8. Kaelor #4
The relic is still there. Its glow pulses. Steady. Waiting.
She looks back at me.
Neither of us speaks.
We don't need to. The bond carries it. The same understanding in both of us at the same moment. This attempt is over. We don't have the time or the platforms. There's no path to that relic that ends with both of us standing.
But we have the armor.
We have the crown.
We have the bond and one reset and a lake with no one left on it who knows what's coming.
That's everything.
Her hand closes over mine. Over both of them. Her fingers over my fingers. The crown and the plate between us.
We stay like that for a moment.
The lake churns. The ash falls.
And the ground shakes for the last time.
The summit opens. The lake climbs. The heat arrives. Her grip tightens and I hold on and the dark comes?—
And through it, the bond.
Warm. Certain.
The armor present. The crown present. Everything we went to ground for still ours.
Carrying us forward as the storm envelopes us once more.
"Ten. "
I open my eyes.
The reset chill. The pale light. The countdown already running.
The armor is there. I feel it before I'm fully conscious — the bond confirming the Magma Plate, the Ember Crown, both present, both ours. The reset took the damage, took the pain, took everything the lava did to me in the previous attempt.
It left what matters.
I look at Olivia's pod.
She's already looking at me. Not the brightness of the last reset, not the excitement of someone who just proved her theory.
Something beyond that — the place where certainty and fear exist together and neither one cancels the other.
She knows what this attempt means. I can see it in the set of her jaw, the stillness of her, the way she's holding herself against the glass like she's already running.
I look past her pod to the others.
Varketh is upright in his. Looking at my pod.
The expression on his face is not the patient calculation I've come to expect — it's something rawer, the fury of someone whose plan resolved incorrectly and who is not finished with the problem.
His eyes move to my shoulders. To the crown.
He sees that I have them back and something in his face sharpens.
I look back at Olivia.
The platforms are almost gone. But the countdown is still happening. We have at least one attempt left. Maybe two. But we can’t afford to take that chance.
“Three.”
She puts her hand flat against the glass.
I put mine opposite hers. Her palm small against mine. The bond warm between us even through the glass .
“Launch.”
One chance to end this. One chance to claim my future with her.
Once and for all.
Arena Three opens ahead of us and I see it immediately.
The platforms are almost gone.
Four remain. Scattered across the lava lake's surface with gaps between them that would have ended our first attempt before we even started.
The lake churns between them, indifferent as always.
The ash falls thick. At the far end, across all that open lava and open air, lies the relic platform. The relic still on its stand.
This is the last time I will ever stand at this ledge. No matter what happens.
Olivia stops at the top of the steps.
I stop beside her.
She looks at me — the full weight of it, everything we've crossed — and then she faces the arena and spreads her arms.
I do the same.
The bond thrums between us, running at its high frequency, and for a second I feel all of it — every reset, every attempt, every moment in a pod with my hand against the glass.
“Pull!” Olivia yells.
I do. I feel that familiar heavy weight, like holding something at arm’s length.
The relic doesn’t fall to the floor this time. Instead, it floats — actually floats — toward us. Over the lava. Over what remains of the platforms .
The volcano rumbles and the ground shakes beneath our feet.
I turn to see what's coming.
Varketh comes through the archway first. His eyes find me before he's finished clearing the threshold.
He looks at the armor on my shoulders, the crown on my head.
Then he looks past me at Olivia with her arms spread — and I watch his eyes move to the relic platform across the lake.
I watch his body change before he's taken a step.
He moves. And I know I can’t just stand there, pulling at the relic, drawing it nearer.
If Varketh attacks us like this, we’ll be doomed.
“Keep pulling!” I yell, turning to meet him at the top of the steps.
I hold one arm out behind me, pulling on that weight. I sense it slowing, as my focus is no longer entirely on it.
The Magma Plate rises from my skin as we come together. Varketh is not patient. He’s trying to stop this before it starts. The first blow lands on the plate and I redirect the second.
Behind me, Olivia is still. Sweat runs down her cheeks.
I manage to hold Varketh at the steps.
And the ground shakes again.
Two.
He drives me back. One step, two. My left shoulder takes the angle wrong and the joint — imperfectly healed from the last attempt — makes itself known in a way I push past. I widen my stance and hold.
Through the bond, beneath the combat — the relic continues to move.
Syrox appears suddenly and strikes me from the right.
Varketh had all my attention and the blow takes me sideways. The armor catches the worst of it and I go down to one knee on the stone. Varketh steps past me toward Olivia.
I grab his ankle. He doesn't fall — he’s too heavy for that — but he slows. I get back to my feet, get between him and Olivia. Syrox comes from the right a second time.
I'm ready this time and I use his momentum against him, hurling him over the platform’s edge. He howls as he falls.
Varketh snarls and closes on me. His plan is obvious: I’m close to the edge now. Easy to throw over the side to chase Syrox.
Then I see it. The relic. It’s almost here! It’s so close!
Varketh pulls his arms back to shove me.
I roll to one side. I focus on the relic. Just a few more seconds!
I plant my feet.
I take his next blow on my crossed forearms and I give back what I have. My left arm is running on something below empty. My legs are doing the bare minimum. My face is split where he caught me two exchanges ago. I am still here, still between him and Olivia.
That's all it needs to be.
The relic grinds closer. The bond roars between us.
The ground shakes for the third time.
He drives at me again — mass and momentum and fury, technique abandoned — and I step inside it and take it on my chest. I wrap my right arm around him and use his momentum.
We go down together. I come up first. Barely.
I bring my knee up into his face and he grunts in pain.
Blood explodes from his nose and runs down his ugly face.
He's slower getting up this time.
He gets up.
Looks at me — the flat eyes running across the damage, taking inventory — and he makes his decision. He comes in hard and fast and catches me across the jaw.
The world tilts. I find the ground with my right hand. One knee on the stone. The left arm hanging wrong. Varketh stepping past me toward Olivia. I have nothing left to stop him with?—
"It's here!"
Two words.
Olivia's voice. Total. Absolute. The certainty of something completed.
I turn.
The relic is clutched in her arms.
It crossed the full width of the arena — every yard of open air above that lava lake — and it is here, at the top of the steps, resting against the Olivia's breast. It glows, pulsing with a rhythm that moves through my sternum like a second heartbeat.
She is looking at me, a big beautiful grin on her face.
Arms clamped tight around the relic. Chest rising and falling fast. Her face open — not managing anything, not performing anything, a cut across her cheekbone from when Varketh drove me back and the edge caught her, blood drying in the ash on her skin.
Varketh is three steps away. And I see the thought on his face before he even moves:
He’s going to try to grab the relic while she’s still holding it… and it will think she’s giving him her consent.
I leap forward a fraction of a second before he does.
Time seems to slow.
It’s like I’m running through treacle.
Varketh howls, a slow, drawn-out thing, deafening me in one ear .
I reach her first, grabbing the relic with both hands, and pulling it — and her — out of reach of Varketh’s clutches.
The pulse comes outward from the relic in a wave — warm, total, a force that moves through the arena in a ring. When it reaches Varketh, it stops him flat. He hits the barrier hard. It holds him there for a second before it expands outward, forcing him back.
The barrier closes around us.
The sound of the arena drops.
Outside, the lava still churns. The males are still there, Varketh pressing his hands against the barrier's surface, looking for the seam, though he knows by now, there is none.
Inside the barrier: stillness. The bond running at full frequency and the relic warm in our hands.
And Olivia looks at me.
She takes one step toward me.
"Kaelor…"
I close the distance.
My hands find her face and I look at her — the ash in her hair, the cut on her cheekbone, the eyes that have navigated every arena in this place and found the way through every time. I almost lost her too many times to count.
"I need you," she says. "Now."
We don’t speak.
There’s no time for words.
The bond is roaring now—full frequency, no barriers, no restraint. I feel her heartbeat slamming against mine, feel the sharp spike of her need echo straight through my chest like it’s my own.
She’s already moving, hands shoving at my shoulders, pushing me back until my spine hits the warm curve of the barrier wall. The light flares once—silent amber ring spreading outward—then settles again.
She climbs me.