The roaring din of the Arena of Sundered Souls was a physical force, pressing in on Ivana from all sides. Her head throbbed, a relentless ache left behind by the Memory-Broker's extraction, and the comforting thread of her calming hum felt frayed to ash. Kresnik stood beside her, his heavy shoulders braced. In place of his usual quiet stillness, a low rattle vibrated in his ribs, mirroring the iron rhythm of the crowd. His pupils darted, tracking the rim of the pit. She tried to offer a reassuring hum, but the sound felt hollow, thin, like a memory of a song rather than the song itself.
Across the dust-choked sands, their opponents emerged from a shadowed archway. The scarred brute, his gray skin crosshatched with ritual brandings, dragged a hooked war-pole that scraped a trench through the grit with every stride. Beside him, Lyzra prowled forward, her twin bladed knuckle-guards glinting with sickly green lacquer under the cavern lanterns. The crowd jeered her partner's name—he was notorious for crushing newcomers before they could land a blow, while Lyzra stripped tendons with surgical cuts.
Morana’s voice, amplified by ancient acoustic horns, sheared through the clamor. “Combatants! The trial demands ingenuity. Today, two against two! May the strongest endure!” Her gray gaze held steady on Vana from the high dais. Down in the pit, the crowd's shouting pressed heavy against the sand.
The bell, a dissonant clang of beaten iron, shrieked through the arena. The branded berserker bellowed, lunging across the ring. Lyzra circled wide, kicking up dry lime. Vana raised her arms, trying to cast a stabilizing pulse, but her throat caught dry against empty air. The rattle in Kresnik’s chest deepened into an open snarl.
Lyzra darted in first, steel claws slashing sideways. Vana twisted back, grease-slick metal whistling inches from her linen tunic. She tried to counter, but her balance dragged, her empathic senses blunted by the stolen memories. The brute slammed into Kresnik, the crescent head of the war-pole whistling in a broad sweep. Kresnik caught the haft bare-handed, wood groaning under his grip, though the strain warped his jaw into a grimace as blood flushed his sclera.
“Kresnik!” Vana yelled, her voice raw. She reached inward for any scrap of calming harmony, but her thoughts yielded only static. Lyzra pressed close, steel teeth snapping toward knee and hip. Cold fire tore through Vana’s thigh as an edge sliced through cloth and flesh. She stumbled, skidding into the dirt.
Kresnik jerked his head at Vana’s shout, losing his footing. His opponent drove the butt of the curved pole forward, shoving Kresnik back into the palisade. Lyzra pivoted instantly. Feinting toward the right hip, she spun inward, her clawed fist snapping across toward Vana’s throat.
Vana ducked, but her heel caught in the trench. The singing notes were gone, leaving her mind stripped bare. Before the steel struck home, a wall of muscle crashed across her vision. Kresnik drove his own forearm into Lyzra's sweep, placing himself between Vana and the cutting edge. Bone cracked beneath the impact. The blades gouged a deep furrow along his wrist and forearm, grating over sinew and gristle. Dark fluid spattered the packed earth, drenching Lyzra's knuckle-guard.
Kresnik barely broke stance. Red veins laced the whites of his eyes, locking onto Lyzra with sheer territorial fury. He stood broad-shouldered across Vana's fallen frame, a solid barrier between her and the arena.
The sight of his torn flesh shattered Vana's hesitation. She stopped grasping for the stolen notes. In their place rose an ugly, jagged vibration that harmonized with Kresnik’s blood-scented anger. Her empathic gift, stripped of its gentle cadence, coiled outward into an open, abrasive frequency—unfiltered and violent.
The air around Vana warped with heatless pressure. A harsh cry tore from her chest, venting pure panic and grief in an invisible burst across the sand. The pulse smashed into Lyzra, flooding the woman's senses with terror and phantom agony. Lyzra jerked, her chin snapping back as if clipped by a cudgel. She dropped to her knees, clawed hands clawing at her ears as her steel claws rattled against the limestone flags.
The scarred brawler stumbled as the backlash clipped him. His pupils shrank to pinpricks, unmoored by the sudden foreign dread flooding his veins. He shrieked, dropping the iron pole, and folded over his knees, smashing the palms of his hands against his brow to drive out the foreign panic.
Kresnik clamped his good hand over his bleeding forearm, watching the brawler retch into the grit. Lyzra lay curled beside him, trembling as tears cut gray tracks through the arena dirt on her cheeks. Vana's resonance hung over the pit like sulfur, scouring away intent.
The arena was silent for a moment, save for the gasping opponents and the thrumming energy around Vana. Then, the immense, crystalline structures that powered Gloomspire, embedded in the walls of the great cavern, began to flicker. Their steady, phosphorescent glow dimmed, then brightened erratically, casting dancing shadows across the stands. A low hum, an almost painful resonance, vibrated through the very stones beneath Vana's feet.
Morana leaned forward on the stone railing, her lips parting as the perimeter crystals guttered. The glow around Vana cast sharp shadows against Kresnik's dripped blood, the conduits whining beneath the sheer surge of her broken resonance. Leaning on her wounded leg, Vana dragged air into her lungs, realizing the display had delivered precisely what the Warden's machinations were engineered to draw out.