The arena groaned like a living thing.
Stone ground against stone as the great spiral shifted another notch inward, dragging platforms, bridges, and ledges closer to the cavern's core. Mana veins pulsed brighter along the walls, the glow deepening from cool blue to a sharper, more dangerous white. The air trembled with the hum of too many powers colliding in too small a space.
Swift stood near the edge of his platform, claws lightly resting on the stone, silver eyes tracking the movements below. The full dragon form had receded, but traces of it clung to him—faint scaling along his arms, sharper angles in his features, a subtle dragontail of frost trailing behind his steps. His wings remained, folded tight against his back, not as huge as before but still unmistakably draconic.
His breathing was steady again. His aura, while cooler and stronger than before, no longer threatened to freeze everything around him. His mind didn't feel like a broken pane of glass anymore.
He felt… centered.
Below, Jake clung to a railing that did not exist five minutes ago, screaming as the spiral carried his narrow walkway along like a loose thread on a spinning wheel. Bumble clung to Jake's ankle like a highly committed paperweight.
"WHY IS THIS STILL HAPPENING?!" Jake yelled.
"ARENA COMPRESSION: ACTIVE!" Bumble chirped helpfully. "THIS IS VERY DANGEROUS!"
"I KNOW IT'S DANGEROUS, YOU'RE ON MY LEG!"
Swift exhaled a puff of frost that curled off the edge of his platform. He could almost smile.
Almost.
The system voice boomed overhead, deep and calm.
"Stage Three compression in progress.
Top Forty threshold approaching."
Forty.
There were forty fighters between this moment and the end of the Battle Royale. Forty survivors who hadn't broken, burned, or been tossed into teleport beams yet. Forty problems, every one of them deadly.
Swift watched Jade slam a man through a waist-high barrier on a lower platform. The impact cracked stone. The barrier gave way. The man flipped helplessly into the air and disappeared in a pillar of light before he could scream.
Forty-one, Swift corrected silently. Now forty.
High above, on a widening section of spiraled stone, Wolf Queen raised her head, eyes closing for a moment as if tasting the air. Wolf King stood near her, tail swaying lazily, golden eyes scanning the chaotic battlefield as if choosing from a menu.
"The dragon's roar," Wolf Queen said, almost to herself. "It was not small."
Wolf King grinned, sharp teeth flashing. "You heard it too."
"I felt it," she said. "Royal blood listens for its own kind of power."
Swift didn't know that. He simply felt his skin prickle where her focus brushed past him, like a cold hand touching the back of his neck from miles away.
Wolf Queen's gaze moved on. Her lips curled faintly as she sensed another familiar thread: shadow, silence, blood.
"The ghost girl still runs," she said. "She has cost us royal blood."
Wolf King shrugged. "Hunt her then. The little dragon won't leave."
She smiled, flat and toothless but no less dangerous. "Good."
She turned away from Swift's distant platform and moved, crossing the narrowing spiral with regal strides that ignored the shaking stone.
Wolf King lingered a moment longer, eyes still fixed on Swift's direction.
"Soon," he murmured. Then he turned and leapt to another platform, following a different scent trail—Mira's, faint and crisp like cut air.
He didn't get far before the ground between him and his prey thundered.
Giga-Ronin landed.
The impact fractured the stone beneath his feet, sending sharp fissures cracking outward. His eyes glowed a faint, steady light, and heat shimmered off his reinforced body. He didn't roar. He didn't posture. He just stood there, like a fortress that had decided to grow legs and get involved.
Wolf King came to a halt, a growl curling up from his chest. "You block my path."
Giga-Ronin rolled one shoulder slowly. "You move toward someone I choose to protect."
Wolf King's ears twitched. "You protect the dragon?"
"I protect the battle," Giga-Ronin said simply. "Your hunt destabilizes it."
He planted his feet. "Move."
Wolf King's smile widened. "Or?"
Giga's fists clenched.
"Or I stop you."
For a moment, neither moved.
Then the spiral bucked again, shoving their platforms farther inward and slightly closer together. The gap between them shrank to a single, crumbling span of rock.
Wolf King didn't hesitate.
He surged forward.
Giga-Ronin met him halfway.
When they collided, the sound was like a landslide hitting a war drum. The shockwave rippled out in concentric rings, knocking nearby fighters off their feet and sending chunks of stone spinning through the air.
On a lower ring of the spiral, Jade was in the middle of punching someone when the shockwave hit. Both he and his opponent stumbled.
"Oi!" Jade barked, catching his balance. "I was usin' that ground!"
His opponent—some form of disciplined fist fighter with a lot of chi and not much patience—scowled and surged forward, taking advantage of the momentary wobble. His fist lashed out, glowing with focused energy.
Jade's head snapped backward as the punch landed.
He blinked slowly.
"Right," he said.
Then he laughed and grabbed the guy by the shoulders.
"You hit like you mean it. Good."
He drove his knee into the man's gut once, hard. The chi shield collapsed. A follow-up elbow crackled with chi-shotgun force, blasting the fighter backward in a burst of compressed air. He crashed into another man who'd been about to attack Jade from behind.
The two bowled over the edge of the platform together, arms flailing, and vanished in twin teleport beams.
Jade stood there breathing hard, rolling his neck. "Two-for-one. Love a bargain."
The spiral lurched. A stray chunk of stone tumbled toward him from above, dislodged by the Wolf King/Giga clash.
Jade looked up.
"…ah, bloody—"
He jumped aside just as the rock smashed into the platform where he'd been standing, shattering the edge.
"YOU TWO COULD CALM DOWN A BIT!" he yelled toward the distant clash.
No one heard him.
Wolf King tore across his platform, claws flashing, golden aura blazing. Giga-Ronin met each swipe not with finesse, but with raw, unyielding force. Claw struck metal. Metal struck bone. Each impact resounded across the cavern. Neither could dominate the other quickly.
It wasn't a clean fight. But it was beautiful in a brutal, ruinous way.
On another spur of the spiral, Shadeclaw panted, chest heaving. Blood matted his fur in several places, dark against his coat. He crouched opposite an enormous armored fighter whose skin seemed fused with stone, runes etched along his forearms and shoulders.
The man's last punch had cracked Shadeclaw's ribs again.
Shadeclaw grinned anyway, baring his fangs.
The armored fighter lifted his hands, the runes glowing.
"You are a strong beast," he said. "But I am built to break your kind."
Shadeclaw spat blood onto the stone between them. "You mistake me for the average wolf."
He blurred.
He didn't go for the chest. The armor there was too thick. Instead he went low, claws digging into the man's knee joint. Bone and stone cracked with a sickening pop. The fighter bellowed and swung down, both arms hammering.
Shadeclaw vanished to the side, grabbing the arm mid-swing and twisting. The rune-lines along the limb sparked, sputtering. Shadeclaw leapt, planting both feet against the man's chest and using the momentum to yank him forward.
They tumbled together, rolling across the stone, a tangle of feral claws and seismic fists.
Shadeclaw bit down hard on the man's exposed collar joint. The fighter roared and slammed his elbow into Shadeclaw's back. Something snapped. Shadeclaw snarled, eyes going bright, and slammed his head forward, skull clashing into the man's chin.
Teleport light swallowed the armored fighter an instant later.
Shadeclaw rolled away, struggling to his feet.
Every breath hurt. His vision blurred at the edges.
Still, he stood.
"Royal blood," he rasped, mostly to himself. "Does not bow."
The arena shuddered.
Farther along the spiral, a blade of lightning crashed into the ground near Tundra Lynx. It split the stone and sprayed shards across his face. He blinked, ice crystals immediately forming where dust tried to get in his eyes.
A spear crackling with electricity thrust toward his throat.
He twisted aside, feeling the heat of it graze the fur along his neck. The lightning spear user snarled and lunged again, using the momentum to chain his strikes.
On the other side of their platform, Ember Claw wrestled with a magma-fisted brawler, flames and red-hot cracks racing up the man's arms.
"You look like a safety violation," Ember grunted.
The brawler tried to crush his skull.
Ember ducked, grabbed his opponent's wrist, and twisted, forcing him to slam his own fist into the stone. Lava splattered across the platform. Ember hopped back, feeling the heat singe his clothes.
"Tundra!" he shouted.
"Busy," Tundra Lynx replied calmly, parrying another spear thrust.
Ember rolled his eyes and jumped, planting both feet against the brawler's chest and kicking off. As he flew backward, he drew in a huge breath and exhaled a spiraling column of fire, twisting it with a flick of his wrist.
The blaze funneled toward the lightning duelist.
Tundra Lynx stepped aside at the last possible second. He slashed his claws upward, releasing a sharp wave of cold that struck the fire mid-flight. The sudden temperature clash exploded into a storm of steam and glassy shards of instantly solidified melt.
The lightning user screamed as crystal fragments peppered his exposed skin. The shock of it disrupted his focus, and the spear's charge flickered.
Tundra lunged in, shoulder ramming his opponent squarely in the chest with a frost-charged strike. The lightning duelist flew backward and teleported out before hitting the ground.
The magma brawler roared, charging Ember again through the steam cloud.
Ember smiled.
"Round two, then."
They collided, fire and molten rock clashing, the temperature spiking so rapidly the air itself wavered. Tundra Lynx watched for exactly one heartbeat, then turned away, already scanning his next threat.
Down below, the universe continued to be cruel to Jake.
His narrow walkway had become a thin spine of stone connecting two larger platforms. As the spiral tightened, the walkway rotated and tilted, forcing him to scramble on all fours to keep from falling.
Bumble clung stubbornly to his ankle.
"RECOMMENDATION: MAINTAIN THREE-POINT CONTACT WITH SURFACE!" Bumble beeped.
"I'M TRYING TO MAINTAIN CONTACT WITH BEING ALIVE!" Jake shouted back.
Two fighters met at the far end of the walkway as it rotated, both spotting him at the same time. Both assumed the same thing: terrified bronze dragon = easy elimination.
"OH COME ON!" Jake yelled.
The first fighter leapt toward him, weapon raised.
Jake flailed. His foot slipped. His arm flung outward with all the grace of a falling trash can. By sheer chaotic chance, his fist connected with the attacking fighter's jaw, charged with just enough nervous bronze electricity to overcharge the man's nervous system.
He teleported mid-fall.
The second fighter tried to use the distraction to rush in. Jake, off-balance, stumbled backward. Bumble, trying to "help," locked his grip on Jake's ankle tighter.
Jake yanked his foot to get free, unknowingly pulling Bumble up and forward like a swinging weight.
Bumble's metal body swung in a wide arc and slammed into the second fighter's shins.
The man flipped head over heels off the walkway.
Teleport beam.
Jake stared down the length of the now-empty walkway, chest heaving.
"I… I won," he whispered.
"CORRECTION," Bumble said. "YOU SURVIVED. I WON."
Jake's eye twitched. "We are having a talk later."
The system chimed softly in the background.
"Remaining fighters: Forty."
The number sank in.
Jake swallowed. "Top forty. Oh no. Oh NO."
Above him, two fighters on a neighboring platform exchanged massive chi-infused blows near the base of a supporting pillar. The stone cracked with each impact. Fissures crawled wider and deeper.
Swift's head snapped up. He felt the tremor before the sound reached him.
The pillar supporting three platforms groaned.
"Jake, move!" Swift shouted.
Jake looked up. The sound hit a second later—the grinding shriek of stone giving way.
The pillar began to crumble, the platforms it supported tilting.
Danny appeared.
He didn't flash into existence. He didn't teleport. He simply moved and the world obeyed, his body blurring as he stepped off his platform and landed on the failing structure. Dust exploded around his boots. Rock split beneath his weight—but he grabbed the falling keystone with one hand.
The strain of the entire structure shuddered through his arm. Stone dust cascaded around him like a waterfall.
He sighed.
"You all keep breaking things," he muttered. "It's very annoying."
The two fighters who'd been brawling there stared in shock.
Danny didn't even look at them. He shoved upward, resetting the keystone, forcing the pillar back into true alignment. The cracks crawled backward, sealing as the mana veins around it realigned.
Before either fighter could thank him—or attack him—Danny flicked his fingers lazily.
Two beams of teleport light instantly whisked them away.
The system chimed again, acknowledging their removal.
Danny let the pillar go and stepped back onto his platform, shoulders loose, as if he hadn't just held the weight of three arenas with one arm.
"Stop breaking the arena," he repeated, to no one in particular.
Swift met his eyes across the spiral. Danny nodded, a brief acknowledgement. Swift nodded back.
Their attention didn't linger.
Swift turned, scanning the nearest paths, sending a quick burst of frost at a collapsing edge beneath an unrelated fighter's feet. The ice solidified the crumbling ledge long enough for the fighter to leap to safety. The man glanced at Swift in surprise.
Then tried to attack him.
Swift tilted his head, mildly disappointed.
The man lunged.
Swift raised one hand, more draconic instinct than thought. Frost gathered in his palm and launched outward in a focused blast, catching the attacker mid-stride. The man's feet froze to the stone. Momentum yanked his upper body forward while his legs stayed locked. He went down hard and slid into the spiral's edge.
Teleport.
Swift lowered his arm.
"I did warn you," he said softly.
On another curve of the spiral, Mira was ruining someone's day with effortless precision. Her expression didn't change as she slipped past a lunging sword, cropped the attacker's hamstring with a low strike, and then chopped his neck. He teleported before his face even hit the floor.
She didn't watch him go. She was already moving, sliding through shadows, mapping the spiral's shifting geometry in her head. She could feel the Wolf Queen's presence like a razor blade pressed somewhere just behind her.
Close. Closer.
She pivoted into a narrow passage, footfalls silent. The platform there was small, half-lit by the glow of the cavern's mana veins. There were no other fighters on it, no obvious exits—only two paths that the spiral was gradually closing off.
It was a trap.
She stepped into it anyway.
Behind her, stone shook as Wolf Queen landed only a short distance away.
"Shadow-girl," the Queen's voice carried through the chill air. "No more running."
Mira turned slowly.
Her face was calm. No fear. No anger. Just focus.
Her hand loosened by her side, blade grip relaxing. Her stance dropped a fraction lower.
They faced each other across the small platform as the spiral clicked again and locked into the next stage. The paths behind Mira and Wolf Queen narrowed, stone grinding into place.
Top forty.
The air between them tightened like a held breath.
Across the spiral, Wolf King and Giga-Ronin had separated, neither eliminated, both marked with new bruises and cracks but still very much standing. Jade wiped blood from his lip and looked around for someone else to punch. Shadeclaw snarled softly, regrouping in the shadows. Ember Claw leaned on his knees, sweat steaming off his arms. Tundra Lynx rolled his shoulders, frost forming and flaking away.
Danny watched the royal-versus-assassin confrontation unfolding with mild curiosity.
Jake sat down on his newly-stable walkway and put his head in his hands. Bumble patted his shoulder with a metal hand.
"CONGRATULATIONS," Bumble said. "YOU ARE IN THE TOP FORTY."
Jake whimpered.
On his platform, wings pressed close, Swift let the cold settle into his bones and watched the Wolf Queen and Mira face one another.
The spiral had tightened.
And there were fewer places left to run.
Fighters Remaining: 40 / 500