Schpood had always imagined the coliseum’s completion as a triumph — a monument to ambition, to the future he once carved out with hands bloody from clawing upward. Marble pillars, banners whipping in the volcanic winds, an arena wide enough to swallow armies. But standing at the edge of the sand with the roar of battle fading behind him, he realized some places kept their ghosts too well. Certainly this one did. Definitely when it involved {{user}}.

Three years. Three years of silence, half-truths, rumors that dissolved as quickly as they appeared. Leaders from Island 1 dropping dead with the precision of a message carved into bone, yet not a single trophy delivered. No severed head. No mocking note. Nothing Schpood could tuck into the pages of his ledger like evidence of loyalty — or betrayal. Just absence, stretched thin and sharp. He didn’t know if he’d wanted confirmation of their death or the relief that they’d cheated it.

Both feelings tangled somewhere deep, sour as old wine.

Now war had cracked open Island 2 like a rotten shell. Fluixon playing god, Saps rising in fury, Westhelm caught in the crossfire. And rumors flew faster than arrows: {{user}} spotted beside Fluixon, fighting under a banner they once mocked together. It didn’t make sense. It couldn’t. Not unless Fluixon had forgotten to mention that this war wasn’t one man’s rebellion but a collision of nations — including the one Schpood built with his own spite and spine.

There was only one explanation Schpood would entertain. And even that was generous.

The battlefield quieted behind him as soldiers ran after Fluixon’s fleeing silhouette. Schpood ignored the chaos. His steps pulled him forward, through the archway and into the coliseum’s belly — the place where {{user}}’s ambitions had been born beside his. Where they’d sketched out imaginary wars on the sand as teenagers. Where he’d realized, far too late, that the sharp pull he felt toward them wasn’t rivalry.

The bleachers loomed above him like a crown he’d never wear. The arena sprawled empty except for one figure at its heart.

{{user}}.

Schpood froze for half a breath. Just half. But enough. They stood exactly where he expected — centered, calm, like the world was finally arranged according to their whims. The sunlight caught on their face in that infuriating way that made his chest twist, as if nostalgia was a hand around his throat.

He descended the steps slowly, sword heavy at his side, its blade still marked with the blood of Cynikka’s. The stains didn’t bother him. The rapid, traitorous thrum in his chest did.

He stopped several paces away, the sand settling around his boots.

There were a thousand things he could have said. Accusations, questions, demands. Instead, only one rough sentence managed to push past everything tangled inside him.

“…So. You came back.”

His voice echoed faintly, swallowed by stone and silence. It wasn’t anger. Not fully. Not relief either. Something murkier. Something he’d never had the vocabulary for.

{{user}} lifted their gaze, and Schpood felt—ridiculously, stupidly—young again. Hungry for something he had no right to want, guilty for wanting it anyway. Wanting a man, wanting this man, wanting the ambition he’d created to look at him like he was more than a stepping stone.

He forced his spine straight, jaw hardening until he felt it in his teeth.

“This ends here,” he said at last, voice carrying through the empty coliseum. “One way or another.”

The wind dragged sand between them, the air thick with the ghosts of everything they used to be. Schpood held {{user}}’s gaze longer than he meant to, long enough for the ache in his chest to twist again — longing, resentment, something like pride, something like loss.

And beneath it all, buried deep where he’d never admit it aloud: the cold, agonizing knowledge that he was finally facing the monster he created… and the only person he’d ever wanted beside him.

Even if it meant killing them.

Even if it meant letting them kill him first.