Chapter Eight: The Awakening
The first tremor hit as they left Fat Man’s study. Stone groaned around them as if the entire arena was taking a deep breath. The patterns on the walls flared brilliantly, then dimmed to a pulsing rhythm that matched the tremors.
“We need to get to the surface,” Raven said, steadying herself against the wall. She yanked her hand back immediately. “The stone… it’s warm. Like skin.”
Koric unfolded one of the maps they’d taken from the study. “There’s a maintenance shaft that should lead up to the old arena floor. If it still exists.” If it hadn’t been reshaped like everything else down here.
Another tremor, stronger this time. Dust and small stones rained from the ceiling. But the dust didn’t fall normally—it swirled in patterns that mirrored the ones on the walls, as if every piece of matter in Arcmire was learning to dance to the same rhythm.
They found the first transformed gladiator at the next junction. Jana was half-embedded in the wall, her flesh merging seamlessly with stone. Patterns flowed across her skin, and her eyes… her eyes were open, watching them with an expression of rapturous joy.
“The pattern grows,” she said, her voice harmonizing with sounds that came from the stone itself. “Can’t you see how beautiful it’s becoming? How perfect?”
“Jana,” Koric stepped forward. “We can help—”
“Help?” She laughed, the sound rippling through the stone around them. “You still don’t understand. We’re not being changed. We’re being completed.”
More voices joined hers, echoing from all directions. The tunnels were full of them now—former fighters in various stages of transformation. Some were almost fully merged with the stone, others still mostly human but moving with that terrible synchronized grace.
“The heart is beating faster now,” Jana continued. “The dream is almost ready. And you…” Her partly stone face split in a smile. “You’re just in time to join the final pattern.”
Raven’s crossbow came up, but Koric pushed it down. “Save the bolts. We run.”
They fled through tunnels that were less like stone now and more like living tissue. The walls pulsed visibly, and the air itself felt thick with potential energy. Behind them, around them, the voices of their transformed companions sang in harmonies that hurt the mind.
Another violent tremor sent them stumbling into a vast chamber they hadn’t seen before. Or maybe it had just formed, created by the entity’s growing power. The ceiling was lost in darkness above, and the floor…
“Gods below,” Raven whispered.
The floor was a massive spiral pattern, composed entirely of transformed gladiators. Dozens of bodies merged with stone, arranged in concentric circles that slowly rotated around a central point. At the center stood Marcus, his form now more energy than matter, conducting the others like some twisted orchestra.
“The heart dreams,” he said, using The Fat Man’s words from years ago. “The stone remembers. And now…” He gestured, and waves of transformation rippled out from him, reshaping everything they touched.
“The maintenance shaft,” Koric hissed. “There!”
A narrow opening high on one wall might have been their target, or might have been a new creation of the entity. Either way, it was their only chance.
They ran for it as the chamber continued to transform around them. The spiral of gladiators moved faster now, their voices rising in a crescendo that made reality itself vibrate in sympathy. Koric boosted Raven up to the shaft entrance, then scrambled up after her as stone fingers reached for his legs.
They crawled upward through a space that was actively trying to close around them. The shaft walls rippled and flexed, patterns flowing past them like water. Behind them, Marcus’s voice rose one final time:
“The arena remembers everything we taught it! And now it’s ready to share those lessons with the world!”
They burst out onto the arena floor, but the horror hadn’t stopped at the lower levels. The entire coliseum was transforming. Walls flowed like liquid, towers twisted into impossible shapes, and everywhere the patterns spread, reaching up toward the sky like hungry fingers.
In the market, the remaining residents fled in terror as stone reached for them with predatory purpose. Those it caught began to change, their screams turning to songs of ecstasy as they joined the growing pattern.
“It’s not just the tunnels,” Raven said, her voice shaking. “It’s not just the gladiators. It’s all of Arcmire. The whole arena is…”
“Awakening,” Koric finished. He touched his daughter’s locket, feeling it pulse warmly against his chest. “And if we don’t find a way to stop it…”
He didn’t need to finish. They both saw it now—the patterns reaching beyond Arcmire’s walls, spreading into the very ground of the Dread Wastes. The entity wasn’t content to simply reshape one old arena. It had learned too well from years of blood and death.
It was ready to reshape the world.
And somewhere far below, in that spiral chamber where the transformed gladiators danced their eternal pattern, the heart of what had once been Arcmire beat faster, stronger, preparing for the final movement in its terrible symphony of change.