The Mboko Grounds were less an arena and more a festering pit of ambition on the outskirts of the capital. The field, churned into a muddy soup by the previous night's rain and the boots of a hundred hopefuls, reeked of stale ale, sweat, and nervous energy thick enough to taste. It was a festival of violence, a chaotic free-for-all where desperate mercenaries, farmhands with dreams of glory, and grizzled braggarts came to test their mettle. Drunken villagers lined the roped-off fighting circles, waving copper coins and shouting bets, their faces alight with a hunger for spectacle.
At the center of it all, standing on a slightly-raised wooden platform, a royal herald in a scarlet tunic that was already splattered with mud bellowed the rules over the din.
"The Mboko Grounds is open to all!" his voice boomed, projecting over the rowdy crowd. "Step forward! Test your strength! Test your skill! The rules are simple: one match! Win, and you earn a bronze token! That token is your entry to the Sunstone tournament on the morrow, and a chance at eternal glory! Lose… and you earn nothing but mud for your troubles! Who has the courage to answer the call?"
Leonotis and Low pushed through the jostling crowd towards a long, splintery table where a weary-looking scribe was taking names. The sign-up sheet was already stained with ale and what looked suspiciously like blood.
Low, as Grom, stepped forward first. She grunted a name at the scribe—"Grom Stonehand"—and made a crude 'X' on the ledger beside it. The scribe, barely looking up from his inkwell, slid a rough, splintery wooden token across the table. It was stamped with the King's crest.
Then it was Leonotis's turn. He stepped forward, keeping his head down as Jacqueline had instructed, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Lia," he mumbled, his voice a soft alto. "Lia… of Greenwater." He signed the name with a shaky hand, the charcoal stick feeling foreign in his fingers. He took his own token, its rough texture a stark, terrifying reality in his palm. It was done. There was no turning back.
With their tokens clutched in their hands, they gave a final, fleeting glance to their companions. Jacqueline met their eyes, giving a single, sharp nod of encouragement before pulling the floppy brim of her hat lower and melting into the thickest part of the crowd, seeking a vantage point where she could watch without being watched. Zombiel was simply stood beside Jacqueline looking out of place in the crowd of blood thristy adults.
Leonotis and Low were on their own. They turned their attention to the muddy fighting circles, where the first fight was about to begin.
"I don't like that grin," Low muttered, chin jerking toward the herald—a tall man in white and gold, waving his ceremonial staff like he was blessing a parade, not a bloodsport.
Leonotis didn't answer. His jaw was clenched too tight.
The next match had already begun.
Two fighters circled each other like predators. One wielded twin iron hooks; the other carried a mace with wicked, uneven spikes. The crowd roared as they clashed.
The fighter with the mace landed the first brutal hit.
CRACK.
It echoed through the grounds like a tree splitting in half. The hooked man's forearm bent in a direction arms should never bend. Bone punched through skin in a quick, wet bloom.
Leonotis sucked in a breath. Low winced. No one else in the entire arena reacted.
"Ha! Clean hit!" someone behind them cheered.
"Move or yield!" the herald called cheerily, as though announcing a festival game.
The man didn't yield. He lunged with his good arm, hook catching his opponent across the jaw. Teeth scattered across the mud like tossed grains.
Low whispered, "They're… they're not even stopping it."
Leonotis shook his head. "Not until someone can't get up. That's what the rules said."
The mace fighter swung again—this time hitting ribs. The crunch was deep. Final.
The hooked fighter collapsed, choking on his own breath.
"Victory to Bortheos the Bloodhoe!" the herald sang out, staff raised in delight.
The crowd erupted, ecstatic. Bets were exchanged, cups were raised, and already people were shouting for the next match.
Low swallowed hard. "They don't care," she murmured. "Not about bones. Not about blood. Not about any of it."
Leonotis stared at the red-soaked mud as attendants dragged the unconscious man away like a broken doll.
"No," he said quietly. "They don't."
And then, as a new roar swelled for the next fighters, the herald's voice boomed through the arena:
"Prepare—next on the roster!"
Low exhaled slowly. "Well. Guess it's our turn to pretend we're the monsters they want."
For a heartbeat, as the attendants dragged the broken fighter away, Leonotis let his eyes drift over the crowd.
Dozens of faces—grinning, shouting, hungry. Hungry for pain. Hungry for the spectacle of bodies breaking. Not one of them looked horrified. Not one looked like someone he'd dreamed of saving when he told himself he wanted to be a hero.
Is this what people cheer for?
The thought creeped into his mind.
All those stories he'd clung to—stories of noble warriors, grateful villagers, a world that lifted heroes high because heroes protected them—felt suddenly childish. Paper ideals in a world made of blood and bone dust.
If this crowd watched him die, they'd roar just as loud.
For a moment, he wondered why he was wanted to fight for people who didn't seem to value life at all.
Then Low nudged his shoulder. "Focus, Leonotis."
He inhaled sharply, pushed the bitterness down, and forced his spine straight.
Not for the crowd. Not for their cheers.They were here for Gethii and Chinakah. For the ones who actually mattered.
He shook his head, clearing it, locking himself back into the moment.
Time to fight.
The mud waited. The crowd waited.
And the bones of the last fighter were still cooling on the ground.
The herald's voice boomed, rattling the very ground. "Next challenger! Grom Stonehand!"
Low, feeling the familiar hum of anticipation, stepped forward. As she moved towards the designated fighting circle, a ripple of murmurs, then outright laughter, spread through the crowd. Her opponent was already there. He was a mountain of a man almost three times her size. He bore the local champion's markings, and his name, Bane, was a rumble on the lips of his cheering fans. He gripped an enormous iron hammer, its head pitted and scarred from countless battles. When his eyes, dark and dismissive, landed on the short, stocky "dwarf" shuffling into the ring, he threw back his head and roared with laughter, a sound as thunderous and mocking as a collapsing rockslide.
"Look at this, lads! A badger in a beard! Think you can stand against Bane, eh, little one?" he bellowed, spitting a stream of brown tobacco juice into the mud.
Low, as Grom, said nothing. Her expression remained grim and stony. She simply hefted the petrified stone axe onto her shoulder, its dark, gnarled handle feeling strangely light in her hands, the massive head catching the weak morning light.
Bane, his ego inflated by the crowd's jeers, charged. He swung his hammer in a devastating, wide arc, a blow meant to crush, to end the fight before it truly began. The air whistled with the weapon's descent.
Low didn't dodge. She planted her feet, wide and firm, her entire body becoming a rooted extension of the earth. She raised the stone axe, not to block, but to meet the blow head-on.
CRACK!
The sound was deafening, a sharp, violent explosion that drowned out the roar of the crowd, echoing like thunderclap across the muddy grounds. The impact jolted up Low's arms but she didn't budge. A collective gasp rippled through the onlookers as the unthinkable happened: the colossal iron hammer, swung by a man of immense strength, was stopped dead. Low, seemingly unmoved by the staggering impact, didn't even slide. A hairline crack spiderwebbed across Bane's hammer head, but her stone axe remained intact.
Before Bane could even register his shock, Low used his own stalled momentum against him. With a powerful, almost casual shove, she sent the massive man stumbling backward, off-balance. Then, with a practiced fluidness that belied her stocky frame, she spun inside his guard, moving with a speed no one expected from "Grom." The flat of her stone axe connected with his ribs with a dull, sickening thud. It wasn't a lethal blow, but it was brutal, designed to incapacitate.
Bane gagged, his eyes wide with pain and disbelief. The wind was knocked from him in a single, agonizing whoosh, and he folded in on himself, collapsing into the mud.
The fight was over in seconds.
The crowd fell into a stunned, disbelieving silence. The boisterous cheers died, replaced by a profound quiet. They stared at the small, bearded "dwarf," who now stood over the prone form of their champion, axe resting casually on his shoulder, as if he'd merely swatted a fly. A new kind of murmur began to rise, a mixture of awe and shock at the "dwarf's" terrifying, unexpected power.
Low's opponent, Bane, was still groaning in the mud as the herald, looking utterly flummoxed, finally stammered out the next name. "Next! Lia... Lia of Greenwater!"
Leonotis, his heart still a frantic drum against his ribs despite his best efforts to appear calm, walked into the muddy circle. He kept his head bowed, the brim of his borrowed hat obscuring his face as Jacqueline had instructed. His opponent was already there, a wiry sellsword with a predatory gleam in his eyes and two wickedly sharp daggers glinting in his hands. He wore expensive, if mud-splattered, leather armor, and a cruel smirk stretched across his face as he took in the slight figure before him.
"Well, well," the sellsword sneered, twirling one of his daggers with exaggerated flourish. His name was Roric, and he had a reputation for brutality and flash. "Looks like they're scraping the bottom of the barrel today. A scared little lambkin. Don't worry, sweetcheeks, I'll make it quick and clean for ya." He chuckled, a harsh, grating sound.
Leonotis, as Lia, offered no response, only clutching his linen-wrapped practice sword, making it seem heavier than it was. He let his shoulders slump slightly, feigning nervousness.
Roric lunged first—a blur of motion and polished steel. The crowd roared as he circled Leonotis with theatrical flair, blades flashing in the sun. He struck with exaggerated flourishes: a dramatic slash at the head, a sweeping cut at the legs, a needless spinning parry thrown in just to show off.
Leonotis dodged each one narrowly—sometimes ducking late, sometimes stepping aside at the last possible second, sometimes stumbling as if his own feet were betraying him. His wrapped sword hung low, appearing far too heavy for him to wield properly.
To the audience, it looked like a slaughter in the making.A seasoned predator toying with an overmatched child.
They jeered at Leonotis, bored of the "lambkin" already.
But Leonotis wasn't stumbling by accident.He was studying.
Every misstep, every clumsy sway, every narrow dodge was calculated—testing Roric's tempo, feeling the weight of his rhythm, waiting for the one mistake a showman always makes:
Overcommitment.
Roric saw what he thought was an opening: Leonotis stepping back too slowly, his guard dropped. With a triumphant shout, he lunged in for the "finishing" strike—a wide, crowd-pleasing flourish meant to end the fight in one dramatic motion.
That was the mistake.
Leonotis's footing stabilized in an instant. His posture shifted—subtle, precise, deadly. He slid half a step to the side, letting Roric's overextended blade cut nothing but air.
Roric's eyes went wide.
Leonotis moved.
His sword, still wrapped, snapped upward in a tight, efficient arc—nothing flashy, nothing wasted. A clean strike aimed for the precise moment Roric's wrist was most exposed, when his balance hadn't yet recovered from the failed lunge.
The blow landed with a sharp, brutal crack—bone, not wood.
Roric screamed, his dagger flying from numb fingers into the dirt.
The crowd gasped. The showman had been dismantled not by magic, not by luck, but by a swordsman who knew exactly when to strike.
"I concede! I concede!" Roric yelled, clutching his throbbing wrist, his face a mask of humiliation and pain. His arrogance had shattered.
The crowd, momentarily silenced by the abrupt end to the fight, erupted in a confused roar. It looked to their untrained eyes like pure luck. There were shouts of "Foul!" and "Cheap shot!", but the herald, keen to keep the matches moving, simply shrugged. A win was a win.
Moments later, Leonotis, still embodying the withdrawn Lia, joined Low at the side of the arena. Low gave him a small, almost imperceptible nod. Despite the crowd's grumbling, they both held their bronze tokens. Their entry into the Sunstone tournament was secured.
Tomorrow was the real arena.
The streets were quieter on the way back, but Leonotis still felt the echo of the crowd—their roaring hunger, their delight in violence—ringing in his skull.
Low noticed the way he kept glancing at the cobblestones instead of ahead. "You're still thinking about them, aren't you?"
"Hard not to," Leonotis muttered. "All that cheering… I never thought so many people would love seeing their own hurt."
Low snorted softly. "Some do. Some don't. If you only hang around the places where the bad ones go, that's all you'll ever see." She bumped his shoulder with hers. "Think about Chinakah. Think about Gethii. Were they bad peoplle?"
Leonotis slowed a little. "…No. They were good. More than good."
"Exactly." Low looked forward again, her voice quieter. "Leonotis… What I like about you is—well, maybe it's because of your amnesia—but you don't have that big distrust of people like I do. You look at folks like they might actually be worth something." She shrugged. "Don't lose that. Not like I did."
A small smile tugged at Leonotis' mouth. "I'll try."
They walked a few more steps before he added, "But what about Zombiel? We have to protect his innocence too."
Low burst into laughter. "Him? I don't know about him. He'll probably never change."
Leonotis laughed with her, the shadows of the arena finally easing off his shoulders as they continued toward the shrine.