The days collapsed into a routine. Sweat, steel, strategy. The kind of week that only exists in the space between one hard thing and the next.
By the day before the second round, Moto's sword work had changed character entirely. He no longer swung the blade like he was trying to win an argument — the strikes were measured, the parries arrived early. Lilly lowered her bokken after their final session and looked at him for a moment.
"Your form is solid."
Moto leaned on the obsidian blade, wiping his face. "I've been thinking about how I want to use it. Defensively, mostly. Hold the line, create openings, let them come to me."
"That suits your style," she said.
"I've got something new to show in the next match." He grinned. "You'll see."
Lilly sheathed her practice sword. "Looking forward to it. Good luck."
On the same morning, Najo stood in front of the Flora checkpoint with his chest out and a look on his face that suggested he'd thought about this carefully and arrived at a decision he didn't entirely enjoy.
"I didn't want to use this," he said to the guard, "but I'm Ginimbi's grandson. Let us through."
The guard had bark-textured skin and eyes that had heard everything. He looked at Najo the way you look at something before you explain why it doesn't work. "Ginimbi. The Warlord of Nyika."
"The Peacekeeper."
A scoff. "Queen Sango despises Nyika. Despises Douglas. Despises Ginimbi specifically." He leaned forward slightly. "Using that name here doesn't buy access. It puts a target on your back. Leave."
They retreated into the city.
The box Tanaka assembled was not elegant. Scrap panels, heavy blankets, a seam down the middle to allow her arms through sleeves without letting light in. She set it on the floor of the hotel room and looked at Najo.
"Your fear isn't just the lightning," she said. "It's the overload — the light, the sound, the arrival of it. So we remove them."
Najo eyed the box. "And I sit inside that."
"Total darkness. Total silence. I can still touch your back through the sleeves."
He looked at it for another moment. Then he climbed in and pulled the lid down.
The darkness was complete.
"Activating Grace Inversion," Tanaka's voice came through, muffled, steady. "Just breathe."
The world softened at the edges. In the absence of sight and sound, something else stirred — a grainy, shifting field of impression, of pressure and light without source. He could feel the outline of Tanaka's hands against his back the way you feel warmth through stone. It wasn't seeing exactly. It was closer to knowing.
It was working.
"Okay," she said. "I'm lifting my hands."
The contact broke.
Zzzt.
A sharp crack split the silence. Pain — not his — and the image shattered. His chest locked.
"Najo. Stay with the flow. Don't follow the sound."
Her hands returned.
They tried again. And again. Each time, the moment the energy moved, fear grabbed it and yanked it toward the only anchor he trusted. Her. The lightning reached for Tanaka every time.
When they stopped, his hands were shaking. He climbed out of the box drenched in sweat and turned to tell her it was useless — and stopped.
She was rubbing her hands together. The skin was blackened in places, split and blistered, a dozen small burns across both palms.
"Your hands—"
"I'm fine," she said, tucking them behind her back.
"You're not fine." His chest tightened in a way he didn't know what to do with. "You're hurting yourself and we didn't even make progress."
That wasn't true, and some part of him knew it. But he couldn't say the real thing, which was that he couldn't stand watching her absorb the cost of his fear. So he said the wrong thing and walked out.
He came back late, long after the city had shifted into its night register. Moto and Aemon were going through quiet preparations on their side of the room. Tanaka sat reading, her hands wrapped in thin cloth she'd found somewhere.
Najo set something on the table without ceremony and stepped back.
A flower — luminous, jagged-petalled, faintly humming. The kind of thing that only grew in the crater.
"Thanks," he said. He didn't look at her. "For today."
Tanaka lifted it slowly. The light from it moved across her face. "I've never seen a mutation like this." Her voice had the quality of genuine wonder, the clinical edge entirely gone. "How did you—"
"You kept saying you wanted to see the crater plants." He shrugged, still not looking at her.
From across the room, Moto raised his eyebrows. "Is that a soft spot I'm seeing?"
"Don't." The tips of Najo's ears went red.
Moto laughed and got back to his pushups.
Snake was already at work when the city went dark.
While he and Blake covered their shift at the warehouse, one of his smaller tattoos peeled free of his forearm — a tiny ink-snake, moving with independent purpose into the shadows.
It found a house in the residential quarter, well-lit despite the hour. Six guards in black-and-green robes stood at the perimeter with heavy staves, the kind of posture that broadcasts how much is being protected. Inside, from what the snake could sense, a young man sat with his mother and sisters. Terrified. Waiting.
If that killer is foolish enough to come here, one of the guards called inside, it will be his last stop!
Midnight. The street was silent. Then — movement in the bushes.
Who's there?!
A small brown dog trotted out into the lamplight, red eyes glowing faintly. The guards looked at each other. They reached out to communicate — the innate ability of every Sango citizen — but the sounds coming back were wrong. Distorted, guttural, nothing they could parse. The dog walked to the front door and barked once.
A signal.
"You usually find them faster," a voice said from the dark behind them. Deep, unhurried, dry with familiarity. "Losing your sense of smell?"
The guards didn't move. Couldn't, really — the fear had arrived before the man himself. The dog ran past them into the shadow, tail going. When they finally turned, they saw him. A man of perhaps fifty-six, built with the density of something that had been useful for a long time. Long black coat. And at his flanks, two hyenas, jaws open, dripping.
"Stay back!" The head guard stepped forward, staff raised.
The man — Jeffery — sighed. "Kazuchi. Dispose of them."
The ground shuddered. A shadow detached from the dark behind him. Massive. Lupine. The wolf-Terror stood over the tallest guard by two full heads, its fur so dense and black it seemed to pull the moonlight in rather than reflect it. Its eyes burned crimson. It lunged, and the sound that followed was brief.
Jeffery stepped through the carnage without looking down, his dog at his heels. He wiped something from his shoe at the doorstep and entered.
Inside, screaming. He held up the wanted poster.
"He knows what he did," Jeffery said. "I suggest you don't make this harder."
Behind him, Kazuchi occupied the doorway, skull-deep in what remained of the head guard, cracking bone at leisure.
Such a glutton, Jeffery said to the wolf, almost fondly, as he walked back out minutes later wiping his knife. Slow down.
In the gutter, the tiny ink-snake watched, trembling. The moment Jeffery moved on, it turned and fled.
It found Snake at dawn, reattaching to his arm as he walked home from his shift, and it played back everything it had seen.
Snake's usual ease drained from his face. He stood very still on the empty morning street. A Terror that obedient, that powerful, under the command of one person — there was no fighting that. Not directly.
"I'll have to win the tournament," he said quietly. He turned toward the arena.
By mid-morning, the arena was packed past comfort. The stands groaned. The announcer didn't need amplification — his voice simply carried, the way certain people's do.
"ROUND TWO!"
The crowd answered.
He gestured, and attendants dragged a wooden board to the centre of the sand. Five blank slots, each waiting for a name.
"These are the only five names that advance to the finals." He slapped the board. It rattled. "You don't need to beat everyone. You don't need to survive. You need to write your name on this board."
He paused for effect.
"Each team sends one fighter. Each fighter receives a sealed cylinder. Inside — multiple copies of a single letter." He paced. "To claim a slot, you must spell your full name. That means taking letters from other fighters. Trade if you can. Fight if you must." The grin sharpened. "Lose your letter, lose your chance."
The teams broke into immediate, urgent conversation.
Moto stepped forward for his group. Four letters. Short name — efficient, he'd thought. Lilly joined from her side, calm, already reading the field. Hawk cracked her neck and scanned for targets before the cylinders were even distributed.
"Fighters! Cylinders up!"
Moto raised his.
In the stands, Snake leaned forward. He squinted. Let out a low whistle.
"Your boy's unlucky," he said.
Najo frowned. "What?"
Snake pointed. "He got an A."
Tanaka exhaled through her nose.
"Most common letter in the arena," Snake continued. "That's blood in the water."
Down below, Moto felt it immediately. The weight of two dozen assessments landing on him at once. Hangaika — massive, broad, three A's needed in his name — was already doing the arithmetic. Even Hawk glanced over.
Lilly stepped close, voice low. "I wouldn't blame you for stepping back."
Moto tightened his grip. "Not happening."
She considered him. Then she raised her own cylinder. "O. I'll give you mine if we cross paths." She turned away before he could respond. "Don't waste it."
Moto looked at the board. He had the A. Lilly would cover both O's. That left M and T.
His eyes moved across cylinders.
"BEGIN!"