Tarnished. Fragile. Radiant.
A new roar surged from the crowd. This was not applause. It was worship.
The arena thrummed with one name, then two—pulsing through ash and blood like heartbeat turned ritual.
"Zcain."
"Nimarza."
"Zcain."
"Nimarza."
The chant folded into itself, dissonant and perfect.
The names weren't celebration.
They were proof.
That in this world—power was the only gospel.
And mercy? Just a name screamed too softly to echo.
Zcain moved first—
But it wasn't a charge.
It was a graceful unmaking.
He stepped forward like memory forgot how to hold its shape. His foot barely brushed the sand—and threads bloomed behind him, crimson, rippling, alive.
His body moved like thread itself—twisting, flexing, never still. Each step a pivot, each pivot a feint. He didn't just command the blood—
—he danced with it.
He leapt again—thread curling behind him like a spine with too many limbs. One dragon snapped at air. Missed.
Zcain dropped—thread first. Not to strike.
To dance.
The blood-laced strand dragged him sideways, flipping his body through the beast's blind spot. He didn't slash.
He slipped.
Like a lie made beautiful.
One thread looped around his leg mid-spin, launching him upward with a grace that mocked gravity. He flipped mid-air, threads dragging through the sand like ink on silk.
They hissed as they unraveled from his body—born not from magic, but blood. Each thread was soaked with sin. Not metaphorical sin—specific, devoured, catalogued transgression. They pulsed with lives already eaten, the agony of hundreds thrumming at their edges.
One thread snapped forward like a question with teeth—
—pierced a dragon's chest—
—and ripped out the heart mid-beat.
The heart didn't fall.
It pulsed midair—surrounded by red thread.
Zcain's eyes flickered—reading it.
A glutton's sin. Hundreds dead.
The thread pulled tighter—then fed it to him.
Not for nourishment. For inheritance.
His spine arched, body reshaping midair. A new limb formed—thicker, armored. Greedy.
A weapon not born. Remembered.
The crowd screamed.
Zcain devoured it before it hit the ground.
Somewhere in the stands, a faceless priest tore out his own tongue and offered it to the sand. A ripple spread—subtle but seismic. The obsidian floor pulsed once. Zcain's threads twitched—faster, sharper. Hungrier. As if the arena itself had granted him another sin to wield.
The dragon staggered, half-roaring, already dead. His threads reconfigured. Sinew lengthened. Horns coiled from his shoulder.
One eye shimmered molten gold.
He was becoming. Not god—
—Heir of Ruin.
And yet... not all his threads gleamed red.
One, darker—vein-black—twitched near his hip but did not strike.
It pulsed with a different rhythm.
Not rage.
Not hunger.
Just... memory.
As if it was waiting to be remembered.
Beside him, Nimarza spun—
Her form fluid, artful, merciless.
She hurled vials mid-motion, each breaking across the dragons' flanks. One splashed blue and froze a wing in air. Another hissed green and turned scale to glass. A third shimmered gold—and the dragon's left eye wept fire.
She didn't slow. She flowed. Her movements were as deliberate as Zcain's were instinctive. When she spun beneath one lunging beast, her black-leather form caught flame briefly—but the mask never cracked.
Nimarza dropped low as a dragon's tail swept above her, uncorked a vial with her teeth, and flung it into the beast's open mouth. Smoke burst from its jaw. The dragon staggered—and she was already beneath it, sliding a needle between two ribs. It collapsed like a puppet that remembered it had no soul.
Then—
She threw the needles.
Each one landed perfectly.
Three dragons staggered. Then collapsed.
But one didn't fall.
She exhaled through her teeth.
Then—clink.
Two obsidian fans unfolded in her hands, their edges serrated, the curve etched with silver runes.
They weren't for wind.
They were for war.
She moved like breath sharpened into blade.
One fan swept wide—scale parted like silk beneath its edge.
The dragon shrieked, spinning mid-air, disoriented.
The second fan sliced lower—dispersing a fine gold mist.
Where it touched scale, memory buckled.
The dragon lurched, wings stuttering—its body forgetting how to fly.
Nimarza turned on one heel, letting the blood arc away from her.
One dragon's eye locked onto hers.
For a flicker—barely the length of breath—something passed between them.
Not mercy.
Not pity.
Just... memory.
In its eyes, she saw herself reflected. Not as she was now—but as a child. Small. Silent. Held in someone's arms she couldn't name. A lullaby hummed beneath blood and bone.
She flinched—just once.
Then the fan twitched.
She spun it faster. Sharper.
Memory wasn't armor.
It was a blade.
She wielded it well.
Her fans snapped shut—punctuating the end of a memory.
Behind her, the dragon crashed into the sand. Not dead—just... unwilling.
One dragon roared and spun—not at Zcain, but at Nimarza. It dropped low, tail whipping across the arena with brutal grace. The strike caught her mid-motion. Her body slammed into a bone spire, bounced, then struck another.
Glass shattered—one of her vials. Vapor curled across her chest, burning luminous trails down her leather skin.
She didn't scream. She laughed.
The sound was sharp and breathless—like delight wearing teeth.
One fan shimmered in her hand—its silver edge catching not flame, but memory.
Along the folds, ancient runes glowed faintly—etched in a language most gods had forgotten.
A single name pulsed between the blades. Not hers.
Someone she couldn't save.
She hadn't spoken that name in centuries. But the fan hadn't forgotten.
She tilted it once—barely.
The wind shifted. The air hesitated.
Then the fan snapped open with a shriek, as if the weapon itself demanded obedience.
And the dragon obeyed—like the air remembered who she used to be.
One fan snapped open in her left hand—delicate as lace, deadly as a guillotine.
She spun it once, sliced through a dragon's tendon mid-step. The beast staggered.
Her mask tilted.
"Sit," she whispered.
And the dragon did—its legs no longer its own.
Her head tilted. The mask caught the light.
"Wrong move," she whispered.
Qaritas felt his heart clench.
It wasn't a fight.
It was a duet.
A cruel, sacred dance.
Pain as rhythm. Death as choreography.
Zcain's threads surged again—not like weapons, but limbs. They carved letters in the air as they slashed, each stroke a sigil.
The threads bent backward mid-strike—forming a halberd of sin. Not forged. Revealed. It pulsed with the pain of the one who once wielded it—a warlord guilty of genocide. Zcain had devoured him centuries ago.
With each kill, a ripple surged down the threads—like hunger drinking history.
The halberd shimmered—not just in blood, but meaning.
A new engraving surfaced along its edge: a name. Forgotten by all but the blade.
Sin was his armory.
Each heart consumed wasn't just fuel. It was a story rewritten into violence.
Each weapon formed by sin matched a different archetype: Lust's daggers. Wrath's flail. Envy's mirror-sword. Gluttony's maw.
And this halberd? War.
He spun it once.
Split a dragon in half from jaw to spine.
Its blood soaked the crowd in memories.
Then he spoke.
His voice struck the arena like a verdict—not shouted, but felt.
A dragon mid-charge froze, limbs locking mid-air, its will folding inward like parchment soaked in blood.
It landed sideways, not from pain, but from submission.
Before the halberd hit the sand, it shattered mid-air—
—not from wear, but will.
The fragments reformed instantly, threads writhing until they shaped a whip edged in jagged mirrors: the Mirror of Envy.
The halberd shattered mid-air—reforming into a whip of mirrors.
Its lash didn't draw blood. It drew memory.
The charging dragon stopped cold—face-to-face with the hatchlings it had once let die.
The second lash came. Not pain. Guilt.
It screamed—not from injury, but recognition.
Its wing tore free of its body as if trying to fly backward into a time it could no longer fix.
It crashed, not slain—but shamed into defeat.
Zcain turned slightly—just slightly—toward the platform where Ayla stood.
The threads flared like a cape behind him, twitching as if recognizing her scent.
"You tried to make us kind," he said aloud—
not screaming, not snarling. Just speaking into the arena, into the past.
"But mercy doesn't survive in hell."
Then, colder:
"Ecayrous taught us truth. And I learned it so well, Mother."
He pointed the halberd toward her without looking.
"Now I teach it back to the stars."
Qaritas reeled.
This wasn't just one of her sons.
This was the culmination of every failed rebellion.
The broken hope remade into gospel by ruin.
Zcain leapt—
Not over. Not aside.
Straight into the dragon's open mouth.
The crowd screamed—
But too late.
The crowd gasped.
Threads lashed out of the dragon's eyes, ears, nostrils—piercing it from the inside out.
It fell mid-scream.
Zcain landed atop its skull, steam rising from his shoulders, fangs now visible.
He looked almost bored.
But his shoulders were broader now. His eyes... less human.
The dragons regrouped—fifty still wheeling in the skies, jaws wide with fire, wings tearing wind into jagged currents. The crowd roared louder. The colosseum trembled.
But Zcain—
But near his hip, the black thread stirred.
Not like the others. Not hungry.
It twitched once—then stilled.
As if memory had almost remembered itself—then changed its mind.
It didn't rise.
It hovered.
Then—stilled.
Like a child watching war from under a bed.
Zcain didn't notice. Or chose not to.
The red threads flared.
He exhaled.
A single thread—vein-black and rimmed in starlight—rose above his head.
Then split.
Once.
Twice.
Fifty times.
Each strand curled outward like a celestial bloom of violence, spiraling high above him, casting shadow petals against the ash sky.
They hovered—then snapped.
The sky split into lines.
Fifty dragons fell.
Not roaring.
Not resisting.
Just… falling.
Each one diced into hundreds of perfect, bleeding pieces. Their limbs, heads, and wings hit the ground in silence. No crash. Just surrender.
Qaritas felt the curse inside him twitch—sharp, restless. Not from fear. From envy.
It pulsed along his spine like it wanted to answer Zcain's bloom with one of its own..
Qaritas's pulse stuttered.
The curse coiled beneath his ribs, whispering:
Let me show them. Let me make the sky bleed.
It would be easy—one blink, and the arena would scream his name.
But he stayed still.
Not from fear.
From refusal.
He felt the heat unfurl beneath his ribs—his curse rising like breath caught too long, like applause begging to be earned. His fingertips tingled, aching for release. It wouldn't be hard. One thought, and flame would sing. One blink, and the arena would remember his name too.
"Let me show them," the curse whispered again.
But this time, he didn't flinch.
He could feel how easy it would be to rise. To burn. To take. To steal a god's silence and make it thunder with his own name.
And that was exactly why he stayed still.
Not from fear.
From refusal.
He wasn't here to audition for worship.
He wasn't here to rewrite his grief in blood just because the world asked him to.
He clenched his fists. Let the heat build—but didn't let it bloom. The curse shivered in protest. Then quieted.
Not submission.
Choice.
"Not yet," he thought. "I won't let you turn this into spectacle."
"Let me decide when I burn."
He clenched his jaw until the ache buried the urge.
He wasn't here to become something.
But gods, part of him wanted to be seen.
And from the sky—
Rain.
The dragons fell like confession—sliced clean, blood spraying in ribbons from the heavens.
Their hearts hit the arena like drums.
And still it wasn't over.
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