“Sunhome!” the announcer cried, stretching the word into a triumphant roar. “It has been far too long since anyone—anyone at all—has chosen to face our four-headed favorite!”
The stands trembled under the weight of anticipation. People pushed against railings, hoisting children onto shoulders, fanning themselves with sun-drenched scarves while heat shimmered across the arena floor.
“Behold!” the announcer continued. “The titan of the deep desert! The unbowed! The immortal siege beast of ancient Sunhome—BORIS GALIDICHIAUS!”
The eruption of sound that followed was not cheering—it was a living force. A tidal wave of noise slammed down from the stands so hard that dust shook loose from the stone joints. The back of my throat vibrated. Even the sand under my boots trembled.
And then another tremor came—deeper, heavier, purposeful.
A step.
Then another.
And another.
Each impact pounded through the soles of my feet, climbing my legs like a physical shockwave. Shenzah crouched low with ears pinned flat, a deep rumble building in his chest.
“Hey, uh…” I began quietly, watching the far gates.
The announcer interrupted me with breathless delight.
“And our challenger—King Kyris of the Black Sand Dominion—faces an endurance trial! Twenty minutes of survival! No killing the big guy!”
I couldn’t stop the grimace that pulled at my mouth. No killing the big guy was a hell of a sentence to stand behind when the “big guy” weighed sixty tons.
The crowd’s reaction rose into a singular, deafening note as Boris’s colossal form lumbered forward. He was not simply large; he was architectural. Plates the size of a city buss lined his spine like the scales of an armored vehicle. Shoulders rolled under mountains of muscle. Legs sank into the sand until the arena seemed barely capable of holding him upright.
His sheer height—over a hundred feet—cast me in a shadow so wide it swallowed half the arena floor.
“Oh god,” I whispered, not even bothering to hide it. “He’s bigger than anything I have ever seen.”
Boris approached in slow, measured steps. Each one sent a tremor through my bones. My calves quivered. The sand rippled outward like a disturbed lake. Even the stone carved stands creaked.
Shenzah barked frantically behind me, trying to wedge himself through the bars, and out of the arena.
One of Boris’s left heads lowered closer to me, the nostrils flaring again as they pulled my scent through armor and sweat. The breath was hot enough that I felt my skin prickle under the Ashwing Aegis.
“Well,” I said softly, gripping the Dominion Chime as it unfolded into a tetsubo of blackened metal and white crystal. “Let’s see how long I last.”
The announcer’s voice cracked with fanfare.
“Begin!”
Boris moved first.
His nearest head whipped downward in a blur so sudden it defied physics. The wind of its passing struck me like a physical shove, sending my footing sliding half a step before I ducked and rolled beneath it. Sand sprayed upward as jaws slammed shut where my chest had been a moment earlier.
The audience howled in delight.
Boris didn’t give me time to recover. A second head feinted low, while the third lunged from the side. I pivoted sharply, twisting under the cross attack, but a fourth head swooped dangerously close, forcing me to leap back to maintain distance.
His attacks were not wild.
They were calculated.
Measured.
Almost curious.
He was testing my reactions like a veteran training a recruit.
I didn’t have the luxury of staying passive.
As the nearest neck coiled to strike again, I drove forward and swung the tetsubo with every ounce of Ashwing-fed resonance I could muster. The impact rang out like smashing a bell against a fortress wall.
Nothing.
The blow bounced uselessly off the armor.
“Fantastic,” I muttered. “Just like attacking a tank with a broomstick.”
Boris rumbled—a sound like distant thunder deepening, almost sounding like laughter.
He lunged, and I bolted sideways, sprinting toward his forelimb. Using a jut of armor as a foothold, I vaulted up, grabbing hold of one of the ridges to haul myself onto his shoulder.
For a brief breath, I stood above the titanic beast, the arena stretching below me in a ring of stunned awe.
But Boris twisted.
The plated ridge rolled under my boots like a ship pitching in a storm.
I flew.
The world spun in a blur of light and sand. Then I hit the arena wall hard enough to send cracks splintering across the stone. Air burst from my lungs, and I slid down in a heap.
My watchers screamed in text:
[VioletVex]: KYRIS NO
[GainsGoblin]: HOLY SHIT THAT WAS AWESOME
[carapace_kid]: GET UP GET UP GET UP
[LifelineV] (DM): 19 minutes left buddy. pace yourself.
I forced myself upright, wincing as a sharp pain cut through my ribs. The Ashwing Aegis had a fissure across the chestpiece now. I shook the dust from my hair and tried to steady my breathing.
Boris was already turning toward me again, all four heads angled downward as though studying me.
“All right,” I growled under my breath. “Round two.”
He barreled forward.
The next ten minutes blurred into a relentless dance of survival—dodging between pillars of steel-armored muscle, rolling under sweeping jaws, scrambling back to my feet after being tossed like a doll. I tried striking again, switching to smaller forms of the Chime, but nothing broke through his armor.
He was slower than the Ashwing yet swifter than any behemoth had a right to be—graceful in his enormity, terrifying in restraint.
Every few blows he paused, one head cocking as if to ask, That’s all you’ve got?
And all four sets of dark eyes gleamed with something disturbingly close to amusement.
Halfway through the trial my limbs burned. Sweat soaked my collar. My lungs felt like someone had shoved heated iron bands around them. Each tremor from Boris’s steps threatened to topple me.
But somehow, I stayed standing.
With five minutes left, he clipped me—not a full strike, not even a committed blow. A casual nudge from one of his heads sent me tumbling end over end until I slammed into the sand near the arena’s center.
A crack snapped across the Ashwing Aegis.
My arms trembled from the effort of pushing myself upright.
Boris watched me with four calm, steady gazes.
The announcer’s voice cracked with exhilaration.
“Five minutes! The king still stands!”
I forced myself up and lifted the tetsubo again, though my arms felt like molten lead.
The last minutes dragged. Boris pressed me—never lethally—but with relentless intensity, refusing to let me rest, constantly moving me, forcing me to adapt. And somehow, I did. My dodges grew sharper, my timing cleaner. Something in him recognized that, and his movements shifted in response, like a dance where neither partner wanted to stop.
The gong struck.
“Twenty minutes!”
The arena detonated with sound.
Boris halted mid-step, breathed deeply, and then lowered all four heads toward me in a bow so immense it drew a gasp from every throat in the stands.
Respect.
I stared up at him, stunned, then bowed back, trembling with exhaustion.
The crowd roared even louder, an avalanche of joy and disbelief. For a heartbeat I allowed myself to breathe—really breathe—letting the noise wash over me like a warm tide.
But then the roar changed.
It deepened. Hardened. Shifted into something primal.
At first I thought it was just the crowd, but no—the pitch was wrong. Too low. Too vibrating. Too heavy.
And the sand at the arena’s center began to bulge.
My body went cold.
No…
Not now.
Not after this.
The ground convulsed, rising like something massive was forcing its way upward. Boris swung his heads toward the disturbance, muscles coiling beneath plates of scarred armor.
A sudden, terrible realization struck me—the same feeling I’d had when the Ashwing sensed my resonance, when the dunes whispered before the smaller worms struck.
This was not random.
This thing was hunting something.
The sand erupted.
A colossal wyrm—easily four times larger than any of the previous ones—burst upward in an explosion of stone and grit. Its spiraled drill-crown spun at a speed that blurred the metal. Plates thicker than the Ashwing’s claws rippled along its body, and a mouth filled with rows of serrated teeth split open in a roar so powerful the arena shook.
Before I could react, it lunged straight toward Boris.
The titan met it head-on.
Jaws clamped around one of Boris’s necks and tore.
The sound—wet, violent, impossibly loud—echoed through my bones. The severed head hit the sand with a horrifying thud, and Boris’s remaining three screamed in pain and fury.
My watchers erupted:
[VioletVex]: WHAT
[Archivolt]: NO PLEASE NOT BORIS
[GainsGoblin]: JESUS CHRIST
[LifelineV] (DM): HOLY SHIT. Im messaging Scott now. Hold steady Marcus.
Boris charged, enraged beyond anything I’d ever seen.
And the wyrm—this ancient, monstrous wyrm—turned to meet him.
I tightened my grip around the Dominion Chime, heat building along the haft.
The arena floor shook as two titans collided.
And I ran toward them.
Boris’ three surviving heads fixate on the Broodlord, pupils contracting to slits. The worm twists, plates grinding, sand cascading off its titanic length as more and more of it hauls up from below. It isn’t just big; it’s wrongly big—longer than the arena is wide, easily four hundred feet, its body an armored spiral of sandstone-colored plates etched with old scars.
Boris charges.
Each of his steps is a localized earthquake. The stands shudder. Chains rattle in the upper rigging. The Broodlord rears to meet him, drill-head spinning up to full shriek, and when they collide, the force of it lifts me off my feet.
I land hard, rolling in a tumble of dust and fragments. For a moment all I can hear is ringing, shellshocked. I clamp my jaw, drag in a breath, and stagger up.
“Shenzah!” I call.
The aardwolf answers with a sharp, warbling bark. He’s already circling away from the main clash, hackles flared, twin tails lashing the air, air crackling between the metal barbs. His instincts scream to run, but he doesn’t. He dances in place, waiting.
“Good boy,” I breathe.
I sprint toward him, slide the last few feet, and grab his harness. Shenzah throws his weight low, bracing, and I vault up into the saddle in one practiced motion that feels way more confident than I actually am.
Up close, the fight between Boris and the Broodlord is a titan’s brawl. Boris slams his bulk side-first into the worm, trying to pin it against the far wall. The Broodlord coils, body wrapping in a muscular spiral around Boris’ legs. Its drill-head saws at his armored side, sparks and chunks of plate flying. Blood rains from the ragged stump of Boris’ missing neck, spraying in arcs every time he moves.
“Alright,” I mutter, rolling my shoulders. “We are so far past exhibition match now.”
The announcer’s voice is nowhere, drowned under screams, stone-breaking impacts, and the grinding howl of the worm’s drill. The crowd has gone from ecstatic to terrified in the span of ten seconds.
Something else hits the arena—the steady drumbeat of boots.
The Sunforged arrive like a golden wave.
They pour from the lower gates in ranks, sixty strong, armor gleaming with sun-runes even under the dust. Some are already drawing slings, loading heavy metal shot. Others plant wide stances, runes flaring along arms and legs as they ready tremor strikes.
Stolen novel; please report.
[LifelineV] (DM) I’M MESSAGING THALOS TO GET HIS ASS BACK HERE NOW. HOLD OUT AS LONG AS YOU CAN. HE SAYS 10 MIN.
“What do you think Im doing Vic…,” I mutter.
Out loud, I shout over the chaos. “Shenzah, wide! We stay on the flank!”
He surges forward, powerful legs eating distance as we angle along the edge of the arena. The ground is a chaos of shattered stone and smeared blood, but he moves like flowing water, barely touching down before launching again.
The Broodlord lashes its tail, a stone-club the size of a siege tower. It swings through a section of the stands; empty seats shatter like toys, sandstone and splinters raining down. A second later it whips back toward the forming Sunforged line.
“Brace!” someone bellows.
Three Sunforged step forward in unison and slam their palms into the ground. Sun-runes along their arms blaze white-hot. The arena floor ripples, then spikes—jagged slabs of rock thrusting upward like teeth. The Broodlord’s tail smashes into them instead of the soldiers, splintering stone, buying a precious heartbeat.
“Now!” another voice yells.
Slings crack in rapid succession. Heavy shot arcs up and then down, slamming into less-armored segments between the worm’s plates. Dull thuds echo. The Broodlord coils in discomfort, but its attention is still on Boris, still chewing into him with that obscene drill-face.
I switch the Chime into its greatsword form—a broad, double-edged blade wreathed in faint violet resonance and licking flames, heavy enough to ache my arms even with the armor assisting.
“Let’s go annoy the big one,” I tell Shenzah. “Not too close. We’re a gnat, not a battering ram.”
We dart in.
Up close, the Broodlord’s body is like a moving wall of tectonic plates, each the size of a ballroom door. Between them, for the briefest moments, softer flesh. I time the stride, feel the rhythm in my bones—then rise in the stirrups and bring the Chime down in an overhead cleave at an exposed gap.
The blade bites maybe an inch before skittering off like I hit hardened iron.
“Seriously?” I grunt.
The worm doesn’t even notice.
Shenzah veers away as a shadow sweeps over us. Boris slams his chest into the Broodlord’s side again, trying to topple it. The impact throws a wave through the worm’s length, and a new shriek tears from its drill.
Dust whirls around us in choking clouds. My lungs burn. My arms already ache from earlier surviving Boris, I’m running on borrowed momentum and stubbornness.
Chat flickers at the edge of my vision, frantic but somehow there.
[ProteinPrincess]: KYRIS WHAT ARE YOU DOING
[carapace_kid]: THIS IS NOT A MID-TIER ARENA FIGHT BRO
[VioletVex]: HE’S BEAUTIFUL BUT ALSO I’M GONNA BE SICK
“Yeah, yeah,” I mutter, voice rasping. “I know. Working on it.”
Another shock pulses through the arena—this time not from Boris or the worm. It’s smaller, tighter, aimed.
Sunforged tremors.
Three more soldiers drop to one knee, slam their hammers into the ground in a staggered rhythm. The floor in front of the Broodlord bucks like a living thing. Spikes of stone shoot up and out, stabbing into the worm’s ventral plates. The impacts don’t pierce all the way through, but some wedges lodge deep, twisting armor out of alignment.
The Broodlord notices that.
Its drill-head snaps away from Boris’ side, turning toward the cluster of Sunforged responsible. Plates grind in a nauseating spiral as it redirects its mass.
“Move!” someone roars.
They do—but not all in time. The worm surges forward, half-diving through the spikes like they’re merely blades of grass. A handful of Sunforged are launched into the air, bodies flung like ragdolls. Others slam their hammers down again on instinct, discharging tremors straight into its flesh.
I stand in the stirrups and drive the Chime down again—this time letting resonance lead the strike. The blade hums, not with heat like Ashwing Aegis, but with the tuned vibration of the Dominion itself. The sword hits a plate already stressed by stone spikes, and this time, it cracks.
Not by much. But enough.
The Broodlord whips its torso, trying to shake off everything. Stone shards fly. A chunk of plate tears free, revealing a strip of throbbing, pale tissue underneath like the belly of some massive earthworm.
“That right there, weakpoint found.”
A massive shadow flickers across the arena, and for a heartbeat my gut seizes—dragon? But no—this is smaller, closer. In the stands above, near one of the highest entrances, something white and gold and black pushes through the crowd like a living avalanche.
Hamu.
A second presence hums along my resonance thread, familiar as my own heartbeat.
Iskri.
He isn’t here yet, but he’s coming, that much I can tell. The moment the Broodlord breached, his awareness flared hot and sharp through the bond, like a taut string. He’s running, sprinting through Sunhome’s streets toward the arena, every step a committed promise of teeth and claws.
I just pray he’s not bringing Felkas with him.
Down in the arena, the Huntmaster makes his move.
From the far gate, two new shapes pour into the sand—not Sunforged, not humanoid. They slide. Two colossal cobras, each easily as thick as a grown man’s torso and over sixty feet long, scales mottled desert tan and obsidian black. Their hoods flare as they rise, tongues tasting the air, eyes glowing a venomous green.
The Huntmaster stands at the gate, horn in one hand, braided whip in the other. He whistles once—sharp, piercing.
The cobras respond like trained war dogs.
They slither in wide arcs, giving Boris and the worm space, then lunge for the Broodlord’s flanks. Fangs sink into exposed flesh where I cracked a plate and where Sunforged tremors jostled armor loose. The worm thrashes, trying to dislodge them, but they hang on with terrifying tenacity.
It’s nowhere near enough to stop the thing now—but I can see the venom beginning to work, like a slow numbness spreading through its body.. Every time the Broodlord shifts, there’s just the slightest hesitation, the barest lag in the chain of motion.
[LifelineV] (DM) THALOS IS ALMOST BACK IN THE CITY. YOU’RE DOING GREAT. JUST DON’T DIE.
[LifelineV] (DM) ALSO CHAT IS LOSING THEIR MINDS, GOOD JOB
“Tell them to send tithe,” I grunt through the din of combat, swinging the Chime again. “Or prayers. Prayers are nice.”
The Broodlord rears, wrenching one of the cobras free and flinging it across the pit. It slams into the far wall with a sickening crunch, slides down in a heap, then—miraculously—pulls itself back up, dazed but still alive. The other cobra clings stubbornly to its side, pumping more venom into the writhing flesh.
Boris uses the opening.
He rears back on his hind legs, all three remaining heads arcing toward the sky, then drops his weight forward. The impact drives the Broodlord’s upper body deeper into the spikes the Sunforged have raised, spearing its underside. Sand and blood geyser outward.
For a moment, the titans are locked like that—Boris pinning, the Broodlord trying to bore through him while its own weight works against it. The whole arena feels like a bowl being shaken.
I take the chance.
“Shenzah, up!” I shout.
He bunches his muscles and leaps onto one of the stone spikes, claws scrabbling but finding purchase. From there, he bounds to another and then another, climbing the improvised forest of rock until we’re level with the Broodlord’s upper body.
Up here, the smell is unbelievable. Hot sand, metallic blood, a deep earth-rot stench that speaks of things that live miles below the surface. The worm’s drill-head is inches away from Boris’ rib plates, chewing at them, trying to get purchase between his armor.
I stand in the stirrups, suck in a breath, and hurl myself toward that exposed strip of flesh between plates near the base of its skull. The Chime hums in my hands, resonance building to a painful vibration. For a moment I am weightless, suspended between sand and sky, between one titan’s rage and another’s hunger.
Then I drive the blade down with everything I have left.
It pierces.
Not deep—nothing can go deep on something this size without insane force—but enough to make the Broodlord scream. The drill stutters, plates grinding chaotically. A wave of hot, stinking blood vomits up around the blade, splashing my armor, my face, my mouth.
It tastes like rust and bile.
I hang there, arm screaming, every muscle in my back straining to keep the sword wedged as the worm thrashes. It tries to pull away. The wound tears wider.
Down below, Sunforged seize the moment. Tremor-strikers slam their hammers into the ground in carefully timed patterns, sending controlled quakes directly up into the Broodlord’s internal frame. Others hurl hooks—massive, barbed things attached to chains—into the same wound I opened. They catch, bite, hold.
“PULL!” someone howls.
They do.
The worm’s upper body is being dragged down and back, away from Boris’ ruined side, its drill scraping uselessly against reinforced plate instead of cutting deeper. The cobras strike again, one burying its fangs into the soft tissue of the worm’s lower jaw.
My arms give out.
I rip the Chime free and fall.
Shenzah is there.
He launches off a lower spike, intercepting me midair with the kind of instinct that comes from training and natural intelect. My landing nearly pancakes both of us, but his muscles absorb enough that we tumble instead of shattering bone.
We hit sand and roll.
I cough, spit blood that isn’t mine, and force myself up to my knees.
Something heavy slams into the arena behind me.
A second tremor follows, this one familiar.
Thalos drops into the pit like a meteor, hammer first.
He lands in a burst of dust and fractured stone, sun-runes blazing across his armor. Without missing a beat, he surges forward, sprinting toward the Broodlord’s midsection. Even with the worm partially pinned, his hits look like a man striking a derailed train—but each blow sends controlled tremors spiraling through its body, resonating with the Sunforged strikes already hammering it.
The whole worm shudders.
Thalos doesn’t even look at me as he passes, just yells, “Couldn’t stay out of trouble for ONE afternoon, could you?!”
“Hey, I picked the elephant dinos, you let Boris live under your city,” I shout back, voice cracking.
[Archivolt]: SUNHOME DUO LETS GOOOO
[carapace_kid]: THALOS ENTRY WAS 11/10
[VioletVex]: MY KINGS TOGETHER AGAIN I AM FED
Shenzah growls low, urging me up.
“Right, right,” I say, levering myself back into the saddle. “Let’s finish this.”
The Broodlord is weakening now. I can feel it. The tremors from its movement are growing sluggish, less coordinated, like a heart losing tempo. The venom has had time to circulate. The hooks and chains have dug deeper. Boris, despite his ghastly wound, throws his full weight again and again into its torso, pinning it down every time it tries to rear.
Thalos times his strike with one of those impacts.
He plants his feet, draws the hammer back over his shoulder, and slams it straight into a cluster of plates just below the wound I carved. For a heartbeat, nothing happens outwardly.
Inside?
Everything gives.
The sound is like a mountain collapsing under its own weight. Plates shear loose from their anchors. Internal supports break. The Broodlord’s entire front half jerks, then sag in a way that tells me something essential just snapped.
“This is it,” I whisper.
I drive Shenzah forward one last time. We sprint up a slanted chunk of broken stone, using it as a ramp, and I launch myself again—less grace, more raw momentum. The Chime’s blade manifests in a narrower, spike-like configuration just as I bring it down.
I aim for the roof of the Broodlord’s mouth, where the flesh is softer, less armored.
The blade punches through palate and into whatever passes for a brain.
The world goes quiet around me.
The Broodlord convulses once, twice. Its drill stutters, then spins down, plates slowing from a shriek to a grinding whine to nothing at all. Its massive body spasms along its length, chains snapping, hooks tearing free under the force of its collapse.
And then the entire monster falls.
Not down into the arena.
Sideways.
“MOVE!” Thalos roars.
Sunforged scatter. I hit the sand and roll, dragging Shenzah with me by sheer instinct. The worm’s bulk slams into the far wall and then through it, stone folding like paper under the weight. A huge portion of the stands—an entire eighth of the arena’s circumference—crumples under the impact. Sand, stone, shattered benches, dust, and debris erupt into a brutal storm that sweeps across the lower sections.
Up in the higher seats, Hamu braces himself, massive body absorbing flying rubble like a living shield. Iskri bursts into the top of my awareness now, finally arriving, hurtling along the outer ring of the arena, barking with that deep, resonant tone that makes the air vibrate. I feel his panic, his anger, his relief the moment he senses I’m still alive.
Felkas is a small, pale shape behind Gata’s cloak and Hamu’s bulk. The boy’s eyes are wet, but he doesn’t look away.
And then, slowly, the dust begins to settle.
Silence hangs for a heartbeat.
Then the roar hits.
This time it is the crowd.
What’s left of them, anyway.
It’s not like the earlier cheers—this isn’t excitement over a cool fight or a spectacular finisher. This is hysteria, awe, and gratitude all tangled into one sound. The kind of cheer people give when they realize they’re not going to die today.
If I had a health bar it would be flirting with the bottom quarter. My muscles feel like they’ve been individually replaced with lead wires. Every breath tastes like blood and sand. Still not sure if its mine or not.
[ProteinPrincess]: I HAVE NO WORDS
[GainsGoblin]: THAT WAS A LEGENDARY+++ ENCOUNTER WTF
[VioletVex]: I’M CRYING AND ALSO I THINK I THREW OUT MY BACK CHEERING
I stand there, swaying, Chime-tip dragging in the sand.
Thalos limps toward me through the settling dust, armor cracked, face streaked with grime and sweat. He looks like he ran across the entire desert in full gear and then headbutted a building.
Which, to be fair, he kind of did.
“We,” he says between harsh breaths, “are never doing that again.”
“You say that now,” I wheeze, “but you know the arena’s going to be begging for a rematch in a month.”
He barks a short, humorless laugh, then his expression shifts as his gaze slides past me, to the far side of the arena.
To Boris.
The great behemoth stands trembling, three heads drooping low, blood still pouring from the stump of the fourth. His legs shake under his weight. Sunhome beast-handlers are already swarming around his feet, tossing ropes, shouting instructions, trying to steady him.
Thalos’ face tightens. Real grief flashes there, raw and unguarded.
“I’ve gotta go see to him,” he says, voice rough. “They’ll need every trick we’ve got to keep him from death.”
“Go,” I say softly.
He claps a hand on my shoulder, gratitude in the gesture heavy as his hammer, then turns and jogs toward the wounded titan, shouting for the Huntmaster as he goes.
I’m left standing amid the wreckage, breathing hard, staring at the Broodlord’s corpse. Even in death, it looks like it’s just… resting. Like it could wake up at any second and continue the nightmare.
“KYRIS!”
The shout comes from above.
I look up just in time to see a small figure break away from the guarded section of stands. Felkas bolts down the nearest stairway, Gata behind him shouting his name. Iskri races along the ring, then cuts down a side ramp, beating them both to the arena floor.
He hits me like a furry meteor.
I stagger back a step, then drop to one knee, wrapping an arm around his neck as he pushes his head into my chest, humming that deep, vibrating sound that means you’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive in a way words never could.
Felkas reaches me a heartbeat later and slams into me as well, arms going around my ribs so hard it nearly knocks the remaining breath out of me.
“That thing was huge,” he rasps, voice shaking. “I thought… I thought…”
I rest a hand on his head, fingers threading around his furry ears. “I’m alright,” I say. “You did good staying up there. You listened to Gata and Hamu. That helped more than you know.”
He pulls back enough to look up at me, eyes still wide, still wet. “You killed it.”
“We killed it,” I correct, glancing around at the battered Sunforged, the exhausted cobras being coaxed back toward their gate, the handlers working desperately around Boris’ mangled neck, Thalos barking orders. “And we lost things doing it.”
Felkas follows my gaze to Boris, expression falling.
“He’ll make it,” I say quietly, more prayer than certainty. “He’s strong. They’ll take care of him.”
Felkas nods, but I can feel the question under his silence, the dawning realization that in this world, even giants can die.
I look back to the Broo
dlord’s hulking corpse. Sunforged are already moving toward it with chains and hooks, speaking in low, wary tones. No one wants to be the first to touch it.
The ashwing was drawn to the resonance of my hive, to the hum of the Dominion’s growth like a moth to flame.
This thing… this Broodlord… came for tremors. For movement. For the symphony of quakes and impacts and stomping footsteps that Sunhome lives in. It was tuned to hear the heartbeat of this territory and answer it with teeth and death.
It’s starting to look less like coincidence and more like design.
One king, one apex, fine-tuned to tear them down. The world shaping enemies to match the shape of each kingdom’s strength.
My eyes drift to Felkas again.
He’s small. Wounded. Still healing. But he’s a werebeast—born of a tribe that runs like wind, hunts like a pack, knows the wild in a way no human ever will. What kind of predator does the world shape for them?
I already know the answer.
I’ve seen it in the bruises on his chest, the broken bones in his hands, the missing finger.
Not a dragon.
Not a worm.
Not some towering nightmare from miles below or above.
Mankind. More unforgiving and terrible than any fanged monster.
The thought sits heavy, bitter, and cold in my chest as the arena buzzes around us, as cheers and cries and orders and prayers blend into a single chaotic hum.
Felkas’ arms tighten around my waist, and I rest my hand on his head again, staring up at the destruction in the stands, the shattered stone, the dead monster.
Thats two apex down.
Posibly ninty others waiting in the wings.
And somewhere out there, a king who thought that this child was his prey.