Arden /Aria's
Silence. It was a heavy, breathing thing in our room, thick with the ghost of the crowd’s roar, with the metallic taste of my victory. I had slept, but it was a shallow, restless thing. The phantom impact of blows still echoed in my muscles. The chant of my name—*Arden, Arden*—was a drumbeat in my skull. I had done it. I had stood in that pit and proven I was more than a secret, more than a runaway. I had forged a new identity from blood and will.
But when I surfaced from the haze of exhaustion, the other side of the room was empty.
The space where Kai should have been was a void. The sheets on his cot were twisted, cold. A sudden, sharp loneliness pierced through the afterglow of my triumph. It was an irrational feeling, a child’s fear of the dark. But it was real. The b
