The dagger still burned in Kaelis's grip when the Hush Guard came for him at dawn.
"On your feet, Ashforged." The guard's boot connected with his ribs, right where the brand still throbbed. "The Arena awaits."
Kaelis curled his fingers tighter around *Echo of the First Betrayal*, the dormant weapon's skin-wrapped hilt pulsing against his palm like a second heartbeat. The visions from last night haunted him—Drachten's blade sinking into Nessa's chest, the world dissolving into fire.
"You deaf as well as dumb?" The guard yanked his chain. "Drop the—"
The dagger moved before Kaelis could think.
A whisper-thin cut opened across the guard's throat. No blood spilled. Instead, *words* leaked from the wound—*"I sold my sister to the slavers"*—in the guard's own voice.
*First Betrayal,* the dagger seemed to hum. *First Truth.*
The guard stumbled back, clutching his neck as the confession hung in the air. Kaelis stared at the weapon, its obsidian blade drinking in the torchlight.
Then the shackles around his wrists *shattered*.
---
**The Hollow Quarter**
Nessa counted the corpses as she walked.
Three Hush Guards outside the apothecary.
Two more in the alley.
Their shadows still pinned to the walls by her needles, their mouths sewn shut with threads of voidspark.
She paused at a butcher's stall, her reflection warped in a blood-streaked cleaver. The brand on her wrist—a surgeon's mark forced upon her last winter—itched beneath its bandages.
"Looking for someone, girl?"
The butcher's shadow stretched unnaturally long in the dawn light. Nessa didn't flinch when it spoke.
"The boy from the dungeon," she said. "Ashforged eyes, fresh brand."
The shadow laughed. "Chainbound don't last long in the Arena."
Nessa drove a needle through the shadow's wrist, pinning it to the wooden counter. "He's not just Chainbound."
The butcher screamed as his *real* wrist sprouted an identical wound.
---
**The Arena Gates**
Drachten watched from the archway as they dragged Kaelis into the sunlight.
His palm still ached where the mirror-scar had formed last night—an exact inverse of Kaelis's brand. The cut had sealed itself by dawn, leaving only a thin white line that pulsed when Kaelis gripped that cursed dagger.
*Too soon,* Drachten thought. *The weapons aren't supposed to wake until Loop 7129.*
A hand clasped his shoulder.
"Your father wants the Ashforged boy dead by noon," said Captain Vey of the Hush Guard. "Make it painful."
Drachten nodded, his eyes never leaving Kaelis as the guards shoved him toward the bloodstained sands.
*I'm sorry,* he thought, flexing his scarred hand. *This is the only way she lives.*
---
**The Arena Sands**
Kaelis blinked against the sudden glare. The crowd's roar vibrated through his bones—nobles in their shaded boxes, Chainbound in the standing pits, all screaming for blood.
His first opponent staggered forward.
A summoned hero.
Japanese kanji flickered in the air above the man's head—*Ryuji "Iron Saint" Tanaka*—before dissolving into the warped Common Tongue of Varethea. His nanosteel katana hummed as it cut the air.
"Kid," Ryuji rasped, his eyes darting to Kaelis's dagger, "whatever that is, *drop it*."
*Echo of the First Betrayal* trembled in Kaelis's grip, showing him flashes—this man teaching Drachten a sword technique that shouldn't exist for another six hundred loops.
The crowd counted down.
*Three.*
Ryuji's stance shifted into something *impossible*, his blade vibrating between dimensions.
*Two.*
Kaelis's brand burned as Ghostfire raced up his arms.
*One.*
The gong sounded.
---