I sat on the hard stone bench, staring down at the massive arena floor below. The entire place was filled with the dim, red glow of the soul-lamps that were hanging from the high stone ceiling. The crowd all around us was making a huge amount of noise, stamping their heavy boots against the stone tiers and shouting for more blood. I looked over at the announcer's box, which was built high up into the obsidian wall. The announcer was moving around inside his booth, adjusting his magical microphone and getting everything ready to call out the next round of the tournament. I could feel my own heart starting to beat faster and faster against my ribs because I knew that my turn was coming up very soon. The thought of stepping onto that blood-stained sand made my stomach twist with extreme anxiety. I looked down at my hands and noticed they were shaking slightly, so I gripped the edge of my clothes tightly to keep them still. I was trying my best to prepare my mind for whatever dangerous fighter would come out of the dark tunnels to face me.
Suddenly, before I could even stand up or say a single word to anyone around me, a pair of small arms wrapped tightly around my waist. I looked down in absolute surprise and saw Salphy. She had lunged forward from her seat and thrown her arms completely around me, hugging me as hard as she possibly could. Her small hands were gripping my clothes tightly, and I could feel her whole body shaking against me. She held onto me for a long time, refusing to let go, as if she could keep me from going down to that dangerous pit just by holding onto me with all her strength. After a few moments, she slowly looked up at me. Her big eyes were completely filled with tears and deep worry. She looked straight into my eyes and asked me to be careful down there. Her voice was very small and quiet, almost completely drowned out by the loud roaring of the crowd in the stands, but I could hear the fear in her words perfectly. I placed my hand gently on her head to comfort her, trying to give her a small smile to show her I would be okay, even though I was feeling incredibly nervous inside. Right after that, Elphyete looked over at me from her spot on the bench. Her long ears dropped slightly as she stared at me with a very serious expression on her face. She looked at me with deep concern in her eyes and said, "Be careful too." I nodded my head to both of them, trying my best to look brave and confident, but the heavy feeling in my chest was only getting stronger as the seconds ticked away.
I stood up from the stone bench, my legs feeling a bit heavy as I prepared to leave the safety of our section. I took a deep, slow breath to try and calm my racing heart, but it did not help much. I turned away from my friends and started making my way toward the stone stairs that led down to the lower levels of the building. Each step I took felt incredibly heavy, and the loud noise of the thousands of spectators seemed to grow louder and louder with every single footstep I made. I walked down the long, steep staircase, the cold stone walls pressing in on either side of me as I moved deeper into the facility. The air down here felt much thicker and hotter, filled with the heavy smell of old sweat and iron. I finally reached the bottom of the stairs and entered the long, dark corridor that led directly to the arena floor. The tunnel was dimly lit by a few flickering lamps, casting long, strange shadows on the ground ahead of me. My boots made a dull, echoing thud against the hard floor as I walked slowly toward the bright red light at the end of the tunnel. I could see the open space of the pit getting closer and closer, and the sand on the floor began to crunch beneath my feet as I finally stepped out into the massive arena.
I walked out onto the loose golden sand, feeling completely exposed under the glare of the red soul-lamps. The scale of the arena was massive when standing right in the middle of it, surrounded by rows and rows of screaming people who wanted to see a deadly fight. I stopped near the center of the pit and looked up toward the high announcer's box, waiting for the official call to begin. Suddenly, the announcer's voice boomed through the entire stadium, carrying a massive amount of volume that shook the air around me. The announcer said, "SOGHA VS NAHTRIAT!" The loud words echoed off the obsidian walls over and over again, causing the crowd to cheer even louder. As soon as the name was officially called, a heavy iron gate on the completely opposite side of the arena began to raise up with a loud, grating noise. I turned my body toward the opening, my eyes straining to see the person I was going to fight.
The other person appeared from the dark tunnel, stepping out onto the sand under the crimson light. When I saw him, I was completely caught off guard. He did not look like a massive, powerful warrior at all. He looked incredibly skinny, his bones almost showing through his tight clothes as if he had not eaten a proper meal in a very long time. He had very long red hair that hung down loosely past his shoulders, moving slightly as he walked toward the center of the area. His eyes were completely black, lacking any white parts at all, which made his gaze look entirely cold and lifeless. Right in the middle of his forehead, there was a large, dark scar that stood out clearly against his pale skin. In his right hand, he was holding a very small knife. The knife was tiny, looking more like a simple tool for cutting fruit rather than a weapon meant for a deadly tournament fight.
I was completely shocked by his strange appearance and his tiny weapon, my mind struggling to understand how a skinny person like this could be my opponent in such a dangerous place. I turned my head away from him and looked up at the announcer's high box, hoping for some kind of explanation or wondering if there was some mistake with the pairing. But the announcer did not care about my confusion at all. He looked straight down at me from his high perch and shouted into his microphone with an angry, impatient voice, "Start already!"
The moment the announcer's loud command echoed through the arena, Nahtriat began to move. He did not rush forward or charge at me with high speed. Instead, suddenly Nahtriat walked slowly at first, taking small, quiet steps across the golden grains of sand. He kept his completely black eyes fixed on me, his long red hair swaying slightly with each step, and he held the small knife loosely down at his side. I raised my sword, gripping the handle tightly with both hands and bending my knees to get into a solid defensive stance, waiting to see what he would do.
Then, without even a single sound, he completely vanished from my sight. He did not leave a blur behind, he did not kick up any sand, and he did not make the slightest noise. He was just standing there one millisecond, and the next millisecond, the space was completely empty. My eyes blinked in confusion as I stared at the empty patch of sand where he had just been walking. A sudden, cold feeling of pure terror washed over my entire body. Before my brain could even realize what was happening or where he had gone, my body dodged on instinct. My muscles reacted entirely on their own, forcing me to leap sharply to the side and twist my torso away from my original position. The movement was completely involuntary, driven by a deep survival instinct that sensed an immediate, deadly danger.
As my feet hit the sand a few feet away, I realized that my instinct had been completely right. He was on my back. He had appeared right behind me in the exact spot I had just vacated, his presence so close that I could feel the cold air moving behind my neck. Before I could even turn around to face him, I can hear him muttered a single word in a low, quiet voice right next to my ear. He muttered, "Impressive."
Hearing his voice right behind my head made my blood run cold, and fear spiked through my entire system. Suddenly, my body moved on its own again, reacting far faster than my conscious thoughts could manage. Without waiting for my brain to command my arms, my muscles locked up and swung my sword to my back with all the physical strength I could muster. The heavy steel blade tore through the air in a wide, powerful horizontal arc, aiming directly at the spot where Nahtriat was standing behind me. I expected to feel the heavy impact of my blade hitting his body, but there was absolutely nothing there. He vanished without a sound once again, disappearing into thin air before the sharp edge of my sword could even touch a single strand of his long red hair.
The heavy swing cut through nothing but empty space, and the sheer momentum of the missed attack threw off my balance, pulling my torso forward and leaving my front completely unprotected. Before I could pull my weapon back or fix my footing on the loose sand, a sudden, massive force struck me directly in the ribs. He had appeared out of nowhere and punched me with incredible strength. The impact was so powerful that it felt like being hit by a speeding boulder, instantly knocking all the air out of my lungs with a loud gasp. The sheer force of the punch lifted my entire body completely off the ground, and I flew backward through the air at a terrifying speed, unable to stop myself or slow down.
I flew across the wide open space of the pit until my back slammed violently into the hard obsidian wall of the arena. The crash was incredibly loud, echoing through the coliseum as the impact cracked the dark stone behind me. A thick cloud of dust and small pieces of broken rock rained down all over my head and shoulders as I fell out of the air, landing heavily on my hands and knees in the sand. The pain in my back and chest was sharp and blinding, making it hard to breathe, but I knew I could not stay down on the floor for a single second. I grit my teeth tightly, forcing my shaking limbs to move, and I stood up, leaning against my sword to keep myself steady as I wiped the dust from my face and looked back out into the open pit.
As soon as I was back on my feet, I tried to get into a defensive position, my eyes searching the dusty air to find where my opponent had gone. But he did not give me any time to recover or catch my breath at all. He vanished again from wherever he had been standing after throwing that massive punch. My eyes darted left and right, trying to track any movement in the sand, but there was absolutely nothing to see or hear. Then, in the next fraction of a second, he appeared to my front, showing up right in the middle of my field of vision just a few feet away from where I stood against the wall. He was standing there calmly with his long red hair hanging in his face and his black eyes locked onto me. He raised his right hand, still holding that tiny, simple tool from before.
But suddenly, right before my eyes, his small knife suddenly become big about 10 feet long. The transition happened instantly, the tiny metal blade stretching and expanding into a massive, terrifying weapon that looked incredibly heavy and sharp under the red light of the soul-lamps. The ten-foot-long blade looked completely ridiculous in the hands of such a skinny man, but the dangerous aura coming from it was entirely real. Without a single moment of hesitation, he gripped the handle and swung the massive, elongated weapon right at me. The huge blade cut through the air with a terrifying, loud whooshing sound, aimed directly at my midsection to slice me in half. I saw the massive sheet of metal coming toward me and reacted instantly, throwing my body flat against the sand and rolling away from the wall as fast as I possibly could. I dodged it just in the nick of time. The heavy ten-foot edge passed right over my body, missing me by a couple of inches, and slammed violently into the obsidian wall behind me, carving a deep, jagged line into the dark stone and sending more sparks and gravel flying into the air.
I quickly scrambled back to my feet, my heart pounding wildly against my ribs as I realized how close I had just come to dying. But that was only the very beginning of the real nightmare. As soon as I stood up, Nahtriat vanished again, leaving the massive ten-foot blade to disappear into thin air along with him. What followed next was a long, brutal sequence of absolute terror that felt like it would never end. He kept vanishing for 5 minutes, completely dominating the entire arena with his silent, impossible speed. For five whole minutes, I could not establish a single moment of safety or peace. He was everywhere and nowhere at the exact same time. He would vanish from the left, appear on my right to swing his massive ten-foot knife, and then disappear again before I could even try to swing my sword back at him. I was forced to move continuously, my boots sliding and skidding across the loose golden sand as I desperately tried to avoid the constant, invisible attacks.
The physical strain was immense, and my muscles began to ache and burn from the non-stop effort of throwing my body out of the way of his giant blade. My breathing became incredibly ragged and heavy, and thick sweat began to pour down my forehead, stinging my eyes and making my vision blurry under the dim red lamps. The loud noise of the thousands of screaming spectators in the stands turned into a distant, confusing hum as I focused every single ounce of my remaining energy just on staying alive. No matter how hard I tried to predict his movements or find a pattern in his silent teleportation, there was absolutely nothing to hold onto. He made no footsteps, he left no traces in the sand, and he did not make a single sound when he moved.
It was a completely one-sided struggle, with me doing nothing but dodging and running for five long, grueling minutes while my body grew weaker and slower with every passing second. Every time he disappeared, I had to guess where the next strike would come from, swinging my legs or ducking my head in pure desperation. The sand was kicked up all around me, creating a small dust storm that made it even harder to see his skinny form. The ten-foot blade would appear from the dark, slicing through the air with a loud hiss, forcing me to leap backward or slide along the ground to avoid being cut into pieces. My arms felt heavy like lead, and my legs were trembling from the pure exhaustion of moving as fast as I could for five continuous minutes without a single break.
Finally, the extreme fatigue caught up to me, and my movements slowed down by just a tiny fraction of a second. Nahtriat noticed the small opening instantly. He vanished from the front and appeared from a completely blind spot that I did not expect. Before my tired muscles could react or shift my weight out of the way, he was able to punch me again, his heavy fist crashing directly into the center of my chest with the exact same terrifying force as the first strike. This time I got sent again, my body lifted off the sand and thrown violently across the wide arena floor like a broken toy. I crashed hard into the dirt, rolling over and over through the sand until I finally came to a stop near the edge of the pit. I lay there flat on my back, gasping frantically for air that would not come into my compressed lungs. It hurts badly, an incredibly sharp and throbbing pain bursting through my ribs, my chest, and my entire torso. Every single breath felt like breathing in sharp glass, and I could barely find the physical strength to raise my head off the ground as the agonizing pain pulsed through my entire body.
I rolled over onto my stomach, groaning loudly from the intense pain as I forced my trembling arms to push my body up from the dirt. I used my sword as a crutch, leaning heavily on the metal hilt just to keep myself from collapsing back into the sand. My vision was swimming, and I had to blink several times to clear the sweat and dirt from my eyes. A short distance away from me, Nahtriat appeared out of thin air, standing perfectly still on the sand as if he had not just spent the last five minutes moving at a terrifying speed. His long red hair was messy, hanging down around his pale face, and his completely black eyes stared down at me with a cold, uncaring expression. The large scar on his forehead looked dark under the crimson light of the lamps.
He looked at my broken, trembling form for a moment, and then Nahtriat suddenly muttered a sentence in a very calm, quiet voice that carried clearly across the quiet space between us. He muttered, "So 5,000 stacks is enough to hurt you, huh?"
I stared at him through my blurry vision, my mind completely stalling as those strange words hit my ears. I'm so confused by what he just said. I had absolutely no idea what a stack was, why he was talking about five thousand of them, or how any of it related to the massive, heavy punches that had just broken my ribs and sent me flying across the arena. The words made absolutely no sense to me at all, and my brain was spinning with endless questions, trying to figure out what kind of hidden meaning was behind his quiet statement while the intense physical pain made it almost impossible to think clearly.
But he did not give me a single second to try and understand his words or recover from the heavy damage. Suddenly he vanished from his spot once more, disappearing into thin air without making even a single sound to warn me. In the next microsecond, he reappeared right beside me and swung his elongated knife, the massive ten-foot blade suddenly materializing in his grip as he brought it around in a devastating horizontal sweep. He swung it so fast, with such an unbelievable and terrifying amount of speed, that the air itself seemed to scream as the metal moved through it. I tried to react, waiting for my body to move on its own and save me from the danger just like it had done at the very start of the match. But this time, the blade was moving far too quickly for my exhausted physical limits. My instinct didn't notice it fast enough to force my body out of the way in time. The sharp, heavy edge of the ten-foot knife cut through the air like a flash of red light, biting deeply into my shoulder with absolute force, and my arm got cut off.