Veric raises Undertow without the gladius, and the whole arena seems to narrow around us.
Memory of Lightwaves opens inside my body like an old tide waking the ghosts of shipwrecks.
Too many experiences cross my muscles at once: hands that held straight swords in hall duels, feet that slid over mud in trenches, shoulders that took the weight of heavy blades on besieged walls. Each memory comes with an answer ready.
And each answer charges OXI.
I move in with Eventide aligned to the center, base low, two dry steps and a guard that recalls old kendo. The first cut drops economical, no excess, forcing Veric to respect the precision of the whole line. Undertow takes the impact, and his arm sinks just enough for me to feel and understand the weight of the defense through my skill.
Before he adjusts, my posture changes.
The body turns sideways, narrow, almost offering only a single line to the shield. Eventide touches outside Undertow with short, pointed strikes, like a fencing blade hunting the seam between plates. Veric gives half a step back. The gladius is still buried in me, but his eyes keep calculating how my next stance will attack.
From the corner of my eye, I see Freya watching from the arena’s edge, hand near her body, not blinking.
She understands combat enough to recognize the absurdity.
A fighter changes rhythm. A master changes intent. What Memory of Lightwaves does is dirtier: it swaps the body’s history with every action and reaction.
[OXI: 2,031 / 2,500]
[Mild Bleeding Active]
The alarm in the HUD gives no rest.
Veric uses Undertow as a feint, opening the side of the shield to force me onto a bad line. The real move comes from the empty hand. He hooks his fingers on the guard of the gladius buried in my abdomen and pulls. I never would have imagined he’d be focused on the gladius.
The pain climbs so hard my golden vision flickers at the edges.
The metal comes free with a low, heavy sound, and the blood runs hot again under the armor. My foot slips a few inches. Veric is already behind Undertow once more, the gladius recovered and hidden against his torso.
[OXI: 1,774 / 2,500]
The clock has started screaming.
I grip Eventide harder and shift it in my hand. The black blade takes on another presence, long and heavy, as if it asks for shoulder, hip, and base.
I come in with wide cuts, old ones, from open war. The first shakes Undertow. The second drags Veric’s feet back through the dirt. On the third, Azure Dividends flares around the shield and returns part of the force, but I already knew, and I use the moment to spin the sword and strike again. His body has to pay the difference this time.
Veric, pressed, answers with the gladius under his guard.
One of the memories inside me knows that angle. Another knows the lie behind it. I let my torso leave the line, fold my elbow over the thrust’s path, and hit his wrist before the blow matures. The sword nearly escapes Veric’s hand.
But he keeps the weapon.
Pride threatens to rise again, inconvenient and sincere.
[OXI: 1,402 / 2,500]
The golden smoke from my eyes grows stronger. Every detail of the arena seems drawn in lines of light: the pressure in Veric’s fingers, the wounded angle of his shoulder, the marks of his feet on the ground, the distance to the edge. At the same time, my body loses temperature.
Bleeding, Memory of Lightwaves, and Eventide drink from the same reservoir.
Veric’s eyes tell me he caught the urgency.
His strategy changes. The gladius lies across the front of Undertow, working as a lock over the shield. Azure Dividends lights stronger, compressed into the bluish face, and the prince plants his feet as if he means to hold back a tide with his own legs.
As my OXI drops, the voices of Eventide stir.
They don’t speak like people. They come as pressure on the arm, as invisible fingers adjusting the grip, as the memory of an art that only agrees to appear when the bearer is already too close to the end to bargain with it. I feel their plea and mine blur together.
I raise Eventide above my head.
[OXI: 1,018 / 2,500]
The arena holds its breath.
"Codex Art Number One."
The black blade lengthens, dense, swallowing the light around it. Veric presses the gladius against Undertow. Azure Dividends shines so bright the shield’s face seems to become a solid piece of the Azure Prime sky.
"Hope."
I bring it down.
The gladius takes the first contact and breaks in two.
The rest of the blow falls on Undertow.
Azure Dividends explodes against Eventide, scattering blue light across the arena, but the black blade takes no rebound and keeps descending. The shield holds enough to keep Veric from being split by the cut.
But it doesn’t hold whole.
A black scar tears across the face of Undertow, deep, ugly, crossing the blue as if someone had driven a cursed shadow into the metal.
Veric is dragged back.
His boots carve two lines in the dirt for nearly sixty feet, his body folded behind the damaged shield, his arms trembling under the weight of the impact. He stops less than a step from the edge of the circle.
Then comes silence.
A small wind crosses the plaza and carries the dust between us.
Veric lowers Undertow a few centimeters. His face is pale, his eyes still fixed on mine. Then he coughs blood, loses the strength in his legs, and begins to fall.
In the same instant, my body charges its price too.
[OXI: 211 / 2,500]
Eventide goes dark in my hand along with Memory of Lightwaves. The world tilts sideways, and all I manage is to watch Veric going down with me.
Freya raises her hand.
"Draw!"
The word is still echoing when, from the corner of my eye, I see Zhang Xi already crossing the arena at a run, her gray tunic cutting through the dust, her eyes locked on me before my shoulder even touches the ground.
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