Chapter 10:

I Can Save Her

Gag Character! (Epic Adventure!)


Shiverglass didn’t look up.

Her shoulders shook, quiet and relentless. The tears wouldn’t stop. Not out of pain—she hadn’t even been wounded—but because something had shattered inside her.


Toma stood there, frozen.


Wooden sword limp at his side. Heart racing. He didn’t know what to say. He’d won—but it didn’t feel like a victory.


He opened his mouth to speak.

Then the sky cracked.


A gust of wind hit the arena floor as two figures descended from above—floating effortlessly down from a gilded turret on the edge of the coliseum.

Gasps rippled through the crowd. Even the announcer fell silent.


One man was enormous, a mountain of silk and sweat and smugness. Jewels dripped from his ears, his fingers, his neck. His robe was stitched with gold thread and reeked of indulgence. He looked like wealth had eaten him from the inside out and left a grinning corpse.

Beside him floated a man in black, a butler, unmistakably. Thin as a needle. Pale as parchment. His posture perfect, his gaze cold, unreadable. He looked less like a man and more like something pretending to be one.


The fat man chuckled as his feet touched the ground. “My, my, my… quite the match, wasn’t it?”

Toma frowned. “Who are you?”


But the man wasn’t listening. He snapped his fingers—casually, like ordering tea—and a length of black chain burst into being, coiling through the air like a snake made of smoke.

It latched around Shiverglass’s neck.


CLINK.

She gasped. The tears came harder. “No… no, please…”


Her voice cracked like glass underfoot.

Toma’s blood ran cold. “What the hell are you doing!?”


The chain yanked her backward. She didn’t even try to resist. Her hands twitched, but they didn’t reach for her sword. Her eyes were wide and blank, as if she’d already left the world.

“She is my property,” said the fat man, matter-of-fact.


Toma’s hand clenched around the wooden sword.

“You’re saying… she’s a slave?”


“A legal asset, dear boy,” he said, wagging a jeweled finger. "She wasn't supposed to lose, now that she did I have... No use for her anymore."

Shiverglass coughed, choking against the collar. “I… I did what you said.”


“You lost,” the butler said coldly. “And you cried in front of the crowd.”

Toma stepped forward. “Let her go.”


The butler stepped between them like a shadow on command.

“Or what?” the fat man asked. “You’ll poke us with your stick? You don’t even know how this world works.”


“I don’t care.”

“Then you’re a fool.”


The chain yanked tighter. Shiverglass gasped, barely able to breathe. She mouthed something—“Sleeping."—but her voice was too faint to carry.

Toma moved.


He darted forward, swinging his wooden blade at the chain. Sparks flew—but it didn’t break. The butler raised one hand and flicked his wrist.

Toma was blasted backward by an invisible force.


He hit the ground hard, tumbling across the stone floor. His sword skidded out of reach.

The fat man grinned. “Now, now. Let’s not be uncivilized.”


“Release her!” Toma shouted, staggering to his feet.

But it was too late. The two men were already rising again, lifting off the arena floor with Shiverglass dangling between them, limp, silent, eyes filled with betrayal and despair.


“No—no no no—!” Toma ran.

“STOP!”


He sprinted after them, shouting, reaching, begging.

They didn’t even look back.


The crowd didn’t know what to do. They had no script for this. This wasn’t the kind of drama they bet money on.

Toma’s mind spun.


*This is a dream. This is a dream. This is a dream.*

He squeezed his eyes shut and shouted:


“If this is a dream, then I don’t need permission to fly!”

He jumped.


And soared.

The world blurred around him. The laws of physics blinked out like forgotten rules. Wind roared past his ears. His coat flapped violently behind him. The stands shrank below. The towers blurred into streaks.


He flew.

The two figures ahead paused in midair, surprised.


They turned slowly, just past the edge of Circle of Ascent, where the arena met the merchant quarters. A cluster of floating buildings formed a dark alley of suspended shops and abandoned estates, drifting in the sky like a half-forgotten dream.

They stopped there.


Waiting.

The fat man grinned again. “Ah. Persistent.”


Toma hovered a few meters away, panting, heart racing.

“Give her back.”


“No.”

Toma’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t get to own people.”


“Don’t I?” The man chuckled. “Dozens of noble families in Mikana would disagree.”

“A person who can’t choose their own path… isn’t living. They’re surviving.”


The butler raised one eyebrow. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll take care of him.”

The fat man floated backward, dragging Shiverglass behind him like luggage.


The butler cracked his knuckles.

Toma raised his wooden sword.


“If I believe, I can save her.”
Nernakai
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