The Extra's Rise

Tiamat's fist slams into my stomach hard enough to make the air scream. Valeria's liquid-armor shell stress-fractures in a spiderweb burst across my abdomen, Erebus's shadow wedge fails with a dry crack, and my own shield folds like wet paper. Heat detonates through my ribs; my spine bends; the floor rushes up.

I hit crystal on my knees, one hand clamped over my gut, breath sawn short. Consciousness slips like sand between spread fingers.

"That hurt," I manage, because if I don't say something I might groan instead. "Did you have to punch me that hard?"

"If I didn't, I wouldn't be able to take you out." Tiamat shrugs, as if we are discussing weather and not my organs. "And how dare you, little swordsman—you swung a blade at my head. I used a fist."

"A fist you spent three thousand years training," I mutter.

Her crimson eyes cut sideways. I look away first.

Golden light pools over me, warm as late sun on stone. Luna kneels at my side, hands steady, face tight with worry she's trying to hide. Purelight hums through muscle and bone; pain steps back a half pace and pretends to be dignified.

"Arthur," she whispers, close enough that her hair brushes my cheek, "breathe slowly. Don't sit up yet."

"I'm fine," I lie, then wince as my ribs disagree. 'Reckless is the only thing that works,' I tell myself. 'Pain is cheap. Weakness is expensive.'

She hears thoughts I don't say and squeezes my shoulder. "You don't have to buy everything with blood."

The healing passes like a tide. When she's done, the ache remains, but it's a reasonable ache, the kind you can stack more work on top of. I push to my feet while the glow still lingers; if I let myself enjoy it, I'll want another minute, then another, and Tiamat will give me neither.

"What's your plan when you finally claw into mid Radiant?" Tiamat asks, folding her arms. No praise. No scorn. Just appraisal.

"Wipe out the Abyssal Kin." The words come out hard and even. Saying them makes the air taste like iron.

"They're the obvious target," she says. "You'll be welcome in half the South if you prune that rot."

"Then Order of the Fallen Flame," I add before she can bait me. "If I can find them."

"They hide better than they rule," Tiamat says. "A problem solved by better eyes."

Luna's hands still, though the warmth remains. Hatred flickers in her golden eyes, old and bright. "We'll find them," she says. "We'll smoke them out of every hole."

"Jack first." I don't say his family name. I don't want to give him the dignity. "Before he gets stronger. He keeps wriggling into the story like a nail in a shoe."

"And Rose?" Tiamat asks. It isn't a test; it feels like she wants to hear me say it.

"She's strong enough to kill her mother now." I swallow. "If she chooses that. She deserves the chance."

Luna leans forward, forehead touching my temple, the smallest touch grounding the tallest plan. "We'll kill Jack together," she says softly. "And Arthur… Elara wasn't your fault."

Bitterness chokes a laugh out of me. "I still let him escape."

"You didn't 'let' anything." Her voice sharpens. "You were low Immortal then. Evelyn stopped you herself. There was nothing you could have done."

"Right," I say, and stroke her hair because if I don't do something gentle I might break a knuckle on the floor. "I was too weak."

Her light strengthens, answering the resolve I'm pretending I've always had. Elara's face rises like a moon behind closed eyes: brave, tired, kind. Pure souls die because corrupted ones make the world pay for their hunger. So I will make the hunger die.

"Jack will be nothing to you at mid Radiant," Tiamat says, casual as a cat after the bird is already under its paw.

I look at her, and the tight knot that lives under my ribs twists. My mother. Tiamat. Titans. If they picked up a hand at the right time, Avalon would still stand. Leopold would still laugh like a drum. Elara would be arguing with me about mercy and I would be losing. They could have clipped Alyssara's wings before the sky remembered her name. They didn't. They are not moving now. Why?

To sharpen me? To make the blade that they think the world needs? How many lives have they fed to that whetstone?

"I still can't trust you," I say, voice low. It isn't a threat. It's a bruise.

Tiamat's eyes don't harden. They soften, which makes it worse. "Ignorance is bliss sometimes, Arthur."

"Ignorance is a well with a lid on it," I snap. "Bliss is for people who like small skies. I want the truth."

"You may have the right to know," she says, quiet as snow, "but I have the right to tell you when I decide to tell you."

The words land like her fist. I swallow whatever rises behind my teeth. Not yet. I can't outrun that answer yet.

I send short, clear messages to my family and to my fiancées—where I am, why, how long. I don't make promises I can't keep. I say I love them, because I do. Stella replies with three worried hearts and a bossy "Daddy be careful." I promise her I will. Luna peeks at the message and smiles like a sunrise no one else is awake to see.

Training becomes days that look like each other until I stitch them with pain and progress so I can tell them apart. Mornings are footwork and frame-craft. Afternoons are structured violence. Evenings are picking glass out of my body while Luna pours light into the cuts until I stop shaking. Nights are sleep without dreams, or dreams so loud I wake with my jaw clenched, and her hand finds mine under the blanket without comment.

Tiamat does not waste time on theater. She teaches with pressure. When I stand wrong, she moves me a centimeter and then hits me where the old stance would have broken. When I angle my shoulder badly, she lets me get away with it once so I feel the luck, then punishes it twice so the lesson lives in bone. When I string too many beautiful ideas together, she steps into the sentence and deletes the conjunctions.

Valeria adapts, learning when to be plate and when to be water, leaving my joints free without leaving me empty. Erebus learns this lair's edges and his own: the Null-Cant sings softer here, Cenotaph Engines take in less waste when the room is clean, the Phylactery Meridian buys me three stolen lives before the ledger says 'pay.' We coordinate. We argue. We get better.

Sometimes I make Tiamat move. Not often. Not much. Enough that her mouth tips a fraction. Once, just once, World's Edge draws a hair-thin red line on her wrist. She looks at it later when she thinks I'm not watching and smiles a grandmother's smile, proud and private.

Between rounds, Luna scolds me for training like a man with a death wish, then kisses the bruise she just closed with light, then calls me an idiot, then tells me she's proud. She holds my hand when my fingers tremble and says nothing so I don't have to choose between pride and relief. We practice breath together—four in, six out—until the heat leaves my eyes and the corners of the room stop trying to lean on me.