The collar couldn't hold her.
Not anymore.
The moment Miri stood over the twitching corpses of Gorran and Veela, her hands drenched in arterial heat, something snapped inside her. Not emotionally—physically. Deep in her chest, something unshackled. Magic long-buried surged to the surface with the force of a breaking dam.
The runes etched into her collar—those violet void-laced sigils—flickered violently.
Once.
Twice.
Then—burst into flame.
She staggered. Gasped. Her body arched as the ground cracked beneath her feet. The crowd went silent as her spine jolted backwards, shoulder blades splitting with wet, fleshy cracks.
And from the wounds—
Wings.
They ripped themselves from her flesh—massive, malformed, beautiful. Not feathered. Not leathery. Something between. Shadow and bone stretched tight with magic, dripping with ink-black void ichor and blood that steamed in the air.
The crowd screamed.
Miri roared.
Not with words—but with power.
The kind that had no language.
The kind born of pain.
She launched upward in a gust of blood and sand, her wings flinging out to their full span—nearly twenty feet across. The wind they summoned shattered glass lanterns and sent nobles tumbling from their balconies.
The crowd became prey.
⸻
Her claws tore through the first person who ran.
A bystander. A cloaked man with too many rings and too little speed. She landed on him, driving him into the stone with a splatter that painted the sand red again.
Then she moved again.
And again.
Her wings didn't flap—they shuddered, twitching with raw energy as she leapt between stone walls and watching boxes. She tore through a merchant woman, raked her claws across the back of a guard trying to flee, her tail lashing out and snapping a man's legs out from under him.
Gasps turned to sobs.
Cheers turned to wails.
The coliseum became a cathedral of slaughter.
Above it all—Arioch smiled.
Watching her like a proud father.
No command. No restraint. Just revelation.
"She's beautiful," he whispered to no one.
Below, the gang moved.
"Shit," Boo growled, eyes wide. "Shit, she's loose—she's not right."
"She's not just loose," Nyxia breathed. "She's gone. That collar—it broke the seal. She's not fighting anymore. She's hunting."
Eurydice's eyes were sharp as blades. "She's losing herself."
Darj was already moving, ducking a swinging tail that shattered a pillar beside him. "We have to ground her. She'll tear through every living soul here!"
Perseus didn't hesitate. He was already pushing toward the center, drawing his Warhammer, voice tight with worry and command. "We get her back—before the city turns this into a manhunt!"
The wings weren't meant to last.
They had torn from her spine like a curse undone, wild and unformed, vast enough to block out the torchlight above. For a moment, she soared—a beast of vengeance, claws dripping, void-runes hissing along her collar like a brand losing its grip.
And then—
Pain.
A crack—sharp, internal, wrong.
The collar pulsed violently. Magic surged through her back like a needle of black lightning.
And her wings—
Vanished.
Not burned.
Not broken.
They simply ceased to be.
One moment she was in the air, a nightmare with eyes like stars.
The next—
She fell.
Her body slammed into the tiered stands like a meteor. Flesh met stone with a sound that made the whole pit lurch. Bones shattered beneath her—not hers, but those of those unlucky enough to be below.
A merchant's face split open beneath her boot.
A masked noblewoman was crushed in half by her tail lashing wildly in reflex.
Miri screamed.
Not in pain.
But in rage.
She was still moving.
Still killing.
A guard tried to stop her—blade raised, voice shaking. She swatted him aside like a child's toy, his spine folding in half around a stone column. Someone else lunged from behind with a spear—she grabbed the shaft, yanked him close, and buried her teeth in his throat.
She didn't recognize anyone.
Not herself.
Not the collar.
Not the lives she was ending.
⸻
From the arena floor, Boo grabbed Darj's arm, her voice tight with a mix of horror and awe.
"She's not a fighter," she whispered. "She's a weapon someone dropped in the middle of a fucking crowd."
Darj's jaw clenched. "Not someone."
His eyes flicked upward.
Toward Arioch.
Who still hadn't moved.
Still smiling.
As if this—the panic, the ruin, the screaming—was all part of the design.
Eurydice stepped forward.
Her eyes were dark, lips parted as she watched Miri rip the gold-threaded arm from a man trying to crawl away.
"She doesn't see us," she murmured. "She doesn't see anything."
Perseus raised a shield between them and the chaos as splintered stone and bodies began falling from above.
"She's gone feral. That collar—it's forcing her to burn herself alive."
"Or it's channeling it," Eurydice said grimly. "She's a lantern. That thing's trying to catch fire from inside her."
Nyxia didn't speak.
She couldn't look away.
Not from the way Miri's form glowed—not from any spell, but from the heat of raw, uncontrolled power spilling out of her bones like a second skin.
A troll tried to shoot her with a crossbow.
She caught the bolt mid-air and flung it back—straight through his eye.
The man fell twitching.
Miri roared, blood cascading down her chin, her tail lashing another innocent into a wall hard enough to leave a smear.
People were fleeing now.
The pit's mood had changed. This wasn't entertainment.
It was massacre.
The cheers had stopped long ago.
All that remained was the chaos of screams, the squelch of flesh, and the constant hum of magic seething around her.
⸻
From above, a few shadowed pit guards lined the edges of the coliseum—waiting, watching, hesitating.
No one wanted to be the one to get close.
Not even Arioch's men.
And yet—
He didn't stop it.
Not yet.
Miri stood at the heart of the wreckage.
Bare. Blood-soaked. Her breathing jagged, spine arched, tail twitching through the smoke.
The collar sparked again.
And again.
And again.
Each pulse seared her mind, fragmenting it further. A scream built in her throat, deeper than pain, louder than anything yet.
But before it could escape—
She dropped to one knee.
Shaking.
Clawed fingers digging into stone.
Her chest heaved.
Eyes flickered wildly—no longer tracking prey.
Just… lost.
Miri rose again.
The world around her was shredded.
The coliseum was no longer a place of sport—it had become a bloodstained altar.
Bodies lay in broken heaps around her. Pools of viscera glistened in the fractured torchlight. Her tail lashed the air in twitching arcs, dripping with ichor. Her mouth hung open slightly, her breath shallow, trembling—but her eyes burned.
And she turned.
Toward them.
Nyxia.
Boo.
Darj.
Eurydice.
Perseus.
Five strangers.
Five shapes in her fractured mind—silhouettes backlit by fire and gore. She saw not concern. Not mercy. Just more chains. More faces. More watchers.
Her claws flexed.
Her lips curled.
She charged.