Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

The ice keeps growing around Freya’s boots.

For an instant, I think she might let the whole arena feel the answer. The stone whitens in a thin layer, rising in small web-shaped crystals that hem the floor outside the barrier. My breath condenses in front of my face, short but visible.

Freya is staring at me. Then she looks around.

The bleachers are full. Any excess could turn an attitude into a defamatory story. Cadets lean their bodies over the seats. Instructors watch with eyes trained to tell training from disaster. The suspended screen still follows the fight, ready to replay anything that looks important.

Freya closes her hand.

The crystals stop advancing.

She breathes deep, heavy, long. The cold pulls back little by little, not vanishing all at once, but returning close to her, as if she were drawing it all back in.

"Let’s focus on what matters now."

I nod. Time to step back a little.

She says nothing more.

Inside the arena, Zhang Xi still controls the center.

Veric tries to reclaim space with Undertow low, gladius protected behind the shield, but Zhang Xi is far faster. Oliver comes along the flank, hammer ready to close the exit and help Veric hold her movements.

Zhang Xi enters the gap between them without hurry. Her foot touches the stone between Veric’s legs, her hip turns outward, and her palm finds his back before the shield finishes taking its line. Veric goes face-first to the floor.

Oliver strikes to correct it, because Kellan is already running toward them. Zhang Xi lets the hammer pass on the outside, touches the haft near his lead hand, and takes the weight out of the blow. Then two OXI-lit fingers touch the side of his forearm. Oliver locks for a second and has to retreat in a wide leap back to keep from handing over his whole body the way Veric did.

"She’s trapping both of them again," Freya says.

"Zhang Xi is Rank C. And her Rank is unbalanced."

Rhayne notices the same thing.

She stops trying to reach Mira and Kellan. The Battle Ribbon draws close to her arm, still turning in smaller circles. Her eyes go to Zhang Xi, then Veric, then Oliver. The conclusion comes clean on her face, with a smile.

As long as Zhang Xi is free, the fight will spin around the monk.

The darkness is born small.

"Void Monarch..." Rhayne whispers.

Nothing explodes. No territory takes the arena. A black thread leaves Rhayne’s hand, runs through the air, and closes around Zhang Xi in compact layers, forming a narrow cocoon of Void energy. The light from the pillars seems to lose color near it.

Zhang Xi tries to spin free.

But it’s too late, and Void energy isn’t something physical you dodge easily.

The cocoon closes on her shoulder, her legs, her waist. The OXI around her begins to pull into the darkness in thin threads. Zhang Xi doesn’t panic. Even trapped, she breathes through her nose and tries to reduce the loss, gathering energy to the center of her body.

That doesn’t cancel the technique.

It only makes the drain cost more time.

Freya goes still at my side. "That’s hers?"

"It is."

"She can control it like that?"

"Yes. When she doesn’t black out, this is the real skill."

Mira Voss is the first to react.

She abandons the line against Veric and cuts through the flank, using Kellan as a shadow for half a step before breaking toward Rhayne. The spear appears in her hand, low, point aligned to cross the distance without giving the ribbon time to open territory.

Oliver closes the path.

He steps in between Mira and Rhayne with the hammer angled, left shoulder a little forward, feet well planted. Mira slows by almost nothing. Enough to think twice. Then her gaze slips to a peculiar point.

Very little, but it slips.

I see it, and so does Oliver.

The dagger she threw earlier lies far off, near the right side of the arena, behind Oliver’s angle. Mira looks at it once, too fast for a cadet to catch, too slow for someone who’s been punished by monsters countless times with the same intent.

Oliver turns his shoulder.

I almost laugh. Air leaves my nose in a short burst, but I hold it back.

Freya frowns. "What is it?"

"That bastard is learning even the bad things from me."

She looks at Oliver. "What are you talking about?"

"He’s going to sacrifice his body for strategy and position."

Mira calls the dagger, opening her hand at her side and gathering OXI in her palm.

The weapon fires back through the Amazon Recall passive, cutting the air from the blind spot. Oliver braces his arm and lets his body take the impact in the side of the shoulder. The dagger sticks there hard enough to pull a low sound from his throat. Blood runs at once.

Mira believes it.

Her foot advances the same instant, the spear coming short and fast, a thrust for the chest opened by the earlier blow. The move is good. Quick, clean, made to finish before the hammer can swing.

Oliver moves only what he needs to.

The spear’s point changes destination and hits the same shoulder where the dagger is already stuck.

Wound on wound. No new line opened. No serious damage.

Mira’s expression changes too late.

Oliver’s arm, even ruined, folds over the haft, trapping the spear against his own body. His right hand already holds Motorhead low, near the hip. The hammer wakes with a heavy glow, a thick vibration that crosses the arena ahead of the blow. The OXI jets hiss like a rocket coming awake.

"Motorhead."

He turns his whole torso.

The hammer catches Mira’s side with a dry, brutal impact, no ornament. Her body leaves the floor and crosses the arena in a flat line, too fast for any pretty defense. The barrier takes the shock with a blue flash, and a wave of dust rises from the floor.

For half a second, no one speaks. The arena goes mute.

When the dust drops, Mira is no longer there. The arena has already removed the body to the intensive unit.

The suspended screen flickers.

[MIRA VOSS — ELIMINATED]

The replay comes next.

First, her glance at the dagger. Then Oliver turning his shoulder. The dagger going in. The spear following the same path. Mira’s face understanding it had been led. Motorhead rising from below, short, heavy, inevitable.

The bleachers let out a single sound.

Freya watches the whole replay without blinking. "He let her hit him."

"Yes."

"Twice."

"In the same place."

She stays quiet for a few seconds.

Inside the arena, Rhayne keeps Zhang Xi trapped in the black cocoon. Veric is already repositioning beside Oliver, and Kellan looks at the empty space where Mira Voss had stood.

The fight has changed.

Freya lets her breath out slowly. "That was ugly."

"But efficient."

She doesn’t argue.

This time, she understood.

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