Gladiator of Fate

Anya

The world is heat, sand, and the roar of a thousand throats. A shadow falls over me, and I roll. The brute’s war hammer crushes the spot where my head was a second ago, sending a shockwave through the packed dirt. He smells of stale beer and unearned confidence. He’s an Alpha from the Granite Tusk pack, built like a battering ram, twice my size and three times as stupid.

“Stand and fight, you little rat,” he bellows, his voice a gravelly echo in the Obsidian Arena. The crowd roars its agreement.

They hate how I fight. They paid to see a spectacle of strength, a clash of Alphas tearing each other apart with honor and fury. They get me instead. A ghost. A flicker. An Omega who refuses to die the way she is supposed to.

I rise to my feet, my twin blades held low. My breath is steady, a calm rhythm in the chaos. I let his insult wash over me. Words are just air. It is action that kills.

He charges, a mountain of muscle and rage. It’s the same move every Alpha tries. They think their size is a weapon. They are wrong. It is a target.

I do not run. I wait. The ground trembles with his approach. At the last possible second, I drop, sliding between his thick legs. The coarse sand, stained dark from a hundred prior battles, scrapes my back raw through my light leather armor. I come up behind him, a coiled spring of motion. My left blade sinks deep into the unprotected flesh behind his knee.

He howls, a sharp, surprised sound that cuts through the crowd’s cheer. He stumbles, his charge broken. He turns, his massive hammer swinging wildly in a clumsy arc meant to pulp my skull. I am already gone. My second blade finds the artery in his neck. The cut is clean, precise.

It is not glorious. It is efficient.

Blood sprays, a hot mist against my cheek. He drops his hammer with a heavy thud, his hands flying to his throat. A gurgling sound escapes him. His eyes, wide with disbelief, find mine for a single, final moment. He sees nothing there. No rage. No triumph. Just the cold, empty calm of a job finished. He collapses onto the sand, and the dust rises to meet him.

The arena falls silent. The silence is a familiar judgment. It lasts for three heartbeats. Then, a smattering of applause, which grows into a roar of approval. They do not like my methods, but they cannot deny the result. Another giant has fallen. The Omega Scrapper lives to fight another day.

I retrieve my blades, wiping them clean on the dead man’s tunic before sheathing them. I do not look at the crowd. I do not look at the enforcers dragging the body away. I turn and walk towards the fighter’s tunnel, the shouts and jeers already fading behind me. Each step is a victory. Each victory is a link in a chain I have been forging for five years.

The tunnel offers a cool reprieve from the relentless sun. The air is thick with the smell of sweat, blood, and fear. My lungs burn, not from exertion, but from the dust. Or maybe from the memory of smoke.

“That was a pathetic display, Scrapper.”

The voice is slick with contempt. I do not need to look to know who it is. Valerius. Alpha of the Iron Fang pack, second only to the champion in the rankings, and the most arrogant creature I have ever had the misfortune of knowing.

He leans against the damp stone wall, arms crossed over a chest plate so polished I can see my own tired reflection in it. He did not even break a sweat in his match today. His opponent was a terrified boy from the territories who barely knew how to hold a sword.

“No honor,” Valerius continues, his lip curling. “Just scurrying. Like the rat you are.”

I keep walking, my focus on the water barrel at the end of the hall. “I won, Valerius.”

“You survived,” he corrects, pushing off the wall to block my path. He stands a full head taller than me, his shadow swallowing me whole. “There is a difference. An Omega should know its place. On its knees, not in the champion’s circle.”

My hand rests on the hilt of my blade. It’s an unconscious habit. A promise. “My place is wherever I choose to stand.”

He laughs, a short, ugly sound. “You have no pack. You have no Alpha. You have nothing. You are a stray, a piece of scrap metal that the King was generous enough to let fight for our amusement. Do not forget that.”

His words are meant to sting, to remind me that I am alone. He does not know that my solitude is my armor. My past is my fire. He sees an Omega. He does not see the sole survivor of Silent Creek.

“Your pack valued strength, didn’t they, Valerius?” I ask, my voice quiet. “Big, strong Alphas to protect everyone.”

He puffs out his chest. “Of course. It is the natural order.”

“My pack valued intelligence,” I say, meeting his gaze. “We knew that the strongest walls can be brought down from the inside. We knew that the biggest beast has the softest throat.”

His smug expression flickers. He is not used to being challenged, especially not by me. “Your pack is dead. Mine stands. I think that proves which philosophy is superior.”

My knuckles are white where I grip my blade. The rage is a living thing inside me, a caged wolf that claws at my ribs. I force it down. Not here. Not with him. He is a stepping stone, an annoyance. He is not the goal.

“Move, Valerius. I’m thirsty.”

“Or what? You’ll bite my ankles?” he taunts, stepping closer. “You think that little knife trick of yours will work on a real warrior? I am not some lumbering fool from the outer rings. I would snap your spine before you even got close.”

“Then we will have to find out when the roster puts us together, won’t we?” I look past him, my expression bored. It infuriates him more than any threat could. “I’m sure it will be a very honorable fight.”

He holds my gaze for a long moment, searching for a crack in my composure. He finds none. With a final sneer, he steps aside. “Enjoy your water, Scrapper. It is all the reward a cur like you deserves.”

I walk past him without another word, my back straight, my steps even. I do not let him see how my heart hammers against my ribs. I do not let him see the tremor in my hands. I reach the water barrel and ladle a drink, the cool liquid a balm on my raw throat.

Let him think what he wants. Let them all call me Scrapper. Let them whisper that I have no honor, no pack pride. They do not understand. They see an Omega fighting for scraps, for survival. They are wrong.

I am not fighting for my life. I am fighting for his death.

Every victory, every jeer I endure, buys me another day, another fight. It pushes me one step higher up the roster. One step closer to the Grand Championship. One step closer to the royal box where the King sits on his gilded throne, watching us kill each other for his entertainment.

One step closer to King Theron.

I can still see the smoke rising from my village, a black scar against a blue sky. I can still hear the screams as the King’s legion descended. They wore the sigil of the Royal House, their armor gleaming in the sun. Theron called it a ‘pacification’ campaign. A necessary measure to bring a rogue pack to heel. I call it an extermination. They burned our homes. They slaughtered my family. My father, my mother, my brothers. Everyone.

I survived only because I was small enough to hide in the old well, listening to the world end above me.

They left me with nothing but a name to hate. King Theron. The architect of my despair.

So I fight. I bleed. I kill. I climb. All for a single moment. A chance to stand in the same room as that man, to look him in the eye as I pay him back for everything he took from me. My vengeance is a cold, hard stone in my gut. It is all I have left.

Suddenly, a blast of horns silences the entire arena complex. The sound is sharp, regal, and demanding. It is a sound reserved for only one person.

The Herald’s voice, magically amplified, booms from some unseen source, seeming to come from the very stones around me. “All hail the undefeated champion of the Obsidian Arena! The King’s Blade! The Alpha of Alphas! All hail the commander of the Crimson Legion, Prince Nolan!”

The name hits me like a physical blow. No. My blood runs cold. It cannot be.

The Crimson Legion.

The main gates to the arena floor, the ones reserved for champions and royalty, grind open at the far end of the grand plaza. A figure walks into the harsh afternoon light, clad in armor the color of midnight and dried blood. The crowd, which had been jeering and cat-calling moments before, erupts into a unified, thunderous chant of his name. Nolan. Nolan. Nolan.

He walks with an easy, predatory grace, his power a palpable aura that quiets the very air around him. He removes his helmet, tucking it under his arm. Even from this distance, I can see the sun glinting off his dark hair.

I remain in the shadows of the tunnel, my body frozen, the water ladle slipping from my numb fingers to clatter on the stone floor. The world narrows to that single, impossible figure. My memory, sharp and cruel, overlays the present with the past.

The strong jawline. The cold, gray eyes that held no pity. The face of the man who stood on the hill overlooking my burning home.

It is him.

The commander. The man who gave the orders. The butcher of Silent Creek.

The King’s son.

And I, the Omega Scrapper, just took one more step closer to him.