(Arthur's pov )
(The Rainbound City)
Rain had been falling over the capital for three days.
Not clean rain. It came down grey and oily from a sky hidden behind permanent cloud cover, carrying soot from the city's collapsed towers. It gathered in cracked streets, poured through empty windows, and ran in black streams around abandoned vehicles half-swallowed by roots.
The city had once been built for people.
Now its apartments stood open like rib cages. Elevated roads sagged between towers. Faded evacuation signs pointed toward districts that no longer existed. Every so often, a sound drifted through the storm—claws on concrete, a guttural call, something heavy moving below street level.
The **corrupted beasts** owned the capital now.
Arthur had led the group into the shell of an old municipal archive just before nightfall. It should have been shelter. Instead, its walls were cracked, its roof was missing in three places, and the windows opened directly onto streets patrolled by creatures that reacted to movement.
Sunny had looked at the rain pouring through the ceiling, then at the exhausted group.
"Fine," he had muttered. "A real house, then."
With **the Creator**, he shaped a compact shelter inside the archive: clean pale walls, a sealed roof, narrow windows, and separate rooms behind solid doors. Nothing extravagant—just enough space for people to sleep without rain soaking their clothes or fear forcing them to stare at each other all night.
The construction had nearly emptied him.
Sunny now lay asleep in one of the rooms, his face pale and his breathing shallow. The faint created light along the ceiling flickered whenever the wind hit the building.
Lola was no better.
Her fight against the lesser-beast pack still showed in the tremor of her hands. She had spent too much aether on flame, wind, and **Storm Chaser**, then pushed herself through another week of travel. She slept with a blanket pulled to her chin, her weapon within reach but her power far from it.
Arthur sat awake in the common room, listening to the rain strike the roof.
Across from him, **Vaelis Mourne** rested lightly rather than slept, back against the wall and weapon across his knees. **Eldric Vaelor** had finally collapsed in a chair after carrying Azrion for too long. In the nearest room, **Azrion Velcrest** lay bandaged and feverish, his ravager wound refusing to heal cleanly. **Sarah** sat alone by a darkened window, staring into the rain where Grace had vanished days earlier.
Arthur studied them all.
Too many people were unable to fight.
Sunny and Lola had little aether left. Azrion could barely stand. Eldric was exhausted. Sarah was grieving. That left Arthur and Vaelis as the only reliable fighters if the corrupted found them.
And the city was the only route north.
The system's announcement still pressed against Arthur's thoughts:
> **1,996 qualification places remain.**
They had already lost time travelling around the continent. They could not wait for everyone to recover completely—not while other contestants were reaching the finish line.
But walking through the capital in their current condition would be suicide.
Arthur watched rainwater slide down the created window.
*Corrupted beasts notice movement first,* he thought. *They can think, but instinct leads them. They hunt panic. They hunt noise. They hunt anything that runs.*
A plan began to form—not safe, but possible.
They would use the storm.
Rain covered small sounds and blurred visibility. Sunny's house could remain hidden inside the archive until dawn. Then Arthur could scout short routes between buildings, using frozen stillness whenever a corrupted beast passed. If they found a subway entrance or service tunnel beneath the main avenues, they could cross part of the city unseen.
The problem was reaching it without spending aether—or waking the city.
Then, beneath the rain, something scraped slowly across the outer wall.
Once.
Twice.
Vaelis's eyes opened.
Arthur lifted one finger: **stay silent.**
Outside, the scraping stopped.
Something sniffed at the sealed door.
The thing outside stopped scraping.
Arthur did not move.
Rain struck the archive in long, filthy sheets. Behind the created walls, every person held still. The corrupted beast sniffed once at the sealed doorway, then dragged its claws across the concrete and disappeared into the drowned street.
Only when its footsteps had faded beneath the storm did Arthur allow himself to breathe.
Then a voice entered his mind.
> **"Drag me to Hell with Heaven's lies."**
Arthur's expression tightened.
The words were cold and close, as though someone had whispered them against the inside of his skull. He did not turn. He did not speak. In a city where movement could mean death, confusion was a luxury.
He stayed silent until the creature was far enough away that even Vaelis relaxed his grip on his weapon.
"What is it?" **Vaelis** asked quietly.
Arthur glanced toward the door. "Did you hear a voice?"
Vaelis frowned. "What voice?"
Eldric stirred in the chair, exhausted but awake enough to listen. Sarah lifted her eyes from the rain-dark window. Sunny and Lola remained asleep. From the nearby room, Azrion shifted faintly beneath his bandages.
"No one spoke," Eldric said.
Sarah shook her head.
Arthur's gaze fell to the floor.
So it had been only him.
*Drag me to Hell with Heaven's lies.*
The phrase made no sense—but it did not sound random. It sounded like a warning, a curse, or a memory that belonged to someone else.
Arthur looked through the narrow window at the drowned capital. Somewhere beneath those streets, corrupted beasts hunted. Somewhere north, the finish line waited. And now, somewhere inside his own mind, a stranger had found a way to speak.
He said nothing more.
Not yet.
Dawn came quietly.
The rain had thinned to a cold mist, turning the drowned streets silver beneath a colourless sky. Inside the archive, everyone was still asleep—Lola and Sunny drained in separate rooms, Azrion feverish beneath his bandages, Eldric slumped in a chair, and Sarah curled near the window.
Vaelis was awake.
Arthur waited until Vaelis crossed to the far end of the room to check the barricade. Then he slipped through a narrow gap in Sunny's created shelter and into the archive's ruined upper hall.
Across the street, the collapsed train station waited behind curtains of mist.
The symbol was still there.
It had been painted—or burned—into the station wall: a pale gate split perfectly down the middle. Rainwater ran over it without washing it away.
Arthur raised his hand.
The same mark beneath his skin began to glow.
A dull ache ran from his palm to his wrist. The gate-symbol answered with a faint pulse, and for one breath the broken station vanished.
Arthur saw somewhere else.
Black sand. Iron gates. A red sky split by distant lightning.
Then a girl's voice, terrified and far away:
> "Who's there?"
Grace.
Arthur pulled his hand back.
The vision snapped shut. The station returned—the wet concrete, twisted rails, and puddles trembling from the rain.
But he had heard her.
And beneath the gate-mark, new words had appeared in thin black lines:
> **A passage opens only when both sides choose.**
Arthur stared at the message.
He had no idea who Grace was. He did not know why a gate connected this ruined city to Hell—or whether answering it would bring help, danger, or something much worse into the arena.
Behind him, Vaelis's voice cut through the mist.
"Arthur."
Arthur quickly covered his hand with a black glove as vaelis asked him with a very suspicious look.
"What brings you outside ?"
Arthur looked once more at the pale gate carved into the train station wall, then closed his hand over the mark on his palm.
"Scouting," he said. "Checking whether the station gives us a route through the city."
Vaelis stepped into the mist, rain beading on his coat. His eyes moved from Arthur to the shattered station entrance.
"And?"
"Flooded platforms. Too exposed." Arthur kept his voice even. "If we use it, we'll be trapped underground with nowhere to freeze if something finds us."
It was believable. Worse, it was true.
Vaelis studied him for a long moment. He had always been good at noticing what people chose not to say.
Finally, he nodded. "Then we find another route."
Arthur turned away from the symbol before it could pulse again.
As they headed back toward the archive, the voice returned—quieter this time, almost drowned by the rain.
> *Both sides choose.*
Arthur did not look back.
But on the station wall behind him, the split gate slowly filled with a thin red glow.
Arthur stepped out of Azrion's room with the black veins still fixed in his mind.
Lucas Mourne had healed him before. If anyone could understand what the near-evolved ravager had left inside Azrion—or slow it before it spread—it was Lucas.
He found Sunny in the common room, sitting beneath the weak glow of his own created ceiling. Sunny looked up, exhausted.
"Do you know where Lucas's group could be?" Arthur asked.
Sunny rubbed his eyes. "Not exactly. We were all scattered across a continent the size of Africa. Helpful system design, as always."
Arthur's jaw tightened. "Think."
Sunny forced himself to focus. "Alex's group was last known near the ravager bone fields, west of the capital. If they kept heading toward the finish line, they may be moving north-east by now."
"That is still too broad."
"I know." Sunny glanced toward the rain-streaked windows. "But if we find signs of a major fight—ravager remains, burned ground, a ruined camp—Alex will be near it. He doesn't exactly pass through places quietly."
Arthur looked back toward Azrion's room.
The injury could not wait forever. But searching for Lucas meant changing their route, spending more time in the capital, and risking the group's remaining strength.
"I'll find him," Arthur said quietly.
---
Miles away, rain beat against the fractured roof of the watchtower.
Lucas watched **Alex Lionheart** kneel beside the dying fire, arranging scraps of charcoal, bone, and broken stone across the floor. It was not a map anyone else would understand at first glance.
But Alex did.
"The capital is here," Alex said, marking a jagged cluster of stones. "Arthur's group began farther south than us. If they followed the eastern roads, they'll be trying to cross the city—or already trapped inside it."
One of the masked figures stood behind him, silent beneath their hood.
Lucas folded his arms. "You are planning to find them?"
"I'm planning routes," Alex replied. "Finding them depends on whether they have survived long enough to use one."
His finger traced a line north-east through the rain-dark ruins.
"Straight through the capital is fastest. Also stupid. The outer districts are less crowded, but they are where ravagers nest after heavy rain. This service road runs between both."
Lucas leaned closer. "And what makes you think it is safe?"
Alex looked up.
"I don't."
Thunder rolled overhead. Beyond the broken tower, the massive ravager that had stalked the bone field earlier gave another distant roar.
Alex swept the makeshift map away with one motion.
"We move at first light. If Arthur's group is alive, the city is where we find them."
Rain rattled against the boarded windows of the abandoned building.
Alex Lionheart sat alone in a wooden chair near the remains of a fireplace, elbows braced on his knees. The building had once been somebody's home; now it was another empty shell on a continent full of them. Water leaked through the cracked ceiling and tapped steadily onto the floorboards.
The others rested in the next rooms. Lucas had insisted on taking watch later. The masked pair had said nothing at all.
Alex stared at the rough map spread across a broken table.
The demons were one problem. Their signs kept appearing where they should not—strange symbols, missing bodies, corrupted beasts behaving as if they had been directed instead of driven by instinct.
But now there was the **Midnight Church**.
Tom.
Alex's jaw tightened.
He did not care about the Church's promises, its sermons, or whatever power it claimed to serve. He cared that Tom had crossed their path, and that the Midnight Church had taken an interest in him.
If Tom died, the distance between Alex and Arthur would grow even worse. Arthur already had too many people depending on him, too many dangers closing around him. Alex could not afford to lose another link to Arthur's group—not when the tournament was swallowing contestants by the thousands.
*Demons to track. The Midnight Church to track. Arthur somewhere inside that ruined capital.*
"Difficult," Alex muttered.
Then his inner voice answered.
> *Difficult is not the word.*
Alex did not flinch. He had learned not to show surprise when it spoke.
> *You are chasing three trails across a dying continent,* the voice continued. *One leads to demons. One leads to believers who worship the dark. The last leads to Arthur.*
"And Tom?" Alex thought.
For a moment, only rainfall answered.
> *Tom is the bait between them.*
Alex's fingers curled around the edge of the chair.
> *The Midnight Church will not kill him quickly,* the voice said. *They will use him to draw out whoever comes looking. Perhaps Arthur. Perhaps you.*
Alex rose, rain-muted thunder rolling beyond the walls.
"So I find him before they can."
> *And if finding Tom means walking into their trap?*
Alex picked up his sword.
"Then they made a mistake setting one."
In the room beside him, Lucas stirred awake as if he had sensed the change in the air.
Alex's hand settled on the hilt of his sword.
"So I find Tom before they can use him," he thought.
The inner voice was quiet for a moment. Rain washed down the boarded windows, hiding the ruined streets beyond.
> *No.*
Alex's expression hardened.
> *Clear the first stage first. Reach the finish line. Move into the next round.*
"And leave Tom with the Midnight Church?"
> *Not leave him. Gain time to reach him properly.*
The voice pressed on, calm and certain.
> *The first stage is designed to exhaust the contestants. Once it ends, there will be an interval—time to recover, regroup, and prepare before the next round begins. I cannot prove it. But I feel it.*
Alex looked down at the crude route map.
The demons. The Midnight Church. Arthur's group. Tom.
Every trail was too large to follow while they were still trapped in the arena, fighting rain, distance, beasts, and the shrinking qualification limit.
> *Advance,* the voice said. *The next round may give you the breathing room this one denies you.*
Alex hated the advice because it made complete sense.
If Tom was still alive, rushing blindly through the capital could get Alex killed—and help no one. But if they qualified, rested, and learned what waited beyond the finish line, he could pursue the Midnight Church with Lucas beside him and a clearer path ahead.
Alex folded the map.
"First, we qualify," he said under his breath. "Then we find Tom."
From the next room, Lucas shifted awake as thunder rolled over the building.