CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: THE AWAKENING STORM
[Even in another life… I would still find you. And even then—I'd forget everything, just to fall for you again.]
THE ARENA — NIGHTFALL
The stands were empty. The crowd was forbidden.
Only shadows watched.
A dome of obsidian glass locked the world out, sealing inside two people who once burned as one—and broke like fallen stars.
No crowd. No commentary. Only cold steel and glass. And silence, so thick it rang.
Two combatants.
One battlefield.
One ancient tension ready to ignite.
23-year-old Zareina stood at the edge of the ring, masked in hand, face is in the darkness, her breath steady despite the quake inside her chest. She masked up.
Zareina Ravyn—alias Nyx—stood alone, black hoodie unzipped halfway, mismatched eyes glowing dim beneath the flicker of the arena lights. One eye shimmered like a wildfire-gold eclipse, the other like frozen starlight. Her hair shimmered with emotional static—violet melting into scarlet, then bled crimson at the tips—emotion flickering like a warning,whispering danger. Shadows clung to her skin like devotion.
Across her, Icarus moved with the silence of a storm brewing. 28 years old, silver hair falling over sharp gold eyes that had seen too much. His expression is unreadable, unreadably calm—but the pressure in the room said otherwise. His Evol pulsed just beneath the surface, coiled like a serpent in wait.
They were told to fight.
Their minds said stranger.
Their souls screamed.
And.
The world felt like it had stopped.
------
Zareina stood motionless in the centre of the Arena—her figure cracked with light and shadow, the silence before a symphony's crescendo. Her mismatched eyes, once hidden under a calm disguise, now burned with raw clarity:
One violet like a shattered galaxy—
The other gold was like a cursed sun.
All eyes were on her.
Across her, Icarus—silver hair tousled, gold eyes unreadable, slow-burning like a buried sun. The air trembled around him, his presence so sharp it hurt to look at.
They didn't speak.
Didn't need to.
Their Evols began to stir.
-------
Zareina's fingers clenched.
A pulse—like thunder underwater—rippled through her bones.
She felt it.
A tug.
A pull.
To him.
Her Evol surged, cracking through the barriers like a dam broken: Mystery and Music collided, twisting reality around her. The sound of her heartbeat echoed in his chest.
He heard her silence.
Across the ring, Icarus's Evol responded with a savage roar. His energy warped gravity, eyes gleaming with golden rage and restraint.
Control. Pressure. Memory locked in time.
And yet, as soon as her energy touched his—
Something shattered.
---
Zareina rushed forward—not to attack - but because her body moved on instinct.
Icarus didn't dodge.
Didn't flinch.
He caught her wrist mid-strike—but froze the moment their skin met.
Their powers exploded between them in a flash of silver and black.
Visions tore through them both:
A battlefield.
Hands bloodied but still clasped.
Her voice, crying his name—
His back, shielding her from blades—
A kiss they never remembered giving—
A goodbye they never truly said.
---
Zareina's hair shimmered in full spectrum, like she was becoming something more than human. Her eyes glowed like divine judgment.
Icarus's golden gaze flickered, his body shaking—not from pain, but from restraint. The way her Evol echoed inside his was unbearable.
"You—" he growled, voice trembling with something broken.
She backed up, breathless. "You feel it too…"
Silence.
Then—
"Yes."
---
The ring wasn't big enough for the war between them.
Each move was a question.
Each parry, an answer.
Each blow, a memory clawing its way up from the abyss.
She moved like a whisper. He struck like thunder. Together, they created a storm that cracked the very ground.
And when they collided again—palm to palm, forehead to forehead—their Evols wrapped around them like old flames reunited.
----
Cipher watched from the van, her hands trembling over her keyboard. Static filled every surveillance screen, corrupted by Zareina's pulse. Her voice trembled.
"No... this isn't just evol.... This is... a key. A forgotten code."
On her screen, ancient algorithms flickered—symbols that hadn't surfaced since the Zero Event, a hidden catastrophe buried by the world's elite. Cipher swallowed, whispering to herself:
"Zareina… who are you?"
---
The air was too still.
Even after the deafening silence that followed Icarus's words—"I could never forget the girl who taught the stars how to burn"—Zareina felt a strange shift inside her. A crack in the dam she had built so carefully.
And then—
it all shattered.
Her mismatched eyes flared open—one glowed the colour of storm-churned amethyst, the other a merciless gold. The arena's shattered ground trembled beneath her feet. That seal on her emotions? Gone. The fire she had always buried? Now clawed its way out of her like a feral beast tasting air for the first time.
Cipher gasped from the shadows. "She's breaking the lock... no—she's awakening."
And Icarus…
He didn't move. He just watched. As if he'd seen this before in a memory he couldn't name.
Zareina's body rose off the ground, slowly, effortlessly, as glowing sigils spiraled up her arms—musical runes tangled in mystery script. Her voice, even in a whisper, cracked the edges of reality.
"You remember me?"
Her voice dripped like dark wine. "Then remember this, Icarus...
You were never supposed to follow me into the dark."
Her words pierced deeper than bullets.
With a single blink, a resonance wave exploded from her chest—shattering glass, distorting sound, and short-circuiting every monitor in the control room.
The force knocked Icarus to his knees—not out of pain, but something far deeper: recognition. The way her power sang was like a melody he'd once bled for. A power that mirrored his own... and something more ancient.
Inside the arena, Icarus knelt. Not in defeat—
But reverence.
He couldn't take his eyes off her. She wasn't glowing—she was unravelling. Every thread of her past life, every sealed-away emotion, every melody unsung—now tore out of her body like thunder.
And the world responded.
A scream—not of rage, but of unbearable grief—ripped through the chamber, shaking the foundation of the entire arena. It came not from her throat but from the resonance between her soul and the world. A heartbeat that echoed through space like a siren's call.
Walls cracked. Metal groaned.
All systems across the Icarus Complex glitched simultaneously. Cipher's screens went black. Back-up power failed.
Only one line of corrupted data kept repeating:
"THE MYSTERY WAKES."
----
ELSWHERE,
IN PRIVATE,
HIGH SECURITY CHAMBER,
Aspen leaned back in her stolen leather chair, boots kicked up on Icarus's desk. She'd been watching everything, live, sipping wine.
And now—
She was still.
A rare silence fell over her lips. And then—slowly, dangerously—she smiled.
"She's beautiful when she's broken."
She ran her fingers over the edge of her glass, voice now a purr.
"Not the kind of broken that begs to be fixed.
The kind that destroys the things that try to own her."
Behind her, Cipher's voice buzzed through comms. "Aspen—are you seeing this?"
Aspen chuckled.
"Oh, I'm feeling it. She's not just an anomaly.
She's the damn epicenter."
Cipher whispered, "They don't know each other. But their powers do."
Aspen smirked, arms folded. "That's not just power. That's history."
Aspen, watching through the cameras, actually grinned. "Oh, darling. Look at you break the world... finally."
---
Back in the Boss's observation deck…
The Boss stood at the glass window, observing everything unfold.
His fingers pressed together, voice calm.
"It begins. The seal is undone."
"What seal?" his assistant whispered.
"The one placed by the old world... to hide what she truly is."
"And Icarus?"
"He has already chosen her. Whether he knows it or not."
The Boss turned away from the glass as alarms flared red.
"So she sings again," he murmured.
"What now?" his assistant asked.
"Now we let her remember what we buried.
And we watch whether she burns the world—or saves it."
---
BACK IN THE ARENA,
Zareina descended like a fallen note.
Her breathing heavy. Her lips stained red from biting down screams which was still covered with mask. The glow in her eyes dimmed to a dangerous lullaby.
And then—
She looked at Icarus again. There was pain in her gaze. Regret. Fury. But more than anything... knowing.
She said it, so quiet only he could hear:
"You told me I taught the stars how to burn."
"Then why did you leave me in the dark?"
The lights exploded above.
And the screen faded to black.
Zareina finally landed.
Her knees hit the ground. Her body trembled, blood dripping from her nose. But her voice? Calm.
"It hurts," she whispered.
"To feel everything at once.
All the versions of myself I tried to erase."
Icarus, still on his knees, reached forward—but didn't touch her. Couldn't.
"Zareina... I didn't leave you."
"Didn't you?" she said. "Or did they make you forget me too?"
She looked at him. And in that moment—
He did remember something.
Not clearly… but enough. A flash.
Two hands in the dark.
Her voice, humming something only he could hear.
The stars blink out one by one above a ruined city.
A kiss.
Her tears.
His promise—broken.
He staggered back.
"What have they done to us?" he choked out.
Zareina gave him a crooked, tired smile. Although her mask covered it but Icarus could see that.
"That's what we're going to find out."
And then she collapsed—unconscious.
"I will be back."
And then Icarus stepped back… and vanished into the mist as the system announced:
"MATCH ENDED: DRAW."
The screens flickered back to life, Cipher's voice barely stable.
"Emergency medical. Arena—NOW."
As the world descended into emergency protocol, Aspen stood…
And whispered into the comms:
"Let her rest.
But when she wakes…
Don't get in her way."
(To be continued)