They stood at opposite ends of the arena, armored, weapons in hand, waiting.
Augustus held the Blood Scythe on the left, a long crimson blade with a war hammer set into its back like a counterweight. Azikeal waited on the right with the Death Harbingers, a pair of black daggers that seemed cut from the same shadowy mist as his armor.
A white feather drifted down from the sky.
It touched the floor, and both champions ran.
Augustus struck first. His blade cut empty air. Azikeal was simply gone—and then he was behind him, daggers rising toward Augustus's spine. Augustus never turned. He whipped the scythe around and drove the hammer head backward. It caught both daggers and rang off them, and Azikeal broke away fast.
Across the complex, Sephir watched the fight on the screen at the edge of the training field while she worked on her tempests. If she could hold them steady with her attention elsewhere, she reasoned, she could hold them steady anywhere.
In the arena, Augustus split the Blood Scythe in two. A short scythe in one hand, the hammer in the other, and between them a line of glowing red soul power—as if his own blood had strung the weapons together. He swung the scythe wide and hurled it at Azikeal.
The blade closed in. Azikeal vanished again.
Augustus hauled on the blood chain to reel the scythe back. He reached for the handle. Azikeal came out of the air on his right and put a dagger through his hand.
Cold black power raced from the Death Harbinger into the wound. Augustus threw the scythe at point-blank range before he could even shout.
Azikeal ripped his daggers free and danced backward. The blade whistled past his face, a hair from opening it. Augustus staggered, gripping his ruined hand while soul blood ran down his fingers. He dragged the scythe back on its chain.
"Blood Rage!"
The blood streaming from his hand reversed course and poured into the weapon. The scythe drank it, and a blood-red aura rolled out across the whole arena.
The bleeding stopped—but the wound did not vanish clean. Where Azikeal's dagger had pierced him, a black brand remained under the sealed skin, pulsing once like a second heartbeat.
The first Mark of Death.
Sephir kept half her attention on the screen. Somewhere in the middle of that fight, she began to feel it—the tempests answering her, moving with her mood, responding to what she wanted before she shaped the thought.
In the arena, Azikeal saw the fury in Augustus's eyes and slipped into the shadows to hide.
It did not work. The blood aura filled the air, and it showed Augustus exactly where his opponent stood.
He swung the hammer at the shadow.
Azikeal burst out of it and crossed both daggers to block. The Death Harbingers held for less than a heartbeat. Nothing forged could hold against the War God's Hammer. He tried to dodge and he was already too late. The hammer took his right arm—crushed it, or rather devoured it.
The gods and angels in the tiers roared. Neither fighter heard them.
Azikeal scooped the daggers up with his remaining hand while his soul blood streamed away into the red aura. He locked the two hilts together.
"Rise to claim this crimson soul. Death Spear."
The daggers dissolved into shadowy mist and reformed as a spear.
Augustus was already charging, hammer and scythe up. They met in the center and traded blows, metal ringing on metal. The aura built with every exchange, dragging dust and debris in a slow spiral around them, as though the arena itself were being eaten by the fight.
Then Augustus poured his blood magic into both weapons. They lit red, and he swung with fresh strength. Azikeal gave ground. He could not evade everything, and shallow cuts began opening across his armor.
The aura around Augustus thinned and disappeared, drawn entirely into his weapons. He was a berserker now, and a berserker leaves gaps.
Azikeal found one. He drove the Death Spear through Augustus's chest and pulled back before the hammer could come down.
Augustus screamed. Soul blood poured down his breastplate. A second black brand bloomed over his heart, matching the one on his hand—another wound sealed by Death's claim instead of healing clean.
The moment the second mark settled, Augustus felt it: a slow leak inside him. Soul power was bleeding away through both brands, quiet and steady, as if Death had opened a valve he could not close.
"I must warn you now, Champion of War," Azikeal said, spear steady. "Listen carefully. My Marks of Death stack with every wound my weapons land. One mark is only a claim. Two marks begin draining your soul power without pause. A third mark ends the fight at once. You already carry two. Every technique you burn from here will cost you twice—once for the casting, and again for the marks."
Augustus looked down at his arm, then at his chest. Both brands pulsed together, and with each pulse he felt another thin thread of strength slip out of him.
"War ensues even at the cost of death. A single Death will not consume the War." He brought his hands together. "Beast's Blood Sacrifice."
His weapons fused. The aura that burst out of them dwarfed the first one. Dust and debris no longer drifted—they were dragged inward, and Azikeal felt the pull catch at him too, harder as it grew. Augustus's eyes went bloodshot. His frame thinned, hollowed out, as though the aura were taking him apart to feed itself.
That was the true price of Beast's Blood Sacrifice. It did not borrow power from the arena. It burned Augustus's own soul power—stamina, soul blood, and the body that carried them—into the weapon in huge drafts. Every second he kept it alive, he paid with himself. And all the while, the two Marks of Death kept draining what little he had left.
The hammer head reshaped into a second blade. He set the double-edged scythe spinning.
And Azikeal, for the first time, was afraid.
On the training field, Sephir lost her grip and the tempests burst apart around her. One thought sat in her mind, refusing to leave. Could death know fear?
"Death fears life," Sraptor said from the entrance, arriving for their combat training. "And life, death."
She turned to look at him. How did he know? She said nothing and went back to the screen.
Augustus was winning. Every angel in the Coliseum could see it. Azikeal could barely keep his feet under the pull of the aura. One more clean strike from that double blade would have ended him.
But Augustus's soul power was almost gone.
Beast's Blood Sacrifice was devouring it in gulps. The Marks of Death were sipping away what remained between those gulps. For a few heartbeats the aura still looked endless from the outside. Inside Augustus, there was nothing left to feed it.
The double scythe wavered first. The blood aura flickered, thinned, and then shattered like glass. Augustus's charge broke mid-step. He looked almost surprised—still facing Azikeal, still an inch from victory—as the last of his strength left him.
His knees struck the stone. He crumpled forward and did not rise. Unconscious. Breathing, but completely exhausted.
Silence dropped over the arena. The gods and angels stared, unable at first to make sense of it. Augustus had not been cut down by a third spear. He had spent himself trying to outpace Death: Beast's Blood Sacrifice burning through his soul power in a flood, while two Marks of Death drained what little remained. War had tried to buy victory with everything he had. Death had only waited until the well ran dry—and left him alive to feel the loss later.
Azikeal stayed on his feet, his shadow armor sealing off his wounds, one thought turning over and over behind his eyes.
I was about to die.
For the first time in his life, Azikeal had known true fear—and lived only because his opponent's power had emptied its wielder first.
Anna flew out to the center of the arena. Healers were already moving toward Augustus's still form. "The Champion of War can no longer proceed. Azikeal is the victor of this round."
The crowd broke into cheers. Azikeal did not react. He kept his thoughts where he kept everything else—in the shadows. And the outcome of the fight had already set the stage for everything still to come.