Chapter 518: The Nursery Rhyme of a Broken Prince

I stretched my shoulders, feeling the familiar ache radiating through my ribs. The regenerator brace hummed softly against my chest, its technological magic the only thing keeping my torso from falling apart like a broken puzzle.

Sixty minutes.

That’s all I had left before I walked back into that arena and faced Julian Valerius. Again.

The prep room felt smaller than it should have, the silence thicker than I expected. Most of the Hounds had scattered—grabbing food, taking nervous pisses, or doing whatever people do when they’re trying not to think about their friends getting publicly beaten in front of twenty thousand strangers. The concrete walls seemed to press in closer with each breath, painted in that institutional beige that screamed "budget cuts" and "minimum effort."

I sat alone on the metal bench, my bat resting across my knees like a meditation object.

Breathing.

Just breathing.

My phone buzzed against my thigh. Messages flooded in from accounts I didn’t recognize—congratulations on making it to the semis, praise for my "incredible journey," fan theories about my mysterious past. Social media accounts I’d never followed were posting edited screenshots of me and Cel holding hands outside the arena, drowning the images in heart emojis and shipping hashtags that made my skin crawl.

I deleted them all without reading past the first few words.

The only message I actually opened was from Luka.

"Proud of you, son. Your mother is crying in a good way. Don’t die."

Simple. Direct. Exactly what I needed to hear. No flowery bullshit about destiny or proving myself—just a father worried about his kid and honest enough to admit it.

I typed back with steady fingers.

"Noted. Will try."

The door opened with a soft whoosh of recycled air.

Braxton leaned against the frame, his perpetual synth-cigarette dangling from his lips like an extension of his soul. "You good?"

"Peachy."

"You look like you’re about to achieve enlightenment or have a nervous breakdown." His eyes swept over me with the same detached interest he’d use to examine a particularly boring poker hand. "Can’t tell which."

"Maybe both."

He snorted, a sound somewhere between amusement and resignation. "Save that zen bullshit for after you win." He jerked his thumb toward the hallway, where I could hear the distant murmur of familiar voices. "Your fan club’s outside having some kind of tactical meeting about your continued survival. Thought you should know."

"Of course they are."

Braxton’s expression shifted, the lazy humor draining out of his features like water through a cracked glass. When he got serious, it was like watching a different person put on his skin. "Julian’s gonna come at you different this time. His old man’s been in his ear all week, filling his head with expectations and family honor and all that blue-blood garbage. Kid’s got something to prove now."

"They always do."

"Yeah, well." Braxton shrugged, the moment of gravity passing as quickly as it had come. "Don’t let him prove it using your face as a canvas."

He left without another word, the door sliding shut behind him with mechanical finality.

I went back to staring at the opposite wall, where someone had scratched "KILL OR BE KILLED" into the paint with what looked like a fingernail.

Julian was wound tight. I’d seen it during the preliminaries when Aaron took that ice spike to the shoulder—Julian’s jaw had clenched so hard I thought his molars might crack. His whole body had gone rigid, like someone had shoved a steel rod up his spine and forgotten to mention it.

He wanted this victory.

Needed it.

His entire sense of self-worth was wrapped up in beating me in front of everyone who’d ever looked at him and seen perfection instead of the terrified, desperate child underneath. Every expectation placed on his shoulders since birth had led to this moment, this chance to prove that the natural order still meant something in a world gone mad.

Poor bastard.

Not because I felt bad for him—sympathy was a luxury I couldn’t afford. But because desperation made people sloppy. Predictable. Readable as a children’s book with large font and colorful pictures.

And I’d been reading Julian Valerius like nursery rhymes since the Gala.

My phone buzzed again.

This time, a group chat notification lit up the screen.

Natalia: "If you die, I’m killing you."

Skylar: "Don’t embarrass us."

Emi: "Please be safe!! I’ll heal you after!! 💙"

Cel: "My sister is watching. Try not to get arrested for murder."

Akari: "Win so I can collect my bet money, Daddy~"

I almost smiled at that. Almost let my lips curve upward before remembering that cameras were probably watching every micro-expression I made.

Nel’s voice slithered through my consciousness like smoke seeping under a locked door.

You’re remarkably calm for someone about to fight a boy who wants to murder you on live television.

"He doesn’t want to murder me," I replied silently. "He wants to prove I’m not real."

Semantics, darling.

"Important ones."

The Audience is absolutely eating this up, by the way. Your heart rate is holding steady at sixty-two beats per minute. You’re either genuinely confident or genuinely insane. The betting pools are split fifty-fifty on which.

"Can’t it be both?"

Apollo’s taking side bets on whether you’ll actually use that Aspect Evolution Ticket mid-fight. The odds are quite favorable if you’re feeling suicidal.

"Tell Apollo I’m not that stupid."

I’ll pass along the message, though we both know you absolutely are that stupid. It’s part of your charm.

I let that slide without comment.

The truth was, that ticket sat in my inventory like a loaded gun I wasn’t ready to fire. Apollo’s cheerful warnings about dimensional instability and potential ego death sounded fantastic on paper, but I’d survived worse. Kaelen had died violently in his original world, his consciousness ripped from his body and shoved into mine without asking permission first.

If I could handle having another man’s soul forced into my brain, I could probably handle one more existential crisis.

Probably.

The door opened again, this time without the courtesy of a knock.

Isabelle walked in with her usual regal composure, her spear held loosely at her side and her wine-red hair pulled back in a severe ponytail that made her look like a warrior queen preparing for battle. She examined me with the same clinical detachment she might use to study a particularly interesting chess problem.

"You’re meditating."

"Breathing."

"Same thing for people like you." She sat on the bench across from me, crossing her legs with fluid grace. "Kenjiro wanted me to tell you that he respects what you did earlier. The thermal vision counter was elegant."

"Tell him thanks."

"I won’t. You can tell him yourself after the tournament." Her eyes glinted with something that might have been amusement. "Assuming you survive Julian’s tantrum."

"I’ll survive."

"You sound certain."

"I am."

Her eyes narrowed slightly, studying my face like she was trying to read text written in a foreign language. "Because you’re stronger than him, or because you’ve already won the psychological battle?"

"Yes."

Isabelle actually smiled at that—just a flicker across her lips, there and gone like lightning. "Natalia is ready to freeze the entire arena if Julian so much as looks at you wrong. I’ve never seen ice form on concrete just from someone’s emotional state."

"I know."

"And Skylar has been sharpening her knives for the past twenty minutes while staring at Julian’s picture on the bracket board. She’s carved his name into three different surfaces."

"Also aware."

"Emi cried earlier. Just for a moment. Then she pulled herself together and started reorganizing her medical kit for the fourth time today. Her hands were shaking."

That one hit different. Lodged itself somewhere between my ribs where the regenerator couldn’t reach.

Emi crying because she was worried about me. Because she thought Julian might actually hurt me. Because she cared that much about someone like me.

Fuck.

"And Cel?" I asked, trying to keep my voice level.

Isabelle’s smile turned knowing, sharp as her spear tip. "The Winter Queen is currently sitting in the VIP section beside her sister, pretending to be perfectly composed while her hands shake every time your name appears on the scoreboard. Seraphina keeps glancing at her with this expression I can’t quite read."

Double fuck.

"Akari?"

"Taking selfies with Hikari and placing increasingly large bets on your victory. She’s turned your fight into a personal profit venture and seems genuinely excited about it." Isabelle stood, her movement fluid as water. "You’ve built something here, Nakano. These women would burn the world for you."

"I know."

"Do you?" She tilted her head, genuinely curious now. "Or are you still pretending this is all strategy and manipulation? Still telling yourself you’re just playing a game?"

I didn’t answer.

Couldn’t answer.

Because the truth was complicated and messy and involved gods and Systems and soul bonds that I barely understood myself. Because somewhere along the way, the lines between performance and reality had blurred beyond recognition.

Isabelle walked to the door, then paused with her hand on the frame. "Win. Not because Nike demands it or because your pride requires it. Win because those five girls out there chose you when they didn’t have to. When they had every reason to walk away and never look back."

She left without waiting for a response.