Chapter 139: The Final Sixteen
I had always imagined that stealing the sky would feel a little more triumphant. Perhaps a chorus of trumpets, or at least a sense of divine vindication that the heavens themselves had finally chosen me as their rightful custodian.
Instead, it felt like motion sickness.
Hours had passed since our dramatic little escape from the mob, and though the balloon sailed steady now, my stomach hadn’t quite caught up with the concept that the ground was not, in fact, politely waiting beneath my boots.
Every time I leaned over the basket’s edge, I expected to see the cobblestones rushing up to greet my skull, and instead there was only the endless sprawl of the city, smoking and writhing like some fever-ridden beast.
Just as I had expected, the city refused to settle. Instead it roared, it howled, it tore itself apart in glittering pockets of madness. With their primary target gone to the sky, that left them to turn on each other once more.
Competitors clashed in alleys, spells screeched across plazas, zealots trampled one another in pursuit of glory that had already bled out into the dust. The nobles squabbled in their dangling balloons, tossing paper bounties like confetti upon the starving masses below.
It was less a city now and more a carnival of despair, and all of it looked far too small from up here, like dolls smashing each other’s porcelain heads in a playhouse.
I gripped the railing tighter, letting the breeze slap against my face, sharp and cold with the taste of smoke. My lungs stung, my ribs protested, but there was something soothing about the height.
Nobody could reach me up here. Probably. Saints above, I thought about the stitched man, almost believing he might sprout wings if it meant clawing me back into his grasp.
That thought had barely scurried across my mind when I heard it—the roar.
Faint at first, like a distant avalanche echoing across mountains. Then stronger, deeper, rolling through the streets below until it made the air itself shudder. I leaned over, my pen clutched in white fingers, and there he was. The stitched man.
Boiling with fury, tearing his way through an entire swarm of competitors as if they were kindling in a fire. His massive arms swung wide, smashing men into walls, tearing limbs with horrifying ease. Blood sprayed upward, bright as fireworks in the moonlight, and for a heartbeat I thought I could see his eyes turn up toward me, sharp and hateful, burning through the smoke.
I pulled back quickly, clutching the railing as if it might somehow hide me. I hated how small I felt. How prey-like. How inevitable his pursuit seemed, even with a city’s chaos between us.
The Man in White appeared beside me.
He leaned against the railing as if he’d been there the whole time, hands tucked neatly in his cloak, posture relaxed, head tilted toward the horizon. He didn’t say a word. He never does, not until he’s good and ready, and his silence was a heavier weight than the stitched man’s roar had been.
We stood there together, staring down at the ruin, the balloon rocking gently beneath our boots. For a long while, only the wind spoke.
Naturally, I broke first. Silence has never been my strong suit.
"So," I muttered, tapping my pen against the railing with exaggerated patience, "do you make it a habit to lurk in silence until everyone around you forgets what sanity sounds like, or is this just a special treat for me?"
No response. Of course not. I tried again.
"You know, most men introduce themselves when they intrude on someone’s brooding. A polite cough, a little small talk, maybe even a compliment about my hair. But no, you prefer the whole silent-reaper routine. Very dignified. Very ominous. Very irritating."
That, at least, earned me a faint chuckle. His hood shifted, and I thought I caught the glint of his mouth curling ever so slightly.
"I’m sorry," he said softly.
I blinked. Saints above, I nearly fell over the railing. "You—you’re what?"
"Sorry," he repeated, calm and unflinching. "For refusing to reveal myself to you. For dragging you all into this mess in the first place."
I stared. This was not how conversations with him were supposed to go. He was supposed to lecture me, taunt me, sermonize about fate. Not apologize. Certainly not to me.
"You’re apologizing," I said slowly, like one might confirm the sighting of a unicorn in their parlor. "You. The man who can apparently shrug off gravity and armies with equal disinterest. You’re apologizing to me?"
He nodded once. "You might have heard the whispers before. That this tournament is more than it appears. That its roots run deep into politics, deeper than most dare to imagine. It’s true. There are figures in the shadows who will stop at nothing to bend this game to their will."
My stomach twisted. His voice was calm, but the words rang sharp and cold. Figures in the shadows. Manipulating everything. Tugging the strings even when blood stained the stage.
I swallowed, my throat dry. The name clawed its way up before I could stop it.
"Japeth."
The Man in White turned his hood toward me. Slowly. Deliberately. Then he nodded. The breath fled my lungs. I clutched the railing tighter. "How do you know his name?"
His reply was as simple as it was damning. "Japeth...is my enemy."
I sagged against the railing, my heart rattling against my ribs. His enemy.
Just then everything clicked together. The ambush in the forest, that feather I’d found, the bounty placed on his head—it all curled back to him, to that one figure. My sponsor. The benefactor I had thought a savior, now revealed as the hand stirring the storm.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to laugh. Instead I just sighed, long and bitter, and shook the thought from my mind before it could poison me further.
Behind me, Nara’s small voice called. "All done."
I turned. The boy stepped back from Rodrick’s slumped form. Faint threads of healing light flickered and died across his hands. And Rodrick—oh saints, Rodrick’s face—
The bruises were gone. The swollen flesh smoothed. The broken skin mended. His jaw was whole again, his features restored with a delicate precision that made him look younger, softer, as if the weight of a dozen broken bones had never once graced him.
It had taken hours. Hours of chanting, of trembling hands, of sweat dripping from Nara’s brow. But it had been worth it.
Rodrick stirred, groaning, pressing a hand to his newly-healed cheek. His eyes found mine, and for the first time in days, he smiled.
"Well," he rasped, voice still gravel but laced with humor, "do I look pretty again?"
I snorted. "Pretty might be a stretch. Less like a brick wall, more like... perhaps a moderately well-maintained fence."
He chuckled, leaning back against the basket. "Better than being rubble, I suppose."
And saints damn me, but I laughed too. Just for a moment, the world felt almost light again. Hours bled past. The balloon drifted, the fires below dimmed into scattered embers. We rested, we mended. For once, no one tried to kill us. I almost didn’t know what to do with the silence.
But then my gaze caught the ring on my finger. The little band of judgment, its number gleaming faintly in the moonlight.
Eighteen.
I nearly choked on my own breath. Only two more eliminations until the final sixteen. Until the true tournament began.
My eyes swept the horizon with surgical precision, scanning every plaza, every rooftop, every flicker of magic below. I wasn’t alone. Fitch leaned over the opposite side of the basket, his jaw tight, his eyes narrowed with worry.
I frowned. "What’s with that look, Fitch? Don’t tell me you’re developing wrinkles. They’d ruin your aesthetic."
He glanced at me, his face pale. "I’m worried. For the Lady."
I grimaced. Of course he was. Always the noble heart, always fretting over someone who would sooner gut us than thank us. I didn’t answer, not truthfully. I only nodded, lips pressed thin, hiding the thought that perhaps she had already perished in some sewer, drowned in filth where she belonged.
But before I could wallow in my cynicism, the scream came. Sharp. Distant. Echoing through the night like a blade across glass.
I jolted upright, my eyes snapping toward the sound. And then I saw it.
A gleam of gold.
The High Priest of the Southern Sun, alive and well, radiant in his absurdity.
He strode across a dark ally, golden sword gleaming in his grip. Facing him were two men, their eyes wide, their weapons raised. One lifted an emerald staff, magic already swirling at its tip.
The priest did not flinch. His sword swung once, slicing the air itself. An arc of golden light leapt forth, severing the man’s arm in an instant. The scream barely had time to form before the priest’s blade descended again, clean through his neck.
The second man faltered, stumbled, turned to flee.
The priest did not give him the chance. He cut low, across the back, splitting flesh from spine. The man collapsed with a howl, clawing at the cobblestones. And then the priest’s heel came down, stomping him into silence, blood spattering the stones.
I grimaced. Saints preserve me, I grimaced until my teeth ached.
And then the sound came.
Click.
Every ring. Every finger. Every contestant in the sky or on the ground. A single, quiet click. I looked down. The number had shifted. Sixteen. The final bracket. The end of the preliminaries.
"...it’s over," Salem said with that little smirk of his, the one that somehow managed to sound smug even when it was only two words and a cracked whisper.
For a moment, I actually believed him. The night had been long, bloody, and humiliating; the kind of gauntlet where one’s soul felt scraped across a cheese grater for sport. Surely the world was obligated to end the preliminaries after such a performance.
And then, as if the saints themselves had been waiting for Salem’s declaration to cue their orchestra, the bells tolled.
They rang out across the broken city, sonorous and heavy, rolling through the ruins like waves of iron. Each peal made the balloon’s ropes shiver, made my chest ache, as though the bells were tolling directly against my ribs.
Below us, the chaos of Port Fallas faltered. The sound was less ceremony than decree, less announcement than execution.
I leaned over the railing, the night air biting my face, and watched as the noble balloons—those perfumed carriages of silk and arrogance—began drifting again. Not away from the city, not toward safety, but converging, slowly, inexorably, toward the market district once again.
Our balloon followed suit, tugged by the same invisible leash. Dunny managed the ropes with more desperation than skill, his lips moving in frantic prayers that even he must have known were wasted breath. Still, he guided us well enough, the crimson silk above us trembling in the wind as we descended.
The first light of dawn peeked over the horizon as we drifted lower. Thin shafts of gold cut across the ruins, slicing through smoke and rubble, painting the broken stones in cruel illumination. It felt like mockery. A new day, yes—but what sort of day? The kind that carried hope, or the kind that sharpened knives?
When at last the balloon kissed the ground with a groan of ropes and wood, I was the first to leap out. My boots struck the cobblestones of the ruined market square, the stones still damp with old blood. For a moment I simply stood there, arms stretched wide, as though daring the city to tell me I had not survived.
Then my eyes caught him.
Arculaus. Or rather, what was left of him.
His corpse still knelt where it had fallen, my spear jutting grotesquely from the wound in his neck, his monocle shattered, his embroidered robes stiff with dried blood. He looked less like a mage and more like a discarded mannequin at a tailor’s shop, forgotten and pathetic.
I scowled. Striding forward, I seized the spear’s shaft. It was lodged deep, the handle sticky with the congealed remnants of arrogance. With one furious wrench, I tore it free. The body sagged forward, collapsing face-first onto the stones with a dull thud.
I twirled the spear once in my hand and muttered under my breath, "Finally. Mine again."
The others were disembarking behind me when I noticed the shadows move. Not the shadows of debris or smoke, but figures, emerging one by one into the square.
The final sixteen.
They came like wraiths, silent at first, then louder. Survivors, competitors, monsters in human skin.
The High Priest of the Southern Sun was among the first, stepping from the blackened arches with his golden sword resting arrogantly across his shoulder.
His grin gleamed in the morning light, sickly and self-satisfied, but it vanished the instant his gaze slid across the Man in White. I watched his lips curl into a sneer, his teeth grinding, the malice radiating from him so hot I half expected the stones to melt beneath his sandals.
And then the stitched man.
He lumbered in from the opposite end of the plaza, breath fogging in ragged bursts, his stitched flesh quivering as though ready to tear itself apart. His eyes—oh, those hateful pits—locked directly onto me. Not Salem. Not the priest. Not even the Man in White. Me. As though the universe had scrawled my name across his vision in blood.
I shuddered. My bones actually rattled inside me. But I held steady. If I trembled, if I looked away, it would only feed him. So I stared back. My pen in one hand, my spear in the other, my insides screaming prayers I would never speak aloud.
The others filtered in. Rodrick, Dunny, Nara, Fitch. Salem, blades on his back, smirk plastered as ever. The Naked Knight, grinning despite the fact that his intestines were probably held together with spit. The Man in White, infuriating in his pristine figure.
Then came the strangers.
An odd looking fishman of deep blue skin, his eyes pale and glassy like the bottom of the sea, his hands calloused from nets rather than blades.
A pair of broad twins, their throats scarred with twin bite marks, moving in eerie synchronicity—thralls, no doubt, the Lady’s brood that had somehow slithered past the massacre.
Then, a zealot—strange even by zealot standards—draped in the standard white cloak. Long white hair spilled from beneath his hood, catching the morning light like threads of silver. His face was hidden, his posture rigid, but when he shifted slightly, I caught the faintest glimmer of red from beneath the shadow.
It set my skin crawling, a cold pressure along my spine I couldn’t name. Rodrick, for his part, squinted hard at the man, his eyes narrowing with the focused suspicion of someone who recognized an old scar but couldn’t place where he had seen it.
Alongside him was another cloaked figure in black robes this time, smaller than the rest, twitching, quivering. A women by the looks of it. Her movements were...odd, as if her body was not entirely her own. My instincts whispered danger, but I brushed it aside. One horror at a time.
That made fifteen.
"Where’s the last?" I muttered aloud, scanning the edges of the plaza.
And then I heard it. Footsteps, soft and reverent. My heart froze. My eyes widened. She came from behind us, dragging the dawn with her.
The Lady of Fangs.
Drenched in blood, in sewage, in filth, but alive. Saints damn her, alive. Her hair clung to her cheeks in wet strands, her eyes gleamed with madness, her smile sharper than the dawn itself and in her hand was a delicate black umbrella hoisted leisurely above her head. She stank of rot and slaughter, and yet she moved with that same unholy poise, a queen wading through ruin.
I opened my mouth—saints forgive me, I opened it to spit some half-formed quip, some desperate sarcasm to shield my terror—but the sound of hoofbeats drowned me out.
Across the plaza they came. Two men on horses, cloaked in black, cassocks hanging low, their faces hidden beneath the shadows of their hoods. Servants of the Northern Cathedral no doubt. Their steeds clattered across the stones with solemn precision, and for a moment the square fell quiet, all of us watching.
The riders reined in, their cloaks stirring in the cold dawn wind. One raised his hand, his voice smooth and resonant, carrying with unnatural clarity.
"The preliminaries have ended. Sixteen remain. Congratulations to you all."
The other added, "You will now be escorted to the main venue."
Their words cut sharper than any blade. The sound of doors slamming shut on the world we had known thus far. I turned, my eyes sweeping across the survivors—no, not survivors. Contestants. Enemies. My enemies. Their faces were pale but steady, marked by the strange peace that comes when one realizes there is no turning back.
A step closer, I thought.
A step closer to Lysaria. To cutting through to the Northern Cathedral. To prying open Japeth’s motives and seeing what monster truly hid behind it.
I breathed deep, my pen warm against my fingers, my ring heavy on my hand. No more hesitation. No more half-measures.
This was it.
It was time for the real nightmare to begin.