CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE ARENA AWAKENS
[When the stars forget their names, they fall. But some… they rise again.]
----
The sun bled gold and ash across the sky. A storm was coming.
Inside the Arena, the silence was deceptive—like the hush before an executioner raises the blade. And beneath that stillness, deep underground, Zareina stood barefoot on cold marble floors. Her body, cloaked in a robe the color of twilight, bore the weight of awakening.
Her hair shimmered, no longer just a veil but a banner—silver, violet, and crimson. Her mismatched eyes pulsed with unspoken truths: gold and turquoise. The colors of memory… and loss.
She stood before a mirror, studying the reflection of someone who didn't feel entirely like her.
"Three days," she whispered.
Her voice didn't echo.
It was too heavy with things left unsaid.
---
Elsewhere – Icarus's Private Wing
He hadn't slept.
Icarus leaned over a railing overlooking a digital map of the Arena's sectors. His eyes were bloodshot but alive—haunted. Holograms of Zareina flickered behind him, caught mid-battle, her presence like thunder frozen in time.
He clenched a bottle of water until it cracked.
"Fuck!! I know your voice," he said to no one. "I know your damn silence too."
His fingers hovered over her voice clip—again. And again. Her words played:
"You carry pain… but I carry silence louder than your screams."
That voice—one syllable spoken during the final blow—still looping in his mind.
He dragged his thumb across his lower lip, eyes bloodshot but gleaming.
"You looked at me like you knew everything I forgot."
Behind him, a voice spoke, low and velvet-smooth.
"You're not sleeping."
Icarus didn't turn.
The man behind him stepped closer, folding his arms.
"She's perfect," he said softly, watching Zareina's image freeze in the air. "Whatever we tried to erase… it didn't work."
Icarus clenched his jaw.
"She's mine," he whispered.
A beat.
Then, more quiet: "Even if I have to destroy the world to remember why."
Then he glared at the man.
"Don't try to snatch her away from me, Giovanni Deluca."
He offered a smile—thin, unreadable, and dangerous. Like a man who already knew how the game would end.
"Ah..chill,Rus.. I do have my Moon."
"Moon?"
Giovanni slightly blushed,"Well..Vex."
"....Leave me alone."
Giovanni left him silently,he knew about what will happen if he provoke this guy.
The room felt silent again.
Icarus couldn't believe Giovanni's nonsense. He didn't care about him, like he ever cared. Even though he was Boss's son. All he thought was Zareina.
He exhaled like it hurt. The edges of his memories were jagged, like broken mirrors slicing his mind each time he reached for them.
Blood.
Fire.
Her hands on his face. Her face—its vivid. Her eyes were screaming something, but her mouth never said.
He knew her.
Not just her fighting style, not just the way she watched the world like it was a puzzle she'd already solved.
No, he knew the way she breathed. The way her silence filled rooms with storms. And that made him dangerous—because obsession wasn't enough.
This was something older.
Worse.
It was memory... clawing back.
---
Cipher's Surveillance Van – At Dawn
Cipher sat stiffly, her fingers flying across multiple keyboards. Beside her, Aspen had her feet kicked up, chewing on sour candy sticks, eyes locked on a new looped video.
"She didn't flinch even when she bled," Cipher said, voice calm. "Her pulse rate stayed stable. Even when she almost lost. That's... not normal."
Aspen grinned, spinning a butterfly blade in her hand. "It's because she doesn't think of losing as an option. She's not scared of death. She's scared of remembering."
Cipher froze. "That's a theory."
Aspen turned to her, eyes sharp. "It's more than a theory. I've seen that look before. On myself. On people who clawed their way back from madness. You don't act like her unless something in you already died."
She leaned back, watching Zareina's mismatched eyes pulse across the monitor.
"And she's not the only one waking up."
Cipher flipped through surveillance feeds. "He's unraveling."
"She's glowing brighter," Aspen added, pausing. "That hair. Those eyes. It's not just power. It's… unlocked history. Looks so damn hot."
"She doesn't know him."
"But she feels him."
Aspen leaned close to the glass, peering down at Zareina training silently, barefoot in the storm.
"She'll destroy him, you know," she whispered. "Because love doesn't survive fire. It becomes it."
---
Medical Wing
Vex was no longer strapped down.
She sat up, arm hooked to an IV, eyes burning with new fire.
She stared at a blade in her lap—one that had once felt light, now heavy with meaning. She remembered Zareina's eyes as they locked during the fight.
There was no hatred.
No cruelty.
Only knowing.
The masked figure had left her with words she couldn't un-hear:
"Your blade... was never meant to kill her. Only to wake her."
She grinned bitterly. "Well... she woke me too."
She stood, pulling the IV from her arm.
Some wars don't need orders. They need truth.
And hers had finally arrived.
"Thanks, Gio..for reminding me."
---
Boss's Office – Morning
The assistant stood with a datapad in hand, breath caught.
"They're converging," she said. "Icarus and Zareina—
The scans, sir. Her Evol isn't evolving anymore. It's... unlocking."
The Boss remained silent.
He stood facing the massive screen that now displayed overlapping timelines.
Two souls.
Two lives.
Two halves of a forgotten whole.
"What happens when they remember everything?" the assistant asked.
The Boss turned. "Then… the Arena was only the prologue."
---
Three Hours Later,
At The Training Center,
Zareina stood in the middle of the training chamber, surrounded by dummies and automated defence drones.
All of them offline.
All of them destroyed.
Ash floated in the air like falling snow.
Her blade vanished into the air as easily as it had appeared.
Evol energy pulsed from her hands, swirling into strands of color—purple, red, white.
Unstable.
Beautiful.
She exhaled sharply. Her fingers tingled with energy—raw, unshaped. Her Evol wasn't just power anymore. It was instinct.
She closed her eyes.
She saw a hallway of fire.
She saw herself running.
She saw a boy, not yet the man called Icarus, bleeding as he clutched her hand.
"Don't leave me," he had said. "Don't forget."
Her eyes opened—twin infernos.
She remembered that voice. And the hand that held hers.
And the night she lost everything.
---
At Dawn,
On The Rooftop,
Icarus stood on the rooftop, wind cutting through his open shirt.
He closed his eyes and remembered something:
A song.
She used to hum.
He couldn't recall the melody, but the feeling… the warmth… it hollowed him.
His voice broke through the silence.
"We died together… didn't we? And now we're just walking corpses wearing crowns."
He looked down at the Arena.
He could almost feel her.
Not as a player anymore.
The real game.
He muttered under his breath, "Three days… and then I'll ask you myself. Even if you kill me before answering."
---
Final Nightfall
Zareina sat alone, cross-legged on her bed. Her hands glowed faintly. She touched her chest where her heart beat.
Every beat screamed something ancient.
Her Evol swirled around her in flickers of illusion: forgotten ruins, a burning temple, a name carved in stone—
"Icarus."
She saw him—his younger self—smiling in the chaos. Reaching for her. Bleeding for her.
And she remembered.
She had died once.
But not alone.
And her eyes changed again.
Black and gold.
Obsidian and dawn.
And then, for the first time in a long while, she spoke aloud.
No whispers.
No mask of silence.
Just her voice.
Cold. Addictive.
"Icarus. Come find me."
(To be continued)