Chapter 61: Tournament of Power
"26th."
That was the number he counted—twenty-six girls leaving the bathhouse in quiet succession, each emerging like specters into the thin morning light. No laughter, no casual chatter. Just the sound of wet footsteps, soft towel rustling, and silence—thick, loaded silence. Their faces were pale, eyes either cast downward or fixed straight ahead. Focused. Distant.
Zephyr watched from the edge of the room, his back pressed against one of the cold, polished columns that ringed the bathing quarters. The stone beneath his fingertips was damp with the last remnants of dawn mist. The sky hadn’t even lightened yet. Pale lilac hovered above like a blanket stretched too tight, not ready to give way to sun. He wasn’t sure if it was morning or just the death of night.
He’d woken up without cause. No alarm, no call. Just the sudden sharp awareness of being conscious. His eyes had blinked open in complete darkness—no ambient glow from the sky, no light filtering through the crystal roof, no sense of time. For a few seconds, he thought maybe he was dreaming again. Then the chill of the room hit him.
He tried to sleep again, flipping onto his side, then his back, then curling slightly. But the restlessness stayed. Not the jittery kind—the deep, carved kind. The kind that grew out of something you couldn’t name. Anxiety? Maybe. Anticipation? That too. But deeper than either, a wordless stirring in his gut. Something was coming. The tournament.
Eventually, he sat up, rubbed his face, and gave up on sleep.
By the time he entered the bathhouse, the steam already hung heavy in the air, thick as fog on a battlefield before dawn. The temperature hit him immediately—humid and warm, almost oppressive, wrapping around his skin like a wet cloak. The water was still. Not calm. Just waiting.
A few others were there when he arrived. No one spoke. Not out of formality or shyness, but because something about the moment didn’t allow for it. The tension wasn’t loud—it was too old, too settled. It had lived here longer than they had.
He stepped into one of the side pools, the stone warm beneath his feet. Submerged slowly. The heat crawled up his limbs, coaxing aches from his muscles he hadn’t even realized he’d been carrying. His breath left in a soft hiss.
Around him, others did the same. Boys from his class. All silent. Some stared ahead. Some had their eyes closed. One guy, with a buzzcut and ritual scars on his back, was muttering something under his breath—prayers maybe, or the names of past matches.
Zephyr rested his arms on the pool’s edge, gazing at the fogged ceiling. His reflection trembled faintly across the water’s surface, barely recognizable in the glow of the subterranean lights. The ripple of someone entering the water beside him distorted it completely.