Kade had died before.
Not in the dramatic sense. Not with crowds watching or legends forming.He had died quietly—alone, screaming, crushed beneath a future he could not escape.
At least… he should have.
The world stabilized around him with a soft, nauseating lurch. Stone beneath his boots. Cold air. The smell of iron and dust. An arena.
Again.
Kade stood motionless as the realization settled in. His heart was racing, but his face remained blank, practiced. Panic was useless. Panic never helped. Above him, tiers of shadowed spectators murmured like insects behind glass. Their faces were blurred, indistinct—less people than witnesses. He didn't remember them from before. That was new. No, he corrected internally. Everything is new.
A presence stirred behind his eyes. Not a voice. Not a thought. A structure.
Probability Overlay — Initializing
Synchronization complete
Fate variance detected
Kade clenched his jaw.
So it was still here. He hadn't imagined it. He hadn't gone mad in his last moments. The thing that had shown him his death—again and again—had followed him back.
Across the arena, something heavy shifted.
The air thickened. Kade didn't need to look to know who stood there.
Raxen. The name surfaced from somewhere deep, unbidden, like a remembered nightmare. The man was tall—too tall—his silhouette warped subtly as if reality itself bent around him. Dust trembled at his feet. Gravity bowed in his presence like a loyal hound. A monster wearing the shape of a man.
Kade's vision flickered. The world fractured.
Futures unfolded like pages in a book he did not want to read. Raxen stepping forward.
Raxen striking. Kade shattering. Again.
Again. Again. Some deaths were instant. Others were slow enough to beg.
Survival probability: 6.3%. Lower than last time. Kade swallowed. Last time, he thought bitterly. So it wasn't a loop. Not exactly.
More like… retries. Attempts. Each one slightly different. Each one crueler.
The horn sounded. The duel began. Raxen took a step. The arena floor cracked. Kade staggered as invisible weight pressed down on him, knees threatening to buckle. His muscles screamed in protest. His lungs felt half-collapsed.
So strong, he thought distantly. Still absurdly strong. He moved—not forward, not back—but sideways, snapping his fingers as he did.
A lie slipped into the future. False Thread deployed. Probability accepted it without question.
To fate, it looked like Kade was about to attack recklessly—an impulsive strike fueled by desperation. Raxen reacted instantly.
Gravity surged around his raised arm, condensing into something dense and lethal.
Kade was already gone. He slid left, barely avoiding the backlash. The force alone peeled skin from his forearm. Pain flared, sharp and grounding.
The crowd murmured. Confusion. Good.
Raxen turned. He punched. Kade saw the punch coming two seconds early. Two seconds wasn't enough. He twisted outcomes desperately—nudging angles, corrupting timing, forcing improbabilities to cluster where he needed them most. The punch grazed his torso instead of obliterating it.
His ribs shattered. Kade flew, hit the ground, and rolled until his body stopped responding.
Warmth spread through his chest. Blood.
So much blood. The Overlay flooded his vision with warnings, cold and clinical.
Critical injury detected
Vital collapse imminent
Survival probability: 4.7%
Raxen approached slowly. Unhurried. Certain. "You struggle well," Raxen said, voice calm and heavy. "But the future is already decided."Kade coughed, red spilling from his lips. He laughed. A broken, hysterical sound."You say that," he wheezed, forcing himself upright, "like the future hasn't been wrong before."
The Overlay pulsed. Violently. For just a moment—just a single, fragile instant—
Kade saw something he had never seen before. A future where Raxen missed.
Not because Kade was faster. Not because he was stronger. But because something interfered. A crack in inevitability. A mistake fate itself didn't seem to notice. Kade's smile widened, blood running freely down his chin.
"…So you can bleed too."
Raxen frowned. And somewhere deep within the unseen machinery governing the world, something shifted—quietly amused. Fate divergence confirmed. Kade didn't know what that meant. But for the first time since waking in this cursed arena— He felt hope.