"A temple?"
Of all the places the domain could have chosen for this, I hadn’t considered a synagogue. And yet here I was in cold harsh night air, stone steps beneath , and a tall temple rising directly ahead, its wooden doors shut like they were keeping sothing in rather than keeping things out.
The moon overhead was red. Not the comfortable amber of a normal night— red, the particular shade that belongs to things that are trying to tell you sothing. I had a reasonable idea of what it was trying to tell .
"What are you doing?" Alia’s voice had sothing in it I hadn’t heard often. Actual concern, stripped of the editorial. "You’re going to get yourself killed."
Before I could respond, the large wooden doors opened.
Cold air pushed through imdiately, the kind that carries weight, that you feel in the back of the throat. And from inside the temple, soone walked out.
A girl.
She had the largest eyes I’d seen on a person, stained a deep purple, and her hair was the sa colour, moving slightly in the cold air.
The way she carried herself was the part that took a second to process, she walked like soone who had arrived sowhere they were genuinely glad to be.
Not the energy of a fighter coming to a fight. Sothing closer to soone arriving at a party they’d planned.
The smile on her face didn’t help.
"I told you once," I said, after the silence had stretched long enough that Alia’s concern was starting to fill it. "Either I get stronger or I die trying."
"In this case, you’re not even going to try before you die!"
"Let’s make a bet." I adjusted my stance, settling into sothing that at least looked like preparation. "If I beat her, you have to be nice to . Actual niceness. No qualifications."
Alia pressed her palm flat against her face. Held it there. "Oh, good lord." The sound she made was sowhere between a groan and a prayer. "If you need motivation, the stakes should at least reflect the situation."
I didn’t wait for her to finish.
I went down the temple steps fast, closing distance before Ember had a chance to set terms I hadn’t agreed to. Impossible difficulty. The one thing I knew about gaps this wide was that you didn’t give the other person room to operate, you crowded them, you made the space uncomfortable, you refused to let the fight beco the fight they expected.
I ca in with a swat, not a real punch, more a disruption, sothing to read her reflexes.
But she didn’t dodge.
She matched it. Brought her own hand up to et mine in the sa motion, mirroring the move with an almost casual precision. When her hand connected with mine the sensation wasn’t impact, it was heat. Imdiate, sharp, spreading across my palm before I’d fully registered the contact.
I pushed past it. Folded two punches and threw them both.
She t both with one hand.
The timing was perfect, not reactive or scrambled, just right. Like she’d already decided where my fists were going before I’d thrown them. And the force she absorbed should have required two hands. That she used one was its own kind of statent.
I was still processing that when she twitched her wrist, one small concentrated movent, and the energy she’d stored in that arm ca back. Not a punch. More like a focused expulsion. It sent backward across the ground, my back finding the temple’s entrance with a sound I felt more than heard.
Right. Impossible difficulty. That tracks.
I stood. Went again, this ti with double the force loaded behind it, committed, driving low and fast to wrap her up and neutralise the reach advantage before she could use it. The death-hug. If I could just get my arms around her—
A kick connected with my chin.
The crack that followed was structural. I felt it in my teeth, in the back of my skull, in so fundantal place below the level of pain. And before the sensation had finished arriving, she had my arm — twisted it, used it to bring upright — and for exactly one second we were close enough that I saw her smile change. Deepen. Like sothing had just been confird for her.
Then her foot ca up into my gut and I was back at the temple entrance.
Fuck.
"Fuck, she’s tough."
"I did ntion this." Alia had adopted the posture of soone who has made her peace with the outco. She was rubbing her fingers together and gave a shrug that communicated, comprehensively, that she had let go of any expectation that I would survive this. "I warned you. Several tis. In succession."
I pulled myself upright, one hand braced against the door, the other holding my arm which had gone from painful to a sustained ache that was starting to define the experience of having an arm.
My breathing was ragged and the cold air wasn’t making it easier. I ran through the inventory — Analytical Eye, Flow State, Adaptive Reflex — and arrived at the honest conclusion that none of them were moving the needle against Ember.
Against the previous opponents they’d provided edges. Here, they were barely registering.
Was this a fight with a ceiling I could reach, or one that had been placed outside any ceiling I currently had access to?
Ember hadn’t moved from the spot where she’d sent flying. She was still standing there, in the sa position, with the sa expression, amusent that had fully settled in, like she was watching sothing unfold exactly as anticipated.
Looking at her from this range confird what the profile picture had suggested. She was absolutely a psychopath. The specific kind that didn’t arrive at that conclusion through damage or deprivation, just a native relationship with chaos that she’d apparently decided to lean into.
Tyler was a psychopath. So was she.
And I was done getting beaten up by psychopaths.
I went at her again, no clear plan yet, but movent, pressure, refusing to let her just stand there and wait. And she didn’t wait.
She humd.
One note. In a low, sustained voice. Which was such a strange thing to do in the middle of a fight that for a half-second I genuinely thought I’d misread what was happening.
Then my body stopped.
Not gradually. My bones just ceased cooperation, a shrieking tightness moving through them like they were resonating with sothing they hadn’t been designed to resonate with.
The ground vibrated beneath . The temple walls seed to move. And sowhere in the middle of all of it, the frequency in her voice built toward sothing that felt like structural failure, like the whole domain was monts away from coming apart at the seams.
Then she stopped.
Showoff.
The sensation released. I found my feet again, stood up straight, still favouring the arm. She hadn’t moved. She was still smiling.
I turned the situation over while the disorientation cleared.
How. That was the question sitting underneath everything. How did soone this far above invite here instead of finding an opponent who could actually test her? The difficulty gap wasn’t interesting, it was a formality, a closing of a door before the conversation was finished.
[New Skill Added]
[Recovery Rate Up — Passive]
A green glow moved across , faint and warm, working through the surface damage. The arm eased slightly. My breathing found a slightly better rhythm. The skill was low-level, I could tell imdiately, more a slow tide than a resolution — but it was sothing.
The system was at least tracking the situation as one I was surviving rather than one that was finished.
"Who are you?" I put the question out there plainly. "And why aren’t you picking on soone your own size?"
The last resort that wasn’t about force. Cypher had talked. There was a non-zero chance Ember would too.
The smile changed. Sothing softer moved into it, not warmth exactly, but sothing adjacent to it. A genuine response to the question rather than a performance.
"I tried." She said it with an expression that was almost rueful. "Nobody wants to play. They either decline the invitation or they figure out what I can do and quit before we’ve even started." The softness held for a mont, then dissolved back into that particular smile. "But you’re still here. You haven’t left." She tilted her head, studying the way soone studies sothing that’s behaving unexpectedly. "Isn’t that interesting?"
And then, she started jumping. An elated, bouncing, clapping jump, the kind of movent that belonged to a child who’d just been told they could have dessert. The entire register of her presence shifted — the dangerous, calibrated fighter replaced in an instant by sothing that looked genuinely, unguardedly excited.
I looked at her.
Oh. She’s lonely.
Not in the way that invited sympathy, exactly. More in the way that clarified the situation. To Ember, friendship was probably asured in willingness to stay in the room while she showed you how best she could kill you.
The people who’d declined or fled had failed a test she hadn’t announced. I was still here, which ant I’d passed sothing she’d been running without telling .
"You’re a psycho," I said. It was a statent of observed fact. "And what makes you think I won’t leave?"
The smile deepened. Sothing knowing moved into it.
"Because that option just closed." She said it the way soone announces a rule change they’ve already implented. "Which ans one of us has to finish this to end it."
"Alia—"
Alia was quiet. Doing the thing she did when she’d decided the lesson was mine to arrive at. I couldn’t entirely fault her, I’d accepted this invitation with full information about the difficulty rating and proceeded anyway. The absence of an exit was, in retrospect, the kind of term I should have anticipated for an impossible-tier multiplayer duel.
Right. So. Options.
The Recovery Rate skill was buying ti, not advantage. Her physical ability was beyond what I could match directly. I’d tested that across several attempts now. The humming frequency was sothing else entirely, operating on a different axis from the physical fight, sothing that acted on the body rather than through it.
Which ant the question wasn’t how do I beat her on her terms. It was what does she have no guard for.
Every opponent I’d faced had one. The system hadn’t given an impossible fight to lose, it had given one with a solution I hadn’t found yet.
I went in again. A punch, committed, readable. And the mont she moved to shut it down, I pulled back and swerved right. One nanosecond of angle. I brought both fists up toward her neck in the window it created.
She caught my arm. Threw over onto the bare ground with a force that bypassed negotiation entirely. I hit the floor and felt it across every bone that was already complaining about the evening.
Standing wasn’t imdiately available. I stayed where I was for a mont, looking up at the red moon, my body conducting its own internal eting about what had just happened.
And then the voice arrived. Not from outside, from sowhere inside, the place where the accumulated weight of every person who’d ever looked at and arrived at their conclusion lived.
Weak...
Weak..
Weak!
That’s what you are, Ren. You’ll never be anything else.
I’d heard it from bullies. I’d heard it from teachers. I’d heard it long enough that there were days it stopped needing an external source.
Ember was standing over the sa way they’d all stood over . Looking down from whatever altitude victory put you at. Waiting.
"Why do you keep going?" Her voice had changed. The entertainnt was still there, but underneath it was actual curiosity. Real interest in the answer. "Every person I’ve fought has begged to stop. You keep getting up instead. Why?"
I laughed.
It ca out genuine, which surprised slightly.
"What’s funny?" she asked.
"The begging part." I found her eyes. "I genuinely can’t picture soone looking at you and deciding that begging was going to work." I let that sit for a second. "Also, you’re just a brat."
The kick arrived at the last syllable. Full force, no warning. I rolled several tres across the ground before friction had an opinion about it, and when I stopped, blood had found its way to my lips from sowhere that had strong feelings about the evening’s events.
Right. This is probably where it ends.
There was no three-life system here. No reset point waiting to put back at the beginning. This was the version with real stakes, and the version with real stakes was running out of ti.
Ember walked toward .
It was the first ti she’d moved from her original position since the fight began. She covered the distance slowly, no urgency in it, and stood over with her face in shadow and her purple eyes catching the red moonlight.
"Interesting." She said it quietly, like it was ant for herself as much as for . Then she tilted her head and rubbed her fingers against her chin, working sothing out. "You know what, I’ll let you live." Sothing settled in her expression. A decision made. "You’ll be a good playmate. When the ti is right."
She turned and walked back toward the temple doors.
"Get stronger and find , Ren." Her voice carried back over the cold air without her turning around. "I’ll be waiting."
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