Esgard held its breath.
The streets, normally alive with noise and flame, were hushed—like the city itself feared what was to come.
No carolers, no merchants.
Only the wind, whispering through alleyways, and the distant toll of iron bells.
Today, the coliseum would drink.
And the gods of blood would be sated.
Ian stood unmoving as the carriage slowed. The arena rose before him as though it were the corpse of a god—immense, rotting with memory, carved from stone that remembered every scream it had ever heard.
He'd seen worse.
Lived through worse.
Survived worse.
It were better even than the pits and it's dungeons.
Inside, the stench hit harder than any blow—sweat, rust, piss, and something older.
Death that never quite washed out.