The Citadel's bridges hum beneath Grant's steps, each crystalline strut singing in a pitch too pure for mortal ears. Star-light bleeds through the translucent floor, constellations sliding past like schools of living fish.
All around him, beings of legend drift through the radiant avenues. Some stride on armored legs wreathed in flame, every footfall leaving comet tails. Others glide like hooded sorcerers, their robes stitched with fragments of nebulae. Farther off, brash figures clash in friendly bouts, laughter ringing like struck bells; one leaps skyward in a blur of gold hair and unbridled fury, another spins a blade that shivers with the promise of worlds undone. There are silent monarchs crowned in shadow, pilots wrapped in the shimmer of distant galaxies, and sword-bearers whose weapons hum with doom and destiny.
Each presence carries the gravity of an entire Sphere—champions, guardians, myths made flesh. They turn as he passes, their voices a low tide of curiosity.
"The Core's new Protector…"
"…crimson lightning… superheroes?"
"…fresh from the Rift itself."
Grant's red arcs crackle softly in answer, instinctively matching the Citadel's quiet rhythm. For a moment he feels both out of place and utterly at home, as though every legend he once read or watched was only a shadow of this gathering.
He breathes in the rarefied air—a mix of ozone, starlight, and possibility—and walks on, the whispers following like a living comet tail: the newest Protector has arrived.
The grand hall curves like a galaxy turned inside out. Walls of living constellations swirl and reshape themselves into scenes of endless wars—rivers of light forming battles fought on a million worlds. When Grant steps across the threshold, the chamber hushes, and a loose circle of figures closes around him.
The first to speak is a swordsman whose scarred blade burns with an eternal ember. His armor is battered bronze, his gaze the fierce calm of someone who has crossed centuries of fire. "Every Sphere falls into shadow," he says, voice carrying the heat of dying stars. "Our task is to keep the blaze alive, even when the night is endless."
Beside him stands a cloaked scholar, the folds of her mantle glimmering with shifting equations. Her eyes hold the patience of someone who has rewritten the end of fate more than once. "I have watched histories break and mend," she murmurs, each word a ripple in the air. "Balance is not victory—it is vigilance without end."
A flash of wild energy draws Grant's attention to a warrior whose hair spikes like a storm given form. Power rolls off him in steady waves, a grin bright and reckless. "You learn fast or you lose fast," he says with a laugh that shakes the chamber. "But when the fight calls, you don't hold back. Ever."
Last comes a dark-clad king, armor etched with the sigils of a long-dead realm. Sorrow sits on his shoulders like a crown of iron, and his voice is thunder steeped in grief. "I saved my world," he rumbles, "and still I stand alone. Protection is triumph. It is also exile. Remember that before you boast of strength."
One by one they offer fragments of their journeys—brief flashes of cities preserved, friends lost, eternities endured. Grant feels the weight of their words settle on him like a mantle heavier than any armor.
He looks around the circle and understands: this is not a gathering of victors. It is a fellowship of those who carry entire realities on their backs, who win only to bear the loneliness of endless watch. And now, he is one of them.
The Citadel's great hall dims until the star-lit murals fade to a quiet twilight. From the far side of the circle a new figure steps forward—a mountain of metal and shadow. His armor seems forged from collapsed suns, each plate etched with scars that glow like molten seams. When he speaks, the sound grinds like tectonic plates shifting beneath an ocean.
"Immortality is our burden," the giant rumbles, every syllable echoing through the crystalline floor. "But there is one place it falters. The Arena strips us bare—no infinite lives, no endless time. Only the truth of battle remains."
A current of unease ripples through the gathered Protectors. Some bow their heads, others square their stances as though preparing for a fight that might begin at any breath.
The armored titan continues, voice steady and cold. "The Arena is not law, nor punishment. It is an old tradition. Any Protector may challenge another. Once entered, the fight does not end until one stands alone. The victor absorbs the fallen's power."
A sharp hiss breaks from the flame-sword warrior. "And their people lose the one sworn to guard them," he snaps. "I have seen worlds dim because of this…ritual."
The scholar folds her arms, star-runed cloak whispering. "A crucible, or a crime. We pretend it brings balance, but it is vanity draped in ceremony."
Across the chamber the spiked-haired warrior laughs, a sound like a thunderclap. "Call it madness if you want," he says, eyes blazing. "But when destiny rings the bell, you answer. No hiding behind eternity."
The dark-clad king lowers his gaze, voice a low storm. "I fought there once. Victory tastes like ashes. Remember that before you seek glory."
Grant feels every stare turn toward him, the newcomer whose crimson lightning still hums against the Citadel's air. He clenches his fists, the charge sparking faintly at his fingertips. "You're telling me," he says, voice tight but clear, "that we protect infinite worlds—then risk it all in a death match for power?"
"It is choice, not command," the giant replies, eyes like iron suns. "But choice defines the Protector. Power untested is power unproven."
Grant's jaw hardens. "My world needs a guardian, not a gladiator. If this 'Arena' is how you measure worth, you can keep it. I didn't come here to steal someone else's strength. I came here to keep everything from falling apart."
The hall hums with layered reactions—approval, disdain, curiosity. Crimson arcs crackle across Grant's suit, answering the tension with a quiet defiance.
Grant trails the procession through a corridor of shimmering prisms, each pane reflecting not his face but fragments of other worlds—jungles of molten glass, oceans suspended upside-down, cities carved from lightning. The hall opens without warning, and the Citadel's heartbeat falls silent.
Before him spreads an impossible coliseum, a ring of infinite breadth suspended in the black between galaxies. There are no spectators of flesh. Instead, tier upon tier of translucent figures gaze downward: the spirits of Protectors long gone, their forms flickering like candle flames in a cosmic wind. They make no sound, yet the weight of their attention presses against Grant's chest.
The armored giant who spoke in the hall steps beside him. "The Arena remembers every duel," he intones, voice carrying like distant thunder. "Every triumph, every fall. Their spirits remain, to witness those who dare follow."
Grant lets his eyes roam the battlefield. It does not stay still. Stone bulges and melts into sand; a heartbeat later the sand ignites, becoming a plain of restless fire. Clouds coil overhead and spill a spiral of stormlight that crackles like a living sky. The ground itself shivers in anticipation, reshaping as if testing the will of whoever enters.
A low hum builds in Grant's ears. He reaches instinctively for the red current in his veins and finds it sharper, hungrier. Speed heightens every detail—the shimmer of a single grain of sand, the pulse of the giant's armor, the silent regard of the dead Protectors. Beneath that speed something deeper moves: a regenerative thrum, knitting muscle and sinew before injury can even take root.
He flexes his hands, arcs of crimson lightning flickering between his fingers. It's stronger here, he thinks, the realization both exhilarating and unsettling. The others who step into this place bleed and fall. He can feel it—his body won't. Every flicker of motion feeds the charge, and the charge mends him faster than any wound can form.
The giant's gaze turns, unreadable. "The Arena bares the truth of each Protector," he says. "Strength. Fear. Purpose. It shows what cannot be hidden."
Grant meets the endless void above, the silent shades all around. For a heartbeat he senses not challenge but invitation, as if the Arena itself recognizes the storm he carries.
Crimson light coils around his shoulders like a living mantle. He exhales, the air crackling. "If this place wants my truth," he murmurs, voice low but sure, "then it will see it."
A resonant gong ripples through the endless coliseum, and the Arena itself responds—stone folding into a jagged plain of black crystal streaked with molten light. Two Protectors step forward from opposite gates. One is a woman of emerald flame, her hair a living comet. The other, a titan carved of obsidian, eyes glowing with ancient grief.
No words pass between them. The ground surges, and they collide.
Light and shadow writhe together in a duel that transcends speed. Every strike fractures the void; every parry births a nebula. Sparks rain like meteors across the silent stands where the echoes of fallen Protectors watch without a sound.
Grant stands at the threshold, crimson lightning haloing his silhouette. He does not cheer. He does not move. The clash before him is both mesmerizing and merciless, a language older than any Sphere.
He wants to ask the question that hums behind his teeth: When one of us dies here… what truly remains? But no one around him speaks, and he understands instinctively why. The answer is known yet never voiced, an unbroken rule as old as the Citadel itself.
The emerald warrior falters for a breath, and the titan strikes. Their power detonates in a flare so bright the echoes flinch and fade. When the light subsides, only one figure stands. The victor's aura swells, richer, heavier, carrying the unmistakable imprint of two lifetimes.
Grant feels it—an inheritance, not a conquest. The fallen's essence threads into the survivor like a river joining the sea. The Arena is not about death. It is about transference, the endless passing of strength so the balance never breaks.
A chill runs through him despite the heat of his own power. One day, will I be the one who falls? Or the one who inherits? The thought coils deep, sharp and inevitable.
At the edge of his awareness, Celestius's voice flickers like distant thunder. This, too, is part of the balance.
Grant's eyes narrow, crimson arcs tightening around him. The crowd of echoes leans closer, though they make no sound. He says nothing.
The duel is over, but the question lingers—unasked, unanswered—burning behind his steady gaze. The Arena has shown him what every Protector eventually faces. And as the chapter closes, Grant stands silent, uncertain yet unflinching, knowing the day will come when he must choose to fight not for survival, but for everything he is.