Each step sank a little deeper than the last. Elias didn't lift his boots so much as drag them forward, toes kicking through the grit as the sand shifted underfoot. It clung to the blood soaking through the side of his thigh—warm at first, now sticky, heavy. The fabric of his sleepwear tore a little more with every movement. His leg burned where the spear had passed too close, shallow enough to miss anything vital, deep enough to leave him limping.
The heat was old and dry, baked into the stone. Smoke still lingered from earlier fights—metal scorched, plasma-burnt. It stung in the back of his throat when he breathed too hard. The torches lining the arena walls spat flame at uneven intervals, and each one stretched his shadow across the sand, twisting with the rise and fall of his chest. The sky overhead looked like ash: flat, gray, low enough to touch. Like it might crush them if the match dragged on.
He kept moving.
