Episode 60. The Price Paid Back to the Stage
# Episode 60. The Price Paid Back to the Stage
The road back carrying the real thing was, strangely, quieter than the road fleeing outward.
Sion felt that was more ominous.
After the arena had fully flipped, there should have been more sound chasing them. Curses, warnings, gunshots, crashing metal. But on this line re-attaching beneath the inner structures, sound died in strange intervals. As though someone was deliberately emptying the sound near the center of the board.
Zahir was waiting.
He could not confirm it in words, but the silence said it.
Jiwoo's skiff and Kael's glider were now riding beneath the inner structures at nearly the same speed. Not fully joined, but the reason to split had shrunk. The dark-red glider still bit behind, but could not lunge as roughly as before. Overturning the hand trying to bring the real thing back before Zahir midway carried a different value from seizing it on the arena floor.
"Touch us here and they flip too."
Kael said low.
Sern answered shortly.
"They'll still bite if they see an opening."
"Obviously."
Jiwoo said shortly, watching the dead shutter shadow ahead.
"That's why we get inside fast."
Sion gripped the ember tighter in his hand.
The real ember was still not vivid. It had not grown on the way back, nor had it died. It simply stayed alive in his hand, low and tenacious. That quiet felt like the largest piece of evidence in the middle of this entire chaos.
"Opens ahead."
Sion said low.
When the line running beneath the dead structures ended, a wide access surface connecting back to the outer layer of Hazran's central courtyard was revealed. It was the same place as the starting line from before the race, yet now it looked entirely different. The red tent covers were half-overturned. Parts of the viewing railings had collapsed. People were no longer standing like spectators. Some had pulled back. Some were still watching inside. Some were calculating which side to attach to next.
And in the middle of it all, Zahir was still standing.
This time he was not seated.
Sion felt that strangely larger. Until now, Zahir had always been the man sitting in his seat, watching the stakes roll toward him. But now he was standing. As though the final scene of who carried the real thing back before him was one he would not receive sitting down.
Nasim was half a step behind him. Harun stood further to the side. Nahira half-blocked Aka's front. Luhai had climbed down to below the railing, nearly tilting inward. Seorin and Ater wore the faces of people no longer spectators but ready to enter the board again.
The moment the two craft reached the center, the crowd's noise rose once, large, then died on its own.
Because everyone had seen it.
The race was broken. The rules were twisted. And yet the hand holding the real thing had returned alive.
That single fact became the center holding together the entire board that had just been flipping.
When Jiwoo stopped the skiff, one last thin metal tremor leaked long from beneath the hull. Simply surviving this far was a miracle. Kael's glider stopped a short distance to the side. Slow and blunt, but a craft that had never torn and held on all the way here.
Sion did not step down immediately.
This single ember in his hand felt like it should be seen before the person.
Zahir spoke first.
"You came back."
The voice was still not loud.
But the entire courtyard heard that low voice first. This man still had no need to raise his volume.
Sion could tell immediately that the words were not a simple welcome.
You came back. Inside those words lived: you survived, you brought it, and you stand before me again—all at once.
Jiwoo stepped down first, and Sion followed, feet touching the ground. His legs trembled faintly as though still remembering the heat-layer's shaking, but his hand did not open.
Zahir's gaze went straight to that hand.
"Show me."
He said.
Short words.
Sion did not hide it any longer.
He opened his hand and quietly revealed the red ember, still alive.
It was not vivid. But it had not died.
That alone was enough.
Inside the crowd, someone swallowed a breath. Luhai stepped forward one more pace almost without knowing it. Ater's gaze sharpened. Seorin caught her breath for just an instant before killing her expression again. Aka was still far away, but this time no one needed to see her eyes. It was too clear whose hand the real thing had entered.
Zahir looked at the ember for a long time.
"It did not die."
He said low.
"It is not a fake."
Sion answered.
A short silence.
That sounded like provocation, yet at this moment it was the most precise sentence spoken.
Nasim smiled by the faintest degree.
Harun did not smile.
That silence was more distinct. How the arena devices had been twisted, who had intervened and how far—no one present could be unaware. The question now was who would be the first to say it aloud.
Zahir lifted his gaze from the ember to Sion's face.
"Then let me ask."
He said.
"Who broke the board."
This time the courtyard air stopped for a different reason.
This was no longer just about settling the race. The hand holding the real thing had returned alive. Which meant now, who had broken the rules had to be settled alongside it.
Seorin smiled very low.
"Finally that conversation."
Ater, right beside her, said nothing and looked once toward Harun. Sern did the same. Luhai held his breath. Nasim's smile thinned further. Nahira, for the first time, shifted to cover Aka's front by the smallest additional degree.
In that moment, Sion knew.
From here, this was no longer a scene about proving they had returned alive. It was a scene about deciding whose blood would settle the cost of that return.
And in the center of it all, the real thing sat in his hand.