Four teams. Twelve people. The room felt like a room for the first time — open space between the clusters, the walls visible from every angle, the sourceless light falling on stone that used to have bodies on it.
Jake stood up when the bunny appeared.
"Semifinals," the bunny said. "Two fights. Two teams remain."
Twelve people looking back.
"Both teams in the final pass through the portal."
The room shifted. Something in the air changed — a loosening, a breath held for days finally releasing. Both teams pass. The final wasn't a death match. Six people would walk out of this room.
"First pair."
Jake's team. And across the room, three people he hadn't spoken to. They'd survived three rounds on the other side of the bracket — a team of strangers assembled in the panic after the rules. Two women and a man. They'd made it this far, which meant they were good.
The semifinals were the last round where losing meant dying.
Jake walked to the center. Kitch beside him, Vauren behind.
The opposing team took their positions. The man was broad-shouldered, dark-haired. He rolled his neck and Jake felt it from five meters — a low hum, a vibration that traveled through the stone floor and into the soles of his feet. One of the women had fine scales across her arms and neck, her body low, her weight shifting between her feet. The other was small, compact, her hands already resting on the stone floor.
"Begin," the bunny said.
Kitch opened. Two panes — one cutting the scaled woman's angle to Kitch, one blocking the small woman's sight line to Jake. The glass caught the sourceless light. Nearly invisible.
Jake moved. Light at his feet, going left, closing on the small woman. She was the one with her hands on the ground. Take her out first.
She was ready. The floor under Jake's next step dropped two centimeters. His foot landed wrong, his momentum going somewhere his body didn't expect. He stumbled. She was reshaping the floor — her hands pressed flat on the stone and the surface tilted under his planted foot. He went sideways. His shoulder hit the ground.
The broad man walked through Kitch's pane. He didn't hit it — he touched it and it shattered, the vibration from his hand passing through the glass and breaking it from the inside. He kept walking toward Kitch.
Vauren intercepted. Stepped into the man's path. The man swung. Vauren absorbed it — the water distributing the impact, his body rolling with the force. He struck back. Pressurized hit to the chest.
The man took it. Swung again. This time the punch carried something extra. The vibration traveled through Vauren's water layer, through the absorption, into the body beneath. Vauren's ribs rattled. The water couldn't stop what passed through it.
"He vibrates," Vauren said. Absorbing another hit. "It goes through."
The scaled woman was fast. She crossed the space to Kitch in three steps, low, the scales catching light. Kitch sent shards. She was past them before they reached her, the glass cutting empty air. She was inside his range in a heartbeat.
Kitch was exposed. A vibration fighter breaking his glass on one side, a speed fighter inside his range on the other.
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Jake rolled off the shifted floor, got his feet under him. The small woman was repositioning, her hands on the stone, the distortions spreading. The ground between Jake and his teammates was unreliable.
He stopped trying to reach her. He turned and ran at the scaled woman heading for Kitch.
Light at his feet. The ground shifted under him twice. He stumbled through it, the light compensating, his body learning the wrongness by feel. He hit the scaled woman from the side. She was fast — turned into it, rolled with the contact. But the collision knocked her off-line. Kitch made a pane behind her. She backed into it.
Jake put his palm against a second pane Kitch threw up in front of her. Light through glass. The scattered brightness filled her field of vision. She flinched.
Kitch shattered both panes inward. She was fast enough to dodge most of the fragments. But her eyes were closed and Jake was already through. Three hits. She went down.
Vauren and the vibration fighter. Each punch passing through Vauren's water and rattling the body underneath. Vauren was absorbing the physical force but the resonance kept getting through. He was losing ground.
Vauren stopped taking hits. He let the next punch come, turned his body, and the fist went past his head. The man's weight carried forward. Vauren hit him in the back of the neck — a compressed strike, short, every ounce of stored pressure in one point. A spot where vibration couldn't help.
The man dropped.
The small woman was alone. Three against one. Her hands lifted from the stone. The distortions settled.
"Done," she said.
Three people on the ground. The bunny walked to the center.
The last time. The last three people who would die in this room. Jake turned away. The sounds came. The sounds went.
Jake sat down. His shoulder ached. His knuckles were split. Kitch had a cut on his forearm from his own glass. Vauren was rolling his left shoulder — the compressed release had cost him. The joint held but he moved it carefully.
The last killing. After this, no more.
The second semifinal.
The tall one, the wide one, the woman with close-cropped hair — the three from the original eight who had dismantled Roden's team in forty seconds. Against them, a team Jake had watched win three rounds through discipline and positioning. A woman who could drop temperatures to freezing, a fighter whose bones reinforced into plating, a man who generated acid from his palms.
It lasted twenty seconds.
The woman opened. Stone projectiles — three, four, five in rapid succession, each one aimed at the bone fighter. The speed was beyond anything Jake had seen. Kitch's glass was fast. This was faster. The first projectile cracked the bone plating on the fighter's forearm. The second hit his chest. The third hit his knee. He was down before the acid man had finished raising his hands.
The acid user threw. A corrosive stream aimed at the stone woman. The tall one stepped forward — one stride — and a pulse of force hit the acid mid-air. The stream splashed sideways, hissing on the stone. He pushed again. The acid user staggered backward. Again. She hit the wall.
The temperature user was last. She dropped the air around the wide one to freezing — frost spreading across the stone, the air crystallizing. He walked through it. Those too-large hands steaming where the cold hit them, the density keeping his body warm through sheer mass. He reached her. One hand closed around her arm.
Done.
Jake watched. Kitch watched. Vauren watched.
Kitch said it first. "They're better than us."
"The stone woman is faster than me. The tall one can shatter my glass with a force pulse. The wide one doesn't care about anything we can throw at him." Both eyes forward. The feathers at his throat tight. "They're better."
"They are stronger," Vauren said. "That is not the same thing."
Kitch tilted his head. "Explain."
"They overwhelm. Direct pressure, coordinated, faster than the other team can adapt. Every fight has been the same." Vauren paused. "They have not fought anyone who refused to stand still."
"They haven't fought us," Jake said.
"No. They have not."
Six people. Two teams. The room was nearly empty. The sourceless light fell on stone and walls and the sheet along the far wall and almost nothing else.
Both teams would survive the final. Both teams would walk through the portal. But the fight still mattered — to the bunny, to the room, to whatever this test was supposed to prove. It mattered to Jake for a simpler reason. Three people across the room had killed Roden and Pol and the chitin woman in forty seconds. Jake wanted to look them in the eye and show them something they hadn't seen yet.
The tall one sat across from them, twenty meters away, his back against the opposite wall. His team beside him. He was watching Jake.
Jake held his gaze.
They sat on opposite sides of an empty room and waited for the morning neither of them would be able to measure.