Verrick's Memoriam-X serum had turned Kaelen's mind into a clean slate.
There were no more dreams. Groth's regrets, Scrap-Breaker's orphaned children... all had been erased, pushed behind a wall of white noise. When Kaelen woke, he thought of only one thing: the next target.
Today is the third day, Rico said as he tightened the straps of Kaelen's armor. The boy's hands were shaking. In those eyes that once looked at Kaelen with admiration, there was now only pure fear. Standing before him was not a hero, but a statue made of flesh.
Who is the opponent? Kaelen asked. His voice was mechanical. The words fell from his mouth not as emotion, but as a data stream.
The Twin-Hammer Brothers, Rico said, swallowing hard. Siamese twins. Sewn together at their backs. One looks forward while the other watches the rear. They have never been defeated in the arena.
Kaelen nodded. He did not fear. He did not strategize. He simply calculated the probabilities with that cold, blue filter in his right eye.
Two heads. Two spines. One center of balance. Strike the center.
Let us go.
The arena was louder today. The spectators wanted blood, and the Black Eye was giving them exactly what they craved.
When Kaelen stepped onto the sand, the Twin-Hammer Brothers had already taken their places. They were a gargantuan, four-armed, two-headed nightmare. In their hands were flails and rusted hooks. They growled from two mouths simultaneously.
Kill! shouted the head on the right. Crush! completed the one on the left.
Kaelen gripped GRIEF's hilt.
The sword refused to leave its scabbard. The metal clung to Kaelen's hand. The blade was furious. It hated the chemical ice in its master's veins. GRIEF wanted agony; it did not want numbness.
Kaelen forced the sword out. The scream of the metal echoed throughout the arena.
When the fight began, Kaelen moved with superhuman speed. Verrick's medicine had sharpened his reflexes and erased hesitation.
The flail swung by the twins passed only a breath's distance from Kaelen. Kaelen ducked, slid, and lunged toward the creature's blind spot—that mass of stitched flesh where the two bodies joined.
It was not an emotional moment. It was merely a surgical cut.
GRIEF tore through the air with a violet shimmer.
RIP.
The blade severed the artificial spine connecting the two brothers. It was not blood that sprayed out, but a black pus and alchemical fluid. The creature was split in two. The two halves of the body fell separately onto the sands.
The spectators went wild.
Kaelen walked toward the brother on the right, who was gasping for life on the ground. The creature was reaching out toward its other half.
Brother... the creature groaned. Do not leave me...
Kaelen raised his sword. Verrick's medicine echoed in his mind: Finish. Clear. Next.
He brought the blade down.
However, the moment GRIEF embedded itself in the flesh, something went wrong.
Normally, Verrick's medicine should have blocked the flow of memories from the sword. It should have built a wall. But this time, the memory arrived not like a river, but like a tsunami. The runes on GRIEF glowed with a blinding violet light.
THUD.
The white wall in Kaelen's mind cracked.
Kaelen was thrown back. He clutched his head with his hands. He wanted to scream, but no sound came. Because he was no longer in the arena. He was in a dark void.
In that void, the agony of the brothers he had killed echoed. The pain of separation. The horror of being torn apart from one another.
And at that exact moment of severing, another sensation emerged from the depths of that void.
It was not an image. It was not a voice.
It was a pulse.
As if thousands of kilometers away, a heart was beating, connected to Kaelen's soul by an invisible line.
Thump... Thump...
Kaelen held his breath. This rhythm was not the rhythm of his own heart. It was much softer, much more fragile, yet just as persistent.
That rhythm pierced through the artificial blue peace within Kaelen. An indescribable warmth spread through his ribcage. Like a longing for home. Like the feeling of belonging to someone.
...I am here...
The word was not heard; it was felt. Like the wind touching skin.
Kaelen collapsed to his knees in the center of the arena. His right eye was weeping blood. Verrick's medicine fought against this inexplicable resonance from the outside, splitting Kaelen's brain in two.
On one side was chemical tranquility, on the other were the bloody memories carried by GRIEF and that distant, mysterious pulse.
Guards rushed into the arena. Rico was shouting in terror from behind the bars.
Giant! Get up! Get up!
Kaelen forced himself to his feet, using his sword as a cane. His legs were trembling.
He looked up. Not at the stands, at Vex, or at Verrick.
Higher. Toward the grey sky visible through the glass opening in the arena's dome.
He had to go there. He did not know why. He did not know who was calling. All he knew was that the source of that pulse was there. And if that pulse stopped, Kaelen would stop as well.
Verrick frowned as he looked down from his box. He noted this glitch in Kaelen.
As Kaelen entered the tunnel, the vow of the twins he had killed—never to leave one another—still echoed in his mind. And the sword upon his back was now heavier than ever.
For now, in its scabbard, there was not only steel, but also the weight of that missing piece Kaelen was beginning to remember.