The sunlight at the end of the corridor blurred my vision — but it was the screams that made me understand where we were going.
The sound climbed the stone walls like something alive, a muffled roar made of voices that mixed and fed on one another. The kind of noise that only exists in places where people gather to see blood.
"Rookie, I strongly suggest you apologize to Viego."
Rose walked beside me with steps that no longer had the calm cadence of before. Her voice had changed — the secretary who translated bad news into palatable sentences now seemed genuinely concerned, and the genuine concern of that woman, I had already noticed, was something rare enough to deserve attention.
The man who caused that concern walked a few meters ahead. Unconcerned. Whistling. With his hands in his pockets and the posture of someone going for a stroll in the park and not to a fight he himself had provoked. Each step of his was long, lazy, carrying the weight of someone who was in no hurry because the world waited for him, not the other way around.
Rose's words made my blood boil more and more — but not in the direction she wanted. I wanted to prove myself. Needed to see what I was in relation to others like me — humans who had gone to the Oasis and returned different. Of course I didn't think myself the strongest. I didn't have that presumption. But I felt, with an urgency that came from a place deeper than vanity, that I needed to measure myself against someone who wasn't so far from me in time, only in advantages.
Viego was a noble. Probably, just like Eris, he had had massive investment since day one. Chose when to enter. Chose how to prepare. Had access to everything I didn't — training, resources, structure, the choice of building a path instead of being thrown into one. What I wanted to know was simple: how far was I from someone who was and still is privileged since the beginning?
The nervousness was real. I felt my body cracking with each step, the joints responding to the rhythmic advance with pops that came from within like warnings. But alongside the nervousness, an addictive adrenaline — the kind I only felt before fighting something that could kill me.
"What do you know about this Viego?"
The shock on Rose's face was almost comic. The heterochromatic eyes widened — the violet and the black opening in unison as though I had asked whether water was wet.
"What do you mean you don't know anything about the person you challenged?" Her voice came out in an indignant whisper, her hand squeezing the tablet against her chest. "If you had paid attention to the presumption of how he acted with me and especially with Nicolai's daughter, you wouldn't be asking this stupid question!"
Her face went red while she measured her voice so Viego wouldn't hear. It was funny — but it also said a lot about what that man, walking a few meters ahead without caring about anything, caused in the people around him.
"So he's strong."
Viego turned his face in my direction without stopping his walk — a casual turn, almost lazy, with an ironic smile that seemed to have been born on that face and never left.
"I hope you're not thinking of giving up, rookie." His voice was deep, but light, like thunder coming from afar — the kind that isn't yet hostile but warns that it's coming. "Honestly, I really need this — I'm pretty rusty in a fight against another human."
Before I could respond, the light that obstructed the corridor opened up.
✦ ✦ ✦
Arenas.
An enormous space, ample and open, embraced by the castle walls on all sides like a central courtyard someone had decided to transform into a battlefield. Corridors like the one I had just exited opened at regular intervals along the walls — mouths of stone that poured out people and swallowed echoes. The artificial sun beat directly on the center, without shadow, without mercy, transforming the white limestone of the arenas into something that shone too brightly to look at directly.
And arenas were what there was no shortage of.
I counted at least twenty — built in a simple fashion, using enormous blocks of white limestone lined up at least a meter in height, forming irregular rectangles that delimited the fighting spaces. Some bore clear signs of wear: deep grooves from cutting weapons crossing the stone surfaces, cracks that showed where blows had missed the target and hit the limestone. Others, farther to the side — near where I stood — lay on the ground as though they had been broken by something and simply replaced by new ones.
"Every day we restructure the arenas." Rose made a point of explaining while my eyes still scanned the place. Her voice had returned to its professional tone — the urgency of someone who knew the time for me to understand where I was was short and wanted to give me the maximum information possible. "Those destroyed stones are the remnants of exchanges between our fighters."
Every day.
They destroyed limestone arenas every day.
I was still processing what that meant in terms of strength and investment when the screams began.
"HEYYY! LOOK! VIEGO'S HERE!"
"Hey, everyone, look over there!"
"VIEGO!"
"VIEGO!"
The screams of recognition and worship transformed that place into something that resembled more a cult than a training arena. Hundreds of men and women — bodies sweating from constant fighting, faces marked by scars the Oasis had given and that they wore like medals — stopped what they were doing and turned in the direction of the man who now walked among the arenas like someone crossing a corridor of honor.
The god they seemed to worship was the blond who now raised his arm in an excessive manner, absorbing each scream, each gaze, each gram of adoration with the naturalness of someone who breathes.
"FRIENDSSS! FRIENDSSS! CALMM DOWNN!"
Viego's gentle words asked for silence — and the silence came. Immediate. Obedient. Hundreds of people stopping talking at the same time because one man raised his hand. The kind of control that isn't won with fear — it's won with something more dangerous: worship.
The only people who didn't stop training were a few dozen at the far end, in a more distant arena, separated from the rest by a distance that seemed intentional. Their clothes had a distinct color, uniform among themselves — red and black — that told me they didn't belong to House Unicorn. They were from another family, another lineage, and their clothes were the clearest way of saying they didn't belong in that place. They trained among themselves with a silent intensity that completely ignored Viego's spectacle.
Viego observed them. The irritated face lasted half a second — the fraction he needed to register that someone wasn't paying attention to him — but he soon ignored it, returning to the audience that seemed in ecstasy at hearing his voice.
"Friends, one and all, and everyone present!" His voice filled the space with the rehearsed projection of someone who had given that speech before. "Today we have a rookie from the farms!"
A volley of boos erupted from the surrounding arenas.
Dozens of fighters screaming, laughing, pointing — more concerned with seeming loyal to Viego than in knowing who I was. I felt the weight of those boos the way you feel rain: it soaks, it annoys, but it doesn't knock you down.
"I know, I know, friends!" Viego continued, his hands raised asking for calm with the false modesty of someone who adores every second of it. "However, we need to give this lower caste the opportunity to show his worth." His eyes turned to me — and the smile I saw there wasn't amusement. It was contempt wrapped in charm. "After all, the one standing before you wishes to take my place."
The screams of rage and disgust rose like a wave.
And burned something inside me.
Not the rage. The rage was already there — present, constant, hot. What burned was the patience. The part of me that was still trying to be civilized, that still thought maybe this could be resolved with good sense and a few good punches. That part died there, buried beneath the boos of people who called me lower caste without knowing a single thing about what I had done, about what I had lost, about the price I paid to be standing.
But I needed control. The moment hadn't come yet.
"Easy, easy!" Viego raised his hands again — the shepherd calming the flock before delivering the lamb. "I know you're angry, but don't worry." He looked at me with a smile on his face. "I proposed something simple: a fight. The winner takes all, while the loser submits completely and unconditionally." The smile widened. "What do you think?"
The screams for me to accept competed with the boos. The noise was deafening — hundreds of voices fused into a pressure that came from all sides, pushing, squeezing, trying to crush me before the fight began.
In the background, the group in red and black had stopped training. They were standing, motionless, observing the scene with an attention the others didn't have — the attention of those who measure before they judge.
Viego looked upward.
I followed his gaze.
And up there — dozens of meters high, at the top of the castle — I saw the structure that gripped the young man's arrogant attention.
A platform that jutted out over the arena like a jaw of stone, projecting several meters beyond the castle wall. From below, I could see the dark stone floor and, above it, walls and ceiling entirely of glass — a room suspended in the air, curved in a half-moon, like a balcony someone had hung from the top of the world to have the best view of what happened below. The glass reflected the artificial sun but not enough to hide what was inside: silhouettes. Eight, perhaps more, seated in enormous chairs arranged in an arc before the front panel. Elders. I couldn't distinguish faces at that distance, but the posture was unmistakable — that of those who settle into a high place and observe what happens below with the tranquility of someone watching ants organize themselves.
So that was what he wanted.
A circus.
And I was the clown. At least that's what he thought.
Something broke inside me. Not with drama — no crash, no visible crack. Just the silent sound of a decision being made in a place that didn't ask permission.
I no longer wanted to be part of that farce.
I brought my hand to my pocket, gripping something nobody besides me would recognize.
"Daughter. Come to me."
Arachne appeared.
Not slowly. Not gradually. She materialized from the Vivarium with the violence of something born ready — and the space that before seemed enormous suddenly seemed far too small. Her body rose in the middle of the arenas, the eight legs opening and settling on the white limestone with an authority that made the stones groan and crack, each one crushing the edge of a different arena. Twelve meters of chitin and silk and black eyes that descended upon hundreds of nobles like a god looking at insects that had just been discovered.
The silence that followed was absolute.
Not the silence of respect. The silence of terror.
The same fighters who seconds ago booed and laughed now retreated, stumbling over one another, falling onto the limestone blocks, dropping weapons, their faces white with something the simulations and the robots and the years of training had never prepared them for: the real fear of something that wasn't an exercise.
I leapt onto Arachne's head.
She received me as always — the minimal tilt that eased my climb, the adjustment of the legs to stabilize me, the familiarity of someone who does it often enough for it to be reflex and not gesture. I stood atop her, twelve meters above the ground, and looked down.
If they wanted to demonstrate power and humiliate what they thought was weak, I would have no consideration whatsoever.
I shouted.
"VERY WELL, NOBLE WARRIORS!" My voice descended upon that courtyard like something that carried weight. "You who from your cradles and your privileges dominated the Oasis! Well then — here stands someone who didn't have the same advantage!" I opened my arms over Arachne, over that immense body that was my daughter, my war, my answer to everything that world had thrown at me. "So what I expect from you is that you show me your worth!"
The silence remained. Nobody booed. Nobody screamed. Nobody did absolutely anything — because when you're looking up at a spider the size of a house with a man standing on top of it, the only things that work are the eyes and the instinct, and both were saying the same thing: "shut up and pay attention."
My gaze descended to Viego.
He was still standing. Hadn't retreated. Hadn't fallen. His face was a mixture of surprise and something I respected without wanting to: he wasn't afraid. Surprised, yes — shocked, perhaps — but his feet remained planted on the ground and his body remained upright, and that said more about him than any speech he could give.
"You who command these idiots." My voice descended to him like a blade. "I'm going to put you in your place. So let's get this over with." I raised my finger and pointed at the glass rectangle at the top of the castle — the elders' hall, the elderly silhouettes, the eyes I knew were wide open even without being able to see them. "I'm sure whoever's up there is going to be very curious to see what the battle leader can do against a mere human from the farm."