The Crown Arena was alive.
It pulsed with stolen memory and ancient suffering, rising from the cracked foundation of the Rupture Basin—where the walls between dreams and death first split during the Convergence. A sky stitched with screams stretched endlessly overhead. Where clouds should have been, there were blinking eyes. They watched everything.
All around the arena, structures twisted upward like broken limbs. Bleachers, formed from the fused spines of forgotten toys, groaned beneath the weight of spectators who no longer remembered they were once children. Spectators who had long since traded innocence for violence.
Floating banners bore shifting symbols that could not be read without bleeding from the eyes. They each shimmered with one truth:
TRIAL OF UNMAKING - THE FIRST ERA BLOODLING TOURNAMENT
Kyon Blackwood stood above it all, watching from the Nexus' astral spire like a god previewing his pawns. Below, the tournament contenders began to arrive—one by one—each tethered to their own brand of horror.
He would not enter yet. Not directly. Not until it mattered.
This first arc? It was to test the waters of pain.
1. THREADBARE, the Seam-Cursed Knight
A humanoid figure of linen and needles, stitched from the remnants of warrior dreams. His face was wrapped in gauze, eyes hollow sockets filled with spider silk. Every wound he inflicted unraveled a memory. Every time he bled, a story died somewhere in the waking world.
He knelt before the entrance gate, hammering his needle-sword into the stone in silent prayer.
He did not speak.
He did not blink.
He only fought.
2. SHARDKIN, the Mirrorborn
A girl—or perhaps a collection of girls—whose body shifted with every step. Her limbs were made from jagged glass shards, each one showing a different version of the child she once was. In one reflection, she smiled. In another, she burned. In a third, she killed.
Her voice was a chorus.
Her blood cut like razors.
Every enemy who dared look into her mirrors fought themselves before they fought her.
3. THE HOLLOW PRINCE
Draped in a cracked porcelain mask shaped like a smiling sun, he moved like a marionette whose strings had been replaced with guilt. He wore a crown of bent spoons, trophies of childhood meals never eaten. A living contradiction, regal and infantile.
He sang lullabies before he slaughtered.
He bowed before he decapitated.
And beneath the mask?
They said there was nothing but a howling void.
4. THE CRESCENDO
A mass of sound in physical form—screams, laughter, static—woven into the shape of a child-sized conductor with a melted baton. Wherever he walked, reality trembled. Wherever he fought, he composed.
He didn't speak. He scored.
And when his victims died, their final moments became his symphony.
5. MARION, The Broken Doll
She walked like she'd forgotten how legs worked. Smiled like it hurt to try. Her stitches were fresh—bleeding lightly from her cheeks, arms, and neck—but she didn't seem to mind.
With rusted hooks for hands and a lullaby stitched into her skin, she entered last.
She did not greet the others.
She stared at the walls.
And whispered, "The strings are ready."
From high above, the voice of the Arena itself cracked open like a rotten egg across the sky.
"The opening trial shall commence now. Five enter. Only one may walk away. The rest… are to be devoured."
The gates sealed behind them.
The ground beneath their feet shook—revealing not a battlefield, but a memory.
Each fighter was cast into a projected fragment of their worst moment. Not an illusion. Not a hallucination.
A literal manifestation of their most formative abandonment.
Marion's Trial:
She stood again in the room where Gasp first "birthed" her. Hanging by the wrists. Limbs half-formed. A voice in her mind, not her own, telling her:
"Smile, sweet girl. Or I'll have to tear your mouth open wider."
The air was thick with theatre grease and burnt feathers. All around her, faces floated—false parents, laughing teachers, stuffed animals with smiles too wide. She screamed once. The room applauded.
Marion turned slowly.
And Threadbare stood there, materialized from the memory's edge, needle-sword already drawn. No words. No hesitation.
Their duel began with silence.
And then blood.
Threadbare slashed once, a surgical strike that severed Marion's left hook at the base. She didn't react. Instead, she launched herself forward, using her socketed wrist like a blunt weapon—slamming it into his bandaged eye.
Threadbare stumbled.
Marion seized the chance, wrapped a wire of piano string around his neck, and pulled hard. Her legs flailed, stabbing blindly with broken bone fragments in her thighs. He responded by driving his needle-sword through her abdomen… and into the floor.
They locked there—both impaled, both smiling.
She whispered, "I hope you're hollow inside."
He whispered nothing.
Instead, he pulled the sword upward, splitting her like a zipper.
Blood splattered the arena.
Marion's body hit the ground twitching. Laughing. Still alive. Barely.
The Arena accepted the kill. Threadbare's arm rose by command of unseen judges.
But then—
Her torso shifted. Bones snapped back. Flesh sewed itself shut.
"Rule Amendment: Resurrection permitted once per soul under bloodling fire."
Marion was reborn.
And now?
She wasn't smiling.
Above, Kyon nodded once.
"This," he murmured, "will be exquisite."