Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

The arena takes a few seconds to process that the fight is over.

The barrier dims first. Then the force pillars ease the blue pulse climbing through the structures, and the low sound of the OXI machines drops until it’s only a vibration in the walls. The suspended screen holds the result a while longer, until the crowd in the bleachers starts to talk.

[VICTORY: TEAM TWO]

Rhayne is still on her knees, one hand on the floor, the other braced on her thigh. Her face has returned to normal, but there’s something wrong in her breathing. Not pain. More like puzzlement. She studies her own body the way she studies an enemy, trying to work out what’s happening to her.

I go to her before I look at anyone else.

"Can you stand?"

She tries to answer fast, fails on the first breath, and closes her eyes for an instant. "I can. I just need... a little OXI."

Coming from her, that weighs more than a wound.

Rhayne spends energy like any Diver, but her relationship with OXI has never been ordinary. In a fight, Void Monarch isn’t only a cost. It drains. It pulls. When a Void Link holds steady, she can even draw OXI from the ally she’s linked to. That’s why she rarely mentions a low reserve. For Rhayne, combat is usually a violent exchange where the world loses more energy than she does.

This time, the bill came back on her, and she looks surprised.

Zhang Xi doesn’t come to Rhayne first. She goes to Kellan.

He’s sitting near the barrier, one hand at the center of his chest, trying to breathe without folding over. The arena didn’t pull him to the intensive unit, so it judged no real risk to his life, but the sword cut on top of Undertow’s impact charged a high price. His chest bleeds and rises with difficulty, and every attempt to inhale seems to stop before it finishes.

Zhang Xi kneels beside him and touches two points near the ribs, then the shoulder, then the base of the neck. The light comes low, concentrated under her palm.

"Breathe through your nose," she says.

Kellan obeys without arguing.

The healing starts simple. No large glow, no wasted gesture. His body loosens little by little, enough for the air to enter better. The flesh that had been laid open begins to close under a kind of watery energy, winding the damage backward.

Freya stays close, watching in silence. The ice around her has almost all vanished, leaving only cold damp on the stone.

Zhang Xi looks at Rhayne while she heals Kellan. "Her technique drained my energy," she says. "But it couldn’t absorb it."

Rhayne lifts her eyes. "I felt that."

"OXI isn’t only quantity." Zhang Xi keeps her hand over Kellan’s chest. "There’s nature. There’s direction. Some energies feed when they touch. Others reject each other."

"Positive and negative," I say.

"You can think of it that way." She accepts the comparison calmly. "There are simpler relations too. Water answers well against fire. Fire eats wind. Wind scatters poison. Poison fouls water. It isn’t a perfect rule for everything, but it helps you understand that strength doesn’t decide on its own."

Kellan breathes deep for the first time since the impact. He still winces, but his chest doesn’t lock.

Zhang Xi goes on. "Her Void pulled my energy. It worked up to a point. I lost OXI. But what left me was no food for her darkness. So she spent everything to hold the void cocoon and got almost nothing back."

Rhayne closes her hand against the stone. There’s no shame on her face. It looks like calculation. She’s found a new wall and wants to know its size.

"Celestial energy," I say, low.

Zhang Xi doesn’t confirm right away. Her hand glows a little brighter over Kellan, and the tension in his shoulders begins to let go.

"That’s a name some traditions use. Monks prefer not to treat it as owning the light. It’s discipline, purification, and vow. An ordinary person touched in that way by the void might have collapsed more quickly. I held because my OXI and energy were trained to stay internal, at peace with me."

"But it tired you," I say.

"Resisting has its cost too. We’re still made of matter, and stabilizing energy inside matter is never cheap."

Her answer hangs in the air.

It’s the kind of thing they needed more than they needed a win. Rhayne can drain almost anything that moves, but some energies don’t feed the Void. That changes combat, healing, support, risk. It changes how far I can trust Void Monarch against someone who looks too saintly to die fast.

Even in this second life, I’m still collecting new pieces. I knew the common elements. It seems there are rarer ones, opposite ones, that I still have to learn.

A few minutes later, the side door of the medical unit opens.

Mira Voss walks in rolling her neck, one hand braced on her side. Her training uniform is too clean for someone just thrown against a barrier, a sign the medics did more than stabilize.

She comes toward us with a shut expression. "The big guy broke four of my ribs, punctured a lung, and made me spit blood."

Oliver, awake now near the far side of the arena, brings a hand to his jaw. Zhang Xi has started on his shoulder, but his posture still gives away the discomfort.

"You walked into my range," he says.

Mira looks at him for a second, then away. She doesn’t seem offended. She seems annoyed at knowing he’s right.

Zhang Xi finishes with Kellan and Oliver and rises slowly. Veric is getting up too, still a little dizzy.

"Now recover OXI before the next round," she says, already walking toward the OXI hydration station herself.

No one argues.

The station sits in a side wall of the arena, near the preparation area. It’s different from the others, a wide machine built into the stone, transparent tubes running behind runic plates. The panel takes Scales and releases a controlled dose of refined OXI, faster than the common machines. This is a combat arena. It has to supply more than low-rank cadets; it has to feed instructors and high-rank fights too.

Rhayne goes first. She actually cuts in front of Zhang Xi to do it.

"Sorry! Low OXI makes me so hungry!" she says, almost desperate.

She sets her hand on the panel, pays for the charge, and puts her fist into the runic glass arch. Blue light climbs the tubes and enters in steady pulses, passing through the arch and lighting the whole corner. Little by little, color returns to her face. Her shoulders stop trembling. Her gaze, though, stays fixed on some point inside.

A full gauge doesn’t erase the discovery.

Zhang Xi refills without trouble. Veric uses the station after, still sore about being eliminated before he could even understand what happened to him. Oliver recovers his reserve in silence; that punch seemed to shake his pride more than his jaw. Kellan goes last, with Zhang Xi watching to make sure the healing held and the chest muscles were working right.

Freya comes up to me while the others finish. "You have good combat vision," she says.

Strangely, it doesn’t land as a comfortable compliment. It lands as a statement of fact.

"I try to look before I need to."

"That doesn’t prove your guild would be different."

"No. It doesn’t."

She seems to wait for another line. Maybe a defense. Maybe a promise. I give neither. Freya has heard enough promises from people who wanted to use her name.

"I didn’t accept your guild," she says.

"I know."

"But... I accept the fight."

"That’s enough for now."

The suspended screen flickers, replacing the old result with a new arrangement. The murmur in the bleachers grows again as the names appear.

[NEXT MATCH — 4V4]

[TEAM ONE: DRYDEN SANDS / RHAYNE VESPER / VERIC AZUREA / OLIVER KAMINSKI][TEAM TWO: FREYA GUNNULF / MIRA VOSS / KELLAN ROOK / ZHANG XI]

Freya looks at her own team, checking, I think, how much longer until it’s time to step in.

My eyes follow what she sees. Mira already tests the shoulder, rolling it as she grips her spear. Kellan flexes his hands inside the gauntlets, as if pumping OXI into the compartments. Zhang Xi settles the sleeves of her gray tunic. Her serenity has come back, and that peaceful smile is fooling careless fighters again.

On my side, Rhayne yawns for a good five seconds before breathing deep. I can’t tell if it’s fatigue, laziness, or some side effect of the OXI drop. Veric spins Undertow on his arm, checking the chain. Oliver takes Motorhead carefully, then sets his hand on the haft and swings hard, testing whether the pain comes or is only a memory.

The barrier begins to rise again.

Freya enters the arena first.

This time, no ice out of control.

Only cold under command.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!