Reiner had returned to the thought again and again, too many times to count, of what it would be like when he finally stood before his daughter. Any father would. Any father who learned, even on the thinnest sliver of faith, that his child might still be alive would run those scenes through his head until they wore grooves into the mind. He told himself it was hope. In truth, it was all he had left.

  Doubt came bundled with it. It always did. What if The Nightmare had lied? The idea felt wrong even as it surfaced.

  But the thought never quite left him, no matter how many times he reasoned it through. An all-powerful gold core had no need to deceive him. And yet. If that were true, then why had she refused him? Why deny something so small as a glimpse? Why forbid him from seeking Jade out himself? Why the secrecy? Why the distance? Why nothing but riddles where answers should have been?

  Why, how, and what had happened in all the time stolen from him?

  Those questions rooted themselves deep inside his gut, festering. They grew heavy and persistent. And while leaving that decaying excuse for a town had eased his breathing, while traveling alongside people who still understood how to live had dulled the edge somewhat, it never truly stopped hurting. Adventurers by heart and soul, they were. People who laughed hard, fought harder, and burned bright while they could.

  Yet even among them, a part of Reiner ached constantly.

  The longing never slept.

  It drove him without mercy, until he realized what he was doing. He had begun searching for his daughter without admitting it to himself, scanning crowds, faces, silhouettes. All of it under the honest lie of adventuring. Any hint. Any trace. Anything at all.

  Months passed. Nothing.

  Then fate, cruel or maybe… merciful, finally moved.

  That face on the wanted poster, there was no mistaking it. No one else would have seen it. No one else could have. This slip of a girl, small enough to be missed in a crowd but carrying eyes like fresh blood and hair the color of a cold winter moon. The ink called her a monster. A murderer. Said she was running with those Vor’Akhs terrorists right there in Varkaigrad, being hunted by the kind of powerful bastards in Vraal’Kor who don't like to lose a trail.

  No one else recognized her.

  Reiner did.

  She looked different, the world was trying to kill her, and she was in a mess Reiner wouldn't wish on his worst enemy, but he knew his own blood. He’d raised her from a squalling babe; a father doesn't just forget the shape of his own heart because someone put a bounty on it.

  And now… now he was finally looking at her.

  The cheering crowd fell silent. Millions packed into the vast arena, the noise dying in waves as Reiner had sat among them, already assembling plans in his mind. Searching this city would be dangerous. Slow. Necessary. She had to be in hiding. At least, that was what he believed.

  For now, he masked himself. Smiled when others smiled. Applauded when they did. He played the part and let the festival carry on around him.

  Still, he couldn’t help but be impressed.

  The young denizens of Varkaigrad were something else entirely, prodigies who had reached red core at ages younger than he had been when he first learned how to survive. Power sharpened early, ambition honed even earlier.

  And above them all stood one man.

  Reiner’s gaze never strayed from him, not once during the endless illusions woven throughout the arena. His battle style was immaculate with no wasted motion and no hesitation. Every choice seemed deliberate, informed by a grasp of the field so complete it felt as though he moved a heartbeat ahead of reality itself. And yet, at times, he abandoned precision entirely, proving without words that brute force still had its place.

  He had a dozen ways to end a life quietly, yet the look on his face wasn't one of a professional— it was the raw, ugly joy of a man who loved the mess.

  And then, when the combatants finally emerged from the battlefield and stepped into the arena proper, it happened.

  The man they’d all been cheering for, the one Reiner hadn’t blinked at for an hour, started to peel apart in place.

  Reiner felt his heart drop straight through his chest.

  The disguise unraveled in a breath. Long golden hair spilled free, flowing and untamed. Deep violet eyes, that were swirling and swallowing light, looked out from a face that now felt too real, too present. She stood taller than before, not just in stature but in presence. The frail, dangerous pale girl with silver hair was gone. In her place stood someone radiant with vitality, as if the world itself had noticed her and chosen to respond.

  She walked with authority. With certainty.

  There was no doubt left.

  It was her.

  And she was in danger.

  Before Reiner could even blink, before his mind could catch up to what the hell he was seeing, three figures were already around her. Pressure rolled off them in heavy waves. Even from this distance, buried inside the crowd, Reiner felt it press against his skin, against his core, against his bones.

  Gold cores.

  There was no mistaking it. Three demigods.

  At gold core, Reiner knew, the world began to react. When they walked, reality itself shifted to make room. When they moved, the presence of the world parted. When they struck, they carried fragments of its will with them. To be hit by one, unless you were gold core yourself, meant nothing more than being reduced to meat. They didn’t need precision. They didn’t need effort.

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  Red core was already considered a monumental leap in power.

  Gold made it irrelevant.

  And there she stood. Between all three of them.

  The man whose skin she had worn was there too, filthy, furious, screaming as he launched himself from the spectator stands toward the arena, lightning tearing across his body as he moved. A red core. He was fast and desparate.

  He didn’t even get close.

  An exact replica of her manifested mid-air, draped in living, writhing shadow, and struck him with force brutal enough to pulverize bone and burst organs. The body was sent flying like it weighed nothing.

  One hit.

  Unconscious before he hit the ground.

  “Know your place, filthy worm.”

  That was all she said.

  Then the replica vanished.

  It was her. It was Jade. There was no universe where his eyes could fail him now, not when she stood there in flesh and blood, unmistakable. She was smiling.

  That didn’t matter.

  She was surrounded by monsters.

  Reiner’s thoughts came apart at the seams. Panic clawed at him, threatening to hollow him out completely. And yet, something lit beneath it. A spark that was sudden and violent. His sinking heart ignited as he stared at his daughter, already a terrifying red core in her own right, standing between three beings who could erase her without effort.

  She’d die.

  That thought alone was enough to snap something inside him.

  After all this time, after the months of hollow waiting and that constant, gnawing ache, he was finally looking at her. Flesh and blood. She was breathing. She was real. There was NO WORLD in which he would allow her to be taken from him again. Not by fate. Not by gods. Not by the world itself.

  The spark flared, then spread, swallowing his core as heat bled into the air around him. Desire turned feral. Absolute. He was not letting the world take her away from him. If the odds were this skewed, then he would burn them all to ash.

  His core fractured under the pressure, overflowing with something dense and violent. He scraped his boots back without realizing what he was doing, unaware of the telltale signs screaming that his core was ascending. Someone behind him shouted, maybe in warning, maybe in terror, but the sound vanished, as if reality itself had cut the noise short.

  He never got the chance to leap. Or scream.

  A presence closed around him.

  Two clawed hands, forged of flame blacker than shadow, wrapped around his core. The world lurched, and suddenly he was… elsewhere. Flames still detonated around his body as he launched forward on instinct, but there was nowhere to go. No distance. No direction.

  What… just happened?

  Jade was gone.

  In her place stretched an endless field of black dahlias, their petals burning with shadowed fire, swaying without wind. The sight didn’t register properly at first. His broken mind lagged. Then he noticed another presence beside him.

  An elf.

  He was naked and chained. Suspended in empty air as though the chains themselves were anchored to nothing. The image sharpened, and with it came understanding.

  He was burning.

  Not outside. Inside.

  His core felt as though it had been placed directly into a furnace, something vast and merciless feeding the flames. The realization struck first. Then the pain followed, slamming into him with a force that tore a sound from his throat.

  He was… ascending.

  Now? Of all times? When Jade needed him—

  The thought shattered as agony spiked. The internal flame erupted, bursting outward and engulfing his entire being in searing white fire. His core expanded violently, dragging power from the world itself, consuming it without restraint.

  There was barely a thread of awareness left. Still, he felt everything, the deep, invasive burn, the sense of being devoured from within.

  And then, within that strange, severed space, he saw a face.

  Ja… de?

  The thought came out warped, half-formed.

  It wasn’t her.

  The woman resembled Jade, just enough to twist the knife, but the differences were impossible to ignore. Familiar. Unsettling. Her azure eyes regarded him with something like pity.

  Wh… o?

  He tried to speak. The moment his mouth opened, the words collapsed into screams.

  She stepped closer and reached into the inferno that was his body. The flames parted for her, recoiling as though afraid. Her steady voice cut through the agony.

  “Just don’t blame me for stopping you from committing suicide again.”

  Her fingers pressed against his forehead.

  “Sleep.”

  The word carried weight. A sort of finality.

  The pain vanished in an instant, replaced by a numb, painless calm. He tried to resist, tried to cling to consciousness, but the world itself denied him.

  Peace closed in.

  And he was gone.

  ***

  Sne?ana let out a slow breath as the man collapsed amid a field of burning black dahlias. Beside him, the chained elf suddenly screamed, as if his body itself had been set alight, as though the agony tearing through the man had been peeled away and forced into the elf instead.

  Which was… not far from the truth.

  [And what of the Jade, Master? Or the motley crew the Master Reiner calls companions?]

  Moryana’s voice echoed through the domain they occupied.

  She stood there in a form that was physical only by courtesy. A phantom presence, floating like a wisped wraith, draped in a hooded garb of smoldering black flame. Four black claws hovered at her sides, two of them gripping a massive scythe wrought from rolling fog. Beneath the hood, there was nothing, only darkness.

  Sne?ana considered the question, fingers brushing the pendant at her neck. She sighed.

  "Cast them into the Nightmare Realm Gweneth saw fit to gift me," she commanded, "but do be a dear and replace the usual horrors with your own brood. Give them enough of a distraction to keep them from poking their noses where they don't belong until the dust has settled."

  She tossed the pendant, the one gifted by The Nightmare, toward Moryana. One claw snapped shut around it.

  After a brief pause, Sne?ana continued, “As for Jade… I’m inclined to believe she won’t be foolish enough to face this without a contingency. We still don’t know the full extent of her skills. Unless something feels wrong, truly wrong, I see no reason to interfere.”

  [Understood, Master.]

  Moryana vanished.

  One of her offspring, a pint-sized, rotund version of the phantom that looked more like a stray thought than a terror, lingered behind. It waddled toward the unconscious Reiner, eyes wide with a curious, dark hunger, only to be met with a sharp clack as a skeletal hand reached out of the ether and bonked it on the head. [No!] the void hissed, dragging the miniature nuisance back into the silence by its scruff.

  Sne?ana briefly wondered what manner of curriculum Moryana used to raise her children. She shook her head and let the thought go. Casting one last look at the sleeping man and feeling that familiar ache settle in her chest, she closed her eyes and stepped out of her domain.

  The Elders were not nearby. No one noticed her absence.

  Those gathered around ‘Reiner’ grumbled at the rising heat, but it soon faded, their attention drawn back to the arena. Jade and the three Elders were sealed within a powerful spatial cocoon, one that blocked all physical senses. Sne?ana didn’t need them to understand what was unfolding.

  And soon, the answer revealed itself.

  Jade possessed something beyond simple teleportation.

  Sne?ana’s eyes narrowed. A tether-based ability, one that allowed her to replace something outright. Sne?ana herself could weave similar hexes, but something this refined, and at red core… Jade had to possess an advanced affinity still unknown to them.

  Sne?ana didn’t have time to act.

  The tether Jade had left behind suddenly blurred, then its lower half was torn away. It hardly mattered. A massive surge of mana swelled inside the spatial cocoon.

  At first, Sne?ana was surprised.

  Then she laughed, softly, at the wide-eyed fossils who had been just a moment too slow.

  The explosion inside the cocoon shook the entire arena.

  Jade was already gone.

  She had entered the Second Trial.

  No one should have been able to follow her inside… but that protection was temporary. Time flowed differently within the trial. By the time it ended, months would have passed for the champions, while barely a week would pass outside. Throughout it all, the Colosseum would fill the arena with carefully curated illusions of their lives, unfolding like a living chronicle for the spectators.

  A few months.

  Would that be enough for Jade?

  Sne?ana exhaled.

  It seemed she had much to prepare for in the near future.

  +16 Adv. Chapters on Patreon!!

  Discord