Chapter 160: S40T7: The South Is Chosen
The crystal felt heavier than ever. It wasn't just the physical weight of the alien quartz against her collarbone, but the gravity of what came next. The Grand Finale. Winners from four teams, all that chaotic ambition funneled into one last arena. Antonella’s fingers brushed the smooth surface, its pulse a silent metronome counting down.
A shift in the light made her look up. The massive, burning sigil of Team East high above them began to dim, its red-gold radiance fading to a dull ember. Simultaneously, across the vast arena floor, the verdant sigil of Team South ignited with a sharp, chlorophyll-green fire. The crowd’s murmuring curiosity swelled, a wave of static anticipation.
Arkan Veyl’s voice cut the air, not from the leader’s platform, but from the very center of the arena floor where he now stood. “Team South. Forward.”
From the shadowed archway beneath the glowing green emblem, they emerged. Binod walked with a calm, measured pace, his hands loose at his sides, his expression a closed door. Jolie followed, her eyes scanning the tiers of spectators and then the other teams’ sectors, her usual playful energy replaced by a sharp, alert wariness. Makvala’s steps were quick, restless, her lips pressed together as if holding back a torrent of words. Anjala moved with a stiff composure, a familiar pressure visible in the set of her shoulders, the careful blankness of her face. Otar trailed last, his silence so profound it seemed deliberate, a choice rather than a retreat.
They formed a loose line before Arkan, the green light from their sigil painting their faces in eerie, shifting hues.
“The structure of Trial Seven adapts to the number of remaining competitors,” Arkan stated, his words precise and chilling. “Team South retains five members. A standard duel bracket would be inefficient. Therefore, an adjustment is made.”
He turned his mercurial gaze toward the East sector. “Taitusi Rayawa. Step forward.”
Taitusi, who had been leaning against the wall catching his breath, jolted upright. He exchanged a quick, confused glance with Antonella before walking out onto the main arena floor, the eyes of the city upon him. The feeling was utterly alien—this wasn’t the frantic energy of competition, but the cold, focused weight of decision.
“Your victory in Trial Three granted you a reward,” Arkan continued, as if reading from a ledger. “That reward is now activated. You will select one member of Team South. The chosen contestant will bypass the preliminary duels and proceed directly to the Team South Final.”
A ripple of shock, sharp and audible, went through the crowd and the Team South line. Makvala’s head snapped toward Arkan, then to Taitusi, her impatience boiling into visible outrage. Jolie’s eyes narrowed, instantly calculating. Binod’s calm mask didn’t slip, but a muscle in his jaw feathered once. Otar simply watched Taitusi, his gaze deep and unblinking.
Taitusi froze. The power was a live wire in his hands. He looked from Arkan’s impassive face to the five people standing before him. His eyes traveled over them, slow and thoughtful.
He looked at Binod first—the quiet, unreadable one. A wildcard. Sending him forward would be safe, maybe too safe. He looked at Jolie, all bright energy and sharp suspicion. A spark in dry tinder. He looked at Makvala, vibrating with indignation. Choosing her would be throwing a lit match into a firework stand.
His eyes slid to Otar. The boy’s silence was a question mark. Would it be a mercy, or a cruelty, to hurl him into a final unprepared?
Finally, his gaze settled on Anjala. She stared back, her dark eyes giving nothing away, her composure a wall. He remembered her from the early trials—the sharp wit, the stubborn resilience, the way she’d won her duel in Trial Five not with flash, but with a cold, relentless precision that had ground her opponent down.
“Him?” Makvala burst out, unable to contain herself any longer. She gestured at Taitusi. “He picks? He loses his own final and gets to decide our fate? What kind of rule is that?”
“It is the rule,” Arkan said, the finality in his tone silencing further debate.
Taitusi took a deep breath. The strategy wasn’t mercy. It wasn’t about fairness. It was about pressure, about creating the most destructive possible dynamic for the team he’d soon have to face in the Grand Finale. Sending the weakest forward would be a gift to the others. Sending the strongest…
“Anjala,” he said, the name clear in the hushed arena.
For a second, there was only the hum of the sigils. Then Makvala made a sound of pure disgust. “Of course! Reward the one who doesn’t need it! So the rest of us have to tear each other apart for the privilege of facing her? That’s not a reward, that’s a trap!”
Jolie touched Makvala’s arm, not to calm her, but in solidarity. Her voice was low, but carried. “He’s not helping her. He’s painting a target on her back. Now we all have to fight knowing she’s already waiting, rested, watching us. It makes every match against each other mean more. It makes us hate her a little for not having to go through it.”
Binod said nothing. He simply turned his head slowly to look at Anjala, then back to Taitusi. His jaw was tight, his controlled stillness now radiating a cold, focused tension.
Otar finally spoke, his voice soft but piercing in the new quiet. “Is that fair?” he asked, looking not at Arkan, but directly at Taitusi. “To choose for us? To decide who fights and who watches?”
Anjala herself hadn’t moved. She didn’t smile. She didn’t acknowledge the green light that now gently haloed her, marking her as the chosen. She took a single step forward, her eyes locked on Taitusi.
“Why?” she asked. The word was simple, stripped bare.
Taitusi shifted his weight, the charming performer gone, replaced by someone navigating a minefield. “You’re good,” he said, shrugging one shoulder. “You don’t panic. You see the whole board. In a final, that’s what matters.”
“That’s not the reason,” Anjala countered, her voice flat. “You chose me because you respect my skill? Or because you want them,” she gestured slightly to her teammates, “to resent me before the final even starts? Because you want every match they fight against each other to feel like a punishment for not being the chosen one?”
Taitusi held her gaze. The arena waited. He gave a small, uncomfortable smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Both answers might be useful,” he admitted quietly.
A stark, brutal honesty. It hung in the air between them, more damaging than any lie.
Anjala absorbed it. She gave a single, slow nod, as if confirming a dark theory. The composed pressure around her solidified into something harder, more isolated. She didn’t thank him. She turned and walked back to her place in the line, now fundamentally set apart.
Arkan watched the fissures form in real time—the anger in Makvala’s posture, the calculating coldness in Jolie’s eyes, the silent judgment in Binod’s, the troubled confusion on Otar’s face. The damage was done, seeded deep into Team South’s foundation before their first duel had even been announced.
“The selection is made,” Arkan declared, his voice rolling over the simmering discord. “Anjala Bimb advances to the Team South Final. The remaining four will compete in elimination duels to determine who joins her.”
He paused, his gaze sweeping over Binod, Jolie, Makvala, and Otar. “Prepare. Your first match begins in ten minutes.”
He turned and walked away, leaving the five of them standing in the oppressive green light, a team already splintered by a gift that felt exactly like a curse.
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Grand Trial Arena, Meridian Citadel, Elarion — the central arena floor beneath the projection veils, with Team South gathered under its sigil as red-gold bracket lines begin to form across the combat stage. Morning, immediately after Taitusi sends Anjala directly to the Team South Final.
The silence after Taitusi’s choice didn’t settle; it sharpened, a blade held at the throat of the moment. Anjala held his gaze for a second longer, her expression unreadable, then turned and walked to the edge of the arena floor beneath the glowing green sigil. She stepped out of the line, a space widening around her like a moat. She was already on the other side.
Binod, Otar, Jolie, and Makvala remained, stranded in the center. The green light from above made their skin look sickly, washed out.
Arkan Veyl raised one hand. The arena floor beneath the four of them shimmered, and lines of red-gold light seared up from the seamless metal, etching a perfect, glowing bracket into the stage. It hummed with a low, electrical frequency they could feel in their teeth.
“You will compete one against another,” Arkan said, his calm voice absolute, “until Team South produces its winner to face Anjala Bimb in the Team Final.”
Makvala’s head whipped toward Anjala, her eyes blazing. “So she just gets to wait? Fresh? While we beat each other bloody for the honor?” She threw her hands up, addressing the air. “He picks her, and we have to run a gauntlet? How is that a team?”
“It is not,” Binod stated quietly, his eyes fixed on the geometric lines of the bracket. “It is a filter.”
Jolie crouched, touching a fingertip near one of the glowing lines. It didn’t burn, but a static charge made the fine hairs on her arm stand up. “It’s a single-elimination bracket. Four become two, two become one. Simple math.” She looked up at Makvala, her voice losing its usual playful lilt. “The trap was the choice itself. Not the structure.”
Arkan ignored the commentary. Four crystalline shards, glowing with the same red-gold light, materialized in the air before him. “You will draw for placement. The first two drawn will be the first duel. The latter two will be the second.”
He gestured. The shards floated toward them.
Binod was closest. He reached out without hesitation, his movement economical, and plucked the first shard from the air. The light winked out in his hand, leaving a smooth, cool stone. Otar, after a heartbeat’s delay, took the second. The instant his fingers closed around it, their two names ignited in the corresponding spaces on the bracket at their feet: BINOD versus OTAR.
Otar’s breath hitched, a tiny, audible sound. He looked from his name to Binod, who merely glanced at the pairing and then back at Otar’s face, his own expression unchanged.
“Great,” Makvala muttered, her arms crossed tight. “The quiet one and the nervous one. That’ll be a thriller.”
Jolie reached for the third shard. As she took it, the final shard drifted to Makvala, who snatched it from the air with a frustrated grunt. The second side of the bracket flared to life: JOLIE versus MAKVALA.
The crowd’s reaction was a wave of sound, part excitement, part speculation. They could sense the dissonance—a clash of controlled stillness versus raw anxiety, a battle of bright social energy versus volatile frustration.
Taitusi, watching from the sidelines where the East sector met the floor, ran a hand through his hair. The easy charm was gone, replaced by a pale, sober tension. “I just wanted to pick the strongest opponent,” he said, mostly to himself, but the acoustics of the arena carried it. “I didn’t think about… this. Making them hate each other first.”
“You don’t think about a lot of things,” Anjala said from her isolated spot. Her voice wasn’t loud, but it cut through the ambient noise. She wasn’t looking at him. She was watching her four teammates standing in their designated squares of light. “That’s your defining trait.”
She finally turned her head, addressing Binod, Otar, Jolie, and Makvala directly. “Whoever wins your little tournament tomorrow,” she said, her tone stripped of any warmth, “don’t come to me already broken. Don’t come to me exhausted from fighting your own. If you do, I’ll finish what they started. And it won’t feel like a competition. It’ll feel like an execution.”
Makvala barked a harsh laugh. “You’re giving us advice? From your safe little perch?”
“It’s not advice,” Anjala said. “It’s the only truth here. Taitusi didn’t do me a favor. He made me your common enemy. He made every punch you throw at each other today feel like it’s because of me.” She let that hang, a poison in the air between them. “So fight clean. Fight smart. Save your real damage for me.”
Arkan watched this, his mercurial eyes missing nothing—the resentment in Makvala’s posture, the analytical chill in Jolie’s, the silent communication between Binod and Otar that was all in the eyes. He let the tension crystallize.
Then he spoke, halting all further debate. “The nature of your duels will be announced prior to each match. Prepare yourselves.”
He offered no further details. No hints, no comfort, no rules. He simply turned and walked away, his footsteps silent on the luminous floor, leaving the four of them standing in the inscribed brackets, staring at their own names and at the finalist who waited, already halfway to the end.
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Grand Trial Arena, Meridian Citadel, Elarion — the central arena floor beneath the projection veils, opening into two mirrored trial dimensions called The Unforgettable Maze, each built from moving walls, golden lure-corridors, rotating staircases, trap chambers, collapsing bridges, false exits, and a central Victory Gate hidden behind shifting stone. Morning, immediately after the first round duel bracket for Team South is revealed.
The glowing brackets pulsed under their feet like captive heartbeats. No one moved. The silence Arkan left behind was dense, a weight pressing down on Binod, Otar, Jolie, and Makvala as they stared at their names etched in light.
“Well,” Jolie said, popping the ‘p’ with forced lightness. “This is cozy.”
Makvala snorted, a sharp exhale of disgust. “Cozy? He pits us against each other to entertain that crowd, and you call it cozy? You’re as twisted as this whole setup.”
“Better than screaming about it,” Jolie countered, her smile not reaching her eyes. She nodded toward the still-empty stands. “They’re waiting for a show. Arkan just gave them the program. Binod and Otar go first. Then one of us.”
Makvala’s gaze sliced toward Anjala, who stood apart like a statue. “And she gets to watch. Fresh.”
“She gets to study,” Binod corrected quietly. His voice was so even it cut through the simmering tension. He wasn’t looking at Makvala or Jolie. His attention was fixed on Otar, who seemed to be trying to make himself smaller. “She will learn from every move we make, every mistake we reveal. That is the true disadvantage of his choice.” He didn’t need to say whose choice.
Taitusi, listening from the sideline, flinched. He opened his mouth, maybe to protest, but no sound came out.
Arkan’s voice boomed again, not from the floor, but from everywhere. The arena itself seemed to speak. “The preliminary duels for Team South will now commence. The nature of your trial is adaptability. The format is pursuit.”
A low, grinding rumble vibrated through the soles of their boots. The seamless metal floor between the four glowing names began to fracture. Great geometric panels slid apart with a hiss of hydraulics and a groan of stressed alloy.
From the widening chasm, a cityscape of impossible geometry erupted. It wasn’t solid, but a massive, intricate hologram projected from below, layers of light and shadow coalescing into a towering labyrinth. The walls were a shifting tapestry of polished black stone shot through with veins of glowing gold. Staircases spiraled upward, then inverted themselves, steps becoming ceilings. Bridges arched over bottomless pits, their surfaces flickering between solidity and empty air.
Doorways of warm, inviting light winked into existence down promising corridors, only to snuff out and reappear elsewhere. The entire structure breathed, walls grinding to block old paths and open new ones with a sound like distant earthquakes.
“The Unforgettable Maze,” Arkan announced, the title rolling through the cavernous space. The golden-black labyrinth filled the central arena, a beautiful, malevolent puzzle. “You will be teleported into two identical, mirrored instances of this maze. You will not see your opponent, but you will compete in the same environment, facing the same challenges, in parallel.”
Otar stared, his earlier anxiety freezing into pure dread. “It’s… alive.”
“Each of you must locate three maze keys,” Arkan continued, as if describing a simple garden path. “They will be hidden. Once you possess all three, the location of the Victory Gate will be revealed to you. The first competitor to pass through their gate wins their duel and advances. The loser is eliminated from Trial Seven.”
He paused, letting the sheer scale of the task sink in. The maze shifted again, a whole section of wall folding inward to create a new, narrowing passage.
“The maze is not merely an obstacle course,” Arkan said, and a new, more dangerous tone entered his voice. “It is a perceptual test. It will offer you shortcuts. It will present you with tools that appear to be weapons or shields. It will open golden doors that promise safer, faster paths. It will even offer moving platforms to bypass entire sections.”
A section of the holographic projection zoomed in, showing a shimmering, floating disc of light hovering beside a treacherous-looking chasm. It looked impossibly convenient.
“Some of these offers will be genuine,” Arkan stated. “They will provide the advantage they promise.”
The scene changed. A contestant—a generic, shadowy figure—reached for a gleaming dagger offered on a pedestal. The instant their fingers closed around the hilt, the floor beneath them vanished, dropping them into darkness. Another figure sprinted toward a golden door. It slammed shut the moment they were three steps away, a massive stone block grinding down to seal the corridor forever.
“Others are traps. They will trigger pitfalls, seal routes, or release the Stone Hunters.” As he spoke, crude, hulking figures of solid rock animated from the walls, their faceless heads turning with a grating sound.
Makvala barked a harsh laugh. “So it’s a liar. A gorgeous, shifting liar. I’d rather just smash through a wall than be flirted with by architecture.”
“That’s exactly how people get buried,” Jolie said, her playful tone completely gone. She was studying the maze’s movements, her eyes tracking the pattern of a rotating staircase. “It’s not about strength. It’s about trust. It wants you to want the easy way. The moment you do, it has you.”
Otar’s voice was small but clear. “Can you win without accepting any offer? If you just… avoid every shortcut and tool? If you just solve the maze as it is?”
Arkan’s head turned slightly, his mercurial eyes finding Otar. “Yes,” he said. “But not quickly. The maze is vast. The keys are deliberately placed. A path of pure caution will be long. It may be too long.”
Binod nodded slowly, understanding dawning in his calm eyes. “Speed requires risk. The maze tempts you to trade security for time. But it defines the terms of the trade. It learns what you are tempted by, and uses it against you later.”
He looked from the hypnotic, shifting projections to his three teammates. “The first choice is the most dangerous. It teaches the maze your hunger.”
From her isolated spot, Anjala watched, her arms crossed. Her expression was unreadable, but her mind was visibly working. “Whoever gets to me,” she said, not to anyone in particular, “will be exhausted. They’ll have fought the maze and their own greed. They’ll have revealed every instinct they have under pressure.” She finally looked at Taitusi, a flicker of something cold in her gaze. “You didn’t just save my energy. You handed me their blueprint.”
Taitusi swallowed hard. The charming performer was gone, replaced by a man watching the unintended consequences of a single decision spiral outward. He looked at the vast, deceptive maze, then at the fractured team standing before it. “This feels worse,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Choosing her was a knife. This maze… this is poison.”
Arkan raised his hand. Four circles of brilliant white light ignited on the floor beneath the feet of Binod, Otar, Jolie, and Makvala. The teleportation platforms hummed with gathering energy, lifting the fine hairs on their arms.
“The instances are now prepared,” Arkan declared. “The duel begins upon materialization. Remember: the maze does not forget. It learns. It seduces. It punishes.”
The light from the platforms intensified, swallowing their forms. The last thing they all saw was the labyrinth, its pathways reconfiguring one final time. Then, with a sound like a sucked-in breath, they were gone.
In the sudden quiet of the arena floor, the grand, golden-black projection of The Unforgettable Maze remained, its countless doors and corridors playing out in silent, shifting patterns. Two sets of golden doors, far apart in the model, slid open with a soundless, inviting glow.
The maze was waiting.