The bowl held the sound of Arashi's extraction for one breath, then let it go. The arms hissed away, the stretcher disappeared through a seam, and the arena remembered it had twenty battles left to decide.
Raizen stepped back into motion. The board recalculated, stacked Nyx points with the new deathmatch combat points. His line moved. He didn't chase it. The work would keep.
A floor below, two heavy arcs cut clean through dust.
Keahi.
She crossed a broken concourse with her claymore low, blade bright the way sunrise is bright. Across from her a tall figure in a long cloak planted a palm on the ground. The earth answered. A knee-high wall rose out of cracked tiles and ran like a wave. He didn't shout. He didn't posture. The ground moved because he asked it to.
The host tried a joke and didn't finish it. "Matchup - Keahi versus… cloak. Nah, I'm just joking. That's Ichiro, folks. He's been farming assist points like a saint, and now we get to see him keep himself alive."
Keahi met the wall head on. No feint. No cute angle. Steel met stone with a noise you felt in the ribs. The wall split. The blade kept going.
Ichiro raised both hands. Four pillars shot up in a square around her. They leaned inward, trying to make her a problem that solved itself. She stepped and the claymore drew a circle at waist height. Stone skinned away from the edge like frost taken by a warm morning. The world tried again - a floor panel lifted under her heel, a ridge tried to catch her ankle. She hopped it like a dancer stepping past a spilled drink and took the high ground - half a stairwell with no stairs.
He dragged the ground sideways. Tiles slid like cards. She rode it. He dropped the ledge under her left foot. She let the drop happen and came down with the blade like a stamp. The stone took a bruise and stopped arguing.
A column rose in front of her face fast enough to break noses. She didn't flinch. The flat of the claymore pushed it away and that push broke the column's future. Ichiro's eyes narrowed. A low ridge ran like a serpent, then reared - a jagged spear of earth to gut a less honest fighter. Keahi turned her wrists. The claymore came down and didn't glance. It cut through the spear, through the ridge, through the idea of stopping her, and kept going until her shoulders said enough.
Dust settled. Ichiro backed a step, cloak flaring with the move. He raised a slab between them - full-body cover. She didn't go around it. She smashed right through it. The edge glowed hard for a heartbeat and the wall remembered it used to be dirt. Sparks spat. The tip of the blade set under his chin, clean. His suit flashed red. It didn't pull him yet - the arms were busy two lanes over. He lifted both hands open, jaw tight, respect visible. The suit locked. The arms arrived. He went up and out with points that would keep his name on the board longer than most.
The bowl liked the clarity. Honest strength is easy to love.
Up in the vertical section, air boomed like a drum.
Esen found Hikari.
He came grinning, rings bright on both hands, hair the color of a warning. Shockwaves rolled like invisible walls. Hikari slid left and the pressure picked her up anyway. She hit a pillar, took the bounce, reset. Another wave came low, intended to take legs. She hopped it and the second wave caught the hop like a catcher's mitt. She skidded, teeth tight, breath even.
Esen laughed. He liked problems he could hit. He hit the air twice in rhythm - one high, one late. The stadium loved him for being simple and loud.
Hikari didn't.
She took the next wall on the forearms and let it shove her three steps. Her staff set like a hinge. She watched his feet. Punch. Plant. Hip. There. The waves didn't come from nowhere. They came from a habit. A habit could be bent and exploited.
The next shockwave rose. Hikari stepped in on the wrong beat on purpose. The staff cut the arc of pressure at an angle that wasn't respectful. The wave kinked. Bent. Slid along the staff like rain down a roof and blew past her shoulder harmlessly, shredding a flag behind.
Esen blinked. Then grinned wider. "Okay!"
He doubled. Left-right, fast enough to make a good fighter fold. She bent the first into the second, curved both into nothing, and stole the half-step he needed to breathe. Inside now. The blunt end of her staff tapped his ribs hard enough to teach, light enough not to break. The suit lights flashed yellow. His body wanted to suck air. He threw a wave at small distance out of reflex. She cut it in half. Blunt end again - shoulder point. The suit made a sound that meant "last warning." He swung late, smile finally gone. She slipped past the late and put the staff across his clavicle. The suit locked. Red climbed. It held him while the arms came.
"Esen - red. Eliminated," the host said, sober and quick. "Points applied. Crowd, breathe! He didn't steal your air, did he?"
Hikari stepped back, staff low. She didn't look for the board. She didn't look for Raizen. She adjusted her grip a quarter turn and moved.
Down two lanes, light flickered like a handful of stars shaken out of a pocket.
Lynea.
Not knives. Shards. Dozens. Each a piece of something that had been whole once - curved, beveled, an intense purple with black outline. They hovered around her in a loose ring, turning on edges like minnows schooling for hurt. When she flicked two fingers, they moved - all together, or none, or some - angles that changed mid-flight like they were listening to music no one else could hear.
Raizen found her because she found him. The first pattern was polite - a fan from the front to see if he would press or read. He read. The second was rude - a high-low cross while two slipped the floor line from behind. He stepped inside the cross, cut one shard out of the air, let two scrape his shoulder, and the one from the floor line met his boot and didn't like the conversation.
Lynea didn't smile. She didn't talk. She looked like somebody who spent more time practicing than explaining.
The next pattern didn't repeat anything. Six came from oblique angles. Three hung, waiting for his guard to commit, then took the new lanes. Four skimmed the floor, kicked up grit, tried to choose ankles. The last pair fell like drops of rain that cut instead of wet. Raizen's blade worked like it had more than one wrist. Flat, edge, flat, edge, step, heel, pivot. He didn't get to choose the tempo. He chose the space. The shards regrouped with a sound like frost thinking about cracking.
He tried to advance. They punished it. Lynea's hand dipped. Every shard went low, then popped up, then fanned back - a flower blooming wrong. He stayed alive by a line. One shard took a thread off his sleeve. Another sliced a clean lock of hair he didn't need. The suit stayed calm. His lungs didn't.
Host, softly, almost to himself: "That control… that's not guesswork."
Third exchange, Lynea flooded the air. Raizen made a decision. Not patience. Not polite. He set his feet like he had on a narrow beam in the Rust Room and drew a line. A fast dash, at the perfect time. It wasn't beautiful. It was committed. The air popped around him - a small, lightning-loud sound as Luminite and body agreed for a breath to spend more than they liked. Shards missed a shadow who wasn't there anymore. He broke her circle, blade slipping past a blur of violet. The tip found the soft space at her waist and stopped. He didn't touch skin. He didn't need to.
Lynea froze. Her shards hung, uncertain for the first time. She looked at the steel, then at him. The smallest nod. Surrendering, hands raised. Her suit blinked red without drama. The arms took a full three seconds to get there. He didn't move for those three seconds. When they lifted her away, the shards fell like snow and then winked out, their light gone now that the hand wasn't asking.
The bowl exhaled. The board moved - Raizen first for a breath, then second, then first again when old Nyx points and clean takedowns did their math correctly.
There weren't many left. Twenty had become fifteen, then eleven in a handful of honest minutes. The sounds were different now - fewer cheers, more sharp breaths. Whoever was still in the bowl had earned it.
One more seam opened in the floor. The arms pulled two bodies at once, mechanical fingers careful. The host didn't clown. He kept facts straight. "Remaining - fourteen. Thirteen. Twelve. Adjusting… eleven."
Four names held at the top. Raizen. Hikari. Arashi, even though eliminated, his past points made a huge difference. Keahi.
The three left found each other without planning to. A wide space under a half-collapsed arch. Good footing. Bad cover. The kind of ground that stares at you and says pick a line. Any line. Trust me, it's the same.
No bows. No talk. A small nod from each meant "ready" and "I won't hold back."
Keahi came first - pressure, not speed. The claymore demanded space and she took it. Raizen answered with angles. Hikari answered with the one thing that scares pressure - absence. She wasn't where big wanted her to be. Keahi's edge glanced off nothing and had to turn to find something.
For a fast, hot minute it wasn't two on one or one on one on one. It was three fighters refusing to be simple.
Raizen's blade wrote short truths. Hikari's staff wrote in margins and then erased them. Keahi drew long lines and dared them to cross. They did. Sometimes that usually was a mistake. This time it wasn't.
Steel kissed steel. It made an honest sound. Boots found grip where there shouldn't have been any. The crowd tried to make noise but failed. Noise is for games. This was something else.
Keahi took a breath and made the field smaller with a long horizontal that wanted to cut the match in half. Hikari ducked under the line, took the space inside Keahi's shoulders, and found the only humane answer - the blunt end to the sternum. Not cruel. Not soft. Clean.
Keahi's suit blinked yellow, then deep orange. She grinned - yes, she actually grinned at that - and lifted again. Hikari didn't let the second swing finish. She stepped inside the hilt, braced, and drove the staff across the collar. The suit's lights made the sound that means you're done even if your pride isn't. Red climbed her spine. It held while the arms found her. As they lifted her clear, Keahi tapped Hikari's staff with two fingers - acknowledgment, not apology. Hikari dipped her head back exactly the same amount, barely missing one of Raizen's swings.
"Keahi - red. Eliminated," the host said, voice a little rough. "Points applied. She's still in the hunt on numbers."
The arena got quiet the way storms do between flashes.
Two figures remained in the open.
Raizen.
Hikari.
No cameras pushed too close. Even the drones hovered wider than before, like birds that know when a line isn't theirs.
They didn't speak. They already had.
Raizen set his blade at a guard that was his, not Kori's, not anyone's. Hikari leveled the staff, one end low, one end high - the way she liked to hide answers until the question arrived.
The board didn't matter. The bowl didn't matter. The sky didn't matter.
They looked at each other and the arena held its breath.
They were the two standing.