Layla's magic gathered them all up in a single wash of light, the frozen labyrinth dissolving away as everyone was pulled back into the arena proper, boots landing on solid, ordinary ground for the first time in what felt like hours. The moment they materialized, the crowd surged forward, spilling past whatever barriers had held them back, swarming toward the two figures still standing at the center of it all.
A team of two. Against every full roster that had entered this tournament, against every favored name and every stacked delegation, Lexel and Ria had walked out the other side as champions.
Hands reached for them from every direction, voices overlapping in a wall of noise too dense to parse into individual words, and somewhere in the middle of it, Ria let out an exhausted laugh, leaning heavily against Lexel's shoulder just to stay upright.
"Two of us," she said, breathless, half to herself. "We did that with two people."
