The glaive rose one final time.
Aya's legs trembled. Her vision swam with blood and exhaustion. Every muscle in Tessa's borrowed body screamed for rest, but she forced herself upright. One more exchange. Just one more.
The champion—the Fang of the South—paused. His eyes, visible through the half-mask, flickered with something almost like respect. Almost like regret.
She fought well. For a peasant girl. Perhaps...
But the Chairman's voice boomed across the arena, shrill with impatience. "FINISH IT! End this farce!"
The champion's jaw tightened. The moment of hesitation died.
Orders are orders.
He moved.
Aya saw it coming. Her body knew what was happening even as her exhausted mind struggled to react. She tried to pivot, tried to flow into another form—
Quadra Emperor Style: Turning Tide...
Too slow.
The glaive sang through the air, a perfect silver arc. Time seemed to stretch, each microsecond an eternity. She saw the blade's edge catch the sunlight. Saw the trajectory. Knew exactly where it would land.
Her right arm.
The steel bit through flesh and bone like they were nothing.
The pain didn't come immediately. First came the wrongness—the sudden absence, the phantom weight that should have been there but wasn't. Aya's eyes tracked downward in numb disbelief.
Her arm—her right arm—tumbled through the air, spinning, fingers still twitching in a final, useless attempt to form a fist. It hit the sand with a dull thump.
Then the pain arrived.
It was a scream that started in her shoulder and exploded through every nerve ending in her body. White-hot agony that turned her vision into static. Her knees buckled. She collapsed onto the blood-soaked sand, clutching at the spurting stump.
[CRITICAL DAMAGE SUSTAINED]
[HP: 1/100]
[STATUS: SEVERE HEMORRHAGING]
[WARNING: CONSCIOUSNESS FADING...]
The crowd erupted into chaos. Some cheered. Others screamed in horror. Tessa's mother wailed somewhere in the stands, her father roaring curses at the guards restraining him.
Aya couldn't hear them. The world had narrowed to the agony radiating from her shoulder and the hot, sticky feeling of her own blood pooling beneath her.
I'm going to die. Again.
She writhed in the sand, teeth clenched so hard she tasted copper. Every second was an eternity of fire burning through her veins. Her vision blurred, darkening at the edges.
Not like this. Not after everything—
The champion stood over her, glaive dripping crimson. He opened his mouth to speak—perhaps to offer final words, perhaps an apology—
BOOM.
The arena's eastern wall exploded.
Stone and fire erupted skyward as something—multiple somethings—tore through the fortifications. The shockwave rolled across the courtyard, throwing nobles from their seats and scattering guards like toys.
Aya gasped, the sudden chaos shocking her back from the edge of unconsciousness. Through the haze of pain, she heard screams. Not the excited screams of a bloodthirsty crowd, but terror.
"ATTACK! WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!"
"THE REBELS! THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS!"
Figures poured through the breach—men and women in mismatched armor, wielding everything from swords to crude explosives. They moved with coordinated fury, cutting down imperial soldiers as they went.
"FOR THE PEOPLE!" one roared, driving a spear through a guard's chest. "DOWN WITH THE TYRANTS!"
Fire spread rapidly. Banners caught and blazed. The wooden stands groaned and began to collapse. Panic consumed the arena as nobles trampled each other in their desperation to flee.
The Chairman shrieked, his massive body jiggling as he tried to run. "GUARDS! PROTECT ME! PROTECT YOUR CHAIRMAN!"
The champion's head snapped toward the breach, then back to Aya. For a heartbeat, their eyes met.
She saw the calculation. Already dead. Not worth staying for.
He turned and vanished into the smoke, following his fleeing lord.
The freedom fighters swept through the arena like a hurricane. One—a woman with a scarred face and a war hammer—paused near the execution platform. Her eyes landed on Aya's crumpled form, the pool of blood, the severed arm lying in the sand.
"This one's gone," she called to her comrades. "Keep moving!"
They left.
Everyone left.
Aya lay alone in the center of the burning arena, her consciousness flickering like a dying candle. The heat from the flames pressed against her skin. Smoke filled her lungs.
Move. Move or die.
But her body wouldn't respond. The pain was too much. The blood loss too severe.
[HP: 1/100]
[REGENERATION INSUFFICIENT]
[TIME REMAINING UNTIL DEATH: 3 MINUTES]
Three minutes. That's all she had.
Her eyes drifted to her severed arm, lying just out of reach. So close. Impossibly far.
Steel Thread.
The skill she'd gained in her ant life—the ability to produce and manipulate silk-like threads strong as steel wire. She'd used it to build traps, to bind prey, to climb impossible surfaces.
Could it work? In this body? Now?
She had no choice.
Gritting her teeth until they creaked, Aya focused. Deep in her core, past the screaming pain, she reached for that familiar sensation—the place where her ant instincts still lived.
[SKILL ACTIVATION: STEEL THREAD]
From her remaining hand, thin silver strands began to emerge. They writhed like living things, responding to her will. Sweat poured down her face as she directed them toward the severed arm.
Closer. Come on. CLOSER.
The threads wrapped around her detached limb, coiling tight. With a mental command that cost her everything, she pulled.
The arm scraped across blood-slick sand.
Inch by agonizing inch.
Closer.
Her vision went gray at the edges. Her lungs burned. The system's warnings flashed urgently.
[HP: 1/100]
[WARNING: CRITICAL STATE]
[TIME REMAINING: 90 SECONDS]
The severed arm finally reached her. With her left hand trembling, she grabbed it, positioning the ragged stump against her shoulder.
Now came the hard part.
Stitch. I need to stitch it back.
More threads emerged, finer now, surgical. She'd never done anything like this. Her Steel Thread was meant for hunting, for binding—not surgery. But desperation made her creative.
The first thread pierced her flesh.
Aya's scream tore through the burning arena, raw and primal. She bit down on her own arm to muffle it, tears streaming down her face. Another thread. Another pierce. She was sewing her own arm back on with steel wire, conscious through every second of it.
[STEEL THREAD: EMERGENCY SUTURING]
[WARNING: UNORTHODOX APPLICATION]
[SEVERE PAIN INFLICTED]
The threads wove through skin, muscle, tendon. Not healing—she couldn't heal this. But holding it together. Keeping it attached. Maybe, maybe her Healing Factor could do the rest if she could just survive long enough.
The world tilted. Her head hit the sand. Everything was spinning, burning, screaming.
[HP: 1/100]
[BLEEDING: REDUCED TO CRITICAL]
[CONSCIOUSNESS: FADING...]
No. Not yet.
Aya forced her eyes open. Through the smoke, she could see the arena's exit—a gaping wound in the stone wall where the freedom fighters had broken through.
Move. Crawl. Survive.
She rolled onto her stomach, her reattached arm hanging uselessly at her side, held together by steel threads and willpower. With her left arm, she dragged herself forward.
One pull. Rest. Breathe.
Another pull. Her vision darkened. Her lungs screamed for clean air.
The flames roared around her, consuming everything. Timbers crashed. Stone cracked from the heat.
I'm an ant. Ants don't give up. Ants survive.
Inch by bloody inch, she crawled through hell.
The arena's entrance was chaos incarnate. Bodies littered the ground—guards, nobles, civilians caught in the crossfire. The freedom fighters were gone, vanished into the city's burning streets. Imperial reinforcements were coming; she could hear their war horns in the distance.
Aya collapsed just outside the arena gates, gasping. Her reattached arm throbbed with every heartbeat, the steel threads glinting wetly in the firelight.
[SKILL EVOLUTION DETECTED]
[STEEL THREAD → STEEL SUTURE]
[NEW ABILITY: EMERGENCY FIELD MEDICINE (CRUDE)]
[HP: 2/100]
[BLEEDING: STABILIZED (BARELY)]
Two HP. Two.
But she was alive.
She looked back at the burning arena, at the inferno consuming the Chairman's seat of power. Somewhere in that chaos, he was probably fleeing. The champion too. They'd left her to die.
Good.
Let them think she was dead. Let everyone think it.
Aya turned her face toward the road leading out of the regional capital. Toward the forests. Toward Tessa's village.
I'm coming home. Just... wait for me.
She stood on shaking legs, cradling her sutured arm, and began to walk.
Behind her, the city burned.
Ahead, an impossible journey awaited.
But Aya had survived worse.
She'd been an ant, after all.
And ants always found their way home.
[END CHAPTER]
System Notifications:
[TRIAL BY COMBAT: DEFEAT]
[SURVIVAL AGAINST IMPOSSIBLE ODDS: SUCCESS]
[NEW TITLE ACQUIRED: SHE WHO REFUSED TO DIE]
[WILLPOWER +5]
[PAIN RESISTANCE +3]
[STEEL THREAD EVOLVED → STEEL SUTURE]
[WARNING: PERMANENT INJURY POSSIBLE IF NOT TREATED]
[QUEST UPDATED: RETURN TO TESSA'S VILLAGE]