Elias tried to breathe and found no lungs.
He tried to open his eyes and found no lids. The arena was gone. Kikaru's heat, the Crafter's monitors, the gravel under his back, the blade in his stomach, all of it had been stripped away.
What remained was pressure.
He was a pulse of blue light above a floor of polished black stone.
The stone stretched farther than he could understand, flat and unbroken under a low red mist. Bone spires rose through it at uneven angles. Each one carried a faint vibration that moved through Elias without needing air.
The place had no wind, but the mist still moved. It curled away from the man before his boots touched it, giving him a path across a realm that otherwise looked sealed and patient.
Footsteps scraped across the stone.
A figure stopped over him. Pale blue skin. Long white hair. A heavy black cloak with dark red lining. Silver eyes studied the blue spark of Elias's soul with the calm of someone inspecting a tool before use.
