The vent spat him out behind a collapsed section of bleachers.
Holden landed in a crouch on the arena floor. The black mist curled around him like living smoke, thick enough to choke on, dark enough to blind anyone without enhanced senses.
Good thing he wasn't anyone.
His 1,000x multiplier didn't just amplify his training. It processed sensory information at impossible speeds. The mist was full of sound if you knew how to listen. The faint vibration of legs on the ground. The subtle shift in air pressure when something large moved.
He could see them.
Not with his eyes but with everything else.
Six Abyssal Hounds were circling the ice wall Lyra had built. They pawed at the frozen surface, testing it, finding the cracks. Three Crawlers were creeping along the rubble to the east. And somewhere in the the arena, close to the rift, something massive was moving with slow, thundering steps.
Holden drew his Star-Forged sword.
He moved.
