Leonotis and Low moved with the slow, murmuring river of the crowd, making their way back to their seats. The air, which had crackled with the electric thrill of combat, now hung heavy and subdued. Zola's scream had been a shared wound, and the coliseum itself seemed to be holding its breath in the aftermath.
Leonotis felt drained, the adrenaline from their covert healing mission replaced by a profound weariness. Every step back toward the stands felt like a step deeper into the gilded cage he couldn't escape. He had saved a friend, but at the cost of revealing another piece of their dangerous puzzle.
When they reached their seats, Adebayo was already there, a solitary, immovable figure against the backdrop of the restless crowd. He wasn't watching the arena; he was carefully re-wrapping the hand wrappings around his hands, his movements slow, deliberate, and meditative. He looked up as they approached, and the tension in his face eased into a respectful nod.
"You returned," he said, his voice a calm, steady bass that cut through the noise. "I was beginning to think the sight of such a dishonorable fight had driven you away for the rest of the day."
"Something like that," Low grunted, dropping onto the bench with the heavy thud of stone.
Leonotis sank down beside her, the persona of Lia a heavy cloak on his shoulders. "Your match," he said, forcing the quiet, high-pitched voice. "We missed it. I can only assume you won?"
Adebayo's lips curved into a faint, proud smile. He finished with the hand wrapping. "The ancestors were gracious," he said, a statement of fact, not a boast. "My opponent was a warrior from the deserts, a master of the scythe. A formidable man, strong and swift. He fought with the fury of a sandstorm."
"But you won," Low stated, her tone flat.
"I did," Adebayo confirmed. "He was powerful, but he fought for himself. His chants were of his own glory, his movements designed to impress the nobles. He sought to conquer the arena."
Adebayo pressed a hand to the stone beneath him, a gesture of deep reverence. "I sought only to honor it. My form of mgba is not about conquest. It is a conversation with the earth. When he tried to sweep my legs, the ground held me. When he swung his scythe to take my head, my spirit was already centered."
He looked at Leonotis, his gaze direct and clear. "I did not break his body. I simply showed him that his foundation was built on sand, not stone. He yielded with honor. It was a good fight."
Leonotis listened, a familiar ache of envy twisting in his gut. Adebayo's victory was so clean, so pure. He fought with a clarity of purpose that Leonotis couldn't even begin to fathom.
Adebayo was a river, flowing in a channel carved by generations of tradition. Leonotis was a flood, a chaotic surge of power threatening to break its banks and drown everything in its path.
Before he could dwell on the thought, Jabara's voice boomed once more, announcing the next bout. The crowd roared with renewed enthusiasm.
"From the sacred temples of Obatala's Reach, the weaver of spirits—Amara!"
Leonotis's breath caught. He just realized that Amara wasn't at her seat. His gaze snapped to the arena floor. Amara was already there, a serene figure in the center of the vast, sun-drenched pit. She looked so small and out of place, yet she commanded the space with an effortless gravity.
Her opponent was a man whose face was obscured by a wooden mask carved with the spiraling, hollow eyes of a spirit. He wore vestments of rough-spun fiber and held a flat, oblong slat of dark, heavy wood attached to a long, braided cord.
"Kambuano, a patron of Oro," Adebayo murmured. "A dangerous matchup. That instrument is a bullroarer. He does not need to touch her to hurt her. He fights with the voice of the ancestors—sound and wind."
The duel began.
Kambuano wasted no time. He began to swing the cord above his head. At first, it was a low, rhythmic thrum-thrum-thrum that Leonotis could feel vibrating in his teeth. Then, as Kambuano spun it faster, the sound grew into a terrifying, unearthly roar that seemed to emanate from everywhere at once. The air in the arena rippled, distorting the light like heat haze.
Kambuano intended to crush the priestess under the weight of the air itself.
But Amara did not cover her ears.
She lifted her staff, its polished black surface seeming to drink the light, and whispered a single, inaudible word. The air behind her shimmered, and with a shriek that cut through the low-frequency roar of the bullroarer, the two Kongamato burst into existence. They were magnificent, terrifying beasts of reddish-brown energy and needle-sharp teeth.
The crowd gasped. They had seen her summon them before, but the sight had lost none of its awesome power.
"She's fighting sound with sound," Low observed. "The beasts' screeching... she can use it to disrupt his rhythm."
Kambuano flicked his wrist, and the bullroarer screamed, sending a concentrated lance of sonic pressure toward her.
One of the beasts swooped low, its massive wings beating in a precise counter-rhythm. The collision of the air currents created a visible shockwave of dust, but the attack dissipated harmlessly before it reached Amara. The other beast climbed high into the sky, circling like a vulture.
"It is a hunt," Adebayo said, completely captivated. "One beast is the shield. The other is the spear. This is not just power; it is strategy."
Leonotis couldn't tear his eyes away. He watched Amara, her expression calm, her body a still point in the cacophony she had unleashed. She didn't shout commands; she didn't make grand gestures. Her connection to the creatures was a silent, seamless thing.
Leonotis could feel the flow of her ase was a steady and controlled current. It was a stark contrast to the wild, untamed power that raged within him. Even now he felt as if his ase was spreading through his body itching to be let loose.
The devotee of Oro grew frustrated. The constant screeching of the Kongamato was preventing him from establishing a resonant frequency. He roared, spinning his body in a circle to generate maximum momentum. The bullroarer became a blur.
This time, he created a vortex.
A wall of screaming wind erupted around Amara, closing in tight. It wasn't solid, but the sonic pressure was so intense it would rupture the eardrums and scramble the equilibrium of anyone caught inside.
"She is trapped in the sound!" someone shouted from the crowd.
But Amara simply looked up.
From its vantage point high above, the second Kongamato saw what its mistress saw. With a piercing shriek, it folded its wings and dove. It was a guided missile of pure spiritual energy.
As Kambuano swung the instrument overhead, the beast slammed into the blurred arc of the weapon.
SNAP.
The cord severed. The heavy slat of wood went flying into the arena wall with a dull thud. The terrifying roar vanished instantly, replaced by a ringing silence that left the crowd stunned.
Kambuano, his equilibrium thrown off by the sudden loss of tension, stumbled forward. Through the settling dust, the first Kongamato shot forward with the flat of its leathery tail. It swept the man's legs out from under him, sending him crashing hard to the ground.
Amara lowered her staff. The Kongamato landed on either side of her, folding their wings with a final, gusting whisper before dissolving into motes of red and gold light that danced in the air and then vanished. The fight was over.
The crowd roared its approval for the sheer artistry of the victory. Amara had won without taking a single step into her opponent's range, silencing the roaring voice of the forest with a single, precise command. It was a triumph of tactical grace.
As she turned to leave the arena, her gaze swept across the stands, and for a breathtaking moment, her eyes met Leonotis's. He felt it like a physical touch, a silent acknowledgment that left his skin tingling and his heart hammering against his ribs.
The day's final matches passed in a blur. The playful energy of the earlier rounds was gone, replaced by a grim, finality.
Jabara announced the last match of the day. "From the Black Steppe, a shadow that has consumed all light before it—Silas!"
A cold silence fell over the arena. Even the wind seemed to die. Adebayo's expression hardened into a mask of deep disapproval. Low leaned forward, her knuckles tight on the railing.
Silas's opponent was a Sunfire-Priest named Femi, a man whose àṣẹ was a brilliant, blinding white-gold. He was the embodiment of purity and righteous fire, a stark contrast to the creeping void that was Silas.
The fight began before the drums did. Femi thrust his hands forward, and a torrent of holy fire, white-hot and searing, erupted toward Silas. It was a wave of pure, cleansing energy, meant to burn away all corruption.
Silas did not move. He did not raise a shield. He did not dodge. He simply lifted one hand, palm open.
The fire hit him.
And vanished.
It did not splash or deflect. It did not explode on impact. The entire, roaring torrent of holy àṣẹ was swallowed by his palm, sucked into a silent, colorless void. The brilliant light of the attack simply ceased to exist, leaving a stunned, absolute silence in its wake.
"What… what was that?" Leonotis whispered, a profound, primal horror coiling in his stomach.
"He didn't block it," Adebayo said, his voice a strained, disbelieving rasp. "He… he ate it."
Silas lowered his hand. His eyes began to glow with that same, sickening, purple-black light, but this time, it was brighter, more vibrant, fed by the stolen power of his opponent. A slow, cruel smile touched his lips.
"My turn," he said. The words were too quiet to be heard, but they were felt by everyone in the arena.
He extended the same hand, and from his palm, a stream of black fire erupted. It was a horrifying mockery of the Sunfire-Priest's attack—the same shape, the same intensity, but corrupted, twisted into something unholy. It was a fire that did not burn with heat, but with cold, a fire that consumed not flesh, but spirit.
The black fire struck Femi. The Sunfire-Priest didn't even have time to scream. The golden light of his own àṣẹ was extinguished in an instant, snuffed out like a candle flame. He collapsed but a hollow shell, his eyes vacant, his spirit consumed.
Silas lowered his hand, the purple glow in his eyes fading back to a dull, latent pulse. He had won in less than ten seconds, and he had done it by turning his opponent's greatest strength into the instrument of his own destruction. The sand where he stood was scarred with those same black marks on the sacred ground.
Jabara, her face hardened, declared Silas the victor. This time, there were no cheers. There was only a deep, terrified silence that was far more damning than any jeer.
Silas turned and walked from the arena, his chillingly efficient match a final, brutal statement. He was not here to compete. He was here to consume.
Adebayo stood up abruptly, his face a mask of cold fury. "That is not a warrior," he declared to the silent air. "That is a curse. An abomination in the eyes of the Orisha."
Low said nothing, but her eyes were fixed on the black scars on the sand, her expression grim. She saw Silas not as an offense to the gods, but as a clear and present threat to their mission. A problem that would, eventually, need to be solved.
Leonotis felt a wave of nausea. The familiarity of that corrupting purple light was no longer a vague suspicion; it was a certainty.
It was the energy of the mushrooms, the blight from the marsh, the same soul-eating darkness he had fought before. It had a name now. It had a face. And it was here, in this tournament, devouring the light, one champion at a time.
The royal dais was quiet in the aftermath of Silas's victory. Even high above the arena, where the nobles usually chattered and sipped palm wine without a care, there was only a dense, suffocating silence. The black scars still smoldered on the sand far below, ugly reminders of a power that did not belong in the world of mortals.
King Rega sat back slowly, fingers steepled beneath his chin. The sunlight glinted off his golden circlet, but in that moment, he looked nothing like a symbol of royal might. He looked like a man calculating the weight of a threat.
Kenya stood at his right, arms crossed, jaw clenched hard enough that the muscles twitched beneath her dark skin. Her wooden mask hid her expression, but the tension in her shoulders spoke plainly.
Zuri stood at the king's left, quieter but equally rigid, her hands clasped behind her back.
King Rega broke the silence first.
"That," he said, voice low, "was the most disgusting display of power I have seen since the day I inherited this throne."
Kenya gave a sharp nod. "It wasn't power, my king. It was violation. That… thing didn't fight. It feasted."
Zuri's eyes, usually calm pools, flicked uneasily toward the scarred arena floor. "The marks left on the sand—those weren't just battle remnants. I could feel something pulling. Like echoes of stolen prayers."
Rega's lips twitched with something between irritation and intrigue.
"Stolen àṣẹ," he murmured. "Spirits swallowed, light inverted… A devourer disguised as a warrior."
Kenya took a step forward, her voice hard. "He wasn't fighting like that before. If he wins more matches that way, he will grow. That type of parasite always grows."
"Agreed," Zuri said. "His aura is unfamiliar… but faintly reminiscent of rot. Like something ancient. Something that should have remained buried."
Rega exhaled sharply, as though her words confirmed a suspicion he'd hoped to dismiss.
"This tournament was supposed to display strength for me to poach," he said. "Now it threatens to showcase something else entirely."
He adjusted his clothes, eyes narrowing as he tracked the last fading flickers of shadow left behind by Silas.
"Jabara will no doubt have opinions," he added with a humorless chuckle. "She always does."
Kenya shifted uncomfortably. "Yes, and she will ask questions."
Zuri nodded. "She was already sensed an imbalance with Silas. She'll most likely contact her Orisha for guidance after this."
Rega's expression was that of annoyance and faintly amused all at once.
"Let her sense it," he said. "Let all the Seers whisper. I rule this kingdom, not the Orisha, and certainly not their interpreters."
Kenya tilted her masked head slightly. "Still… keeping an eye on Silas would be prudent."
"Oh, I will," Rega said, the corner of his mouth lifting in a thin smile. "A man who consumes fire is either a weapon waiting for me to wield… or a problem waiting for me to end."
Kenya and Zuri bowed their heads in silent agreement. All three of them felt the silent shiver crawling beneath the surface of the world.
Silas had not merely won.
He had announced himself.
And whatever was coming next… it would not merely be a fight.
It would be a reckoning.