The arena flared to a mouth that swallowed every sound. The opening moved against me — not merely a defeat, but methodical crushing, a lesson in my first fall.
Zaro began the assault: the threads of blood he wove in the air were not mere chains but lashes that shredded sight and robbed muscles of coordination. Drik struck from one side with a blow that made the earth moan under its weight; my knees buckled. Mayra plucked her tune — a single note enough to choke breath and splinter the mind into shards; my head spun like a drum beaten without rhythm. And all the while Felix coiled like a serpent along my back, driving his intricate needles into points I only felt minutes later as balance collapsed.
I wasn't fighting four men so much as a system that stole you before the blade touched you. Their blows were interlocked like a clockwork net; each one completed the other, and each second leeched a piece from my flesh and soul. I tried to summon my Dual Shadow, but the collar at my throat had loosened my bond to the dark: each pulse sent a screaming echo into my chest as if the walls themselves were closing in. I lunged, I struck, I shook — but the result was plain: I fell to my knees, taste of blood in my mouth bitter as surrender.
The crowd ululated; the city's owner smiled the smile of a victor. There was no heroism here, only spectacle. And before the chamber could seal the scene's epilogue, I heard it — a cold voice not from human lips but from a corroded technological void, ringing like a distant alarm:
> "Do you require assistance?"
I paused the breath. It sounded like the very question I had heard when the Resurrection Curse was born in me, but recast: mechanical, calculated, lethal. I remembered the old offer — the System — the one that had whispered before: the First Offer. But this time it was different: this voice did not offer; it extorted the soul.
I answered inwardly before the space could speak again: No. I will not be a slave. I will not be a house for a machine.
The voice replied, devoid of mockery: Very well. But if you refuse now… you will not refuse later. This is a recorded fixture. Then it cut off.
Moments later a battered little screen slid out from the arena's flank, its edges trembling like old skin, and slow, clinical letters wrote across it:
> "Enter the name of the subordinate."
Whispers gathered around me: what does "name of the subordinate" mean here? Who must write this? A strange shock tore through me — do they want me to become a loyal thrall, a label for a new mask? My pulse raced. The screen repeated:
> "Enter the name of the subordinate."
I choked out with dust and blood in my throat: "I… am no one's slave. I am king of myself."
Immediately another harsher line blinked up:
> "Enter the name of the sovereign now."
A corrupt laugh crawled from the leftovers of my humanity — a laugh that refused to die in silence: Very well… then I will give you a name. Hear me: I am… Tiger of Death.
The air around me responded to the uttered name like keys sliding into an ancient lock. Something within the collar trembled. The screen flashed successive entries like a list of offerings to an eye hungry for power: skills, labels, descriptors. The menu was swift, suspicious, and irresistible:
> "Available skills list: enter the skill number to activate the trial."
"1 — Abyssal Flame"
"2 — Shadow of Cruelty"
"3 — Show Me Death"
"4 — Memory Severance"
…
My heart stopped at one selection as if it were the root of truth: Show Me Death. I stared at that name like a mirror reflecting the end of the world. It meant what the darkness had always whispered: nothing returns the same after touching death.
At the brink of collapse, on the edge of surrender, the prompt ceased to be merely an offer — it was a summoning. I heard an inner whisper not of the cold System but of something deeper, more sacred: Do you wish to see?
I answered with a strangled cry, not for mercy but for birth: Show me death!
The screen inhaled a lethal light and intoned in a sharp, mechanical voice:
> "Sovereign accepted — Activation: Gaze of Death."
In that instant everything changed. My eyes ignited with two charges: the right black as the abyss, the left silver as a shattered mirror. They were not ordinary gleams but ancestral mirrors that devoured light. Power rose from depths I had never known: whatever those eyes took in, they drew life-thread from it like a strand ripped from the world's shoulder. If they stared into a human heart, they snatched part of its soul; if they locked on a monster, they siphoned its energy and melted its being like wax in flame.
The collar thrummed as if tolling a bell, but the pain turned to possession. I rose with difficulty and realized I was no longer mere kindling on their altar. A seed of a different being had sprouted inside me: Tiger of Death was not merely a title — it was a vow, a body, a law.
The crowd screamed; the owner howled: "What is this?!" — but his shout dissolved at the edges as I fixed a tiny ring of sight on the arena: at Drik, at Zaro, at Mayra, at Felix — and curiosity on their faces warped into a terror without precedent.
I whispered coolly, cold as verdict: "If my eyes have seen your death… know that you have lost your portion of life."
With those words the spectacle began. It had become no longer a test of failing nor merely a bloody show, but the birth of a new decree: the Gaze of Death — a skill that did more than kill; it struck the victims' time, stealing from them the very things that made them human