Oraya wakes from a terrifying dream of a winged man and her dead former lover to find herself trapped in darkness, overwhelmed by conflicting sensations. Raihn’s voice breaks through inside her mind, and they realize the potion from the feast created a temporary mind bond that lets each feel the other’s thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations. As they steady themselves in separate stone cells, Oraya recognizes the trial as an imitation of Extryn, the prison from Nyaxia and Alarus’s legend, and assumes the two gates atop a central wall are the path forward.

When Oraya opens her cell, she sees a colosseum already drenched in blood, filled with starving beasts, panicked contestants, and a stone barrier dividing her from Raihn. Some competitors are crippled by the mental strain of the bond, and the arena allows no escape, even for fliers. Oraya and Raihn throw themselves into the fight from opposite sides, but at first the shared senses make Oraya clumsy and slow. Once Raihn pushes her to stop resisting and trust the bond, they begin to fight as a true unit, drawing strength from the partnership they built earlier in the Kejari.

As they battle toward the wall, Oraya notices a crucial pattern: when Raihn is cut, her body reacts, and that clue helps her realize each contestant’s paired partner can be targeted from afar. She identifies Nikolai as Ravinthe’s partner, cripples and kills Ravinthe, and immediately creates an opening for Raihn to finish Nikolai on the other side of the arena. With that discovery, Oraya and Raihn coordinate their progress, sacrificing small advantages to help each other survive while the field narrows and the surviving contestants race toward the two gates.

Near the top of the wall, Raihn is intercepted by Angelika and quickly begins to lose because Vincent’s torture has left him weakened. Although Raihn tells her to keep going, Oraya abandons her own climb and doubles back through the chaos to find Angelika’s injured partner, Ivan. She fights through Ivan’s painful blood magic and nearly kills him, but at that moment another contestant shoves a Bloodborn woman through one of the gates to test it, triggering a violent flash and shock through the arena. Distracted by the blast and Raihn’s scream in their shared mind, Oraya is stabbed in the side by Ivan, who seizes control of her blood and hurls her into the pack of monsters.