They called it a “staging lounge,” like this was some conference room, not the front line of Colosseum. Glenn stepped through the reinforced door and felt the hum of the arena under his boots. It was in the walls, in the air, even crawling under his skin. Out beyond the corridor, the PITT was awake and hungry.

  The others were already inside.

  Atsumori sat alone on the floor in one corner, his armor folded around him in neat layers, his blade placed across his knees, eyes closed in meditation. His face, still impossibly young beneath the lacquered helmet, was lifted slightly like he was listening to music only he could hear. He didn’t move when Glenn came in.

  Andromache stood in the far left corner with Deathnibbles. The two of them were low-voiced, facing one another, heads close. She still hadn’t put down Hector’s shield. Deathnibbles still hadn’t put down his grudge. When they noticed Glenn, they both looked over at him. Andromache’s eyes flat and unreadable, Deathnibbles’ narrowed with hostility and then turned their heads back and went right on whispering.

  Oba Ifekudu leaned against a stone support column. He hadn’t his spear this time point-down against the floor, his hand around the haft just high enough that anyone who tried him would think twice. He didn’t talk. He just watched.

  Gilgamesh wasn’t even pretending to be subtle. He stood in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips and a smirk that had probably annoyed several millennia of people. Every time Glenn glanced up, he caught the demi-god giving him an up-and-down like a butcher checking marbling.

  Karna stood with his back against the wall closest to the exit that led to the arena floor, bow unstrung, arms crossed, gaze lowered but not relaxed. Like he was conserving energy.

  No one looked relieved to see Glenn.

  He tried not to care.

  He crossed the room to Atsumori first, because Atsumori felt safe. Young. Familiar in a way. Like someone who shouldn’t be here, which was most of them, but it was loudest on him.

  “Hey,” Glenn said quietly. “I’m Glenn.”

  Atsumori didn’t open his eyes. “Go away.”

  Glenn blinked. “I just wanted to…”

  “I don’t want to be seen with you.”

  That hurt, and he hadn’t even said anything yet. “Why?”

  Atsumori let out a very soft exhale through his nose. “Because you’re bad news.”

  Glenn swallowed. “Bad news?”

  “You think we don’t hear them?” Atsumori tilted his chin toward the ceiling. “The gods. The sponsors. They all talk. You’ve got a target on you the size of eternity, and I’m not interested in catching what’s aiming at you.”

  “I don’t…”

  “And,” Atsumori added, finally opening his eyes. They were very dark and very tired for someone who hadn’t even gotten to live out his twenties, “besides. You’re Death.”

  Glenn frowned. “I’m… a reaper.”

  Atsumori nodded slightly. “WERE a reaper. But everyone Glenn touches dies. Isn’t that how it goes?”

  The room went suddenly colder.

  “What?”

  Atsumori’s gaze barely moved. It wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t mocking. It was almost apologetic. “Everyone you care about,” he said softly. “Your coworkers. Your friends. Your… whoever she was. They’re gone. Aren’t they? So tell me I’m wrong.”

  Glenn opened his mouth.

  Nothing came out.

  He hadn’t said it like that yet. He hadn’t let the thought shape itself. He’d been living on rage, on certainty, on the clarity of a single target. Mictlāntēcutli. It was clean to hate a name.

  But the way Atsumori said it slid a crack through him:

  What if it wasn’t just that god.

  What if it was you.

  What if this is what you are.

  Glenn tried again. “That’s not…I didn’t…it’s not…”

  Atsumori turned his face away, eyes closing again, dismissing him gently, like a prayer being set down. “Please leave me alone,” he said quietly. “I’d prefer not to die early twice.”

  Glenn stood there too long, throat tight, hands numb.

  He backed away.

  He’d expected to be resented. He’d expected jealousy, suspicion, maybe even hostility. He hadn’t expected to be… infectious. All this power made him isolated. Alone. He felt suddenly aware of his own body, of how close he stood to other people, as if standing next to him meant you’d already signed your own paperwork.

  He was halfway across the room with those words circling him like vultures when someone said, “Havn’t you seen enough ghost to not look like one?”

  Glenn turned. Karna was watching him.

  The warrior pushed off the wall and approached with a relaxed, almost casual confidence. Up close, Karna’s presence hit like sunlight: warm but so bright it stung. The armor fit him like a birthright. He moved like someone who knew what he was worth and still somehow wasn’t getting paid.

  “Glenn, was it?” Karna said.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s a pleasure to compete with you.”

  Glenn blinked. “That’s not what everyone else thinks.”

  Karna gave a brief shrug. “Everyone else is out for themselves.”

  Glenn raised an eyebrow. “You’re not?”

  “Oh, I absolutely am,” Karna said, smiling. “But I like to play fair. It feels cleaner that way.”

  Glenn worked up a smile. “You’re not afraid of losing?”

  Karna’s expression flickered. “No,” he said softly. “I am not afraid of death. Being unarmed and betrayed at the time wasn’t pleasant, but fear is boring once you’ve met it properly.”

  Glenn tilted his head. “Then why are you here? Why enter something like this if you don’t fear what happens if you lose?”

  That earned him an appreciative look. Karna seemed genuinely pleased to have been asked.

  “The tournament,” he said, “isn’t about us ‘dying.’ We’re already dead. We don’t die. We get… refiled. Sent back where we came from. Benched. Patted on the head. Told ‘maybe next cycle, champ’ and tossed back into whatever corner of afterlife we crawled out of.”

  “So eliminated,” Glenn said. “But not eliminated eliminated.”

  Karna laughed. “Listen to you. So cautious. ‘Eliminated eliminated.’ No. Not at first. You’re not melted down for door fuel. You’re just… forgotten again.”

  “Then why do it?” Glenn asked. “Why crawl through this circus if all it gets you is maybe a pat on the head?”

  Karna leaned in slightly. His voice dropped. “Because of the only thing that matters here.”

  Glenn waited.

  “Worship,” Karna said simply.

  Glenn frowned. “Worship?”

  Karna nodded. “There’s no money here. No house to buy, no car to upgrade. You can conjure material. If a god of death wants a palace, the wall grows a palace. Value isn’t in gold. We passed that. The only currency left is attention. Devotion. Glory. Followers. To be adored is to exist. To be ignored is to rot.”

  He pointed with his chin toward the ceiling, past the reinforced stone, past the PITT, up to where the box of gods watched from their thrones.

  “You win,” Karna said, “and you don’t just get an office. You get a story. Your face goes on banners. People call your name when they’re afraid to die. You become the answer to prayers.”

  He tapped his own chest, then lowered his hand. “You lose, and you’re nothing again. Just one more shade in a back hallway. So. You see why we’re all so eager to impress.”

  Glenn glanced around the room.

  Andromache and Deathnibbles were still whispering, but now he saw the way Andromache angled her body, half-shielding the squirrel, half-blocking line of sight from the door and any listening ears. Not kindness. Strategy. She thought like a commander under siege.

  Oba Ifekudu hadn’t moved, but his eyes had: in the reflection on a metal vent, Glenn caught him watching Karna and Glenn talk. Assessing not just Glenn, but the fact that Karna was talking to him.

  Even Gilgamesh, pretending to be bored, had shifted just enough to listen.

  They were already choosing alliances. Already jockeying. The first trial hadn’t even started.

  Glenn felt absurdly grateful for someone even pretending to treat him like he wasn’t nuclear waste.

  “You helping me because you’re nice,” Glenn asked quietly, “or because you think I’m useful later?”

  Karna smiled without apology. “Yes.”

  Glenn couldn’t help it. He huffed out a laugh.

  Before he could press for more about the trials, the door slammed open and an Ifrit stalked inside.

  It pointed one smoldering claw toward the hallway. No words. No announcement. Just a look that said: showtime.

  The room shifted. Weapons were lifted, armor cinched, shoulders rolled. Atsumori rose softly to his feet, bowed to no one in particular, and slid his helmet on. Andromache kissed Hector’s shield in a brief, private motion. Deathnibbles stretched his neck like a boxer.

  Glenn gripped Mora’s scythe. His palms felt damp.

  The Ifrit led them through a narrow service hall that opened directly onto the arena floor.

  The roar hit like weather.

  The PITT was fully alive now, and it sounded feral. Every section of the stands was on its feet, waving sigils, pounding fists, chanting names. The gods’ balcony pulsed with divine attention. Wagers flashed from hand to claw to spectral ledger.

  The floor of the arena had shifted. Where there had been a single open stage before, the ground now displayed seven faint circles on the marble. Seven “starting spots,” each glowing in a different color. The translucent barrier hummed overhead like a sealed dome.

  Lilith was already in the center, lit from every possible angle. Beside her, the floating camera-eye projected her in real time across the jumbotron above, where she loomed thirty feet high.

  “PITT AUDIENCE!” she screamed, and the place erupted on command. “WELCOME TO ROUND ONE!”

  The gods leaned in.

  “Tonight’s trial is a classic,” Lilith purred. “A team-building exercise we like to call…”

  Her arm shot into the air like a magician revealing a card.

  “...HIDE THE PUDDING!”

  The crowd howled. Glenn looked at Karna. Karna winked.

  Lilith clapped. “Contestants! Please proceed to your assigned markers!”

  They each stepped onto one of the glowing circles. Glenn’s circle pulsed sky blue under his boots. Deathnibbles hopped onto a violet one. Karna’s burned gold, Atsumori’s deep red, Andromache’s cold steel gray, Oba Ifekudu’s storm-grey, Gilgamesh’s molten amber.

  The instant they were all in place, walls exploded upward out of the floor, seven partitions slamming into place between them, partitioning the arena into seven triangular “slices” of a heptagon. Each slice had its own space, its own audience-facing opening, and its own overhead light.

  The crowd cheered the way mortals cheer for sports.

  Glenn couldn’t see the others anymore. Just his triangle. Just his piece of the problem.

  Lilith raised a finger. The jumbotron flickered to a glittering animation, a cheerful, cheaply drawn corporate training cartoon. The kind he’d seen in the Reaper Core HR orientation, probably by the same people.

  A cheery voiceover played in patronizing tones:

  “HELLO, MANAGERS-IN-TRAINING! IN THIS SCENARIO, AN EMPLOYEE, OOPS! A SOUL HAS ACCUSED ONE OF YOUR TEAM LEADS OF SEXUAL MISCONDUCT. THIS POSES LEGAL, REPUTATIONAL, AND BRAND RISK. YOUR GOAL IS TO PREVENT THIS SOUL FROM CONTACTING THE PRESS.”

  The cartoon soul, a smudgy, big-eyed little ghost, tried to raise a tiny hand. The cartoon manager shoved a paperwork stack into its mouth.

  The audience laughed. Glenn’s stomach turned.

  “REMEMBER,” the voice chirped. “IT’S NOT ABOUT TRUTH. IT’S ABOUT CONTROL.”

  A digital timer appeared in the sky above the heptagon. 10:00.

  Lilith’s voice boomed across the PITT. “FIRST TRIAL BEGINS NOW!”

  The clock started.

  A shape coalesced in the middle of Glenn’s wedge corridor.

  At first it was just energy, a vague shimmer, a ripple in the air. Then skin formed. Clothing. Eyes. The shape of a person clarified.

  It was a girl.

  No, a young woman, but painfully young-looking still. Barely out of her teens. Dark hair hanging limp. Arms drawn tight across her chest like she was cold, or ashamed, or both. She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  Glenn froze with confusion.

  “I…” he started, then craned his neck up toward the lip of the wall, where he knew the gods’ box had line of sight. “Lilith! I don’t…what is…what is this?”

  No answer.

  He looked back at the girl. She flinched when his gaze landed on her.

  “Hey,” he said quickly. He raised his hands up in the universal I’m not a threat gesture. “My name’s Glenn. What is yours?”

  No eye contact. Her breathing was shallow, quick. She kept glancing, very fast, up and out toward where the gods sat.

  The timer ticked: 9:17.

  “Okay,” Glenn said softly. He crouched a little, lowering his height without getting closer. “Are you hurt?”

  No response.

  “Do you know where you are?”

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  A tiny shake of her head.

  He swallowed. “Okay. Can you tell me your name?”

  Silence. Her throat moved. Her eyes welled.

  “Please,” he said. “I’m trying to help, but I don’t even know how to start unless I know who you are.”

  Her lips parted. For a moment, nothing came out. Then, just above a whisper, like it cost something, she said:

  “Katie.”

  Glenn nodded. “Katie. Okay. Katie. Thank you.”

  9:01.

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  She jerked like he’d struck her. Her mouth snapped shut. Her head shook, hard, tiny movements like she was trying to rattle the memory loose and fling it across the room.

  “It’s okay,” Glenn said quickly. “It’s okay. I’m not…” He ran a hand over his face, panic flickering in his chest. “Listen. There’s a crowd out there. They’re waiting to see how this goes. I don’t care about them. I care about you. But for me to do anything, I have to understand what ‘this’ is. Katie, who hurt you?”

  Katie swallowed. Her eyes darted once, involuntarily, up toward the gods’ box.

  That told him more than her words.

  Then, barely audible: “…Mammon.”

  Glenn blinked.

  “Mammon?” he repeated.

  Katie nodded, a tiny motion. Tears clinging to her lashes trembled and fell.

  “Mammon from the office of Hell of floor two?” Glenn said. “Finance Mammon? The one with the… cuffs and the… smirk?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. Nodded again. Shoulders shaking.

  The world tilted a few degrees.

  8:12.

  Glenn exhaled through his teeth. “WaIT,” he said quietly. “Is this real? Holy shit did this actually happen? Okay, Katie. Thank you. I believe you.”

  Up in the gods’ box, someone said, “Contestant Seven is… interviewing his soul? That’s a tactic.”

  Another god snorted. “He’s so slow. He’ll time out.”

  Lilith’s voice echoed through a megaphone, all mock enthusiasm. “Ohhh, interesting approach from Contestant Seven! Going soft angle! Let’s see how that pans out!”

  Glenn looked at the timer again,7:49. And then he looked back at Katie.

  “This is wrong,” he muttered.

  He straightened. Cloak snapped around him. He didn’t think, he didn’t have a concrete plan. He just moved.

  The scythe hummed in his hand. The lantern flared. And Glenn blinked out of his wedge.

  For a moment, he was no where.

  He reappeared two wedges over in Gilgamesh’s sector who was up to his shins in a fresh-dug mound of loose dirt. Gilgamesh was on his knees, forearms bulging, packing the sand down over something with the easy efficiency of someone very familiar with burying problems.

  Gilgamesh didn’t even look up.

  Glenn stared. The corner of a small, transparent hand poked out from the mound.

  “Oh my god,” Glenn hissed.

  He vanished.

  He reappeared in Andromache’s wedge.

  Andromache was crouched inches from her soul. Another woman, this one in old Greek dress, pale and shaking. Andromache’s face was close, voice low and razor-sharp calm. She held out a sheet of parchment with neat, tight script on it and a stylus. The ghost’s hand trembled, then moved. She signed.

  Andromache glanced up just long enough to meet Glenn’s eyes. The look she gave him was a blade placed under the chin: Do not interrupt me.

  Glenn vanished.

  He appeared in Karna’s wedge.

  Karna knelt in front of his soul, palm open, pouring a stream of molten gold coins into the shaking hands of a ragged, hollow-eyed man with burn scars down both arms. “This buys silence,” Karna was saying evenly. “You take this, you walk. You are safe. You are provided for. You never speak again. Do you understand?”

  The ghost nodded, clutching the gold.

  Karna looked up, startled. “Glenn? What are you… You have five minutes left.”

  “It’s real,” Glenn said, breathless.

  Karna frowned. “What?”

  “It’s real. These aren’t props. These are real souls. Real people.”

  Karna stared at him for a beat, processing.

  Then he sighed. Not surprised but resigned. “Of course they’re real.”

  Glenn’s stomach lurched. “They’re victims.”

  “Yes,” Karna said quietly. “And if you lose, you both get fed back to whatever hell spawned you, and this whole show rolls on without you. You want to make change?” He pointed at the timer now blazing 4:58. “You can’t make change if you’re eliminated. Win first. Fix later.”

  “I’m not going to hurt her,” Glenn said.

  Karna spread both hands. “You don’t have to just change their mind. That’s the assignment. Stop her from getting her story out. If you won’t muzzle her, muzzle the story.”

  “Thats not justice!”

  “Then find justice for them if it means shutting them up, Glenn!”

  Karna’s eyes burned.

  Glenn swallowed. “How.”

  Karna threw his hands up. “That is why you are here right?”

  Glenn felt something in his mind resolve with a violent click.

  He didn’t thank Karna. There was no time. He grabbed at the air, let Mora’s scythe pull him and again used his cloak to vanish.

  He reappeared in his own wedge, Katie still hugging herself and shaking.

  3:21 left.

  Then something else hit the ground in his wedge, hard.

  Mammon.

  The demon-corporate hybrid landed on both knees, wrists twisted behind him in a bindt. His perfect silk tie hung crooked. His expensive smile was gone.

  “What the hell is this?!” Mammon barked. “What is this, you little bitch. Who do you think you are peon. Get this off me.”

  Glenn yanked him upright by the collar and slammed him against the wall hard enough to leave a crack.

  Katie gasped. Her eyes went huge.

  Above, in the gods’ box, someone stood. Someone else cursed.

  Mammon tried to bare his teeth and got more spit than dignity. “This is not regulation. Lilith! LILITH! Where the hell are the judges. Lilith, get your pet under control!”

  Glenn didn’t even look at him. He looked at Katie.

  “Katie,” he said quietly, voice shaking with fury he couldn’t quite swallow anymore. “Listen to me.”

  Her eyes flicked between Mammon and Glenn rapidly, panicked.

  “I don’t know what he did,” Glenn said. “And I’m not asking you to relive it for me. I am not here to make you tell me. I am here to make him shut up.”

  Mammon laughed, a short, ugly sound. “You think she scares me? Glenn, buddy, come on. She’s a flea. She’s a mortal chick who couldn’t even keep her place when she…”

  “Shut up,” Glenn snarled, scythe pressing harder under Mammon’s jaw.

  Katie stared. Her breathing hitched.

  “You,” Glenn said, eyes locked on her, “are being told to stay quiet. You’re being made to swallow it. You’re being told you don’t count. I can’t undo that today. I can’t make the gods care. I can’t fix the system yet. But I can do this one thing.”

  Mammon’s eyes finally widened. “Okay. Okay, hang on. This is getting theatrical. Lucifer will not appreciate…”

  Glenn ignored him. “Katie,” he whispered, “I can’t force you to be quiet. I won’t. But you can force him. You can silence him.”

  Her mouth opened. Closed. Her hands trembled so hard her shoulders shook.

  Mammon scoffed. “What is she going to do? Huh?” He tried to lean away from the blade and winced when it nicked skin. A sliver of pearly ichor welled. “You don’t get it, kid. I’m management. She’s trash. You think anybody upstairs cares what she says? I did her a favor. She was already doing…”

  Katie’s face twisted.

  Good, Glenn thought savagely. Feel it.

  “Katie,” he said, voice low and fierce, “take my scythe.”

  She stared at him like he was Prometheus gifted mortals the flame..

  The timer screamed down to 1:55.

  Mammon choked on a laugh. “Oh, that’s rich. Oh, that’s cute. You think I’m scared of this? Please. She begged for attention. I gave it. She loved it. They all love it. She was a whore in life and you think…”

  Katie moved.

  Not gracefully. Not like a warrior. Like a human who had finally been given permission.

  Her hands wrapped around the shaft of Mora’s scythe just below Glenn’s grip. Her fingers were shaking so hard she could barely hold it. Glenn didn’t let go, but he let her feel the weight.

  “It’s okay,” he whispered. “You’re not alone.”

  1:32.

  Mammon was sweating now. “Okay. Okay, we’re all having big feelings, I get it, but this is not funny anymore. Lucifer is watching. HEY. LUCIFER IS WATCH…”

  Katie made a sound that was almost a sob and almost a growl and entirely alive.

  Together, her hands pulling, Glenn’s guiding, his strength behind hers as they drove the blade.

  It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t cinematic. It was clumsy, jerking, fueled by panic and rage. The scythe sliced through Mammon’s throat in an ugly diagonal, tearing divine flesh like expensive fabric.

  For a split second Mammon’s face was outrage.

  Then surprise.

  Then nothing.

  Blood, not mortal red but something pallid and shivering with faint light sprayed across the marble.

  The entire arena went dead silent.

  The timer, still counting down in relentless red digits, read 0:14.

  Katie staggered back, panting, eyes wide and wet. The scythe handle shook in her grip. Then her outline flickered. Her form began to haze.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. She sounded like relief given voice for the first time. “Thank you.”

  And then she was gone. Dissolved.

  The buzzer sounded.

  BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP.

  The walls around Glenn vanished, sinking back into the floor. The barrier overhead hummed. The arena reassembled into a single open stage with seven contestants standing in rough formation.

  Glenn was on his feet, scythe bloody in his hands.

  In front of him, Mammon’s body hit the marble, twitched, and went still.

  The body didn’t heal.

  That was the part that made the gods sit forward.

  Gilgamesh was the first to break. “What,” he bellowed, pointing at Glenn, “the actual fuck is that?”

  The entire arena exploded.

  “THAT’S NOT POSSIBLE!”

  “Did he kill a manager?!”

  “He can’t kill a demon. Demons don’t die…”

  “Unless…that boy… is he a celestial?”

  Hel slammed a fist onto the railing hard enough to crack the obsidian inlaid in her armrest. “Explain this,” she snarled across the gods’ box. “Lucifer, explain this.”

  Ekwensu’s eyes flared. “This is unacceptable. This breaks structure. This violates sponsorship neutrality. Lucifer, you will account for this now.”

  Lucifer did not look angry.

  Lucifer looked pleased.

  He rose not dramatically. Just stood. And when Lucifer stood, the noise remembered to lower for him.

  He held out one hand.

  Lilith, still standing center-stage with her mic, went quiet. The floating camera-eye zoomed in on Lucifer’s face and blasted it across the jumbotron: perfect suit, folded wings, calm expression like he was having a civilized conversation over after-dinner drinks.

  “My esteemed peers,” Lucifer said, voice smooth enough to skate on, “let’s all take a breath as the results still favor Giglamesh’s time.”

  The arena hushed to a simmering roar.

  “Yes,” Lucifer continued. “That was unexpected. Yes, Glenn, my contestant, has demonstrated an, ah, creative approach. But I would argue that is precisely what management needs.” He gestured elegantly toward the cooling body of Mammon. “We’ve had centuries of compliance. Of predictable answers. Of dull obedience to upper management. Aren’t you bored?”

  Some of the gods did not hide that they were, in fact, bored for centuries.

  Lucifer spread his hands. “Listen to the audience.”

  And the audience, still electric from the kill, began chanting.

  At first it was messy. Then it wasn’t.

  “GLENN! GLENN! GLENN!”

  Gilgamesh’s face twisted. That was supposed to be his chant.

  Oba Ifekudu glared like a man whose weapon had just been stolen.

  Karna stared at Glenn, expression unreadable.

  Atsumori looked sick.

  Deathnibbles just watched Glenn with something caught between horror and unwilling admiration.

  Glenn didn’t hear the chant. He was staring at Mammon. He couldn’t look away.

  Up in the gods’ suite, Izanami leaned in toward Persephone. “He killed a manager. How?”

  Persephone’s smile was thin and sharp. “He killed a manager who was as weak as man. I am not grieving.”

  Ereshkigal said nothing. Her eyes were coals.

  Lucifer waited for the noise to crest, then lifted his voice slightly, just enough.

  “In fact,” he said, “this inspires me.”

  The other gods went still.

  “We have, for too long,” Lucifer said smoothly, “allowed these tournaments to run like theater. A show. A rehearsal. ‘Elimination’ that does not eliminate. Stakes that are performative. Glory that’s pantomime. Why? Because we are prisoners of upper management? We all know the script they write for us.”

  No one contradicted him because they all, silently, did.

  He smiled. “Well, lets rewrite the script. Let’s make it interesting again.”

  Hel narrowed her eyes. “Define ‘interesting.’”

  Lucifer clasped his hands behind his back like a lecturer about to unveil a new syllabus. “Simple. From this moment forward: elimination is elimination.” He glanced down at Glenn.

  The arena rippled.

  Ekwensu’s grin widened like a wound. “Go on.”

  Lucifer nodded. “When a contestant loses, when they fail to deliver, when they rank last, or when they embarrass their sponsor.” He tilted his head. “They go away.”

  Osiris’s voice cut like a blade. “Away where.”

  Lucifer looked him dead in the eye. “Away,” he said softly. “No reassignment. No recycle. No reincorporation. No after-afterlife. True termination. Blankness. Unmaking. Gone.”

  “How?” Osiris asked but afraid of what he was about to find out.

  “With these.” Lucifer raised a finger and Litlith appeared in the arena holding a briefcase. She opened them up. Six shimmering flowers lay changing colors, some that no human eye has seen before.

  Lucifer continued. “You see. Upper management has been hiding these from us. This is a flower of life. It can fuse with a soul. And once this is destroyed, the soul is not reaped. It does not go to upper or lower. It will just poof.” He made a gesture with his hand. “Gone. Back into the universe from which it came.”

  The arena didn’t murmur this time.

  It shocked.

  An electric thrill shot through the stands. Half the audience inhaled sharply. The other half howled delight. There has never been a way to kill a soul. Souls were pure energy. You can contain, control, but never destroy.

  Yanluo Wang turned to Lucifer so only the gods could here. “So what? Who cares if you can destroy or ant or imprison it. What’s so great about these flowers?”

  Lucier smiled. “Because. If one of use eats a flower infused with a soul…We gain that soul. Imagine. The energy used to power this world infused in us! But, at a cost. We become mortal…”

  The gods of death eyes were shocked.

  Yama looked at Lucifer for a moment analyzing him then said, “You mean. We can kill them? Other gods?”

  Lucifer smiled. “Precisely. Right Persophone?” He looked right at her.

  He then turned back to the audience so all could hear him. “So, I propose every contestant take one. They are already infused with a soul. Let’s make this a real tournament! And for added measure. I will tell the winning god how I came across these.”

  Down on the marble, Glenn felt his stomach drop.

  Gilgamesh threw up his hands. “Now that’s a tournament,” he roared, beaming with bloodthirsty satisfaction.

  Oba Ifekudu slammed the butt of his spear onto the ground in approval. “Yes! Yes! At last, real stakes!”

  Atsumori stood very, very still.

  Karna’s jaw flexed.

  Deathnibbles swallowed.

  Glenn couldn’t breathe.

  Lucifer turned, letting the moment simmer in his wake. “Of course,” he said silk-smooth, “I won’t impose this unilaterally. I am not a tyrant.” (Hel snorted loudly enough to be heard in three languages) “So I propose we get consent. We are all gods of death here. We respect process.”

  Lilith, recovering in an instant, threw an arm toward the contestants and shouted, “Contestants, do you accept these terms? That from this moment on, loss means obliteration? That you understand the risk, and you enter willingly?”

  The camera-eye dove low, feeding each face to the jumbotron for the audience.

  Gilgamesh laughed and lifted both arms. “YES.”

  The gods cheered his bravado.

  Oba Ifekudu lifted his spear one-handed like he was offering the crowd his own heart to eat. “YES.”

  The Aztec section pounded their drums so loudly the arena floor shook.

  Andromache did not smile. She simply nodded once, jaw clenched; Persephone’s corner of the stands hissed like a nest of snakes in approval.

  Karna did not answer immediately. He looked up at Yama in the gods’ box. Yama didn’t move. He didn’t nod. He didn’t shake his head. He just watched.

  Karna inhaled, squared his shoulders, and called out, “YES.”

  The Hindu section erupted.

  Atsumori looked like a boy on trial. He glanced up at Izanami. Her face was unreadable. Her eyes were not.

  He bowed, hands at his sides, and said in a steady voice, “Yes.”

  Deathnibbles’ eyes flicked up to Anubis but Anubis was not there. Deathnibbles’ throat bobbed. His tail flicked. He lifted a tiny paw.

  “...Yeah,” he squeaked.

  The PITT screamed.

  Every cheer, every bet, every divine ego in the box, everything combusted at once into a frenzy. The arena had been hot before. Now it was a wildfire.

  Lilith swung toward Glenn last.

  “And you, Contestant Seven?” she called, voice echoing sweetly through the dome. “Do you accept? Do you acknowledge that if you lose any round, you don’t go back to your department, you don’t get reassigned, you don’t get to brood in some poetic ruin. You just… fade into nothingness?”

  Every eye in the arena turned toward him. The chant had stopped. The city had stopped. He could feel their expectation like hands on his throat.

  Glenn opened his mouth.

  He didn’t answer right away.

  He couldn’t stop thinking of Atsumori’s voice in the waiting lounge: Everyone Glenn touches dies.

  He couldn’t stop thinking of Katie: Thank you.

  He couldn’t stop seeing Mammon’s body, lying still in a way that wasn’t “recovering” and wasn’t “dramatic flourish.” Just still.

  He couldn’t stop thinking: Is this me? Am I the one who turns the volume up on suffering wherever I stand? Am I the one who drags the floor down to a pit?

  Is this on me?

  Because before he walked into this place, “elimination” meant embarrassment and reassignment.

  Now “elimination” meant erasure.

  And that happened the moment he got here.

  It happened because of him.

  He felt, just for a heartbeat, like a loaded weapon someone had pointed at a room.

  Lucifer watched him with a quiet, patient smile that said: Say yes. Say yes and become mine.

  Glenn swallowed hard. His mouth tasted like metal.

  He lifted his chin.

  His voice didn’t waver when he said, “Yes.”

  The PITT detonated.

  The sound hit like a wave. The stands convulsed. The gods’ balcony split into arguments and laughter and side-bets whispered furiously behind gloved hands and clawed gauntlets.

  Gilgamesh threw an arm around Oba Ifekudu’s shoulders and shouted something about “finally a real game.”

  Karna just exhaled like he’d been holding his breath for a century.

  Atsumori bowed his head, silent.

  Deathnibbles didn’t cheer. He just stared at Glenn like Glenn had set fire to the floor under both of them.

  Above, Lucifer sat back down slowly, folding his wings in behind him, smug and satisfied. He didn’t beam triumph. That wasn’t his way. He looked… vindicated. Like a man who’d always said the rules were a joke and had finally convinced the room to laugh.

  Beside him, Hel muttered, “You’re playing with fire, Morningstar.”

  Lucifer smiled without looking at her. “That,” he said softly, “is the idea.”

  Yanluo Wang noticed something. “Wait. There are only six flowers but seven contestants.”

  Lucifer looked down at Glenn. “That is because my contestant already has taken a flower.”

  Down on the marble, Glenn’s hands shook.

  Everyone Glenn touches dies, Atsumori had said.

  Glenn looked at his own fingers. At the smear of pale ichor still drying on his knuckles.

  He couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe, just maybe, the kid was right.