The chanting hit Ryn like a rising tide as he walked towards the arena. After a much-needed week of rest, it was finally time to finish the preliminary trials. The arbiters told him that, with how strong the competitors had gotten this year, they needed to restructure the system from seven years ago. With the first two trials declaring his win, he was already seeded as the number one contender in the tournament, but this last trial would remove all doubt.

  "Slay-er! Slay-er! Slay-er!"

  The word climbed up his spine and settled in his stomach. The injection sites had left scars along his arms. He felt the magic pulse with each chant.

  He stepped out into the harsh white glare of the arena lights. The sand crunched under his bare feet. He took a deep breath in. The air carried the familiar mix of sweat, blood, and ozone.

  But tonight, all of that sat behind the noise. Tonight, they were screaming for him.

  The Chimera he slayed to earn his nickname had been a weak A-rank by the Shattered Reach's standards, a footnote on the lists the higher factions traded. Weak compared to the Titans.

  Still, he was only a mid-tier B-rank, and the accomplishment was something he took pride in. His master had told him that the Demon was the strongest B-rank that he had ever seen. He is just a man. Ryn thought to himself.

  The roar grew silent in anticipation when he became visible. He rolled his neck once, cracked his knuckles, and felt his pulse begin to race.

  "Competitor Ryn Kaelor," the announcer boomed, voice full and theatrical, as if he'd watched the same highlight over and over until he believed it himself. "The Chimera-Slayer enters the Pit of Thirteen!"

  The response was physical. He felt the crowd's vibrations. Ryn let it soak in. A memory popped into his mind, one that he hadn't thought of in a very long time. His mother had tears in her eyes and told him to be strong, his father's corpse just behind her. He didn't let it show on his face; his lips stayed locked in a forced smile.

  The crowd wasn't here for his pain.

  He heard a loud click as the gate swung open.

  A lean, bone-ridged shape burst through the gap, throwing sand into the air. It was a sand shrew, ravenous, ribs glowing with thin, frantic lines of blue where mana starvation ate at it from the inside. With jaw opened wide and saliva trails slinging from side to side.

  Ryn moved before it had time to size him up. He gripped his signature clever in his right hand tightly.

  He slashed to the left, and the monster snapped its jaw around his shoulder, forcing him to drop his weapon. A wisp of wind mana leaked out of the wound, forcing the teeth out. The wolf lashed out again but overshot him. Ryn swung his left hand, his knuckles slamming into the hinge of its jaw.

  The crack of the jaw vibrated through his hand.

  The beast stumbled, head reeling from the strike. Before it could recover, he tore a fragment of plating from its shoulder. The broken shard became a knife in his hand. He drove it up under the eye, sharp edge scraping bone, and twisted until he felt a click.

  The wolf went slack.

  The crowd roared.

  Ryn wiped the blood from his cheek with the back of his hand, breathing in short bursts. The bite mark had already healed, and more power from the cloud was pulsing through him.

  "One," he murmured, barely loud enough for himself.

  The next gate groaned open on the far wall.

  This one came slower. Heavier. An armored goreback lumbered out, each step leaving a deeper print than the last, tusks like hooked blades jutting from its jaws. Its maw dripped thick strings of yellowed spit. The beast stood on four legs at a height that made Ryn's own six feet look small.

  Ryn circled, drawing his mana inward, feeling his heartbeat hitch with every step. The beast tracked him, plodding along in a wide arc, trying to cut him off.

  He waited.

  The moment its patience broke. It dropped its head and charged. It connected, and the pain that bloomed under his ribs where the tusks made contact. He let his feet slide out from under him, displacing the force through himself instead of taking it. He rolled under the bulk, felt hot breath pass over his face, and slashed up at the softer belly with his make-shift knife. The strike wasn't clean, and the pain made the beast enrage.

  The goreback roared, stumbling as blood splattered across the sand in heavy arcs as it stomped towards Ryn. He planted his feet, ignored the way his ribs screamed, and used the weight of its charge to wrench its head sideways.

  Something tore.

  The beast's spine snapped with a sick, wet pop.

  Two.

  The power increased with each victory, and his fights began to blur together.

  Shardwyrms exploded from the sand around him like broken spears. He severed the tendons at their joints and crushed their skulls with fist-sized stones when they tried to burrow away.

  A trio of Null Hounds, ribs showing, eyes burning with void light, snapped at his heels. He grabbed one by the scruff as it lunged, used the body as a shield, and felt the impact of the other two sink teeth into meat that wasn't his before he twisted, reversed, and opened their throats.

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  A void stalker tried to melt into the shadows. He kicked sand into its eyes, squinting against the backlash of corrupted mana, and kept moving, circling, jabbing, letting exhaustion eat at it until opening and instinct were the same thing.

  A Legion-bred brute, plated and enhanced, stormed across the pit with a two-handed hammer. He ducked under the first swing, rolled his shoulder through the second, and drove a heel into the back of its knee hard enough to turn one of its augmented ligaments to pulp. When it dropped, he wrapped an arm around its neck and pulled until the armored collar turned into a strangling cage.

  Even seconds lengthened. Time turned syrup-thick in his lungs.

  By the time the seventh body hit the sand, his breath rattled in his chest. Blood soaked his forearms up to the elbow. Every step sent a dull throb up from his ribs, like someone was tapping a chisel against the bones.

  The crowd was louder than any of it.

  "Slay-er! Slay-er!"

  He let himself believe them. No one will beat me.

  For the first time in his life, surrounded by monsters and metal and voices that only wanted him alive so he could entertain them, Ryn believed he was unstoppable.

  The eighth gate hissed open.

  What came through wasn't exactly teeth and muscle. A green mist seeped under the bars first, curling like swamp breath. Vines pulsed beneath the sand, writhing like worms under skin.

  His stomach sank even before the announcer's voice clawed its way over the speakers.

  From the way the crowd's tone changed from sharp interest to a few uneasy jeers, he didn't need the name, but he thought it anyway.

  Verdathorn.

  The thing that emerged was a construct grown and built in equal measure: a tangle of rooted limbs, petals slick with venom, teeth blooming between overlapping layers of bark and leaf. Spores drifted from its central mass with every shuddering step.

  "Not this one," he breathed, throat dry.

  It shrieked in a grinding, wet-metal falsetto and lashed out. Vines as thick as his wrist snapped across the sand. He rolled, felt thorns scrape his calf. One vine locked around his ankle and began to tighten.

  He slashed at it with a wind blade. The cut wasn't elegant. It burned through more of his reserves than he wanted it to, searing the tendril into two twitching lengths. He came up on one knee, his vision going in and out from the exhaustion.

  His limbs had gone heavy, and his mana was thin and flickering, like a candle with too much wick and not enough fat.

  The beast lunged. There was no clever angle left, no trick.

  He ducked under the mass as it came down, grabbed what he could reach, and pulled with both hands, redirecting the momentum until the creature slammed sideways into the iron wall.

  Spore sacs burst on contact. The air filled with bitter, choking dust. Ryn turned his head and coughed, tasting metal and mold.

  His hands moved before he could think. They dug into the beast's chest, fingers forcing past layers of plant-matter armor, thorns burying into his palm and breaking off. He found the pulsing heartwood core and tore.

  The creature spasmed, then went slack, collapsing in on itself.

  Only after it stopped moving did he realize he'd fallen with it. Sand pressed cool and gritty against his cheek. His hands didn't feel like they belonged to him anymore.

  Eight.

  His ears were still ringing when the ninth gate started to rise, grinding slowly, stubbornly, as if whatever was behind it didn't particularly care to come out.

  When the shadow at its base resolved into a sentinel frame, his gut turned to stone.

  Not a complete Machine God Sentinel, but an older model. An outdated war suit, borrowed from the Owl King's armory and wired up for sport. Heavy limbs. Core casing burnished from old use. Enough mana in its chest to fold a man in half if it landed a solid hit.

  He forced himself upright. The world tilted. His body felt like it had been packed with sand and nailed shut.

  He spat red and staggered forward anyway.

  The sentinel came in measured strides, each footfall a minor quake. There was no malice in the thuds—just a cold calculating dread.

  "Come on," Ryn whispered, jaw locked. "Come on. Come on."

  The hammer-arm came first. He threw himself aside, barely clearing the arc. Wind off the swing wicked the sweat from his face. The second strike caught his shoulder as he turned, a glancing blow that still sent white fire down his back and dumped him onto the sand.

  For a moment, there was nothing but the taste of grit and copper and the sound of his own pulse.

  When the world snapped back together, the sentinel was almost on him.

  He got one knee under him. It felt like lifting the whole arena. He screamed at the thought of letting his dream of freedom slip through. He drove the broken length of a thorn-vine toward the seam at the back of its leg.

  The barbed length of the plant, still tacky with its own venom, sank into metal. Sparks burst from the joint. Mana crackled.

  The sentinel twitched as hydraulic fluid came pouring out.

  Ryn didn't let it recover. He got on top where the cockpit entrance was and ripped and tore at anything that seemed important; his fingers scraped along the armor plates, and he clamped both hands around a hose that led to the robotic head.

  Something in his shoulder popped as he yanked at it, and he tasted bile.

  Metal screamed inside its casing. Joints cracked under its own weight. A shower of sparks rained down as the frame twisted.

  Then the sentinel's legs gave.

  It crashed to the sand, head at an unnatural angle, limbs spasming once and then going still.

  Silence held for a breath.

  Then the Crucible detonated.

  "NINE! NINE! NINE!"

  The sound hit him harder than the sentinel had. Ryn stood there shaking, chest heaving, knees threatening to give at any moment.

  He couldn't keep going this was his limit. But he was the first crucible combatant to pass eight. Even his master only made it seven.

  The tenth gate began to groan open.

  Something large scraped the stone behind it. He didn't even look.

  Cold moved through him, sharper than any metal edge.

  His hand rose on instinct.

  The noise from the stands stuttered and broke. Rough-throated chants cut off mid-syllable. It was as if the arena itself held its breath.

  Ryn bowed, every muscle complaining at the motion.

  "Enough," he said.

  The announcer choked on his own spit before he recovered.

  "Ryn Kaelor... has bowed out! Nine rounds completed! A new record in the Pit of Thirteen!"

  The release of sound after that hurt. The pit shook from it. He made himself walk, every limb screaming as he stepped out of the killing bowl and onto the steel ramp. The lights above him flickered.

  He had done it.

  He had done what no one else had.

  He was the Slayer.

  No one could...

  A gauntleted hand clamped down on his shoulder hard enough that he nearly dropped.

  He turned.

  The Enslaver, his master, loomed there, black armor humming with caged mana, ghost-plate visor reflecting the arena lights in a faceless glare.

  "You did well," the Enslaver said, voice rough as ground glass. "But if you had anything left, anything at all. You should've left it in the sand."

  Ryn frowned, offense rising hot and fast. His body was one continuous bruise, and this man was talking to him about more?

  "No one can surpass nine," he said. "You saw what it took."

  The Enslaver's grip tightened, plates clicking softly.

  "Never trust a record, boy. Someone always comes to break it."

  Ryn shook his head, refusing the cold trickle of doubt trying to find purchase.

  "The crowd's with me," he said. "No one can beat me."

  The Enslaver released him.

  "You'll see," he said, and turned away, attention already drifting back toward the pit.

  Ryn watched him go, confusion curdling into irritation, into slow-growing indignation.

  No one can beat nine... Not when the crowd has already chosen.

  He leaned against the wall, letting his hammering heart slow, allowing the pain drag at his edges until it blurred.

  The cheers changed.

  At first, he thought they were still for him, just dulled by distance. Then he realized it wasn't cheering. The sound was warped and turning raw and ugly. It was booing

  For the Demon.