"You two did great," he said, forcing his voice steady. "They're already calling you Stray and Shadowborn."
Kai barely reacted, his gaze drifting over the enclosure as though names meant nothing.
Matt cleared his throat. "Hey, I got a new ability in that last match. Did you get anything?" ignoring Drake.
"No. Nothing." Kai's tone was flat, unreadable. "What did you get?"
"Shadow Chain. If I step on someone's shadow, it locks them in place."
He tested it without warning, planting his heel on Kai's shadow. Kai stiffened instantly, frozen mid-breath. The paralysis lasted indefinitely as long as he was on the shadow, it was enough to make Matt grin despite himself.
Kai tilted his head, lips quirking faintly. "Interesting."
A guard's shout echoed down the hall—time was short.
"You ready?" Matt asked. "This next one decides if we reach floor one."
Kai gave a slow nod.
Matt hesitated, then threw the question out casually, though his chest was tight. "Say… why do you even want to reach floor fifty?"
The air in the room shifted. Drake and his bodyguards cut sharp looks toward them, their expressions taut, like the wrong answer could draw blood.
"To become a broker, of course," Drake said, voice dripping with certainty.
The words hung in the silence, heavy and absolute.
The announcer's voice boomed overhead. The gates groaned, chains rattling. The next match was about to begin.
---
We finished the match faster than anyone expected—clean, precise, almost rehearsed. Two strikes, two corpses. The crowd didn't even have time to blink before it was over. One-hit kills on cue. Efficient. Too efficient.
The gates opened again, and we were herded back into the waiting chamber. The chants followed us like a tide rolling against stone. Shadowborn. Stray. Shadowborn. Stray.
Drake was waiting with that smug little grin, a jug of water in one hand and a bundle of rations in the other. "Not bad," he said, tossing the food our way like scraps for dogs.
Kai didn't hesitate. He tore into his portion with an almost feral hunger, tearing dried meat with his teeth, swallowing mouthfuls of bread without stopping for breath. His jaw worked fast, his throat straining, as though he hadn't eaten in days. Maybe he hadn't—not properly.
Mattethis sat against the wall, more deliberate, chewing slowly, watching Kai devour his food in silence. He didn't say anything. Maybe he couldn't.
The water went down just as quickly. Kai emptied the jug and set it aside without a word, leaning back against the cold stone, eyes closing like he might fall asleep right there.
Afterward, Drake gathered his little entourage—his spirit guardian shimmering faintly behind him like a shadow barely leashed—and motioned us forward. "Time to move. Floor One awaits."
His two guards turned to one guard as the other got another job plus Drake didn't need the security he has stray and shadowborn by his side.
We followed, the weight of victory heavy but hollow. Past the gates, the crowd was waiting. Cheering. Roaring. Hands slapping against iron bars, voices grinding against our ears. Shadowborn! Stray! The names weren't ours, but they stuck anyway. The arena loved to rename you, to carve away whatever you were before.
The elevator was waiting at the end of the hall, an iron box suspended by chains that rattled like bones when the doors creaked open. Drake stepped in first, his guardian sliding after him like a darker version of himself. Mattethis followed, shoulders squared.
Kai and I stepped in last, the chants still ringing behind us, fading as the doors dragged shut.
The chains groaned, and we began to rise.
The elevator rattled upward, every link of chain groaning under the weight. The air was stale, metallic, and thick with the ghost of blood. None of us spoke at first, silence riding heavy between us.
Then Drake broke it. He always did.
"You know why they call it Azura Tower, don't you? Most people think Azura built it. Truth is, he didn't. He died in it."
Even his bodyguards leaned in, though they'd heard the story before.
"Azura wasn't a god, wasn't some myth. He was a fighter—one of the greatest to ever crawl out of the mud. He started like we did, in the sublevels. Step by step, he clawed his way higher. Not fifty floors, not a hundred. Two hundred. Two hundred and forty-five. That's how far he climbed."
The number hit harder than any roar of the crowd. Even Mattethis shifted uneasily. Two hundred and forty-five. Impossible to imagine.
Drake's grin sharpened. "And yet, the Tower broke him. They say on that floor, he faced a guardian that didn't just fight him—it outlasted him. He bled, starved, fought for days until his body gave out. But here's the twist. His corpse never came down. The Tower kept him. Some say his bones are woven into its walls. Others whisper he became one of its guardians, bound like the rest, waiting for the next poor bastard to reach him."
The elevator shuddered as if to punctuate his words. Dust sifted from the beams above.
Drake leaned forward, lowering his voice. "That's the truth of the Tower. It doesn't just kill—it takes. You lose here, you're not buried. You're absorbed."
He paused, eyes glinting. "One floor you'll hear about long before that, though, is Thirty-Five. Bone Breaker. That guardian doesn't bother with weapons. It inflicts damage pure damage. Doesn't matter how strong you are—it'll catch you, twist your body until bones snap like dry branches. Dozens have gone in. None have walked out. Some whisper Bone Breaker was once human, too. A fighter who fell, bound into the Tower forever. Azura beat it—but barely. And only because the Tower wasn't done with him yet."
"Then there's the new guardian floor 15 he's currently at. They call him Nightmare. They didn't know what to do with him so they made him a floor boss. Tell you what I'm scared of whoever owns that thing. It's inhuman"
The thought coiled in Kai's chest. He couldn't stop his mind from flicking to Velnix, his own spirit guardian. For a heartbeat he wondered what would happen if Velnix were chained to these walls, forced to fight strangers for eternity. He pushed the thought away as fast as it came. His face stayed still, unreadable.
Drake chuckled softly, almost reverently. "That's what makes Floor Fifty the marker. By then, the Tower has already started carving you into someone new. The Broker's Seat, the penthouse? That's just the prize. The real achievement is surviving long enough for the Tower to strip you bare—and still breathing when it does."
The elevator jerked, swaying hard. The chains screamed but held. Above us, the darkness stretched higher still, endless.
Kai finally broke his silence. "Then we'll see."
Drake's smirk spread, sharp as a cut. "Yes," he said. "We will."