The air in the coliseum didn't just hum with energy anymore; it vibrated with the aftershock of violence. On one side of the vast arena, a Bane-class entity—a hulking monstrosity of living magma and shifting tectonic plates—let out a ground-shaking roar. Opposite it, drenched in sweat and glowing with a steady, silver-and-gold aura, stood Anya. Her chest rose and fell in a controlled rhythm, her eyes locked on her opponent with a focus so intense it seemed to bend the light around her.
Forty years.
The thought was a ghost at the edge of Deo's consciousness as he watched her. Forty years since the affinity revelation. Forty years of watching her ascend while he fought for every inch of ground.
He wasn't watching her now. He was fighting his own battle.
His opponent was another Bane-class, a lesser one than Anya's—a creature of whipping vines and paralytic thorns. Deo's katana was a blur, layered with unstable Spatial energy. He'd finally, finally learned to kill Nuisance-class demions. Then Hazard-class. This was his first Bane in fifty-three years of trying.
It was going poorly.
He misjudged a spatial cut. The whip-vine lashed past his defense, its thorn sinking into his shoulder. Not a deep wound, but a paralyzing agent flooded his system. His left arm went dead, the katana in his right hand suddenly feeling impossibly heavy.
« TOXIN DETECTED. NEUROTOXIN CLASS 4. INITIATING METABOLIC COUNTERMEASURES. ESTIMATED RECOVERY: 17 SECONDS. »
Seventeen seconds was an eternity. The creature lunged.
A silver blur intercepted it. Anya didn't attack the plant-beast; she simply placed herself between it and Deo. She didn't even look at it. Her hand snapped out, caught the leading vine, and with a casual twist of her wrist, Enhanced energy surged down its length. The vine, and the creature it was attached to, petrified instantly before shattering into a million pieces of desiccated plant matter.
She turned to him, the fierce battle-light in her eyes softening into concern. "Your footwork was off. You over-committed on the feint." Her voice was calm, analytical. The voice of a master assessing a student.
Deo just nodded, his jaw clenched as he fought off the toxin's effects. Shame burned hotter than the venom in his veins. She had just obliterated his opponent without breaking a stride from her own, far more dangerous battle.
Later, in a rare moment of true quiet, K was absent. The coliseum was still. They sat on the steps of a manifested ruin, passing a vessel of condensed energy water between them. The silence was comfortable, worn smooth by decades of shared exile.
"It's changing me, Deo," Anya said suddenly, her voice quiet. She wasn't looking at him; she was staring at her hands. The hands that could shatter stone and heal fatal wounds. "The fighting... the constant dying... it's not just training. It's carving away parts of me. There's... another me in here. One that likes it. One that wants more."
Deo looked at her. He saw the new hardness around her eyes, the effortless lethality in her posture even at rest. But he also saw the fear in them. The fear of losing herself.
"My parents," she continued, her voice barely a whisper. "They died from a cellular decay plague when I was five. I was in the next room. I heard them... unmake." She finally looked at him, and the vulnerability there was a stark contrast to the warrior of minutes before. "That's why I studied medicine. I never wanted anyone to feel that helpless again. I wanted to save people. And now... now I'm becoming a weapon that only knows how to unmake."
The confession hung in the air, raw and painful. Deo reached out, his fingers brushing against hers. It was a simple gesture, but after forty years of nothing but combat, it felt more intimate than anything.
"I'm protected," he said softly, tapping his temple. "The System. It's... keeping me sane. Or at least, functional. But it's also why I'm so damn slow. It's like I'm trying to run a race with anchors chained to my soul."
"I can't stay, Deo," she said, her voice firm now, laced with a heartbreaking resolve. "I feel my mind fraying. The person I wanted to be... she's slipping away. If I stay another decade, I'm not sure she'll be there at all. The average person breaks in four years. I've lasted forty. I'm at my limit."
The words should have filled him with despair. Instead, they filled him with a fierce, protective ache. He understood.
"Then you have to go," he said, his voice rough with emotion. "You have to get out."
She turned her hand, lacing her fingers with his. "I made a vow to myself a long time ago, in a hospital room, that I would help people. I need to go keep that vow. But I made another vow here, with you." She looked at him, her gaze unwavering. "We survive this. Together. So I'll be waiting for you. On the other side."
It wasn't a declaration of love spoken with flowers and poetry. It was a promise forged in blood and shared trauma, and it was more real than anything Deo had ever known. He squeezed her hand, a silent oath in return.
They sat there for a long time, not speaking, just sharing the silence. It was a better conversation than any they'd ever had with words.
When K returned, Anya was ready.
"I'm leaving," she stated, her voice leaving no room for argument.
K looked at her, then at Deo, and simply nodded. "You have extracted most of the value this place holds for you. To stay further would be to diminish returns. Very well."
He didn't make a speech. He just opened a rift in the fabric of the coliseum—a tear of blinding white light that led back to the real world.
Anya took a step towards it, then paused. She looked back at Deo one last time. The fierce warrior was gone. In her place was the woman he'd shared his silence with. She offered him a small, soft smile, the first truly gentle expression he'd seen on her face in forty years.
"Don't keep me waiting too long," she said.
Then she turned and stepped through the rift. It sealed behind her, leaving Deo alone in the infinite coliseum with K.
The silence she left behind was deafening.
K observed him for a moment. "Your turn. The Bane-class tectonic entity is reforming. Try not to die in the first five seconds this time. It's tedious to reset."
Deo looked at the spot where Anya had vanished. He felt her absence like a physical wound. But he also felt her promise, a warm ember in his chest.
He turned to face the reforming monster of magma and stone, his katana feeling heavier than ever.
He was alone. He was struggling against a foe she had mastered decades ago.
But she was waiting for him.
And as the beast charged, Deo realized that for the first time, he wasn't just fighting to survive. He was fighting to keep a promise.
He was fighting to get back to her.
« SIMULATION RESET. » « OPPONENT: IGNIS, THE TECTONIC BANE. THREAT LEVEL: BANE. » « SIMULATED DEATH COUNT: 8,441. » « WARNING: HOST VITALS SHOW SIGNS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL FATIGUE. »
He ignored the System. He raised his blade.
On the other side of the rift, Anya collapsed to her knees on the familiar, unforgiving stone of the real world. The air felt thin, quiet, dead. The crushing weight of the time chamber was gone, but so was its constant, life-giving energy.
But she was whole. She was herself.
And she was power.
She felt it thrumming under her skin, a contained supernova. She could feel the fabric of reality around her, could sense the life force of every person in the citadel miles away. With a thought, she could enhance her body to move faster than sight, to strike with the force of a meteor. With another, she could mend a mortal wound or purge a planet-wide plague.
She wasn't just strong. She was a force of nature. A Cosmic-level entity, easily in the top hundred strongest beings in the known universe.
But all that power meant nothing to her in that moment. All she could think of was the man she'd left behind in the endless now, still fighting, still struggling.
She closed her eyes and sent a silent promise into the void, hoping somehow he would feel it.
I'm here. I'm waiting.