They were there.
All of them.
My former companions.
They weren't the same anymore, but I would have recognized them among a thousand. Even deformed, even changed, even covered in scales, living armor, black feathers or ritual marks. Even unrecognizable, their gazes, their breaths, their absences — everything in them still vibrated with what we once were.
And for a second — just one — my whole body wanted to reach out to them.
I wanted to scream. To walk. To break that ridiculous distance. To tell them I was here. That I hadn't forgotten. That despite the races, the mutations, the pacts, the erasures... I had never stopped carrying them within me.
But I didn't move.
I didn't even think to. Because something invisible — and far older than fear — already had its claws around me.
The entire coliseum had frozen.
Or maybe it was me.
Or maybe it was them.
The Lords.
