Ah… it felt good to finally shed the fa?ade.

  And it felt just as good to stand there, openly smug, staring down three demigods who wanted me dead in that very moment, and yet couldn’t touch me. I could still feel it, the tearing shield of divinity wrapped around me, the colosseum’s protection pressing against my skin like a constant hum.

  But this time, I wasn’t relying solely on something beyond my control.

  Quite the opposite.

  I was calm because something far more important stood right in front of me. And because I was utterly confident I could reach it. Enter it. Go somewhere none of these demigods would ever be able to follow.

  I studied the three figures surrounding me.

  Two men and one woman, all clad in the red robes of the Flameclaws. The men both had black hair, with contrasting eyes: one green, the other blue. Even though they had lived for centuries, neither looked older than their early thirties. But it was the woman who drew my full attention. Red-eyed. Seething so violently that I could practically feel her glare drilling holes straight through me.

  She was the only one with her sword drawn.

  It wasn’t pointed at me. Instead, she had it planted into the sand between us, both hands gripping the hilt, like she was anchoring herself, forcing restraint so she wouldn’t cleave me in half on the spot. My eyes curved into crescents as I smiled directly at her.

  Even so, despite my posture screaming mockery, I could feel it. The crushing pressure of three Gold cores bearing down on me like a rising tide. I had absolutely no illusions about this, I didn’t stand a chance against even one of them. Not even remotely.

  If this became a fight, it would be over before it truly began.

  Unfortunate for them, then, that I had no intention of staying. Even if they had some clever method prepared to bypass the colosseum’s protection, it wouldn’t matter.

  Before any of that, though, there was another problem.

  A man drenched in filth, wearing little more than rags that barely preserved his modesty, lightning crawling wildly over his body as he charged toward me at breakneck speed. The real Toma?.

  At least I didn’t need to deal with him myself.

  Before he could close the distance— still screaming every profanity he could think of— a sudden surge of purple mana swallowed him whole. A shape tore itself into existence from nothingness, and an uppercut slammed cleanly into his stomach. All the air left his lungs in a single, broken gasp as he was launched backward like a discarded doll, crashing into the arena sands at absurd speed.

  The newcomer straightened.

  It was me.

  An exact replica, down to the last detail, except she was dressed in living shadow. A cape, a skirt, upper armor, even heels, all formed from dense, writhing darkness. The outfit itself looked almost uncomfortable, like it was bound into that shape against its will.

  Which, to be fair, it was.

  Transfiguration using material drawn from the shadow dimension was… difficult. Awkward in ways that resisted clean explanation. I did manage to make it work, eventually, but never in anything resembling an effortless or casual manner. No matter how much I refined the process, I could never truly transfigure that shadow-stuff into something else. I could only shape it. Roughly. Imperfectly.

  I tried forming a dagger once, but it couldn’t cut a thing. A sword followed, only to end up blunter than a slab of slate. They looked the part, certainly, but functionally was useless. It was all appearance without substance.

  And yet, that wasn’t the real problem. Not the one that kept coming back to haunt me.

  My clones were always naked when I created them. Always. And while I could rationalize a great many things, I was still reluctant to keep producing unclothed copies of myself in public. There was a faint but persistent sense of shame attached to it, one I preferred not to examine too closely.

  Which was precisely why this odd property of the shadow dimension became such a blessing. I could expel my clones directly into that inky reflection of the world, and from there, they could clothe themselves by transfiguring whatever passed for matter in that place.

  A practical solution. An elegant one, even.

  Still… even knowing all that, I couldn’t help but stare at my own clone and feel an uninvited flicker of admiration. She looked good. Ridiculously so. This one was the curious clone, apparently, and who would have thought she had such a sense of style? The moment she appeared, right after kicking the life out of the real Toma?, she turned her gaze on the filthy man sprawled in the sand and sneered with open disgust.

  “Know your place, worm.”

  Then she turned away from him and cast a sharp, murderous glare at the three demigods for a brief moment, before vanishing once more into nothingness. Well. It seemed the curious clone came with a touch of anger issues as well.

  As for me… I returned my attention to the three Flameclaw elders standing opposite me and kept my mildly mocking grin firmly in place. There were reasons for that. Several of them.

  For one, my disguise was bound to be stripped away in the second phase regardless. Every champion would be relieved of everything they carried and thrown into a prearranged event. I would be no exception. No disguise potion. No extender serum. Nothing to keep the lie intact. Everyone would see me for what I truly was.

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  So why not do it sooner?

  Perhaps part of it was the temptation to witness even a hint of defeat flicker across the faces of these demigods, though it didn’t look like I’d be granted much of that pleasure. None of them had attacked me yet.

  All three remained at a distance. No shouting. No dramatic outbursts. Just thus cold assessment. Only Alina radiated open hostility, which was fair enough. I had deceived her and wounded her pride, after all. The other two elders were composed and their expressions were unreadable. They still exerted enough pressure that my former self would have collapsed just from standing nearby.

  Now, it barely registered, aside from the reminder of what they represented. Inevitability. I didn’t stand even the faintest chance against them. Not a rat’s ass of one.

  The crowd, meanwhile, had grown mostly silent. Some watched with open interest; others seemed to sense that something was unfolding, even if they couldn’t quite grasp what. My face was famous, after all, but that was my pre-evolution face. Back when I was frail, pale-skinned, crimson-eyed. This was different. I stood taller now. Sharper. More assured. Golden-haired, posture steady and confident.

  I wasn’t sure how many would connect the dots.

  To them, I was simply an intruder, someone who had replaced one of the contestants. And oddly enough, the crowd didn’t feel nearly as hostile as I’d expected. Not yet, at least.

  “What is your end goal in all this, Miss Jade?” he asked evenly. “You do realize you won’t be winning this battle. Nor surviving to the end. Frankly, retreating earlier would have been the most sensible course of action.”

  There was no accusation in his voice. No anger, either. Just mild curiosity, like he was inspecting a puzzle rather than addressing a threat. It irritated me more than open hostility ever could.

  I also noticed, belatedly, the barrier enclosing the three of us. Spatial in nature. Cleanly executed. Teleportation, or anything resembling it, was completely out of the question. Sound didn’t pass through. Neither did most other forms of interference.

  Predictable.

  I’d known forces like them would have counters ready for something as convenient as teleportation, so I hadn’t been banking on it anyway. Not that I could teleport in the first place. What I did with my clones operated on an entirely different principle. My body stayed here. My armor stayed here. Everything stayed here. In the instant of the switch, I simply became my clone, and the clone overwrote what had been me in that precise moment.

  I’d already tested it under spatial restriction in Vasilisa’s lab. No spatial magic— alchemical, enchanted, or hastily engineered— had been able to interfere with it. Quantum magic was troublesome like that. It didn’t care about rules people were comfortable enforcing.

  As for his question, I laughed. Soft at first, then a little more freely, before turning my gaze fully on him.

  “My end goal?” I said. “Simple. I want to be left alone. I want to live peacefully and do what I enjoy.” My smile widened. “And I can promise you, what I enjoy looks nothing like the charming terrorist portrait you’ve painted of me. Unfortunately, I’ve been getting the distinct impression that you lot would strongly object to that arrangement.”

  “And so your motivation,” the second man said slowly, sounding genuinely surprised, “is to defy us.”

  That tone finally got under my skin. The casual dismissal. The assumption that I wasn’t worth real concern.

  I dragged the words out deliberately. “Why the hell not?”

  I tilted my head, grinning as their expressions tightened. “First of all, I’m not a foolish dragon.” The word landed exactly where I wanted it to, they flinched. Good. “Let’s not pretend you don’t know what I am. You probably know more about me than I do myself. And going to these lengths just to erase me? It reeks of desperation.”

  I gestured lazily between them. “You dressed me up as some vile menace that had to be rooted out. Sent even your precious Golds hunting for little old me. So of course I wasn’t going to run. What would that buy me, exactly? A life spent looking over my shoulder? Living in constant fear that one misstep would end me?”

  My smile thinned. “I know what terror Gold cores inspire. And I don’t know how to live inside that terror. Quite literally. So I did what I’ve always done best.”

  I met their gazes, one by one.

  “I defied you.”

  They remained silent.

  The pause stretched just long enough for my irritation to curdle, and I let out a low growl. “You all know how the Vor’Akhs worship dragons, don’t you?” I said flatly. “All it would take is me dropping my disguise, and I could have an army of zealots tearing reality apart in my name.”

  I scoffed. “You’re lucky I hate them just as much as you do. Lucky I’m prideful enough not to even consider it. But honestly?” I shook my head. “Sometimes it feels like I’m being tested for being too noble for my own good.”

  A sharp click of my tongue.

  “Tch. Tch.”

  I stopped and gave it some thought, tapping the toe of my boot against the sandy floor as I muttered, “Well… maybe there’s a hidden agenda tangled up in that too. Maybe these old fucks want me to do it for some reason.” I hummed to myself. “A certain someone would’ve caught the thread already. Right now, though, I just feel stupid. Why are people so needlessly complex?” I shrugged lightly. “Whatever the case, they all feel the same when you munch on them.”

  I nodded, satisfied with that conclusion—then realized I had been talking the entire time.

  I looked up.

  All three of them were staring at me with faint, unmistakable bewilderment.

  Panic struck immediately.

  “Uh—! I wasn’t talking to myself,” I blurted out. “I was addressing you. Obviously.” I waved a hand. “Not that I munch on people much! I mean, there was this one time I ate a guy’s arms, but that was only because I didn’t have anywhere to dispose of them. And then I ate them again when he regenerated. Also, he deserved it.”

  Why was I still talking.

  I coughed into my fist. “Not that I needed to clarify any of that. Hmph.”

  Fuck. I didn’t like this. Not one bit. What the hell did they think I was, staring at me like that?

  Anyway.

  It was clear my plan hadn’t worked. I hadn’t managed to provoke them, hadn’t pushed them into making the first move so I could slip away while the reverent Flameclaw demigods publicly humiliated themselves in front of a massive crowd. Even though they were blocking my escape spatially, my own method didn’t particularly care about that. Still, time was running out. My clones could only persist for five minutes.

  I shrugged.

  “Well, I suppose I’ll see you all again when I won’t need this flimsy protection to face you,” I said, smiling pleasantly. “And I promise, that time will come very soon.”

  They remained unmoved. Unfazed. Only Alina showed the slightest hint of agitation, and even she didn’t look like she intended to act.

  So be it.

  Time was up.

  I gave them a casual salute and switched places with the terrorist clone, who was already halfway through the portal. Just before I slipped in, I caught a final detail: the curious clone had already finished analyzing the spatial barrier meant to prevent my escape. It was solid. Sophisticated. Tough.

  Well. Tough for someone like me.

  The elders sensed it instantly. Their composure cracked as they snapped into alertness, but not before terrorist-me turned towards them, her expression splitting into manic glee. Golden tentacles erupted from her back and armor as she lunged straight for Alina, catching her off guard.

  I couldn’t hear anything inside the barrier, but I didn’t need to. A bolt of fire tore clean through the clone’s torso, evaporating her lower half in an instant.

  I shook my head. The grin never left her face.

  Her tentacles coiled around Alina anyway.

  A question surfaced in my mind:

  Explode her or not?

  For the first time, I felt that refusing would be a betrayal, of myself, of that facet I had allowed to exist. So I confirmed it. Yes.

  And then I slipped into the void-like portal without looking back.

  Everything went blank.

  The first sensation that greeted me on the other side was immediate and white-hot pain, as something lashed across my back like a bladed whip.

  Jade (the defiant dragon):

  Successfully antagonized three demigods, traumatized one impostor, and emotionally validated a homicidal clone.

  Status: Mildly proud. Mildly concerned about what that says about her.

  “I handled that with grace. And only some tentacles.”

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