The echo of the hissing water had long since faded in Silarias’ cold, stone rest chamber when the rhythmic tapping against the thick glass forced him to abandon his meditation. His quiet was over. With a cold, purposeful movement, Silarias rose from the edge of the wooden bed. His heavy footsteps left an almost invisible imprint on the stone floor as he moved toward the corner of the room where his specific gear was waiting. It was time to bury Silarias and let his undercover persona rise once more.
With a brutal, fluid motion, he pulled the deep, ash-gray robes over his massive shoulders. As he wrapped the fabric around his torso, the spiritual energy of the disguise activated with a violent impact. The air surrounding his face immediately began to vibrate and warp from an intense, layered heat. It was as if reality itself were being scorched away before his face; a thick, viscous haze of glowing heatwaves and flickering, jet-black ash particles formed like an impenetrable mask. His true features vanished completely behind a pulsating, unnatural heat barrier that emitted faint sparks of dark fire every time he breathed. Wrapped in the folds of the robes, his stature seemed all the more threatening, a walking furnace masking his true divine pressure under the identity of a brutal, mysterious gladiator. He did this purely to avoid commotion; no one could know who he truly was right now. That reveal would have to wait until the entire tournament was behind them.
Silarias walked to the heavy window and looked straight down through the thick glass pane into the deep, shadowed alley adjoining the private complex. His pupils narrowed beneath the glowing haze. Down there, in the sparse light of the lanterns, stood Nyx. On either side of her, she held little Miki and young Ren. Silarias felt his heart instantly leap straight into his throat with brute force. A wave of pure, unadulterated recognition and an instinctive surge of protectiveness coursed through his veins, though he struggled to maintain his composure within his disguise. What on earth were they doing here, so close to the danger of the inner sectors?
Down in the alley, Nyx looked up, knowing someone was watching her from behind the glass. She tapped the two children on their backs with a casual, gentle, almost playful nudge to encourage them. Miki giggled and squeezed Ren’s arm, after which the two little ones let their voices ring out in unison with a tight, scripted tone clearly rehearsed with Nyx beforehand, even though deep down, Ren and Miki genuinely wanted to say it themselves:
“Yeeah… I promised them I’d set up a meeting!!.. right.”
Ren immediately looked up with wide eyes and tugged at Nyx’s dress. “Do you think he’s really as strong as he was on the big screen, Miki? He looked like a walking volcano!”
“Way stronger, dummy!” Miki shouted with a big swing of her small arms, punching wildly into the air. “He smashes everything with one blow! He just chops those monsters into tiny pieces like it’s nothing!”
Nyx tried to hide her nerves, hushing the children in a soft yet trembling voice. “Shh, quiet, you two. Mind your manners. We’re not here to wake up the whole neighborhood.”
A heavy, warm laugh escaped Silarias’ heat-shrouded chest, his voice deep and distorted by the barrier echoing across the square:
“Haha… Anything for the little ones!?, could you step back a bit?”
A little further down in the depths of that same alley, half-hidden in the darkness on a row of wooden crates, sat Nicola and Apollo. A heavy jug of strong liquor stood between them, and they were taking deep gulps. A raw, unmistakable atmosphere of a brotherly bond hung between the two men. Without words, they understood each other’s weight; both carried the crushing pressure and suffocating expectations of an almighty, unyielding family.
“It never stops, does it?” Nicola muttered, wiping the jug and passing it over. “If it’s not your own blood pulling at you, it’s the chaos they leave in their wake. You get completely consumed by that damn mess of a legacy. We’re always the ones who have to stand tall when the ground caves in.”
Apollo took a deep swig, his throat burning as he swallowed the liquid, his gaze fixed tightly on the dark walls. “Tell me about it, man. You breathe the name of your family like it’s pure poison, but you can’t spit it out. It’s in your bones. And look at those guys of ours in there. Beat and Blitz. They’re practically copies of each other, Nicola. Not normal fighters, but walking natural disasters of pure chaos and brute force. They just laugh while they tear the whole place down, and who gets to clean up the damn mess afterward? Us, that’s who.”
Nicola gave a bitter laugh and nodded slowly, his eyes heavy from the drink and fatigue. “Exactly that. Us, yeah, the suckers behind the scenes. You’re always standing in their burning shadow. You’re the architect in the dark while they set the whole world ablaze. But somewhere… damn it, somewhere you respect that brute force too, no matter how infuriating and exhausting it is. At least they actually do something.”
“It’s like watching a lightning strike,” Apollo said, staring thoughtfully at the bottom of the jug. “You know damn well it destroys everything it touches, that nothing stays whole, but you simply can’t tear your eyes away from it.”
Midway through his next sentence, just as Nicola was about to bring the jug back to his mouth, he stopped abruptly. His arm froze halfway in the air. Half-tipsy, he stared straight ahead at the open square of the alley with a deadpan, focused gaze.
“What’s up with you?” Apollo asked, raising an eyebrow as he gave Nicola a nudge. “You seeing ghosts or something? Keep drinking.”
“Look up there, idiot,” Nicola whispered in a sudden, icy tone that instantly sobered Apollo up. “Up there.”
Triggered by the sudden, chilling shift in the atmosphere, Apollo looked in the exact same direction Nicola was staring out of pure curiosity. Their eyes locked at the precise moment the air above them burst open.
Silarias launched himself from the high window frame, diving straight down at explosive speed. He made a brutal, perpendicular dive, his ash-gray robes billowing wildly behind him. The air around him burst into flames; bright, crackling tendrils of jet-black fire whistled past his body, viciously swallowing the shadows off the walls. With a deafening crash, he slammed into the center of the stone floor. The impact sent a shockwave through the alley. The ground beneath his boots shattered into a deep spiderweb of cracks, while a ring of heavy, pulsating heat and jet-black smoke was violently blown outward for meters, blasting dust against the walls.
Any fear the children might have felt melted away instantly in the face of pure spectacle. Ren and Miki immediately went wild like children do, jumping and waving their arms as if they had just witnessed the most insane attraction ever:
“Mister, can I maybe get a high five.. and what else can you do, Flamo??”
“Show that fire again!” Ren shouted super enthusiastically, running wildly around the large, smoking figure. “Do that trick with those black flames from before! That was way too cool!”
Silarias slowly rose from his crouched position, the black flames around his wrists extinguishing with a hissing sound, though the heat barrier continued to pulse intensely around his face. At that exact moment, as he turned his head, Silarias and Nyx locked eyes directly. The spiritual connection was so intense that Nyx’s entire confidence was scorched away in a single fraction of a second. She lost her composure completely; her cheeks turned deep red, and she began drooling with her mouth half-open at the brutal, imposing presence of the man before her.
Silarias kept his focus strictly under control, attempting to handle the situation professionally to protect his secret. He began to introduce himself in a heavy, formal voice under his alias:
“Flamo is the name.”
“Wow, Flamo!” Miki shouted, pulling boldly at his ash-gray robe. “You’re way bigger than on those magical screens! Do you always smell like burnt wood?”
To break the tension, he immediately bent forward, lifted Miki and Ren into the air simultaneously with effortless ease using his massive arms, and began playfully tossing them around.
“High flyers!” Silarias laughed in his heavy, distorted voice, catching them with a smooth motion. The children shrieked with laughter, their little hands waving wildly through the air.
“Again, Flamo! Higher! Throw me higher!” Ren called out, out of breath from laughing.
Silarias set them down gently and switched his attention back to Nyx. He stepped forward, attempting to offer her a formal handshake. But Nyx was so completely overwhelmed by the proximity of his intense pressure and the heavy heat radiating from him that her legs simply refused to function. She lost her balance and stumbled backward with wide eyes.
Out of pure, lightning-fast instinct, Silarias’ arm shot forward. He grabbed her firmly and decisively by her waist and shoulder, pulling her upright with a short, powerful tug to break her fall. The heat barrier around his face remained imperviously vibrating, revealing not a single trace of his true identity.
“Watch out,” he said in a heavy, mechanically distorted voice, maintaining his undercover persona with absolute strength. “You look pale.”
Nyx flushed deep red all the way behind her ears, her entire face ablaze. Her breathing shifted completely into wild, irregular gasps. That intense proximity and the raw, masculine pressure of this mysterious gladiator were simply too much for her to handle. She became completely flustered and needed an immediate outlet for her overloaded, nervous energy:
“Oh man, you really dare, don't you..”
She discharged her powers wildly and instinctively out of pure panic. With a fierce swing, she aimed her hand sideways. A blinding, concentrated beam of moonlight shot from her palm, slicing through the air. The beam struck a colossal bale of hay at the end of the alley, and the impact was catastrophic; with a bright flash of light, the energy perforated the object and pulverized it into fine, glowing ash dust within a microsecond, drifting through the alley like a shimmering mist. Blushing intensely, sweat on her forehead, she stared in shock with wide, trembling eyes at the total emptiness where the bale had just been resting:
“I uhh sorry.. I don't know.. What?!”
Her gaze shot across the open square and locked onto two figures behind a row of wooden barrels. There stood Jane and Aurelius, who was currently disguised under his Photo persona. Jane had no idea that the figure beside her was actually her own Aurelius. But the heavy, pure, and unmistakable scent of his body hung so thick and warm around the Photo disguise that it completely overwhelmed her senses. That familiar, masculine scent surged so deep into her nostrils that it drove her completely wild. She lost all control, began purring softly like a comfortable kitten, and squeezed the disguised Aurelius’ arm lustfully. Arching her back, she began drooling aloud at the memory of the brutal feats she had just seen Photo commit in the arena.
“Oh gods… that scent… it’s so ridiculously warm…” Jane murmured in her passionate haze, pressing herself against the Photo disguise. Her cheeks glowed deep red beneath her mask. “Those strikes, that divine power of his… it’s driving me insane… I want him to take me…”
Aurelius tried frantically to maintain his composure beneath his Photo persona, his own face bright red from pure panic and embarrassment as she snuggled so closely against him. “J-Jane… calm down, everyone’s looking,” he whispered in a trembling, poorly distorted voice, attempting to take a step back.
Silarias’ sharp gaze followed Nyx’s shocked eyes immediately, and his distorted voice cut through the alley hard and authoritative like the crack of a whip:
“PHOTO!”
Jane snapped out of her erotic trance with an immense jolt. With a bright red, completely caught-red-handed face, she looked toward the group, realized the total, humiliating blunder she had just made in front of everyone, and let go of Photo’s arm. Aurelius, sensing trouble and terrified that his identity would be leaked, activated his powers. In a flash of blinding light, he bolted off like a man possessed, leaving a bright trail of fading light behind to hide his deep shame.
Nyx screamed out in pure bewilderment, stretching her arm out wildly toward the streak of light where Jane had just been leaning a moment ago:
“JANE??”
Miki, who understood none of it and thought it was some weird new game, pointed at Ren with a laugh and shouted in a loud, childish voice:
“REN?!”
“No, idiot, that’s not Jane! Jane was standing right there shaking!” Ren shouted back, shaking his head at her. “Photo just ran off super fast in that light!”
Nyx ignored the children’s confusion entirely and pressed on in the very same breath with wide, suspicious eyes, staring at the spot where the flash had originated:
“Aurelius then?!”
Aurelius, who had come to a stop in the distance under his Photo disguise and was looking back completely stunned, tried with all his might to alter his voice to salvage the situation, staring at Nyx with a trembling, uncertain tone:
“Sorry, I don't know what came over me.. The atmosphere here in the inner sector is just… too intense for me.”
Nyx stared at him intently for a second, recognizing Jane’s deeper emotional chaos like no other, and immediately reclaimed her royal authority to resolve the situation. “You’re not the only one, come..” Reaching down with an imperative gesture, she grabbed Miki and Ren firmly by their hands and gestured for the trembling Jane to follow. “To the bastion. Now.”
“Are we leaving already?” Miki asked, heavily disappointed as she pulled on Nyx’s arm. “I wanted to give Flamo a high five and ask him to do another trick!”
“Yes, we’re going, no more discussion,” Nyx said sternly, though her own heart was still pounding like crazy in her chest from the tension.
Silarias stood motionless in the shadow of the alley. His undercover mask held strong; he kept his mouth firmly shut, saying nothing more to protect his identity. He watched her coolly from behind as the jet-black ash particles kept vibrating around his robes. Nyx looked away sideways with a deeply blushing face, refusing to look back one last time at the gladiator’s smoking form, and walked out of the alley at a quickened pace:
“Good luck out there..”