whatever it touched, breaking something deeper than mere flesh with every impact.
Ilena understood she was going to die, and that this death would look nothing like anything she'd ever imagined for herself.
She'd never had an easy life. Her parents had died while she was still a child, and only the violence of the lower city had provided for her since. She'd become a gladiator because it was the only thing she knew how to do with an existence she'd never really been given the chance to choose. She should have won, today. Kept doing what she'd always done, simply survive whatever was forced on her. She didn't understand. She never got the chance to.
The crowd roared, unable to look away. Atlas had long since dropped the blade, his fists alone now enough to carry that energy no one in the stands could name but everyone could see. Ilena no longer fought back at all. He kept striking long after it had stopped meaning anything, until his own fists, covered in blood, closed on empty air.
He lifted his head to the ash colored sky, and screamed.
It wasn't a cry of victory. It was something vaster, an anger that seemed to search for a direction and never find one, and the entire crowd froze at once, as if that single sound alone had been enough to freeze the blood in their veins.
"MY NAME IS ATLAS." His voice carried to the very last rows without the slightest visible effort. "EXISTENCE WILL KNEEL BEFORE ME."
It took the crowd a moment to understand what they'd just heard. Then, one voice at a time, they began to chant, louder and louder, until the entire arena had become a single repeated word.
"Atlas ! Atlas ! Atlas !"
In the stands reserved for gladiators, Hercles watched the scene, eyes narrowed, arms still crossed.
"So that's your path," he said, quietly enough that only Dran, sitting beside him, could have heard. "We're more alike than I thought."
Dran wasn't looking at anything anymore. His gaze had drifted somewhere past the arena, his lips moving without a sound, still caught in a terror this fight had clearly torn wide open again.