Chapter 548: Cortisol Levels Suggest a Crash
My legs stopped working somewhere between the arena floor and the tunnel.
Not dramatically. Not a collapse. Just a slow, creeping realization that the muscles in my thighs had filed a formal complaint with the rest of my body and were refusing to participate in forward motion. I leaned against the tunnel wall and let the concrete hold me up while the roar of twenty thousand people faded behind me like a tide pulling out.
Three fights. Julian, Reyna, Natalia. In the span of one afternoon.
My ribs felt like someone had taken a cheese grater to them from the inside. The regenerator brace whined against my chest, working overtime and probably writing me a strongly worded email about workplace conditions. The Dragon Witch’s Ring pulsed on my finger with residual heat. My bat hung from my right hand, the grip tape dark with sweat and flecked with ice crystals that hadn’t melted yet.
I looked at my hands. Trembling. Not from fear or adrenaline. Just the plain, stupid, biological reality that I had pushed a human body past what human bodies were built for, and the body was letting me know about it.
Nel’s voice slid through my consciousness like water through cracks.
"Heart rate one forty-two. Core temperature elevated. Mana reserves at nine percent. Cortisol levels suggest you’ll crash in approximately forty minutes. The Audience is debating whether you’ll make it back to Onyx House or pass out in the corridor. Current odds favor the corridor."
I told Nel to shut up.
"Also, Natalia’s heart rate just normalized, which means she’s either very calm or planning something violent. Given recent data, the probability of both occurring simultaneously is roughly eighty-seven percent."
I told Nel to shut up louder.
Isabelle appeared beside me. I hadn’t heard her approach, which was either a testament to her skill or a condemnation of my current state. Probably both. Her wine-red hair caught the fluorescent lighting in the tunnel and turned it into something regal. She had a bruise forming on her forearm where Satori’s bat connected during the match, and she examined it with the academic interest of someone cataloguing a new species of insect.
"You’re leaning."
"I’m resting."
"You’re leaning on a wall because your legs have stopped functioning."
"Resting aggressively."
She looked at me the way she always looked at me. Like I was a theorem she couldn’t quite prove. Like every answer I gave opened three new questions. Isabelle Okoye, the woman who walked away from every elite guild in the academy because she found them morally repulsive, now stood in a concrete tunnel watching me slowly slide down a wall because I’d kissed my soul-bonded girlfriend on live television after beating her in a combat tournament.
My life was a mess.
"Can you walk?"
"Obviously."
I pushed off the wall. Took two steps. My left knee buckled and Isabelle caught my elbow with the casual strength of someone who bench-pressed small cars as a hobby.
"Obviously," she repeated.
We made it to the prep room. Someone had propped the door open and the fluorescent lights inside hummed with the particular frequency that made everything look slightly worse than it actually was. Braxton sat on a folding chair with his synth-cigarette dangling from his lip, one leg crossed over the other, looking at me like a mechanic inspecting a car that shouldn’t still be running.
"You alive?"
"Mostly."
"Good enough. Bus leaves in twenty."
Carmen materialized from somewhere with a half-empty flask and a grin that could have started a bar fight. "The kiss was a nice touch. Social media is having a collective meltdown. Someone already made a compilation video set to a love song. Natalia is going to murder you."
"Natalia kissed me back."
"Which is why she’s going to murder you. You made her do it on camera. She had a choice between looking weak by pulling away and looking like your girlfriend by kissing you back. You turned a combat match into a dating show announcement."
She wasn’t wrong. I hadn’t planned the kiss. It just happened. Standing there with Natalia looking up at me with those purple eyes full of fury and love and frost on her lips, my brain had simply checked out and my body had taken over.
The Scumbag System should have a warning label. Side effects may include: spontaneous public displays of affection, loss of tactical judgment, and the complete inability to keep your personal life out of the national news cycle.
Emi found me before I found her.
She came through the door like a small blue-haired missile, her healing aura already active, that green glow washing over her hands as she dropped to her knees beside the bench I’d collapsed onto. Her fingers pressed against my ribs with the firm gentleness of someone who had mapped every injury on my body over the past two months and kept a running mental inventory of which ones I was lying about.
"Three fractures reopened. Shoulder inflammation is worse. You’re dehydrated and your mana channels are running so hot I can feel them through your combat suit."
"But the vibes are great."
"The vibes are not great. The vibes are you being an idiot three separate times in one afternoon." Her sapphire eyes were wet but her voice was steady. That was new. Two months ago Emi would have been crying already. Now she saved the tears for after she’d finished yelling at me. Growth.
The healing aura sank into my body and the worst of the pain receded like a wave pulling back from shore. Not gone. Dulled. Pushed to a manageable background noise that let me breathe without wincing.
Skylar materialized in the doorway with her hood down and a cut above her left eyebrow that she hadn’t bothered to wipe. The blood had dried into a thin line that looked almost decorative against her pale skin. She leaned against the frame and watched Emi work on me with an expression that mixed genuine concern with studied boredom. Skylar Amane’s personal brand: caring violently while pretending not to.
"Nice kiss."
