Entrima left the arena with his head held high, but his place on the battlefield didn't stay empty for long. No sooner had the healers carried off the last traces of the duel than the great Aether screen switched to the next duel of this round. The crowd murmured in approval, and somewhere among the stands the first bets were already being placed.
At the outermost edge of the tournament field, Gwuth, a wiry night goblin with greenish-gray, scar-covered skin and narrow, light-sensitive eyes that narrowed to slits even in the arena's muted afternoon light, faced off against Bran, a faun whose horns gleamed golden in the sunlight. Neither of the two counted among the legends known from the old tales, and that was exactly what made their fight something special for the spectators in the lower stands—two young warriors who still had to earn their place, without a reputation preceding them. Gwuth wielded a curved sword, its blade coated in a finely shimmering spore-dust that turned even a glancing hit into a burning itch, while Bran wove between the flying blows with the agility of a forest creature, his hooves barely audible on the churned sand. Their fight would keep going while more important things happened elsewhere—a steady heartbeat in the background of the afternoon, one hardly anyone consciously noticed and yet one that never quite fell silent.
For high above the arena, in the shielded box of the heroes, hidden behind heavy curtains of dark velvet and protective Aether runes that let no uninvited ear through, there was more unrest that day than on the battlefield itself.
Seven seats were filled. Three remained empty, and the emptiness ran through the conversation like a crack, one that should really have been about something else entirely. Ten of them were counted as the legends of this age, those whose names were told to children long before the children themselves could hold a bow or speak a formula—not because they had been unbeatable, but because they had stayed when others would have left. Once a year, for the tournament of Memoria Decem, they gathered to assess those who might one day follow in their footsteps. That three of them were missing this year of all years was more than just inconvenient.
The dwarf king sat with his arms crossed in the middle, his bushy brows drawn into a single line that left no doubt the matter displeased him. Beside him the succubus woman, whose husband, a seraphide with feathered wings and a scar running across his throat, said to stem from a fight against a creature that no longer bore a name, drummed his fingers restlessly on the armrest, his wings twitching faintly with every movement. A little further along sat the water-man, a tall figure in a dark, gold-veined hooded robe. Beneath the hood, three pale red eyes glinted, fine barbels hanging from his blue-scaled jaw—a Nerathi, as they were born in the underwater cities of the Deep Oases. Beside his chair leaned a spear with a crystalline blade, barely used but never far from his hand. His movements seemed strangely fluid even in the dry air of the box, as if he could hardly wait to be back underwater. The remaining seats were filled with faces that inspired awe even among heroes, but that afternoon they all sat with the same expression: that of a council waiting for something that refused to come.
"We called ten," the dwarf king said finally, his voice rougher than usual, as he slowly ran a finger along the armrest of his chair. "Seven came. That's not a good sign."
"Maybe they were simply held up," the succubus woman put in, though even her tone sounded as if she didn't quite believe her own words.
The water-man shook his head slowly, his movements strangely fluid despite the dry air of the box. "Three missing is too many for a simple misunderstanding. We are not just any gathering. When the ancestors call, one comes."
Down in the arena, Gwuth was just launching into a new attack. He stamped once, hard, and a cloud of shimmering spore-dust broke free from his blade, condensing into a cutting crescent shape that raced deep and fast toward Bran. The faun threw himself aside, rolled over his shoulder, and came back up onto his hooves in one flowing motion, just in time to dodge the next strike with a leap backward. For one breath the two stood facing each other, sweat on Bran's brow, a thin smile at the corners of Gwuth's mouth, before the night goblin pressed forward again, this time lower, closer to the ground, forcing Bran to block horns-first. The metallic clang could be heard even high up in the box, a short, hard sound that nearly got lost in the roar of the main stands.
Before the discussion in the box could continue, footsteps clattered up the stone stairs to the box, hurried and out of rhythm, accompanied by cursing that sounded more amused than desperate. The door flew open, and Fenric stumbled in, out of breath, his reddish-brown hair disheveled, his tattered dark red cloak with its feather-like fringe hanging crooked off his shoulders, half torn by some undergrowth he'd apparently had to run through. A golden ring flashed on his pointed, elf-like ear as he struggled to brush the hair from his forehead with his free hand—the sly, faintly smirking set of his lips hadn't quite vanished even now, out of breath as he was. A tuft of leaves still clung to his left boot, which in his haste he didn't seem to notice at all.
"Sorry for the delay," he panted, one hand pressed to his chest. "I—I took a bit of a detour."
"A detour," the dwarf king repeated dryly, one eyebrow raised. "Fenric, you're Vulpiri. Your kind can find your way through three different forests in total darkness without setting a single foot wrong."
Fenric smiled crookedly, still catching his breath, and dropped into the empty chair with a sigh. "And yet I still managed to get lost in the middle of a city with exactly one main street. I'm impressed with myself, honestly." A brief laugh went through the room, even the water-man couldn't quite hold back a smirk. Fenric's people were known for their unerring sense of direction, valued for generations as scouts and trackers, whose names were whispered in the border territories whenever a lost caravan needed to be found again—that of all people it was him who'd gotten lost in the narrow, neatly laid-out streets of the tournament city only made the whole thing more ridiculous, and he himself seemed to be the first to laugh about it, even before anyone else did.
"Sit down," the king grumbled, though the hint of a smile caught in his beard, no matter how hard he tried to suppress it. "That makes eight. Two remain."
The seraphide, who until then had only drummed his fingers in silence, raised his hand slightly without standing, straightening his wings once, as if he could shake off his own unease that way. "Eight is better than seven, but it doesn't change the fact that two are missing who, in all these years, were never seen to be missing. I'd suggest we don't wait until evening, but send someone out now." The dwarf king gave him a long look but said nothing to it, as if he wanted to work the thought out for himself first before speaking it aloud.
The mood shifted noticeably as the group's gaze drifted to the two remaining empty seats, which suddenly seemed far larger than two single chairs really ought to be.
"Faelan will come," the succubus woman said, though it sounded more like a hope than a certainty, one she seemed to be measuring against her own words even as she spoke them. "He likes to oversleep, we all know that, that's nothing new."
"Of all people, a Tolkühn who oversleeps," Fenric murmured, having settled by now with a cup of water, which he drained in one go. "Fits him." A quiet murmur of agreement went through the group—those who knew Faelan Tolkühn knew there was nothing small about him: a giant, stocky and broadly built, whose ability was to rein in his own size so he could make himself small enough to fit through spaces like the arena at all. He spoke calmly, almost deliberately, and it was said his Sanitas Aether was as steady as his temperament—that of all people, a man who held back so much of himself made no exception even for sleep had long since become a quiet, recurring joke among the heroes.
But the second empty seat weighed heavier, and the laughter in the box died the moment her name was spoken.
"Lena is missing," the dwarf king said, and his voice lost every trace of humor. "Lena. Not Faelan."
No one needed to explain why that was different. Lena had for years been known as so relentlessly punctual that people in the city joked one could set the tower bells by her—a strictness that suited her haughty manner like almost nothing else could, for Lena would have taken it as a personal insult to arrive even one tick late. She had never been late, not to any meeting, any gathering, any call of the ancestors, and even those among the heroes who barely knew her had heard of that reputation. That her seat now stood empty, while even the notoriously oversleeping Faelan still had a plausible excuse, left a silence in the box heavier than any word spoken in the last several crowns.
"Maybe it's nothing," the seraphide said finally, his voice brittle with reluctant hope, but no one in the room seemed to truly believe him, least of all himself.
Far below, in the simpler rows of the spectator stands, Alvios too had noticed the duel at the edge of the tournament field. He leaned over to Nouel, gaze briefly on the arena, where Gwuth was just hurling a cloud of spore-dust at Bran, which dissolved at the last moment into fine, harmless threads as the faun dodged it with an elegant sideways leap. "Don't you think the box seems more restless than usual today?" Alvios asked.
Nouel, arms crossed over his chest, barely let his gaze stray from the heroes' box, clearly visible from the stands. "What's more interesting is what's being discussed up there," he said curtly. "Three heroes are missing. For a tournament the ancestors themselves called, that's no coincidence."
"You think it's something serious?" Alvios asked, his brow creased with worry.
"I think I don't know," Nouel replied, "and that I don't like that." A short, dry sentence that told Alvios more than any long explanation could have.
Raiiko, who had sat silently beside them until now, gaze fixed unwaveringly on the fight, finally said, without raising his voice: "If even the heroes are worried, we should be too." He added nothing more.
"But we don't actually know any of them, do we?" Alvios put in, half to Nouel, half to Raiiko. "I mean, should we even be thinking about this?"
"One doesn't have to know someone personally to notice when something's wrong," Nouel countered, a hint of superiority in his voice that Alvios knew well enough by now not to be bothered by anymore. "And you should start learning what to pay attention to, instead of just watching."
Alvios made a face, wanted to reply, but fell silent as, down in the arena, Bran forced Gwuth to the ground with a well-aimed strike of his horns, a short, clean hit that decided the duel without anyone in the stands seeming to particularly appreciate it. Gwuth pulled himself back up, limping, a crooked grin on his face that betrayed more respect than bitterness, gave his opponent a brief bow, before both were tended to by the hurrying healers—a small, unnoticed close to a fight that was never meant to be the center of attention anyway.
In the heroes' box, the conversation had moved on by now, grown quieter, almost like a prayer.
"There was a time," the dwarf king began, gaze fixed on the arena without really seeing anything of it, "when we once waited for someone who didn't come. Back then it was Regina Maren who had called us, against those factions who wanted to tear the land apart before there was even a crown to hold it together." His voice dropped, turned almost reverent, while the others in the box fell silent without meaning to. "She fought as if she had nothing to lose, and in the end she'd lost almost everything. Friends who never came back. Entire lines of her own house, wiped out in a single night. But she rose again. Again and again, until the factions that once believed they could carve up the land among themselves were nothing but names in old chronicles."
"And now her family sits somewhere in this city, while we stare at two missing names," the water-man murmured, "and hope it isn't the same story repeating itself."
The seraphide cleared his throat quietly. "I still remember Regina standing at my side, on that last night before the fall of Castra Ombrae. She never told me what she saw in that place before she took it. Only that she was never the same afterward." He looked down at his own hands, as if searching for an answer there. "If her children are in danger today, that's not only her story. It's ours."
No one contradicted him. The sun stood lower over the arena, casting long shadows over the empty seats, while down below the next duel was already being prepared and the spectators had no idea of the unease gnawing high above them in the heroes' box, quiet and persistent as a crack spreading through ice before it breaks.
Fenric, who seemed unable to bear the silence any longer, leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Should I go out and look for them? I can find anyone described to me. Just not my own way, apparently." A tired smile went around the room, but the dwarf king shook his head.
"Not yet," he said. "We give them until evening. If none of them have shown up by then, we'll send out messengers, if only to make sure it really is nothing." He straightened, gaze fixed on the arena again, where the next fight was already being announced and the stands were roaring once more. "Until then," he added more quietly, more to himself than to the others, "let's hope this doesn't turn into a story someone has to tell later."
The seraphide nodded slowly, not looking entirely convinced, but he didn't argue with the king further. Fenric, who clearly sensed the tension in the box, tried once more with a joke. "If it helps—I could look for Faelan and Lena instead of my own way home. Maybe I have better luck with other people's paths." No one laughed this time, but the succubus woman briefly laid a hand on his shoulder, a quiet gesture of thanks for trying to lighten the heavy mood, if only for a breath.
Down in the stands, Viktoria, who had only half-listened to the three young men's conversation, watched as the Aether screen prepared for the day's next duel. She stretched, arms overhead, with that offhand elegance that made even so small a gesture look like a little performance when she did it, before a crooked smile flickered across her lips. "Two missing heroes, a tournament that's only just getting started—that," she announced, with a hint of her usual cockiness, "sounds like exactly the kind of chaos I like." Then her gaze grew more serious for a moment, as if she herself had noticed how out of place the lightness sounded just now. "Whatever happens with it," she added more quietly, more to herself than to the others, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, "I don't think today is anywhere near over." She cast one last glance up at the heroes' box, where the figures sat motionless in the afternoon sun, barely more than shadows from this distance, then turned back to the fight. Beside her, Nouel straightened almost imperceptibly, as if he too had decided not to lose sight of the matter, while Alvios just looked back and forth between the box and the arena in silence, as if he could work out what was really happening up there just by looking hard enough. Raiiko said nothing more, but his gaze stayed fixed on the box, long after the others had already turned back to the tournament—as if he already knew that today would raise more questions than it answered, while somewhere beyond the city walls two names remained unanswered.