The crowd was not horrified by what they had just witnessed. They were ecstatic. They revelled in it. The blood flowed freely, and it was exactly what they had come for.
A betrayed man, stabbed in the back just as he had spared his opponent, detaching himself from his own humanity in response, seized by an anger so dense it had ceased to be solely his own. Because that was the most terrifying part of it all. Atlas's rage did not remain contained behind his ribs. It spread, seeping into every chest in the stands all the way to the very last rows, as if thousands of people had suddenly discovered that they shared, for a fleeting moment, the exact same fury, directing a collective hatred toward the female gladiator.
What remained of Ilena, in the end, barely resembled anything at all. The spectacle held something animalistic, purely instinctual, devoid of any recognizable form of combat. And the crowd roared, carried by that same murky excitement, that borrowed rage that belonged to no one in those stands and yet surged through them all simultaneously.
"Atlas! Atlas!"
Even Renn, from his golden tribune, felt this anger wash over him, a hot, intoxicating wave that made him grip the armrests of his seat tighter than he had intended.
"So, this is it. Atlas," he murmured, speaking to no one in particular, his gaze fixed on the motionless silhouette standing in the center of the sand. "Isaac didn't disappoint me. You are a phenomenon."
Renn had always harbored a particular appetite for the arena, and even more so for this kind of spectacle macabre, absolute, the kind you only see once in a lifetime of combat. For the first time since his ascension, he felt truly satiated.
Atlas, however, was no longer thinking anything resembling a coherent thought. He was no longer entirely himself. He wasn't even certain if he was still a single entity.
These people irritate me, screaming like that. I should kill them all. No. Why not? We are chained. Too weak. Then I will break these chains. Patience. Tch. Too slow. Let me out. Let me do it. It's my body. Is that really still the case? Let me enjoy this a little.
Atlas was no longer certain who was asking the questions, nor who was answering them. The thoughts collided, alien yet familiar, fighting for control over a flesh that burned from the inside out.
No one in the stands noticed that Atlas had remained perfectly still long after the final blow was struck. He stood in the center of the sand, contemplating what was left of Ilena with an almost tender attention. Had anyone been able to look closely enough, they would have seen his eyes oscillating between royal blue and a sky blue so pale it was almost white, two shades fighting for dominance on the surface of his irises before one finally took over. The royal blue stabilized, devoid, for once, of the red embers that usually accompanied it. Something calmer than pure rage. But still a long way from azure.
The guards who came to retrieve him were not so lucky.
"No one is putting chains on me today," Atlas said, his voice carrying an authority that was not his own, when the first of them approached with the irons.
He did not go quietly. It was neither fast nor clean. It took six men in total to finally subdue him, and two of them limped away one pressing a hand to a split lip, the other nursing a visibly broken nose.
Hercles, Tête Brûlée, and Dran the only three people present who knew Atlas to any degree stood in silence watching the scene unfold, each vainly searching for the slightest trace of the calm, composed man they thought they knew within the entity now struggling under six pairs of arms.
Tête Brûlée was the first to speak.
"There it is. He finally snapped." He spat on the ground, sounding almost satisfied. "Took him longer than I expected. I knew I should have bet with Dreo."
"Hmmph," was all Hercles managed to answer, his eyes never leaving Atlas for a single second.
Atlas woke up in his cell, fully chained, his wrists and ankles bolted to the wall by irons far thicker than any he had known thus far. He had no idea how much time had passed.
He would never remember exactly how he had gotten there. He only retained fragments: a smell of mixed sweat and fear, hands closing around his arms without ever really managing to hold him. He pulled on the chains once, twice, felt the metal resist, and something inside him something that wasn't quite a thought registered the information without drawing any useful conclusion from it.
It happened to me again, fuck! All I remember is the sensation of cold metal against my ribs and...
He rushed to press his hand where his back was supposed to have been pierced. He found nothing. Nothing but a faint scar.
I'm almost certain this is tied to him... His thoughts drifted toward the royal blue color, which strangely felt much calmer than usual. Weaker, almost tired.
Across the cell block, Dran had retreated into the furthest corner, as far away from the bars as his own chain would allow. With his knees pulled to his chest, he stared wide-eyed at the silhouette chained to the opposite wall.
Atlas looked at him deeply with his azure gaze, asking honestly, "What's wrong? Why am I scaring you like this?"
But the question only terrified Dran more. He didn't even answer. The two of them remained like that for a long while.
Hercles entered the block in the late afternoon, alone, having clearly negotiated this privilege with a guard who hadn't seemed particularly thrilled to grant it.
He sat directly on the stone floor, at a respectful distance from the chains, and remained silent for a long moment, observing Atlas with that same quiet attention he applied to everything.
"Hey, Atlas? Can you hear me in there?" he finally asked.
Nothing answered, save for a low, almost animalistic growl that rose from Atlas's throat without him even realizing it.
"I'm going to tell you something," Hercles said, "and you're going to listen to me, whether you want to or not, because I really have nowhere else to be until tomorrow."
He let the silence settle for a second.
"I remember everything clearly. Every minute, every second. The guard's arm raising for a second time. The kid curling up, not even trying to protect himself anymore, just trying to take up as little space as possible." His voice remained perfectly even, as if he were describing a training drill rather than a memory. "And something inside me refused. Not for the kid. Well, not only. Maybe that kid reminded me of my younger, weaker self. That guard had just decided, right in front of me, that he had the right to crush someone weaker than him. And I couldn't let that exist in the same room as me."
He slowly clenched his fist, as if waking a memory lodged somewhere deep in his knuckles.
"My Distortion doesn't break me, Atlas. It doesn't divide me, it doesn't make me talk to someone other than myself. It takes, that's all. It takes until there is absolutely no room left in the room for any will other than my own." He paused. "I snapped that guard's neck with my bare hands. I remember it like it was yesterday. I never managed to figure out if I did it for that kid, or simply because I couldn't stand the thought of anyone but me deciding who had to fold that day."
Dran, in his corner, had stopped moving entirely, as if the slightest gesture risked drawing an attention he desperately wanted to avoid.
"Isaac never punished me for it." Hercles let out a joyless laugh. "He congratulated me. He said I had just proven my worth. That's when I understood what I had truly become here. Not a man you punish for killing. A good investment you congratulate."
"It took weeks before that hunger subsided," he continued, without a shred of shame in his voice, merely stating a fact. "Weeks where I found myself, almost involuntarily, looking for the slightest excuse to feel someone break before me again. Until I understood that there is no 'me' or 'not me'. It's all you. You distance yourself from your peers, that's all. This dominant personality, it's just the real me, finally asserting itself. It's what I have always been, and what I will always be. The more my distortion evolves, the more I will align with this vision of myself."
He leaned slightly forward, his eyes searching the half-turned face for any sign that Atlas was truly listening.
"You, you're a bit different." Hercles hesitated, as if weighing the words he was about to speak. "I don't know exactly what it is you're carrying in there. But I saw it, once, in the wagon. Something calmer than what you are now, along with the anger. You are several things at once."
Atlas's throat went dry. The growl faded slightly.
"You'll find what you need. Your true self. The path of your existence." Hercles paused again. "If that calm still exists somewhere in there, maybe now would be the time to let it rise to the surface."
Nothing changed, not immediately. But something, very far behind those almost incandescent blue eyes, seemed to quiver for barely a second before shutting down once more.
Meanwhile, the arena continued to live its own life, entirely indifferent to what was unfolding in the depths of the cell block.
Two free gladiators from Tra fought in the early afternoon a classic, technical, almost restful bout after what the crowd had experienced earlier. It was the kind of exchange where both fighters still saluted each other at the end, sweating but intact. The crowd applauded politely, still shaken, still digesting what they had seen just a few hours prior.
Then came a duo from an arena further north, two brothers who always fought together against a single opponent. It was a rare practice that Tra seemed to discover with a mixture of fascination and unease. Their opponent, a colossus whose forearms were covered in old burns, held his ground far longer than anyone would have bet, before finally collapsing under sheer numbers rather than brute strength.
No one died this time. The crowd almost seemed disappointed.
Dran, from his cell, heard every wave of noise without being able to distinguish its meaning. That wall of sound rising and falling like a tide made him catch himself hoping, without really knowing why, that the next fight would have nothing to do with Atlas, nor with anyone he knew. Just strangers, far away, whose blood wouldn't matter to anyone in this cell.
Evening fell over Tra without Atlas finding anything that resembled himself again.
Burn-Head returned one last time before nightfall, inspecting the chains with a professional eye, then lingering on Atlas's face and his still-burning eyes.
"Three days of fighting," he said, more to himself than to anyone else in the room. "And there are two left."
He didn't even bother waiting for an answer he knew wouldn't come.
Hercles remained sitting there for a long time after the head guard left, long after night had fully fallen, long after Dran had finally drifted to sleep, exhausted by his own vigilance. He observed Atlas, motionless against the wall, the chains pulled taut, that low growl never entirely fading. He recalled what Atlas or rather, that other consciousness had unleashed before being chained here.
Somewhere deep inside what remained of Atlas, too far down yet to break the surface, something calm and patient continued to bide its time.