Chapter XIX
✦
Dot's eyelids fluttered open to the soft, flickering glow of oil lamps.
The air carried the sharp tang of medicinal herbs mixed with dried blood. A dull ache throbbed through his entire body — the particular pain of something that had been broken and put back together without asking permission.
Beside him sat Yiva, draped in a flowing blue dress that caught the lamplight like rippling water. Her hands rested in her lap. Her posture told the rest — she hadn't moved from that spot in hours. Strands of hair had escaped her braid, framing a face etched with exhaustion and quiet relief.
"Where am I?" Dot rasped. He tried to sit up. The world tilted.
Yiva's fingers found his immediately — warm, steady. Her grip tightened. A wide, trembling smile broke across her face despite the shadows beneath her eyes.
"I'm so glad you're alive," she whispered.
Before Dot could answer, the door opened. Sylric strode in, armor still dusted with arena grit, a grin cracking his weathered face.
"Kid. Glad you're back among the living."
Dot blinked. "What happened?"
Sylric exchanged a glance with Yiva. Exhaled. "A lot."
The arena floor had become a slaughterhouse of stone and screams.
Dot's body lay crumpled in the sand, severed at the waist, dark blood pooling beneath him. Yiva knelt in the dirt, cradling his upper half against her chest, sobs raw and broken, tears cutting clean tracks through the grime on her face.
Above them, Dren and Sylric clashed with Boldr in a storm of steel — the giant roaring, axe swinging in brutal arcs, the two warriors dodging and striking back with grim, calculated ferocity.
Then the guards poured in. Spears leveled. A wall of steel forming around their champion.
From the tunnel mouth, Vespers stepped forward — and stopped. Her face drained of color as she took in the carnage.
Yiva felt it first. A subtle warmth. A sickening pull against her arms.
Dot's torn flesh began to knit.
Wet tendrils of muscle wove back together with unnatural speed, reforming, reaching, pulling the two halves of him toward each other with a wet, obscene sound.
Yiva froze, eyes wide.
"*Get away from him!*" Vespers shouted.
A deafening crack split the air. Dust exploded outward in a choking cloud as black, tentacle-like appendages erupted from Dot's reforming body — writhing, unstable, slick with something darker than blood. They lashed blindly in every direction, shattering stone, hurling rubble across the arena.
Vespers thrust out a hand. A pulse of violet light enveloped Yiva and yanked her backward through the chaos, depositing her at the arena's edge just as the tentacles fully unfurled.
The crowd's panic crested into a tide of terror. "*Demon!*" Bodies scrambled over seats and barriers. A massive chunk of debris hurtled toward fleeing civilians — Dren's blade flashed, cleaving it in two before it landed.
"Kid, *calm down!*" Dren called, advancing through the dust.
The tentacles answered with violence. Rubble flew. Sylric lunged, trying to get close, and a whip-like strike caught him across the chest and flung him into the stands with a bone-jarring crash.
Dot's body — now whole, now wrong — turned toward Boldr. The tentacles surged forward like living shadows, driven by one impulse.
"We have to kill him," Vespers said, low and grim, cutting through the noise to reach Dren. "Before it's too late."
"No!" Yiva was already running — straight into the swirling dust and destruction.
The stadium groaned. The ground cracked. Pillars trembled, masonry raining down as Dot's power tore at the structure around him.
Unknown Enclosure
A man murmured to the woman at his side, watching through means that shouldn't have been possible from this distance.
"Finally," he said, voice velvet over steel. "You've grown." A pause. "You see that, Surtr."
Boldr's axe bit deep into Dot's shoulder. The wound bubbled and closed instantly, flesh knitting with a wet, sucking sound.
Dot's tentacles coiled around Boldr's thick neck like iron cables and tightened. Veins bulged. When Dot's voice came, it was deeper — layered, cold, something infernal underneath the words.
"I told you. I'll have your head."
Then Yiva was there.
She slipped behind him, arms wrapping around his waist, fingers interlocking over his chest, face pressed against his back.
"Dot," she said. Quiet. Steady. "Come back."
The tentacles lashed outward in frenzy — slashing across her arms, her sides, bright lines of red blooming through torn cloth. She didn't flinch. Her hold only tightened. Blood dripped warm onto the cracked stone beneath her feet.
"This isn't you," she said, louder. "Come back."
Dot's mind plunged into darkness.
He stood in an endless void — black as pitch, cold seeping into his bones. Before him stood himself. But wrong. Eyes burning crimson, skin veined with shadow, a cruel smile on lips that should have been his own.
"Stop resisting," the other Dot said, voice echoing from inside his own skull. "Accept who you are. A demon from hell."
The pull was seductive. Heavy. His hand began to lift —
"Dot. Please."
Yiva's voice cut through the dark like a blade through cloth.
The void shattered.
Vespers was already moving. Golden chains of light snapped into existence and wrapped around Dot in a glowing prison that hummed with containment, pulling the darkness back inside its borders.
The memory faded.
Dot's face crumpled. "Did I hurt you?"
Yiva shook her head quickly and lifted her arm — fresh bandages, clean, the bleeding long stopped. "I'm fine."
"Anyone else?"
"No," Sylric said from the doorway. "We got lucky."
"Where's Dren?"
Sylric's jaw tightened. "Fighting alongside Boldr. In the coming war."
Dot went still. "What?"
"A lot happened while you were out. Two days." Sylric rubbed the back of his neck. "Greenwood armies are marching — Boldr's brother is dead and they're exploiting the chaos. Someone else is hitting villages. And the news about you spread fast." A pause. "Every assassin, every serious player — they want what makes you special. You're top of every list now."
Yiva grabbed Sylric's arm and dragged him toward the tent flap.
"*Enough,*" she hissed, low and fierce, once they were outside. "He just woke up."
Sylric met her glare evenly. "He needs to know what he's walking into. He's the most wanted man in this world now." He held her gaze. "Waking up doesn't change that."
A heavy canvas tent rose against a blood-red sunset, emblazoned with the sigil of a three-headed dragon coiled around a gnarled tree.
Inside, a middle-aged warrior sat sharpening a blade. Scars crisscrossed his face like a map of old battles. His eyes were hard and calculating, the eyes of a man who had long since stopped being surprised by anything.
"We move out today," he told the aide before him.
The aide bowed and left. A moment later a woman stepped through the flap — elegant, dangerous, her face veiled below the eyes. Redman's partner.
The warrior's brow arched. "What are you doing here?"
"My master sends his regards." A thin smile. "And something to aid you in this war."
She gestured.
Three figures entered behind her — two young men, roughly middle-aged, and a girl with vivid pink hair.
The warrior leaned forward. "What are they? More of your lab rats?"
"Better." Her smile widened.
She drew a slender knife and — without hesitation — severed one of the young men's heads. It hit the ground with a dull thud.
The body didn't fall.
Flesh bubbled at the stump. Tendrils of muscle and bone reached upward, reforming, rebuilding. Within seconds a new head sprouted — identical, blinking with mild confusion.
The warrior's scarred lips curved into a slow, predatory smile.
"What do you call them?"
"Rejects," she said.
"And what do you want in return?"
Her eyes gleamed. "The same as last time."
The tent flap fell closed behind her.
✦
— To Be Continued —