The ceiling was wrong.
Sumit stared at it for a long moment. There were no cracks or stains, only smooth white stone carved with a pattern of feathers that curled toward the center. The bed under him was so soft he felt like he was sinking. Nothing about this room belonged to a medical ward, and it was nothing like the arena.
Where am I?
He turned his head slowly. Sunlight came through a tall window and lay across the floor. In a chair beside the bed, arms crossed and chin dropped to his chest, sat Jack, snoring softly.
Sumit's throat tightened. He held still for a few seconds just to look at him. Then, carefully, he pushed the blanket aside and started to slide his legs off the bed. If he was quiet, he could get up without waking him...
"You're awake, kid."
Sumit froze. Jack hadn't moved, and his eyes were still closed. Then one eye cracked open, and a lazy grin spread across his face.
"Did you really think you could sneak past a captain of the guard? Even a sleeping one?"
"You were snoring."
"Tactical snoring." Jack straightened up with a groan and rubbed the back of his neck. "Sit down before you fall over. You've been out for two days."
Sumit sat. "Where are we?"
"The castle." Jack waved a hand around the room. "The king's own castle, if you can believe it. He gave the order himself: the kid who held the tree gets treated like a royal guest. The cooks have been sending food every few hours. Servants keep coming in to ask if you need anything. One of them cried when I told her you were still sleeping." He scratched his ear. "I think she was just tired."
"The tree..." Sumit's hands curled into the blanket. "Kabir. Did the King..."
"It's over." Jack said it simply, and the word settled in the room. "The King killed him. The whole arena felt it, and the shockwave gave back every drop of aura that tree had taken. We all woke up, one after another, like waking from a bad dream. The monsters turned to ash, and the wood too."
Sumit let out a breath he felt he'd been holding since the tunnel. "And the cult?"
Jack's smile thinned. "The King and the elders dragged every one of them out of the Temple that same day. The priests, the traitor champions, the guards who'd been bought. Nobody was left to run." He didn't say more, and Sumit didn't ask.
"Chief Dhruv?" Sumit asked quietly.
"Him too."
"And Leo? Ishita? Musak?"
"Leo's back on his feet and complaining about the paperwork. Ishita..." Jack's eyes softened. "She sat in that chair for a full day before I made her go and rest. Said she wasn't leaving until you woke up. And the rat-man, Musak, the King pardoned him and gave him a purse for the information. I'm told he's already bargaining for a bigger one."
Sumit laughed, and it hurt a little. Then it faded. "Jack... the people who were turned to stone. Are they all right?"
Jack was silent a moment. "They're alive. But the tree took something that didn't all come back. Everyone who was petrified has lost about half their aura. Me, the elders, even the King."
Sumit's stomach dropped. "Half? Jack, you were a captain. You were..."
"Hey." Jack's hand landed on his head and ruffled his hair, rough and warm. "Don't worry about me, kid. It's easier to walk a path you've already walked."
Sumit looked up. There was no weariness in that face and no bitterness. It was the same wolf-man who joked at the worst moments and refused to let anyone carry a burden alone. The same Jack as before, down to the grin.
Sumit smiled too, wide and a little wet around the eyes. "...Okay."
"Good. Now eat something. You look like a scarecrow."
Three days later, the great hall of the castle.
The hall was packed with people from the capital, nobles and soldiers and the elders in a line to the right of the throne. Sumit stood in the center of the carpet in clothes that weren't his, with Jack and Ishita just behind him. A hundred eyes were on him. He wanted the floor to open.
The King of Taou rose from his seat.
"This kid," the King said, and his voice reached every corner, "went into the tunnel when he had nothing to protect him but his own stubbornness. He held the tree when it would have swallowed him whole. He gave me the strength I needed to finish what I should have finished far sooner. Without him, none of you would be standing here."
A murmur went through the hall. Sumit stared at his shoes.
"For that, ten thousand gold." Servants carried in a chest, and the lid opened on a shining heap. Gasps rippled through the crowd. Sumit forgot how to breathe.
"And one thing more." The King raised a hand. "The royal technique. King's Order."
The hall erupted. An elder stepped forward, a stern man with a white beard. "Your Majesty, that technique has never left the royal line..."
"I know what it is, Shashi." The King did not turn his head. "I am the one who is giving it."
"A boy from another..." The old man stopped himself. "He is not of this land, and he is not ready."
"He is not," the King agreed. "He will be."
Silence. Shashi bowed, jaw tight, and stepped back.
The King descended from the dais and held out his palm. A ball of aura formed there, small and glowing, with something deep and alive turning inside it. "This is what I know," he said, quietly now, for Sumit alone. "You won't understand it today. Maybe not this year. But it will come to you slowly, and when it does, use it well."
He pressed the light to Sumit's forehead.
It felt like warm water poured into his skull. Something vast and quiet unfolded behind his eyes, and in a blink it was gone, leaving a faint hum like a distant bell. Sumit staggered. Ishita's hand caught his sleeve.
"There," the King said gently. Then he reached into his robe, and the hall fell silent again.
He held out a gem wrapped in rough, cracked stone, dull and cold. Sumit knew it at once. It had sat at the heart of the black tree.
"It's dead," the King said. "Silent. I have held it for days and felt nothing. But it carried the same power you used when you took Kabir's aura and gave it to me, and if it ever wakes again, you are the only one who can control it. Keep it safe."
Sumit's fingers closed around the stone. It was cold.
The moment it touched his palm, it dissolved into light and slid into the watch on his wrist.
"The fragment has been found," the watch said, and the voice rang across the silent hall. "The user is now registered in the tournament. The user will be moved to the next stage."
"Wait," Sumit whispered. "I didn't..."
His hands were turning transparent. He looked up and found Jack staring at him, ears flat, for once with nothing to say. Ishita's eyes were wide and bright. Behind her the King stood very still, one hand lifted.
The light swallowed him.
When it cleared, the carpet was empty, and every person in the hall stood looking at the place where he had been.