The world had narrowed to a single, obsessive thought.

Silverwood Reach. Archer. A strange ability.

The words echoed in my mind, a relentless loop that overshadowed everything else. The roaring crowds, the grand spectacle of the Colosseum, the strategic discussions with my team — it all felt like a distant, muffled dream. For almost two years, my search had been a series of cold, hard dead ends. A hundred phantom leads, a thousand scanned faces, all culminating in the familiar, hollow ache of nothing. Now, for the first time, I had a flicker. A tiny, fragile signal in an endless void of static, and it was consuming me whole.

The next two days of the Aptitude Gauntlet were a blur of forced concentration. The trials continued, each one a different flavour of Imperial audit. We faced a logistical challenge, tasked with allocating limited resources to build a defensible outpost against a simulated siege. Eliza took the lead, her mind a whirlwind of optimal placements and structural weak points, while Lucas commanded the defensive drills. I played my part, offering suggestions from a "healer's perspective" on triage points and morale, all while my thoughts were a million miles away. We passed a survival trial in a simulated arctic tundra, the biting, phantom cold a welcome distraction from the fire in my gut. Through it all, I was an actor on a stage, speaking my lines, hitting my marks, but my soul was somewhere else entirely.

"Jack, you with us?" Lucas' voice cut through my haze during a break. We were in a private training room, one of the perks of our Gold-tier status. He had a look of genuine concern on his face. "You seem... distracted."

"Just tired," I lied, the words tasting like ash. "This city... it's a lot to take in."

He nodded, accepting the flimsy excuse. "Get some rest. Tomorrow is the Cross-Sectional Melee. The winners from all ten sections will face off. The competition is about to get real."

Tomorrow. The word was a promise and a threat. For two days, I had poured over the public broadcasts of the tournament, my Gaze scanning hours of footage, hoping for a glimpse of Section Epsilon's matches. But the Empire curated its narrative. They only showed the most explosive, cinematic highlights from a few chosen teams, and the archer's was not among them. The information blackout was a unique and exquisite form of torture.

I shifted my focus to Mavia's progress. Her matches were a masterclass in brutal, understated efficiency. In the footage, she moved with a cold, predatory grace that was entirely Nyx. She never used flashy, high-cost skills. It was always a perfectly timed parry, a blade slipped between armor plates, a shadow-grenade used to disorient an opponent just long enough to land a disabling blow. She was a ghost, climbing the solo rankings without ever making herself the star of the show. She was a true professional. She was everything I envisioned her to be.

Finally, the day arrived. The Cross-Sectional Melee. The atmosphere in the Grand Colosseum was even more electric than during the opening ceremony. The massive arena floor had been transformed. In the center, a huge circular platform of black, rune-etched stone floated fifty feet in the air, held aloft by crackling beams of pure energy. Ten smaller platforms orbited it, one for each of the victorious teams from the preliminary sections. The roar of the crowd was a physical force, the collective anticipation of ten-thousand spectators focused on the battles to come.

We took our place in the stands, not as competitors, but as observers. Our team had placed a respectable fourth in our section, safely in the upper-middle of the pack, exactly as planned. Now, my only role was to watch. My hands were slick with sweat. My heart hammered against my ribs, each beat a frantic drum counting down the seconds. My Gaze was locked on the empty platform designated for the victors of Section Epsilon.

One by one, the champions were announced, their platforms rising from beneath the arena floor to take their place in the orbit. A team of three hulking, bull-headed Minotaurs from the Sunken Plains, their axes bigger than I was tall. A quintet of lithe Felir skirmishers, their movements sinuous and predatory. A duo of Dweorg forgemasters whose auras burned with the heat of contained magma. The power level here was on a completely different scale.

"And now," the announcer's voice boomed, "the dark horse victors from the remote territories! Hailing from the Silverwood Reach, please welcome the champions of Section Epsilon... Team Verdant!"

The platform rose. My breath caught in my throat. I saw two figures first. A young man, broad-shouldered and solid, carrying a massive tower shield that pulsed with a faint green light. A smaller, wiry girl with twin daggers, her posture a coil of nervous, kinetic energy. And then, I saw her.

She stood behind them, a silver longbow held loosely in her hand. She was taller, her frame leaner and harder than I remembered, but the fierce, defiant set of her jaw was unchanged. Her dark hair was pulled back in a practical, no-nonsense ponytail. She wore armor of hardened, black-and-silver leather, perfectly suited for an archer. Her eyes, dark and impossibly familiar, were scanning the roaring crowd, not with awe, but with a sharp, analytical focus that I knew as well as my own reflection.

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It was her.

The knot of grief and fear I had carried in my stomach for months didn't just loosen. It dissolved. A tidal wave of pure, overwhelming relief washed over me, so potent it made my vision swim. Every worst-case scenario, every nightmare of finding her too late, or not at all, vanished in an instant. She's alive. She's strong. She's right there.

Their first match was against a team called the Steel Vanguards, a classic trio of Kyorian loyalists in heavy plate armor. A tank, a heavily-armored battlemage, and a combat medic. A perfect counter to a lightly-armored, high-mobility team.

The bell chimed, and the battle began. Her shield-bearer and leader of their group — Marcus, the announcer said his name was — met the enemy tank's charge with a resounding clang of metal on metal, his shield glowing with a verdant, protective energy. The skirmisher, Lena, was a blur, darting in and out, her daggers probing for weaknesses in the enemy's armor. They were good. Coordinated. But the Vanguards were a steamroller, relentless and powerful, pushing them back across the platform.

I watched Anna. She moved with a liquid grace I remembered from our afternoon sparring sessions back in the day, always keeping her distance, loosing arrows with crisp, economic precision. An arrow to disrupt the battlemage's casting. Another to force the tank to shift his footing, giving Marcus a brief reprieve. She wasn't just firing projectiles; she was controlling the battlefield. A surge of pride, so fierce it almost made me gasp, swelled in my chest. That was my sister.

But then, the recklessness I knew so well surfaced. The Vanguards' medic began to channel a powerful healing spell. Instead of continuing to harry their damage-dealer, Anna took a risk. She aimed a high-power, mana-infused shot directly at the tank's helm, trying for a knockout blow. The arrow struck true with a deafening crack, staggering the massive warrior, but it wasn't enough to put him down. The medic's spell went off, and the tank's minor injuries vanished. It was a wasted effort, a showy move that had accomplished nothing. I winced. Still hasn't outgrown that flair for the dramatic, has she?

The Vanguards pressed their advantage. The battlemage unleashed a wave of concussive force that sent Lena tumbling, and the tank, his head now clear, brought his massive warhammer down on Marcus' shield. The impact was sickening, a boom that echoed through the arena. The shield held, but I saw Marcus' arm tremble, his footing broken. The enemy battlemage was already conjuring another, more lethal-looking spell. They were caught.

And then, Anna stopped moving. She planted her feet, her expression shifting from fierce concentration to something deeper, more absolute. The noise of the crowd, the chaos of the battle, seemed to fade away as all my senses locked onto her. This was it.

She drew her bow, but it was different this time. As the silver string tightened, the air around the nocked arrowhead began to shimmer and warp, like intense heat rising from pavement. A visible distortion, a lens in reality itself, formed around the point of the arrow. Even from the stands, I could feel it through my Gaze — a sudden, sharp pressure, a fundamental law of physics being bent to her will.

It seemed like she didn't aim at the tank or the mage. She aimed at the space just behind them.

She released the string.

The arrow did not fly. There was no arc, no travel time. One instant, it was on her string. The next, with a sound like the universe being cracked open, it arrived at its destination. A miniature star of pure, annihilating force detonated behind the Vanguards. The blast wasn't fire or energy, but a shockwave of pure, compressed space. The enemy medic, caught in the epicenter, simply vanished, his shields and armor disintegrating. The tank and battlemage were blown off their feet, sent tumbling across the platform like discarded toys.

Before the stunned crowd could even process what had happened, Team Verdant moved. Marcus charged the dazed tank, his shield now an offensive battering ram. Their rogue-like fighter, back on her feet, was a flicker of silver and black, her daggers finding the exposed joints in the battlemage's armor.

It was over in five seconds.

A moment of absolute, stunned silence descended on the Colosseum. Then, the crowd erupted in a single, deafening roar.

I barely heard them. I was on my feet, my hands gripping the railing in front of me so hard my knuckles were white. The weariness of Jack, the cold caution of Eren Kai, it was all gone. All that was left was a feeling so profound, so overwhelming, it threatened to buckle my knees. The suffocating weight I had carried for years had been lifted, and in its place was a soaring, terrifying, incandescent joy.

"Jack? You okay?" Lucas' voice was a distant murmur at my side.

I couldn't look at him. If I did, he'd see the unshed tears threatening to spill from my eyes. He'd see the truth of many months of agony ending in a single, explosive moment. I kept my gaze locked on the small figure standing victorious on the platform below, trying to control the ragged, shuddering breaths that wracked my body.

"Yeah," I managed to rasp, my voice thick with an emotion I couldn't hide. "Just... really impressed."

I finally found you, Anna. Just a little longer and we will finally be reunited. The thought wasn't a plan or a strategy. It was a vow.

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