The sheer scale of the Coliseum was intimidating.
Tens of thousands of students separated by their genetic tiers filled the towering bleachers. In the center of the massive sand filled arena, a brutal spectacle was already underway inside a shimmering energy shield.
Silas hovered near the entrance tunnel. He tried to blend into the shadows while his eyes darted frantically across the arena.
Instructor Morgana Thorne stood perfectly still in the center of the sand.
Even from a distance, her presence was suffocating. She was terrifyingly beautiful and clad in form fitting obsidian armor that seemed to absorb the sunlight. Her raven black hair cascaded down her back.
She was known throughout the Institute as The Black Pyre Warden. She was a Level 7 Ascendant whose cruelty was matched only by her raw power.
A bulky student kneeled in the sand before her. He was much larger than Silas and wore high grade protective gear. But he was currently sobbing uncontrollably with his sword discarded in the dirt.
"Please," the boy begged. His voice cracked and amplified through the arena speakers so every word echoed perfectly through the silent crowd. "The beast bit my arm. I cannot fight it. I forfeit! I invoke the surrender clause!"
Morgana Thorne didn't move. She simply looked down at him with cold eyes.
"The Iron Blight Institute does not spend its resources cultivating cowards," Morgana's voice rang out. It wasn't loud, but it possessed a strange frequency that made Silas's teeth vibrate in his skull. "You faced a Rank 1 Bristle Hound. A creature fit for target practice. And you dropped your weapon."
"I am bleeding out! Please!" the boy screamed.
Morgana sighed. "Defective."
She didn't raise a weapon. Instead, her eyes flashed with a pale blue luminescence.
Silas recognized the technique instantly from his studies. Siren's Wail. It was a high tier aura manipulation that weaponized sound frequencies directly into the nervous system.
An invisible ripple warped the air around the kneeling boy. He didn't even have time to scream.
The boy's eyes instantly rolled into the back of his head. Thick streams of dark blood violently erupted from his nose and ears.
His body stiffened like a wooden board for exactly one second before all his muscles simply turned off.
THUD!
He collapsed face first into the sand. His brain had been liquefied inside his skull.
The entire Coliseum was deathly silent. No one cheered and no one booed. You didn't make noise when the Warden was working.
Silas felt cold sweat break out across his back. His stomach twisted into a tight knot.
'Donnie was right,' Silas thought. 'I should have stayed in bed. I should have gone back to the concubines.'
He slowly backed up toward the tunnel entrance and took one step backward into the shadows.
"And where do you think you are going, Low Chain?"
The voice didn't come from across the arena. It echoed directly inside Silas's mind.
He froze and slowly turned his head back toward the center of the Coliseum. Morgana Thorne was looking directly at him.
Despite the hundreds of yards separating them, her gaze felt physical.
"Student Silas Vane," she called out. Her voice now projected across the arena speakers.
Every single head in the thousands of seats snapped toward Silas. He was suddenly the center of the universe.
"You are exactly forty seven minutes late to your final execution of duty."
Silas swallowed the lump of pure terror in his throat. He stepped forward out of the tunnel. He knew that running would only result in a liquefied brain.
"Instructor Thorne," Silas shouted back. His voice sounded frustratingly weak in the massive space. "I had a physiological malfunction. I am here now. I am ready to test."
Morgana tilted her head slightly. A cruel smile touched her lips.
"A physiological malfunction? How fascinating. Do you know what I see when I look at you, Vane?"
Silas didn't answer. He gripped the hilt of his short sword tightly.
"I see a defective tool," Morgana said with venomous disdain. "A blunt rusted cog that clutters my workspace. You possess no innate talent, no pedigree, and clearly no discipline."
She glared at him. "The fact that you survived the preliminary weeks is an insult to the evolutionary process."
Silas felt a spark of anger ignite beneath his fear. He had clawed his way through the last four months of hell. He had survived starvation rations and physical beatings.
'Trash,' he thought bitterly. 'Always treating us like trash.'
"If I am so defective," Silas yelled back, surprising himself with his own volume, "then let me fight! Throw a Dire Kin at me and let us see if the trash can bleed!"
A collective gasp rippled through the stands. A Low Chain student talking back to the Black Pyre Warden was akin to a mouse challenging a hurricane.
Morgana's smile vanished. Her eyes darkened from cold indifference to absolute malice.
"Bold," she whispered. The word carried across the entire arena. "But you misunderstand your position. You do not get a standard test, Vane. You do not get the dignity of a fair fight."
She raised her right hand. The air around her fingers began to warp and distort. Black flames erupted from her palm.
It wasn't normal fire. It was Black Pyre, an elemental manifestation that burned away life force rather than physical fuel.
"You want to bleed?" Morgana said softly. "Let us see what is underneath that pathetic skin."
She flicked her wrist.
The Black Pyre shot across the arena faster than a bullet. I
Silas barely had time to widen his eyes before the black fire hit him squarely in the chest.
BOOM!
The impact lifted him completely off his feet and launched him through the air. The physical blow was nothing compared to the agony that followed.
The black flames clung to his clothes and ate through the synthetic fabric in a microsecond before biting into his flesh.
Silas hit the arena sand hard. He rolled violently as he screamed.
It was a raw primal sound of absolute torment. The Black Pyre didn't just burn. It dissolved.
He could feel the skin on his chest and arms charring. The fat beneath boiled instantly, the flames digging hungrily toward his ribs.
The crowd watched in stunned silence as the Low Chain student writhed in the dirt like a human torch.
"Open the southern gates," Morgana commanded. She turned her back on Silas as if he were already a corpse. "Release the Cloud Cobra. Let it clean up the mess."
Across the arena, heavy iron gears ground together. A massive steel portcullis slowly rose.
Hiss!
From the darkness of the holding pens, a horrific hissing sound echoed. A thick muscular body slithered out into the sunlight.
It was a Cloud Cobra. A four meter long monstrosity with scales the color of bruised clouds. Thick green acid dripped from its massive fangs.
Splash!
It hit the sand and hissed violently as it melted the grains into glass.
Silas lay in the center of the arena. His vision was swimming in a sea of red and black.
The fire had finally sputtered out and left him a ruined smoking husk. He couldn't move his arms.
He looked down through blurry tear streaked eyes and saw the stark white of his own ribcage exposed to the open air.
He was dying. The pain was so absolute that his brain couldn't even process the fear anymore.
Through the haze of agony, he heard the heavy slithering approach of the Cloud Cobra. The beast raised its massive hood and locked its slit pupil eyes onto the charred helpless meal.
'So this is it,' Silas thought. His breathing came in ragged gasps. 'Donnie was right. The math does not lie.'
He closed his eyes and waited for the massive fangs to pierce his skull.
Then, a sound echoed in the darkness of his fading mind. It wasn't the hiss of the snake or the roar of the crowd.
It was a sharp mechanical chime.
[Ding! System Awakened!]