For this chapter, imagine you lived in this galaxy.
Imagine you were born a Dagon.
Dagons are built the way other races tell stories about. Gray-blue skin stretched over dense muscle, broad frames, heavy bone. Their faces tend toward permanent scowls, expressions that look like challenges even when none are intended. It is not posturing. It is just how they are. By the age of ten, a typical Dagon can lift the kind of ground car you probably have in your driveway and hold it overhead without much effort. Strength comes early to them. Power is expected, not praised.
They grow big. They grow strong. No one applauds it.
Now imagine that, sometime in your teens, you said out loud what most Dagons only think in passing. You told anyone who would listen that one day you would enter the Coalition Carnage Competition. Not to participate. Not to represent. To win. You trained day and night toward that singular goal, pushing your body until exhaustion became routine. You even braved the terror behind the Door, the one most people pretend does not exist. The Dark World does not scare everyone away, but it scares enough of them.
At twenty-five, you earned it. You became the Superstar of Unity for the ninety-seventh Coalition Carnage, beating out thousands of other Dagons who wanted the role just as badly. You were strong enough that the air itself bent under your movement, pressure shifting when you struck. Among your people, that mattered.
Imagine you are Prisma.
Imagine you are the strongest Dagon alive.
Now imagine you lost.
Not a close loss. Not a technical defeat. You failed to make Finals at all. You were dismantled badly enough that the broadcasts stopped using your name and started using phrases like learning experience and promising future. How would you feel? Embarrassed. Angry. Maybe resigned.
Prisma was furious.
So furious that he trained again. Not smarter. Not safer. Harder. Eight straight years of it, every day layered on top of the last, until the idea of stopping felt worse than the damage he was doing to himself. When the ninety-eighth Coalition Carnage came, he returned stronger, sharper, more controlled. He made Finals that time. He proved it was not a fluke.
And then he lost in the first round.
That is where the difference shows.
Some people would take that second failure as closure. Proof that they had reached their limit. They would brush themselves off, accept that they had done their best, and move on with whatever life remained outside the arena.
Prisma does not work that way.
What if winning was not a goal, but a requirement. What if anything less than victory felt like erasure. What if the need for it was not rational, not healthy, but absolute.
Exactly.
1049-097-TC, two weeks before the start of the current competition.
The planet Unity holds exactly three million inhabitants, no more and no less, divided cleanly into thirds. One million Dagons. One million Kujin. One million Risen. The reason for this balance is not recorded anywhere official, and anyone who knows the real answer learned long ago not to explain it. Unity survives because the numbers are enforced, not because they are natural.
The Trinity ruled over the populace, each member representing one of the three races so that none of them fade into extinction. It is a system built on compromise and old scars. In the distant past, Dagons were conquerors who took what they wanted by force. The Kujin were intellectuals who valued order above all else and built hierarchies to preserve it. The Risen had once been slaves, until rebellion and bloodshed carved their place in history. Even now, generations removed from those origins, the races remain at odds, distrust simmering just beneath the surface.
And the three men tasked with holding that fragile balance together are something else entirely.
Ulmesh reclines slightly in his seat, fingers steepled, his expression calm in a way that reads as deliberate provocation. "And you will see," he says evenly, "Itum is stronger than any Dagon you could have chosen."
Lagan's jaw tightens. His chair scrapes against the floor as he leans forward, eyes burning. "You keep insulting us, Ulmesh. Have you forgotten that you were born Dagon?"
Ulmesh does not raise his voice. He barely moves at all. "And reborn Risen," he replies. "A race much superior to you and yours. Or have you forgotten."
The words land exactly as intended.
Lagan surges to his feet, fists clenched, every inch of him radiating restrained violence. The chamber feels smaller with him standing, pressure building as if the air itself is bracing. Before it can tip over, a softer voice cuts through the tension, sharp precisely because it does not shout.
"Lagan, please. Not today." Millijur's hands are clasped together, knuckles white. "This meeting is important." He swallows, then asks the question none of them have managed to avoid. "Should we interfere in the tournament to ensure victory?"
Ulmesh answers without hesitation. "No. Itum is strong enough to not need aid."
Lagan scoffs. "So you say. But he and his race were wiped out during the Great Cleansing. By the Dagons of that distant time." His gaze locks on Ulmesh. "By you, in fact."
For the first time, something flickers behind Ulmesh's eyes. Not guilt. Not regret. Memory. "That was a long, long time ago," he says quietly. "When I died, my life as a Dagon died as well. What we were before, we no longer are." His voice hardens. "We have Risen."
The double doors never open.
They explode inward instead, torn from their hinges by the force of a single kick. Metal shrieks as it twists, slamming against the chamber walls. Ulmesh and Lagan are on their feet instantly, instincts flaring, bodies angled for violence. Millijur vanishes beneath the conference table with a yelp, chair legs scraping loudly as he scrambles for cover.
You stride into the chamber through the wreckage.
A brown sack rests over your shoulder, its contents heavy enough to stretch the fabric. Blue-green liquid drips steadily from a torn seam, splattering against the polished floor. By the way, your right arm is gone, taken cleanly at the shoulder, leaving nothing but absence and old pain you no longer acknowledge.
You stop at the table and speak.
"I'm the Superstar this year."
Ulmesh stares, then laughs, disbelief breaking through his composure. "Prisma? Is that you? Ha! I thought you dead."
Lagan rounds on you, fury unchecked. "You are a disgrace to all Dagons! You have failed twice! You will not—"
"I'm the Superstar this year."
The repetition lands harder than the first time. You shrug the sack from your shoulder and toss it onto the table. The fabric splits on impact. A green, polka-dotted head rolls free and comes to rest facing the space beneath the table.
Millijur screams. Long, loud, and high-pitched enough to echo.
Ulmesh snaps without looking away from you. "Itum! Will you shut up, Millijur!"
You meet their eyes as you speak again. "If any of you disagree, step forward and I will kill you now."
Lagan takes a step forward despite himself, fists clenched tight. "You think you're strong? You couldn't win with two arms! Your Soul Style isn't even that powerful or unique, when compared to those of now."
Ulmesh raises a hand, slow and deliberate. "Wait." His gaze flicks briefly to the head on the table, then back to you. "Itum was stronger than the two of us combined, Lagan, and is now dead at Prisma's hands… or hand."
The room goes quiet.
The words settle in, heavy with implication. Even Lagan hesitates now, the weight of the reality sinking in.
From beneath the table, Millijur's voice trembles. "What choice do we have? The competition is in fourteen days."
Indeed, the coward speaks true.
The decision has already been made.
And now, let us return to the present day.
Roxy's voice cuts cleanly through the omniband, bright and energized, carrying easily across systems and screens.
"Day one is turning out outstanding, as we approach the halfway mark. Battle four is about to begin! Let's check out the geodome!"
The options flash across the feed: Nature's Teeth, all crushing pressure and darkness. The Junk Moon, unstable gravity stitched together with scrap and old technology. Eden, Earth's contribution, reshaped so drastically, it barely resembles the planet most people imagine when they hear the name.
You do not react.
This is a Prisma chapter, and Earth and its Superstar, do not matter. Not right now.
Roxy laughs as the selection locks in, her enthusiasm sharpening. "Hell yeah! The Underbay!" She leans into the moment, feeding off the anticipation. "Its denizens want,need, the Blessing! Home to many off-worlders, and some of them might be willing to place a knife in the back of our Superstars so their home world's chances of winning improve. I'm eager to find out! Let's gooooooo!!!"
The feed plunges downward, dragging the audience with it.
A hundred thousand feet beneath the surface of Ksush, the Underbay unfolds like a scar that never closed. Rows of hovels cling together for stability, structures that barely qualify as living space wedged between condemned buildings layered in faded gray and old graffiti. Every surface looks worn thin, paint flaking, metal corroded, concrete split by years of neglect and violence.
The smell hits hard and fast. Decay mixed with urine, excrement, and the sharp chemical tang of substances banned everywhere else. It assaults the senses to the point of hysteria for anyone unfamiliar with it. The people who live here have adapted. If asked, they would shrug and offer the same tired defense: at least it's too dark to see what's causing the stench.
Trash carpets the streets, illuminated by dim streetlights that flicker more than they shine. The cracked boulevard running through it all looks like it was abandoned halfway through construction and never forgiven for it.
You know this place.
You live two miles outside the geodome's barrier, close enough to feel its presence, far enough to disappear when you need to. You moved here some time ago, right after—
No.
You cut the thought off before it finishes forming. You do not like thinking about it. There is no reason to start now.
You walk down the boulevard at an unhurried pace, shoulders squared, head level. Hostile intent brushes against your Awareness from every direction, bodies pressed into shadow, eyes tracking you from behind broken windows and half-collapsed doorways. Hands tighten around weapons that stay hidden.
What would you do about it?
You do nothing.
You keep walking.
They know you here. They know what happens if they misjudge you. The Underbay remembers violence the way other places remember history, and your name carries weight whether you speak it or not.
A sharp sound cuts through the air ahead. Metal snaps. An explosive charge goes off. Someone screams, briefly and high, before the sound cuts out altogether. An ambush, sprung badly or against the wrong target.
Of course, you turn toward it.
If you were Prisma, what would you do next?
A) Accelerate and end it quickly before it spreads
B) Let it play out and assess who survives
C) Approach at the same pace, forcing whoever's left to notice you
An explosion blooms a hundred yards to the northeast, the sound rolling through the Underbay like a dull, familiar thunder. You do not change your pace.
Either the ambushers are dead, or the Superstar is.
It does not matter to you. If it is the former, then your assigned opponent was strong enough to survive the Underbay doing what it does best. If it is the latter, then someone has robbed you of your victory, and you will make a point of tracking them down and killing them for it. Either way, the outcome is acceptable.
You take another step. Then another.
Nearly sixty seconds pass before the air shifts.
You feel it first, a sudden disturbance in the ion field, sharp and deliberate. A reddish object the size of a manhole cover tears through the space ahead of you, launched from a thirty-degree angle at roughly half the distance of the original explosion. It hums as it spins, energy coiled tight inside its surface.
You sense the sender the moment he leaps.
A Preesling. Reptilian. Fast. His presence cuts across your Awareness like a blade, not because he is hiding, but because he is moving too quickly to linger in one place for long. You recognize the confidence in it immediately. He wanted you to notice.
You consider taking the hit.
For a fraction of a second, the idea crosses your mind. You could tank it. Let the disk detonate against you and see what kind of force it carries. Measure him that way. It would hurt, but pain has never been a deciding factor for you.
You discard the thought and leap instead.
You go straight up, pushing off the street hard enough to fracture the concrete beneath your feet. The disk slams into the ground where you stood a heartbeat earlier, detonating in a tight, controlled explosion. It is similar to the first blast, but smaller, cleaner, shaped for precision rather than chaos.
You land on the roof of a twenty-foot building as debris rains down around you.
The reptilian Superstar is already descending.
He bounces off the air itself, rebounding from something invisible, then again, speed stacking with each contact. The effect is unmistakable now. He is not simply jumping. He is striking points in space that throw him forward harder and faster each time.
He is a green streak against the dim Underbay lights, scales catching what little illumination there is. To anyone else, he would be difficult to track. To you, he is perfectly clear.
You watch him line up the approach. You feel the pressure build as he closes the distance, momentum compounding into something that might actually matter.
You could brace.
You could dodge.
You could counter.
Instead, you throw a punch.
No flourish. No hesitation. Just a straightforward strike, timed to meet him at the point where speed becomes liability.
What do you think Prisma is relying on in this moment?
A) His durability, trusting his body to absorb whatever comes
B) His timing, believing speed always creates an opening
C) His power, expecting the impact to end things immediately
Preeslings are known for their agility. It is the one thing everyone agrees on when the subject comes up. Flexible spines, powerful tails, bodies built to redirect momentum rather than absorb it. This one seems a cut above even that reputation.
Your punch should have met him square in the chest.
Instead, he twists in mid-descent, his body folding around the strike with practiced ease. Your fist passes close enough to graze his scales, close enough that you feel the air shudder from the near miss, but he is already moving past it. His tail snaps out, wrapping tight around your bicep, scales biting into skin. He jerks hard, leveraging your own mass against you, and for a split second it feels like your remaining arm might tear free at the shoulder.
Then you are airborne.
You smash backward through the dark structure behind you, walls and support beams giving way in a cascade of concrete and metal. You halt your momentum mid-flight, stopping yourself before the street claims you, and float there as the building collapses inward under its own weight.
It never had a chance.
The lives inside it wink out all at once, twenty-eight points of light snuffed cleanly from your Awareness. You register the loss without reaction. They were an ultra-violent pirate gang, the kind that would have carved this district into something worse if left unchecked. If they were going to die, there were worse ways.
The dust cloud settles as you hover above the wreckage.
Fritz looks up at you from the street below, elongated snout tilted back, dark green and silver scales catching the glow of the remaining streetlights. His grin stretches wide, all teeth and confidence, making him look even more predatory than his species already does.
"What's good, my dude?" he calls out, voice light, almost friendly.
He plants his feet and gives a little wave with one clawed hand. "Nice to meetcha. Name's Fritz."
You answer with ions.
White energy condenses in front of you, air screaming softly as billions of charged particles are forced together into a tight, pulsing sphere. It looks like a miniature star, light bending around it, pressure building until the space nearby feels strained. You draw back and punch the ball forward with everything behind it.
Fritz's eyes flick to the forming blast.
"Not the convo type," he mutters under his breath.
He is already moving.
The ion sphere tears through the space he occupied a heartbeat earlier and slams into a junked vehicle farther down the street. Electricity engulfs the metal frame like living flame, crawling over it in violent arcs as the car disintegrates from the inside out.
Fritz vaults cleanly over the blast, tail snapping behind him for balance as he sails straight toward you. Invisible points in the air catch him and throw him forward again, speed stacking as he chains the rebounds together. Each contact sharpens his approach, turning his body into a guided projectile aimed squarely at you.
He is coming in fast enough now that the air itself seems to peel away around him.
What do you think Prisma is preparing to do as Fritz closes the distance?
A) Let the hit land to gauge Fritz's maximum output
B) Adjust the air density to disrupt his approach
C) Counter mid-impact and force a close-quarters exchange
So how do you deal with a leaping lizard moving fast enough to turn the air itself into a launch pad?
You have options. Too many, honestly. Another punch would work, if you timed it right. A kick might give you more reach, more leverage. You could form another ion sphere, one of those condensed stars of pressure and charge, and meet him at range. When you control the ions in a planet's atmosphere, you are never truly out of answers.
Ions are simple things, stripped-down molecules carrying electric charge, drifting invisibly through the air of most worlds. Billions of them can be forced together into something solid enough to hit. Trillions can be spread wide, stiffening the atmosphere itself, turning empty space into resistance. You can make the air fight for you, as Fritz finds out, first hand.
Fritz's yellow-tinted eyes roll briefly in their sockets as he tracks your movement, pupils narrowing when he realizes you're about to commit. He reaches somewhere along his side and produces one of his metallic orbs, fingers tightening around it as he twists mid-motion. Even while struggling against the pressure you're exerting on the air around him, he manages to fling it forward.
The orb vanishes a millisecond before you move and you hit the invisible rebound zone at full speed.
Your Quickening makes you one of the fastest Superstars in the competition, fast enough that most opponents never quite understand what hit them. Here, that speed betrays you. The moment you collide with the unseen surface, the stored momentum snaps back at you, amplified and redirected. You are hurled backward the way you came, faster than even the tail toss managed earlier.
You slam into the geodome barrier hard.
Just like the three-armed wrestler two matches ago, you do not stop there. The barrier throws you back with twice the force, and you tear away from it in the opposite direction, body adjusting instinctively to the reversal.
What happens next catches you off guard. It would catch anyone off guard.
You plow straight into the next attack Fritz fires your way, an energy disk streaking toward you from below. You do not slow. You do not brace. The collision blooms into a fire cloud that briefly turns the Underbay bright enough to be seen from blocks away. Those watching from alleyways and shattered windows retreat deeper into the dark, deciding whatever is happening here is no longer worth the risk.
When the smoke clears, you are still there.
Floating.
Unmoved.
Fritz hangs upside down from a rusted stairwell by his tail, staring at you with wide-eyed awe, mouth open in a grin that looks almost childlike in its delight.
"What a badass," he says, laughing softly. "This is awesome."
You answer by clenching your fist.
Ions scream as they are pulled into shape around you, several spheres tearing into existence at once, each one humming with contained violence. You punch the first, sending it screaming forward. You kick the second, redirecting it on a lower arc. You drive your head into the third, launching it straight through the space Fritz just abandoned.
He drops from the stairwell and vanishes into the maze of condemned buildings, using the terrain as cover. Your ion spheres follow, slamming into structures with catastrophic force. Electricity crawls over entire buildings like living flame, hundreds of millions of volts racing through metal and stone. Screams echo briefly, then cut off. When the light fades, scorch marks stain half a dozen facades, permanent reminders of where lightning chose to land.
You remain where you are, hovering, watching the ruins smoke.
What do you think Prisma is trying to do right now?
A) Force Fritz out of hiding by denying him safe terrain
B) Overload the rebound zones by flooding the area with ions
C) Test how much chaos Fritz can operate inside before slipping
You keep the pressure on.
Ion spheres streak through the Underbay in relentless succession, forcing Fritz to stay airborne. He dives between condemned buildings, rebounds off invisible anchors, flips and twists through collapsing walkways and exposed stairwells. Each time he thinks he has bought himself a breath, another bolt tears through the space he just vacated. You herd him deliberately, driving him from one cluster of structures to the next, denying him the chance to settle into a rhythm.
During one particularly fluid exchange, he twists sideways in mid-flip and produces a compact weapon, rectangular barrel snapping into alignment with practiced ease. He fires without breaking stride.
The disk comes fast.
You recognize it instantly as Tek, some firearm-adjacent construct designed to deliver shaped force rather than raw destruction. You meet it with one of your own ion spheres, the two colliding midair. The flash is blinding, light washing out the battlefield for a fraction of a second.
That is all it takes.
When your vision clears, Fritz is gone.
Not just out of sight. Gone.
You reach for him instinctively through Awareness. Soul Style users sense the living the way candles announce themselves in darkness, each soul a point of presence, some brighter than others. Your range stretches roughly twenty miles in every direction, a constant map of existence layered over reality.
There is nothing where Fritz should be.
The absence hits harder than any blow. There are methods to hide the soul, techniques and Tek designed to mask that inner signal, but they are rare and dangerous to use improperly. You did not expect him to have access to something like that.
What you do feel is the ions shifting above you.
You look up just in time.
A black sphere drops from the darkness overhead. You bring your arm up to block, bracing for impact. The object slams into your forearm with incredible force, spinning as it bites into flesh. Skin tears. Tissue peels away under the rotational pressure, pain flaring sharp and immediate.
You grit through it and redirect the momentum, twisting your body and sending the object skidding past you instead of through you.
The sphere uncoils mid-motion.
Fritz emerges from it, scales now fully black, absorbing light rather than reflecting it. His tail lashes out and hooks around your ankle, and he yanks hard, dragging you groundward with brutal efficiency.
You hit feet-first.
The impact carves a small crater into the street and sends a shockwave rolling through the surrounding buildings. Windows shatter. Loose debris rains down. The ground booms under the force of it.
Fritz lands a few meters away with his own heavy crash, suddenly seeming to weigh far more than his frame suggests. The black sheen fades from his scales, the familiar green and silver returning as he straightens.
"Cool, huh?" he says, grinning despite the damage around him. "It's Tek I made myself. Cranked the weight of my scales up a thousandfold." He gestures casually. "I was coming at you pretty fast. Kinetic energy topped out around four tons, give or take. You stopped it with one arm. Dude, that is so fire!"
Your forearm is stripped nearly to the bone. Blood runs thick and dark down your skin. You do not give him the satisfaction of reacting.
You are done measuring.
You quicken.
You cross the distance between you in an instant, leaning back as you arc a foot out in a sweeping motion. Ionic energy trails from the strike like a whip, curving toward Fritz with controlled violence. He drops low onto all fours, the lash passing just overhead and tearing into a nearby building instead. The structure collapses in on itself, reduced to the rubble it was always going to become.
Your other foot snaps out immediately, another ion whip screaming toward him.
It misses.
Again.
To his credit, Fritz does not hesitate. He surges forward, closing the space in less than a second. Both clawed feet slam into your left knee with crushing force. If you feel it, you do not show it. You bring the same leg down in a brutal stomp, aiming to end him outright.
He is already moving.
What do you think Prisma realizes at this moment?
A) Fritz is adapting faster than expected
B) This fight will not end at range
C) The Dark World recalibration is overdue
Fritz's tail saves him from becoming paste.
It coils around your leg at the last possible instant, anchoring him just long enough to redirect the force meant to end him. Using that leverage, he snaps both feet upward and plants them square into your chin. The impact cracks through the air, sharp and clean. He grins as he does it, teeth bared in open enjoyment, already reaching for you with one clawed hand.
You swat the grab aside and step through it. He vaults over your shoulder instead, tail flicking toward your eye on the way past. It is a lazy attempt, a desperate one, the kind weaker fighters rely on when they are out of options. You turn your head just enough for it to miss, irritation flaring hotter than the near miss deserves.
He immediately throws another metallic orb. It vanishes as soon as it leaves his hand. Fritz strikes the invisible rebound point a heartbeat later, zipping in the opposite direction, chaining the motion into a tight reversal. His scales darken to pitch black as his legs tuck in, body compacting into a dense, incoming shape. He rockets toward you, lining up a dropkick aimed directly at your face.
You duck under it by instinct alone. He slams into the wall behind you, feet hitting first. Instead of stopping, he runs up the vertical surface, claws scraping sparks as he climbs. At the apex, he pushes off and launches back toward you, talons outstretched, chest open, posture loose.
Cocky.
Your leg lashes out and finally connects.
For a fraction of a second, it feels right. Solid. Final. The impact carries everything behind it, and Fritz's form collapses inward, scattering into nothing but air and debris.
The street is suddenly empty.
You straighten slowly, scanning the ruined block, eyes tracking movement that is not there. No soul flare. No rebound echo. Just the Underbay, broken and quiet, smoke drifting lazily upward.
"Hey, dude?"
The voice comes from below.
You look down just in time to see Fritz clinging to your shin, arms locked tight like a child refusing to be let go. His grin is still there, undiminished, even as he snaps both feet upward again.
Your view flips to the shadowed sky.
The blow sends you spinning backward, vision catching broken light and collapsing silhouettes. Fritz releases you mid-motion, twisting away in a smooth arc and landing cleanly, laughing as if this were all a game. You hit hard and skid, staring up at the dim ceiling of the Underbay like you expect something to answer you back.
As if there were anything up there worth listening to.
You do not believe in gods. You do not believe in unseen hands guiding fate or moral frameworks imposed by things that cannot be struck. No higher power dictates your actions. No distant presence decides when you are allowed to be good, or when you must restrain yourself.
And right now, restraint is gone.
The anger that floods you has nothing to do with pain. Your body has endured worse. This is humiliation. This is being toyed with. The air around you thickens as your rage bleeds outward, ions responding to your emotional state without being told.
The atmosphere itself begins to press down.
What do you think pushes Prisma over the edge here?
A) The realization that Fritz is enjoying the fight more than he is
B) The repeated misjudgments that let Fritz keep control
C) The insult of being treated like a spectacle instead of a threat
The ground shakes.
It is not subtle. It is not localized. Burning white light splashes across the Underbay like sudden noon, so bright that those watching from the comfort of distant worlds see the landscape itself begin to fail. Buildings buckle inward. Streets fracture and peel apart. Whole sections of the district collapse downward, folding into the level below as if gravity finally remembered what it was owed.
The camera feeds lose clarity almost immediately.
Dust and dirt surge upward in rolling clouds, blotting out most of the visuals. What remains is sound. Twisting metal screaming under impossible strain. Concrete tearing itself apart. The wet, sickening crunch of structures and bodies giving way together. When the dust finally thins, a gaping chasm occupies the space where a neighborhood once existed, its jagged outline tracing the limits of the geodome like a scar burned into the world.
You float above it all.
The destruction hangs beneath you, settling slowly, debris still falling in lazy arcs. Your expression has not softened. The fury is still there, barely contained, radiating outward in subtle distortions of the air around you.
Roxy's voice cuts back in, breathless and electric.
"What massive power on display by Superstar Prisma!" she shouts. "He demolished everything inside the geodome! Everything!!! The Underbay went more under, and those under it, and on it, are done! Sorry, our hearts are with those who lost their lives here today. Is Superstar Fritz among them? Let's count to be sure! One… two… three…"
Nothing happens.
No green streak. No voice from below. No sudden reappearance hanging upside down from wreckage, laughing like this was all part of the plan.
Silence answers her count.
"Winner of the battle," Roxy declares, voice lifting. "Superstar Prisma!"
You feel it then. The declaration. The acknowledgment. Victory, clean and absolute, carried across systems and screens.
Can you imagine the feeling of being declared the victor of anything?
You probably can. Because you are not a loser.
The smile that pulls across your face would look out of place on anyone else. On you, carved into a gruff, scarred visage, it fits just fine.
The omniband begins its recall sequence. You feel the familiar pull, the system preparing to wrench you out of the geodome and deposit you back on Dycord like a piece being returned to the board.
You do not allow it.
You thicken the ions in the air deliberately, interference blooming outward in a controlled field. The teleportation stutters, fails to lock on. You will return soon enough. On your terms.
Instead, you drift toward the ten-foot doors at the edge of the geodome. Smooth, glossy metal sheets stand upright without visible support, irrelevant to the devastation around them. They slide open as you approach, obedient, and you pass through without looking back.
You rise fast, higher and faster for only a few seconds, then cut your ascent and descend sharply. You land on a street where no eyes dare follow you, where even the bravest Underbay watchers know better than to linger.
Your home squats where you left it. Unassuming. Unwelcoming. Barely livable.
Inside, it is exactly what you need and nothing more. A bed. Training equipment worn smooth by years of use. Food storage stacked neatly. No comforts. No decorations. No distractions.
You lower yourself to both knees in the center of the single room. Eyes closed. One hand resting loosely on your lap. Breathing steady.
Meditation is not optional for a Soul Style practitioner. Mind and body must move together, not one dragging the other forward, but unified. It is a truth Kane, Avia, Gorjon, Morihilus, and Fiaster all had to learn before power answered them fully.
You slip into stillness.
An archway forms within your mind's eye, familiar as your own heartbeat. Rotting oak, splintered and dark, its surface etched with age and something older than time. You pass through it without hesitation, stepping into speckled darkness.
You have been here thousands of times. Maybe more.
You have never questioned what this place is.
You have only ever known one star, the one that burns in the Papuru Galaxy. You have never considered that this space, this endless map of light and absence, is something else entirely. A reflection of another galaxy. Another proving ground.
What would you think if you knew there were entire civilizations beyond this, waiting to be tested?
You walk. You have a body here, solid and heavy, even though empty space serves as ground beneath your feet. Ahead waits a being far smaller than you, golden skin etched with shifting symbols that refuse to settle into meaning. His hair hangs in a single braid that reaches nearly to his ankles.
Soby turns as you approach.
"Welcome back, Prisma," he says calmly. "Are we jumping right in?"
"Yes," you answer without pause. "I need to be better."
Soby bows deeply, one arm extending toward a door that was not there a moment before. It bears golden markings and an arched opening that feels wrong to look at for too long. You reach for the knob and pull.
The sound hits first.
Screeching. Roaring. Hissing. Slashing. Crunching. Stomping. Cries that cannot belong to anything meant to live.
The smell follows. Decay. Blood. Death.
The sight defies language.
Creatures tear into one another beneath the doorway's starlight, shapes colliding in a frenzy of violence. Teeth the size of your home snap shut on flesh. Ten-headed abominations with ten arms end in gnashing maws. Tentacles and tongues coil through heaps of torn bodies. Grotesque forms writhe and feed without pause.
A thing as tall as the Tower of Laws, made entirely of black hair and teeth, rips the head from a smaller creature coated in black goo. A massive head lunges toward a mouth with arms, only to have its jaw torn free and devoured. Midnight blood fills the air, raining down like oil as the Dark World consumes itself.
An ink-black sun rimmed in crimson burns overhead, radiating heat without light. Beyond it, a massive black hole waits, patient and endless.
Imagine this is your first time seeing it.
Imagine standing at the edge of this and being told that this is the price of power. Most would close the door. Wake from the trance. Throw the soul coal away and live in ignorance.
Unless you needed this power.
Unless you needed to prove your strength to anything that dared exist.
Unless you were Prisma.
You leap, falling into the horror below without fear.
Soby follows.