My legs stopped working sowhere between the arena floor and the tunnel.
Not dramatically. Not a collapse. Just a slow, creeping realization that the muscles in my thighs had filed a formal complaint with the rest of my body and were refusing to participate in forward motion. I leaned against the tunnel wall and let the concrete hold up while the roar of twenty thousand people faded behind like a tide pulling out.
Three fights. Julian, Reyna, Natalia. In the span of one afternoon.
My ribs felt like soone had taken a cheese grater to them from the inside. The regenerator brace whined against my chest, working overti and probably writing a strongly worded email about workplace conditions. The Dragon Witch’s Ring pulsed on my finger with residual heat. My bat hung from my right hand, the grip tape dark with sweat and flecked with ice crystals that hadn’t lted yet.
I looked at my hands. Trembling. Not from fear or adrenaline. Just the plain, stupid, biological reality that I had pushed a human body past what human bodies were built for, and the body was letting know about it.
Nel’s voice slid through my consciousness like water through cracks.
"Heart rate one forty-two. Core temperature elevated. Mana reserves at nine percent. Cortisol levels suggest you’ll crash in approximately forty minutes. The Audience is debating whether you’ll make it back to Onyx House or pass out in the corridor. Current odds favor the corridor."
I told Nel to shut up.
"Also, Natalia’s heart rate just normalized, which ans she’s either very calm or planning sothing violent. Given recent data, the probability of both occurring simultaneously is roughly eighty-seven percent."
I told Nel to shut up louder.
Isabelle appeared beside . I hadn’t heard her approach, which was either a testant to her skill or a condemnation of my current state. Probably both. Her wine-red hair caught the fluorescent lighting in the tunnel and turned it into sothing regal. She had a bruise forming on her forearm where Satori’s bat connected during the match, and she examined it with the academic interest of soone cataloguing a new species of insect.
"You’re leaning."
"I’m resting."
"You’re leaning on a wall because your legs have stopped functioning."
"Resting aggressively."
She looked at the way she always looked at . Like I was a theorem she couldn’t quite prove. Like every answer I gave opened three new questions. Isabelle Okoye, the woman who walked away from every elite guild in the academy because she found them morally repulsive, now stood in a concrete tunnel watching slowly slide down a wall because I’d kissed my soul-bonded girlfriend on live television after beating her in a combat tournant.
My life was a ss.
"Can you walk?"
"Obviously."
I pushed off the wall. Took two steps. My left knee buckled and Isabelle caught my elbow with the casual strength of soone who bench-pressed small cars as a hobby.
"Obviously," she repeated.
We made it to the prep room. Soone had propped the door open and the fluorescent lights inside humd with the particular frequency that made everything look slightly worse than it actually was. Braxton sat on a folding chair with his synth-cigarette dangling from his lip, one leg crossed over the other, looking at like a chanic inspecting a car that shouldn’t still be running.
"You alive?"
"Mostly."
"Good enough. Bus leaves in twenty."
Carn materialized from sowhere with a half-empty flask and a grin that could have started a bar fight. "The kiss was a nice touch. Social dia is having a collective ltdown. Soone already made a compilation video set to a love song. Natalia is going to murder you."
"Natalia kissed back."
"Which is why she’s going to murder you. You made her do it on cara. She had a choice between looking weak by pulling away and looking like your girlfriend by kissing you back. You turned a combat match into a dating show announcent."
She wasn’t wrong. I hadn’t planned the kiss. It just happened. Standing there with Natalia looking up at with those purple eyes full of fury and love and frost on her lips, my brain had simply checked out and my body had taken over.
The Scumbag System should have a warning label. Side effects may include: spontaneous public displays of affection, loss of tactical judgnt, and the complete inability to keep your personal life out of the national news cycle.
Emi found before I found her.
She ca through the door like a small blue-haired missile, her healing aura already active, that green glow washing over her hands as she dropped to her knees beside the bench I’d collapsed onto. Her fingers pressed against my ribs with the firm gentleness of soone who had mapped every injury on my body over the past two months and kept a running ntal inventory of which ones I was lying about.
"Three fractures reopened. Shoulder inflammation is worse. You’re dehydrated and your mana channels are running so hot I can feel them through your combat suit."
"But the vibes are great."
"The vibes are not great. The vibes are you being an idiot three separate tis in one afternoon." Her sapphire eyes were wet but her voice was steady. That was new. Two months ago Emi would have been crying already. Now she saved the tears for after she’d finished yelling at . Growth.
The healing aura sank into my body and the worst of the pain receded like a wave pulling back from shore. Not gone. Dulled. Pushed to a manageable background noise that let breathe without wincing.
Skylar materialized in the doorway with her hood down and a cut above her left eyebrow that she hadn’t bothered to wipe. The blood had dried into a thin line that looked almost decorative against her pale skin. She leaned against the fra and watched Emi work on with an expression that mixed genuine concern with studied boredom. Skylar Amane’s personal brand: caring violently while pretending not to.
"Nice kiss."
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