Anthesis of Sadness

The healers rushed toward Rizork, white silhouettes cutting through the burning mist, their long immaculate robes floating around them like scraps of ectoplasm. They looked like benevolent specters emerging from the depths of the temple, tasked with bringing back to life a giant struck down by fate.

One of them, the youngest, lifted his head with almost paternal care, and slowly poured between his parted lips a vial of purified blood. A rare essence, alive, still pulsing as if it had refused to die. Another traced, with the tips of his fingers, a complex spell whose glyphs vibrated with a pale green light, weaving over his wounds a net of healing energy, soft but firm, like slow rain on fractured earth.

And under the effect of their gestures, the burns closed. Quickly. Almost too quickly for wounds that severe. His skin slowly regained its natural tone, the nerves reconnected, and his breathing, first ragged, became steady again. His chest rose with greater force. His gaze, clouded, sharpened.

He was alive.

And already... he was returning.

His strength rose faster than the arena itself, which was only just beginning to recover from the destruction wrought.

But I was no longer watching Rizork.

Lysara was walking toward me.

Not as a conqueror. Not as a warrior hungry for recognition.

She walked with the sure slowness of someone who no longer needs to prove anything. An inner light radiated from her silhouette, not through magic, but through certainty. Radiant. Yes. But without seeking to dazzle.

She had won.