Silence swallowed the arena the moment Vico vanished into the clouds.
Not a peaceful silence—
a loud, crushing one.
The kind that settles over a battlefield after something impossible has happened.
For a moment, no one moved.
No one breathed.
Then Sanguina—the Sentinel Faction Leader—stepped forward. Her voice cracked through the stillness like a whip:
"All units—move! Take the injured. Bring them to the hospitals. Recover the fallen. Now!"
Her command broke the paralysis.
Enforcers, Sentinels, Medics—everyone scattered into motion. Bodies were lifted, stretchers rushed in, rubble cleared, orders shouted. The colosseum came alive again with frantic urgency.
Everyone moved—
except three.
Waraabe.
Kongu.
Varga.
They stood frozen, staring at the sky where Vico had disappeared.
Not just shocked by the destruction.
Not just shaken by Arbokh.
But shattered by the truth that hit harder than any strike:
Vico was alive.
He didn't remember them.
And he wasn't their friend anymore—
but something else entirely.
Their bodies wouldn't move.
Their minds wouldn't accept it.
Their hearts wouldn't let them breathe.
Hours later…
The arena had been evacuated, every survivor transported to hospitals across the district. Report after report confirmed it:
Multiple casualties.
Multiple fighters in critical condition.
Among the injured:
Vail, brutalized first by Orien, then by Arbokh.
Gaja, his tusk cracked, skull concussed, body beaten to pulp.
Duma, still unconscious, electricity lingering in his muscles like venom.
And Zame, who had been rushed to a Predator private medical facility—one arm completely shattered, several ribs broken, some dangerously close to puncturing his lung, bruising spreading like dark ink beneath his skin.
For a fighter who had taken down more opponents than anyone else in the qualifiers… seeing Zame torn apart like this left even the Predators speechless.
But among the casualties…
among all the broken bodies and near-death reports…
there was one name that cut deepest.
Falko.
For Waraabe, Kongu, and Varga, the weight of his death—combined with the return of a friend who no longer knew them—was almost too much to bear.
Days passed.
Slowly, the survivors began to wake.
Gaja opened his eyes first, groaning as the pain in his cracked tusk and bruised ribs reminded him he was still alive. Vail followed soon after, wrapped in reinforced bandages, each breath scraping painfully through his injuries.
Zame awoke not long after—and the first words out of his mouth were:
"I'm hungry."
And finally—after several agonizing days—Duma stirred.
But unlike the others… for him, recovery wasn't a matter of days. Or even months.
For Duma… it would take years.
The lightning had carved itself deep into his nerves. The damage was permanent. Even awake, he couldn't feel his legs properly—a creeping numbness spreading from his thighs downward. Every flicker of movement sent excruciating pain stabbing through his body like electric daggers.
Doctors whispered words no fighter ever wanted to hear:
"Chronic nerve trauma."
"Permanent side effects."
"He may never move the same again."
Among the three…
Duma was the one whose life had been forever altered.
As soon as each fighter woke, the faction leaders made their way to the recovery rooms.
Atrax.
Sanguina.
Aevor.
Savran.
None arrived with hostility.
None with judgment.
Only urgency.
Each delivered the same message:
"Get up. You're needed."
And so, despite their pain, despite their injuries, despite the weight of everything they had survived… they went.
At last, all six of them were gathered in the same room again.
A long table.
The four faction leaders on one side.
The six warriors on the other—bruised, bandaged, broken, carrying wounds deeper than any hospital could treat.
The atmosphere was thick.
Heavy.
Suffocating.
Because everyone in that room knew—
This meeting wasn't about the tournament anymore.
It was about Vico.
Atrax was the first to speak.
His voice didn't carry anger.
It carried gravity.
"Kongu, Varga, Waraabe." He looked at each of them in turn.
"When the others were still unconscious in the hospital, the three of you told us everything about your past—about Vico, about what happened back then."
His tone darkened—not with fury, but with a long-buried truth clawing its way to the surface.
"I'll tell you something only the four faction leaders know…" Atrax leaned forward slightly. "But remember this—back then, only Savran was a faction leader."
He tapped a finger on the table—sharp, cold, echoing through the room.
"Twelve years ago, I heard about a case… one that sent chills down my predecessor's spine."
Everyone leaned in.
"A child was killed." His voice dropped to a low, grim whisper. "And another child—"
Atrax pointed directly at Varga.
"—you—found a black scale that had no match anywhere on record."
Varga stiffened.
Waraabe's jaw locked.
Even Zame's eyes narrowed.
"At that moment," Atrax continued, "my predecessor knew something was wrong."
He clasped his hands together.
"When they analyzed that scale, they discovered it didn't belong to any known hybrid. Not any normal animal. And none of the known Mythics had scales like that."
The room froze.
"But the scale was Mythic. So that meant only one thing—there were other Mythics we didn't know about."
Atrax's expression hardened.
"My predecessor had two choices:
Reveal the truth and risk mass panic…
or bury it so the population wouldn't succumb to fear."
He exhaled slowly.
"He spoke with the other faction leaders, and together… they decided to bury it."
Silence pressed down on the room.
"And now? Now we understand that scale was only the beginning."
He took a breath.
"Because they don't have just one or two Mythics. We believe there are at least seven— including the one Vico called 'Father'… and four of the five known Mythics. After the incident with Arbokh, all but one disappeared completely, which leads us to believe they've aligned themselves with this group."
A chill swept the room.
"I believe that the night Vico 'died'… was the night they kidnapped him."
Shock rippled across the room.
Atrax continued:
"I believe they have a way to sense Mythic potential—even before a child awakens. Even before they manifest anything.
That's how they knew Vico was one of them.
So they took him.
And they probably have a way to force the Mythic awakening inside them… to trigger the mutation."
He sat back.
"And from what we saw that night… they didn't just take him."
His voice dropped to a chilling whisper.
"They recruited him."
© 2025 Moku. All rights reserved. INSTINCTBOUND is an original work by Moku. Unauthorized reproduction or distribution is prohibited.