Chapter 28: Coliseum

“Coliseum,” I repeated.

In my first life, I’d studied enough history to know what a coliseum was.

The Romans had built theirs from travertine and volcanic rock, a monument to organized violence where men killed each other for the entertainment of crowds and the convenience of emperors. Gladiators, slaves and prisoners. People whose value was measured in how spectacularly they could die.

The cheering that poured from the arched entrances was the same sound.

I tugged the rope that still bound my wrists to the carriage’s interior ring.

“I thought I was being taken for training,” I said, keeping my voice level. “That’s what you told me.”

Brandt stood outside the carriage.

“This is training. The first stage,” he said, “is surviving the Coliseum.”

The word surviving landed too different than training.

“Surviving,” I echoed. “The Coliseum. As in the place where they kept slaves.”

My eyes moved from Brandt to Ghost to Roen, searching each face for the crack that would reveal the joke.

There was no joke.

Brandt’s dark gaze didn’t waver.

“What,” he said quietly, “did you think you had become?”

It cut through every assumption I’d built over twenty days on the road. Every morning run behind the carriage. Every afternoon of lifting rocks until my muscles screamed. Every evening of sparring until my hands couldn’t grip the training sword and my body hit the dirt and Roen’s voice counted repetitions into the dark.

I’d thought I was preparing for something.

I’d thought they were investing in me.

Ghost stepped forward. His pale eyes held the same temperature they always held. No warmth. No apology.

“The moment you were requisitioned,” Ghost said, his voice precise as a surgical incision, “you became property of the Iron Cross. Not a recruit. Property.”

He let the word sit in the air.

“A slave,” he continued, “until you prove valuable enough to be considered otherwise.”

The betrayal hit me like a fist to the stomach.

Not the word itself.

What hit me was the twenty days.

Twenty days of Brandt teaching me footwork patterns while the carriages rested. Twenty days of Roen counting my push-ups with that infinite, metronome patience. Twenty days of Ghost critiquing my shoulder movement, my grip, my timing, my breathing.

I had looked at them and seen something.

Not friends, but close to it. Mentors, maybe.

I had watched them fight monsters on the road and felt my chest swell with something dangerously close to admiration.

And all of it, every morning run, every rock carried, every bruise earned in sparring, had been preparation for this.

For a cage.

“You lied to me.”

My voice came out wrong. Too loud. The composure I’d built over loops and deaths and careful, calculated conversations cracked down the middle.

“You said I’d receive a training weapon. You said there’d be an evaluation. You—”

“We said all of those things,” Ghost interrupted, smooth as glass. “And all of them were true. You will receive a weapon. You will be evaluated.”

His head tilted.

“Inside.”

The fury that erupted in my chest was the hottest thing I’d felt since the draconic flame. It burned through the carefully constructed architecture of calm I’d been maintaining. It burned through the pragmatism.

For a moment, I wasn’t the man who had learned to treat death as currency.

I was just a person who had trusted the wrong people.

“Fuck you,” I snarled at Ghost. “When I get out of this place, I’m going to beat you so badly your grandchildren will feel it.”

Ghost’s expression didn’t change.

“If,” he corrected, “you get out.”

I bared my teeth.

“When.“

The smile that spread across my face had no warmth in it.

Even if it takes a thousand lives. Even if I die every day for a year. Even if the curse resets me a hundred times inside those walls.

I will walk out.

I yanked against the ropes. The hemp bit into my wrists and the iron ring groaned against its bolts.

“Untie me,” I demanded. “Right now. I’m not going in there like cargo. I’m not—”

Brandt’s chin dipped.

A fraction of an inch. The smallest possible nod.

Roen moved.

For a man his size, he was horrifyingly fast when he wanted to be. One enormous hand closed around the rope at my wrists. The other produced a strip of cloth that he wrapped around my jaw and the back of my skull before I could get another word out.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

The gag tasted like old leather and horse sweat.

I screamed into it. The sound came out as a muffled, furious hum that vibrated against the cloth and went nowhere.

Roen lifted me off the bench with one arm.

My feet left the carriage floor. For a nauseating second I hung in the air, suspended by the grip on my bindings, legs kicking at nothing.

He set me down outside the carriage.

Roen took the rope in both hands and began walking toward the Coliseum.

I had no choice but to follow.

Roen’s strides were so long that I had to half-jog to keep the rope from yanking me off my feet. Rage boiled behind the gag. My breath came in short, harsh snorts through my nose.

“It’s not so bad,” Roen said, his deep voice carrying the conversational tone of a man discussing weather. “I was in the Coliseum myself. When I first joined the Iron Cross.”

I glared at the back of his bald head.

“It was actually pretty easy,” Roen continued. “I just had fifteen fights and become the leader. Didn’t take long.”

His massive shoulders shrugged as if the memory was mildly amusing rather than life-defining.

“Only broke four bones. Maybe five. I don’t remember exactly.”

I tried to scream through the gag again. It came out as an inarticulate growl.

Roen didn’t notice. Or didn’t care. Both seemed equally likely.

The interior was exactly what the exterior promised.

The lower level was a network of corridors carved from the same dried-blood stone. The ceiling hung low. The walls wept with moisture. The air was thick, humid, carrying the smell of sweat and iron and something organic that I didn’t want to identify.

Torchlight lined the passages at uneven intervals.

Two figures stood at the transition point between the entrance corridor and the deeper passages.

Knights.

Not the road-worn, monster-fighting variety. These were garrison Knights. Polished armor. Clean tabards. Swords at their hips that looked like they’d been maintained. They snapped to attention when Brandt appeared behind me.

“New recruit,” Brandt said. He produced a folded document from inside his coat and extended it.

One of the garrison Knights took it, unfolded it, read it, and nodded.

The transition happened without ceremony.

The rope changed hands. Roen’s enormous grip was replaced by a gauntleted fist that pulled me forward.

The garrison Knight led me deeper.

The corridors narrowed. The torchlight grew sparser. We descended a flight of stairs cut into raw stone, then another.

The lower wing opened before us.

It was a broad, low-ceilinged hall lit by mana-glow that emanated from crystals set into the walls at chest height.

People moved through the space.

Not Knights.