The Executioner stepped fully into the pit.

  It walked forward and let the dirt take its weight, each footfall made the packed earth shiver.

  It was taller than any greenskin he’d seen. Taller than the Bison Latifrons had been. Its shoulders were a slab, too wide to be natural, armor plates stacked and riveted like someone had tried to build a walking cannon and then decided to give it arms.

  The axes it carried were obscene.

  Each one was a double?bladed monster—heads broader than a wagon wheel, edges honed into a cold, bright line. The hafts were wrapped in dark leather, thick as fence posts. They looked like tools meant to fell trees the size of houses.

  The boy stood with the Beastmaster’s Spear in both hands and felt, in a sick, familiar way, the same thing he’d felt when the Tyrant Lizard King came through the jungle.

  Not I can’t win.

  Just—

  This is going to hurt.

  Above him, the stands stirred. Elves leaned forward, leaf?cloaks rustling. Their eyes glittered. Their mouths curved.

  At the front tier, Princess Imrahil gripped the railing with white knuckles, one leg stiff and wrong beside her. The staff?wielding elf stood a step behind her, staff planted like a root, his face carved into calm contempt.

  “Kill that lowly insect!” Imrahil screamed again, voice raw enough to scrape. “Splatter his organs on the soil!”

  The Executioner looked at the boy.

  There was no face to read—only a helm with no slit he could see, only a smooth front plate that caught the light and gave nothing back. Where a man would breathe, there was nothing. Where a man would shift his weight like he was alive, the Executioner did not.

  Then it moved.

  Fast.

  The first step was heavy. The second was heavier. By the third it was charging, armor plates clanking, axes lifting high as if the air itself was something it could split.

  The boy’s body went cold and time seemed to slow down as his eyes narrowed. He stepped off line.

  The first axe came down where his head had been, and the world exploded.

  Dirt and root fragments and dust blasted up in a spray. The shockwave slapped his face. His ears rang. The edge of the blade bit deep enough into packed earth that it stuck for a fraction of a heartbeat.

  The boy used that heartbeat. He lunged and drove the spearhead into the Executioner’s side—right under the arm, where armor always had to open for movement.

  The spearhead hit metal.

  It did not slide in.

  It did not even hit anything.

  It rang like a hammer strike on an anvil and skated away in a shower of pale sparks that flickered and died. The impact jolted up his arms and into his shoulders. The Executioner ripped its axe free and swung the other one in a flat, horizontal arc that would have taken the boy in half.

  He threw himself backward, spine bending, boots digging, and felt the wind of that blade brush his coat. He landed hard, rolled, and came up with the spear already leveled.

  Again. Again. Again.

  He tried the knee. The elbow. The neck. The seam where the breastplate met the waist. Each thrust was clean. Each time the spear answered with the same hateful truth.

  Metal.

  Hard.

  Unyielding.

  The Executioner came on without caution, without fear of overextending, without any sense of protecting itself because it had never needed to. It chopped at him as if it could chop the world until the boy stopped moving.

  The boy dodged left and the axe buried itself in the earth, tearing a trench. He dodged right and the second axe missed him by inches and struck the roots lining the pit wall. The roots that made up the arena ribs shivered and bled faint green light along their veins.

  The Executioner didn’t care.

  It yanked the blade free and swung again, and the boy only barely got the spear shaft up in time to meet the haft instead of the edge. The impact nearly tore the spear from his hands.

  His palms burned. His wrists screamed. He skidded back in the dirt, boots leaving furrows, and for a heartbeat he saw the spear bend—just a hair.

  He recovered, breath harsh in his chest.

  He had fought men.

  He had fought monsters.

  This was something else entirely.

  This was like trying to fight a falling tree.

  Only the tree chased him.

  The Executioner feinted—if it could even be called that. It brought one axe down hard enough to make him commit to dodging, then the other came through in the space his dodge created.

  The boy saw it late.

  Not too late. Never too late—because Dexterity did what it did now, because his body moved before panic had time to tell him what to do. He twisted sideways. The axe edge caught him anyway. Not a clean cut. A glancing bite along his ribs, shallow enough that it didn’t open him to air, deep enough that he felt skin tear and blood warm his side.

  Pain flared.

  His Vitality turned the bright spike into a hard ache, turning the open rush into a stubborn ooze that slowed before it could become a spill.

  The crowd made a happy sound. Imrahil laughed, sharp and ugly.

  “Bleed,” she hissed. “Bleed, Hollow.”

  He didn’t look at her. He kept his eyes on the Executioner.

  It attacked again. And again.

  The hour stretched itself out of moments. He learned the Executioner’s rhythm.

  Two heavy swings. One short hook meant to catch him if he ran. Then a charge—always a charge—meant to trample him under sheer mass and let the axes finish the job. He stopped trying to stab through the plates. He started trying to move the thing.

  The spear became a lever instead of a blade.

  When the Executioner swung and overcommitted, the boy stepped in close enough that the metal smell of it filled his nose and jammed the spear shaft under the back of its knee and heaved with every ounce of Strength he had.

  The Executioner’s leg buckled a fraction.

  Not much.

  But enough.

  It stumbled forward, one heavy step turning into two, the axes dipping as it had to catch itself.

  The crowd hissed in irritation. The boy didn’t stop. He darted to the side and jabbed the spear butt into the back of its ankle joint and used its own momentum against it—like tripping a mule that didn’t want to stop running. The Executioner lurched. Its axe head clipped the dirt wrong.

  The whole walking fortress went down to one knee. For half a heartbeat, the stands went quiet. Imrahil’s mouth opened. The staff?elf’s eyes narrowed. The boy lunged for the helm. If there was any place, any gap, any weakness, it would be there. He drove the spearhead straight at the center of the faceplate with everything he had. The tip struck. Sparks burst.

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  The plate dented—barely, a shallow dimple. It did not puncture. He felt the spear shudder. He felt the recoil in his bones. The Executioner rose anyway, almost lazy about it, as if falling had been a mild inconvenience.

  It swung one axe backward without looking. The edge caught the spear shaft. The Beastmaster’s Spear did not snap, but a long, ugly gouge appeared along the pale wood, blackened at the edges like something had tried to burn its way through.

  The boy’s stomach tightened.

  That spear was his class. His leash. His lifeline.

  The Executioner came in again, and the boy went back to running.

  He ducked one swing and felt the blade shave hair off his scalp. He rolled under another and came up with dirt in his mouth. He tried to parry a third and the impact tore skin off his palm, blood slicking the grip.

  He could feel bruises blooming under his ribs where the shockwaves hit. He could feel a thin ache in his left knee where he’d landed wrong twice. He could feel his shoulder where the net had bitten him earlier, the old soreness waking up under new strain.

  Vitality kept knitting.

  It did not make him immortal.

  The Executioner’s axe head clipped him in the thigh—haft and metal both—and it felt like being kicked by a horse. He went airborne for a heartbeat, slammed down, saw white, forced air back into his lungs.

  The crowd roared. They wanted him broken. They wanted him crawling.

  He got up anyway.

  He looked at the armor again.

  No slits. No seams big enough. No exposed joints.

  He wasn’t even sure there was a body beneath those plates.

  Still, he kept watching. Kept learning. Kept waiting for the one mistake.

  The Executioner did not make mistakes. But the arena did.

  On one wild charge, when the boy’s boot slipped in a patch of dried bile—green stain left from the plague toad’s death—the boy lurched sideways and barely saved himself from falling under the next axe swing. The Executioner’s momentum carried it forward anyway. It shouldered into the blue dome. The barrier hummed and flared.

  Blue light rippled outward in concentric rings, like a stone dropped into a pond of glass. But the Executioner did not even slow.

  It hit the dome with its shoulder and the dome bent like a curtain of hard water, held for a breath, and then rebounded, throwing the Executioner backward a step.

  No smoke and no burning. Nothing. The armor came away clean. The crowd laughed—at the Executioner, at him, at the whole ugly dance. The boy’s eyes narrowed.

  Again.

  A later swing—too wide, too hungry—sent the Executioner’s axe edge screaming into the blue.

  The barrier flashed. The axe did not melt. The metal did not glow. The Executioner did not recoil as if hurt. It just dragged the blade free and came back at him like the dome wasn’t even there.

  Something in the boy’s chest shifted.

  The dome hurts me.

  It doesn’t hurt it.

  Which meant the dome wasn’t simply a wall.

  It had its own rules and followed them. And rules were something he could use. He ran again, drawing the Executioner across the pit, keeping distance, letting it swing until its own weight started to work against it. He forced it to hit the dome again—once, twice—watching the ripple, watching the strain in the blue.

  He saw it then, a moment where the dome’s light went thinner near the rim, where it kissed the grown platforms and the railings—where the staff?elf stood above, staff planted, as if anchoring the whole spell with his hands and his hatred.

  The boy’s gaze flicked up. The staff?elf’s eyes met his for half a heartbeat.

  And the staff?elf smiled like he already knew what the boy was thinking. As if daring him.

  The boy’s mouth went tight.

  All right.

  He stopped trying to win the fight. He began pulling the Executioner toward that section of the dome.

  Toward the front tier.

  Toward Imrahil.

  The princess leaned over the railing, one hand clawed into living wood, the other shaking with rage and pain.

  “Stop running!” she screamed. “Fight it! Die like a man!”

  The boy ignored her. He ran until his lungs burned and his legs felt like hot wire. He ran until the sound of the crowd became a physical thing pressing on him from above. He ran until his vision tunneled and the Executioner’s axes became nothing but silver flashes and wind. He took a hit across the shoulder—flat, not edge—something that cracked deep and made his arm go numb for a breath. He nearly dropped the spear.

  He kept it.

  He took a glancing cut along his forearm that reopened the place the arrow had gone in.

  Blood slicked his fingers again.

  He kept moving.

  The crowd screamed. They chanted.

  “Executioner!”

  “Hollow!”

  “Filth!”

  “Kill!”

  He could barely hear his own breathing over it. Could barely hear the scrape of his boots on dirt. He could feel the dome behind him without looking now, a humming pressure at his back like standing too close to a hot stove—except cold, except wrong.

  He reached the edge.

  And stopped.

  The boy turned and faced the Executioner. The crowd’s roar swelled, sensing the shift. Imrahil leaned in so close her face was only a few feet beyond the blue. The staff?elf stepped beside her, staff lifted, eyes shining with a hard, hungry anticipation.

  The Executioner came straight for him.

  The boy lowered his spear. Let it rest against his thigh, tip angled down. Then he lifted both hands, open, palms out. A surrender gesture. A taunt. A dare.

  His heart hammered so hard it made his vision pulse. He could feel his own sweat drying cold on his skin. He could feel the bruise?ache of an hour’s worth of near?death. He could feel the edge of the dome humming at his back. And he could feel the Executioner’s shadow swallowing him as it charged.

  Behind the blue, Imrahil screamed something in Elvish that sounded like a curse and a prayer twisted together.

  The staff?elf shouted back, voice cutting through the crowd like a blade. The boy didn’t hear the words.

  He watched the Executioner’s axes lift.

  Watched the moment where it committed—fully, recklessly—because it did not know how to do anything else.

  And then, near the final breath before the collision, he reached inward.

  [Bestiary].

  He grabbed the newest line.

  And yanked.

  A door opened in the dirt of the pit.

  A tear in the air, a sudden wrongness, and then a thing slammed into existence with a wet thud that shook the arena floor.

  The [Giant One?Eyed Plague Toad].

  Wagon?sized. Horned. One bulging, lidless eye swiveling as it tasted the air.

  Its mouth sagged open, dripping green bile that smoked where it hit the dirt. The crowd screamed—half delight, half outrage. Imrahil’s face snapped toward it, eyes wide. The staff?elf’s expression broke for the first time—real shock flickering through the practiced contempt.

  “Beastmaster,” someone hissed up in the stands, like the word was a slur.

  The boy didn’t give them time to process.

  “Go,” he rasped, voice raw.

  The toad’s throat pulsed.

  It hopped away. It launched itself to the far side of the pit in a single, heavy bound, landing with a wet slap that sent a spray of bile flecking across the dirt. It crouched low there, huge body coiled, eye fixed.

  The Executioner did not slow. It did not turn for the new monster. It was locked on the boy. It sprinted even faster now.

  Axes coming down.

  The boy held his hands out wider.

  Come on, then.

  He could not dodge.

  Not with the dome at his back. Not with the Executioner’s reach covering the entire space in front of him.

  This was the whole point. This was why he’d waited. This was why he’d saved the beast for the last second.

  The Executioner’s shadow swallowed him.

  The axe edge flashed. The boy felt the air cut.

  And then—

  The toad’s tongue snapped out. A barbed, glistening cord, thick as rope and fast as a whip. It wrapped around the boy’s chest under the arms, barbs biting fabric and skin, slime burning cold against his ribs.

  It yanked and the boy flew sideways.

  Hard.

  It ripped him off his feet and dragged him across the dirt like a hooked fish. Pain flared along his sides where the barbs scraped.

  He didn’t care.

  Because the Executioner’s charge didn’t stop.

  It had already committed. Its axes were already in motion. It hit the blue dome where the boy had been standing.

  And the dome—

  Broke.

  Shattering.

  Blue light splintered like glass. Shards of it sprayed outward in a silent burst, vanishing as they flew, leaving a jagged hole where a perfect curve had been. The crowd’s roar turned into a single, sharp sound of terror as the Executioner went through. It didn’t slow for the stands. Didn’t even seem to register that the world beyond the dome existed.

  It barreled forward like a runaway wagon with axes for hands.

  Princess Imrahil was directly in its path.

  The staff?wielding elf was beside her.

  For one heartbeat, the boy saw Imrahil’s face—not hatred now.

  Shock.

  Fear.

  She tried to step back on her ruined leg.

  She couldn’t.

  The Executioner hit the platform.

  Wood exploded.

  Living roots snapped and screamed. Imrahil vanished under metal and momentum. Gold blood sprayed in a bright, wrong fan across the railing.

  The staff?elf raised his staff as if he could command the world to stop.

  The Executioner’s shoulder took him next.

  He folded like cloth, crushed against the grown wood, and for a split second his eyes met the boy’s across distance and chaos—still full of contempt, still full of certainty—

  And then his body was simply gone, ground into the platform under that impossible weight.

  The dome above the pit shivered. The remaining blue light flickered and then collapsed. The last thin sheen of blue winked away, leaving open air where the lid had been.

  A thousand elf voices broke into screams.

  And the Executioner—

  The Executioner froze and began seizing.

  A shudder ran through its armor from helm to heel like something inside it had just been struck by lightning. Then light bloomed from beneath the plates.

  Fire.

  Orange?white, brutal, hungry.

  It spilled out of the seams of its armor, licking from the joints, flaring through tiny gaps that hadn’t existed a second ago. The metal plates began to glow from within, as if the thing had been a furnace all along and someone had finally opened the door.

  The Executioner burst into flames from the inside.