The Conglomerate didn’t bother with explaining any of the special qualities of the arena to the candidates. It would be too time consuming and most of them wouldn’t be able to understand it properly.

The candidates were provided with the listings for their seeding match-ups. The 5 fights after that would be individually calculated by the presiding Faifekau.

On the first day of the tournament all the candidates were individually herded into the arena and given their own waiting rooms. They all had a view of the arena but what they were looking at wouldn’t be the same as what another group would be viewing. Due to the Conglomerate being able to manipulate the space within the arena, the only matches the candidates would see would be the ones from within their groups. Because of the spatial abilities multiple matches would be able to occur at the same time without occupying the same space.

Some of the candidates noticed the oddities of the scheduling. A few asked some of the members how it was possible that multiple matches would be held at the same time. And the members had been instructed to give vague assurances of the arena being much bigger on the inside.

For some of the candidates who had an inkling that something was wrong in the arena their questions were outright ignored.

_____________________________________

Sone and Mai marveled at the odd room they’d been herded into. It was a dark room but everything was illuminated. The only furniture in the room were a couple couches facing a window that overlooked the arena and a table pushed into a corner.

The siblings had been led into the room by a tall, fair skinned trainee dressed in all white and a Faifekau dressed in the usual all black uniform of their order. The trainee appeared to be a foreigner and this intrigued Sone. He had noticed that the Conglomerate had foreigners amongst the members. He hadn’t expected a foreigner to be a trainee to be a Faifekau, a position that he knew had a high standing in the Conglomerate.

Mai was busy studying the odd room. Deep in her gut she could feel that something was wrong with the room. “What’s wrong with this room?” she asked the Faifekau as she continued to study what was observable.

“Nothing. This is just another normal room that is reserved for candidates.” answered the Faifekau matter-of-factly.

This didn’t satisfy Mai. She had been noticing odd things about the island for a while now and this arena had helped further mystify her. She couldn’t shake the unease.

Without warning the sound of a bell tolling filled the room. The trainee turned and held the door to the room open as the Faifekau motioned for the siblings. “Your first match is up, we’ll lead you both down to the arena.”

---

As they entered the arena Mai noticed how odd the arena was. It felt like the room they had just been in. She couldn’t shake the feeling of being detached from reality. Instead of walking towards the middle of the arena she intently watched as the Faifekau and the trainee closed the door. To her surprise the door disappeared before it fully closed. Walking back to the wall she reached out to feel for the door and found nothing, just a dark patch of wall.

Sone was a few feet away from the middle of the arena when he noticed that Mai wasn’t next to him. Turning back, he whistled at her and motioned his head towards the arena. “They should be here soon.”

Mai jogged over to him, still feeling unsteady. “Something’s wrong with this place.”

“I know. Feels like we ain’t been in the right place since we walked in the entrance.” Sone said. “We’ll just have to advance and figure out what’s up. Can’t get hung up.”

As the siblings quietly talked they noticed their first match-up entering the arena.

______________________________________

In another spatially removed arena, Mr. Bel and his group of intruders were busy feeding. They had been forced to starve since their meeting with the Tu’i so it was time for them to let loose.

Two of the intruders, one of them with a tattoo on their throat that looked like a gaping maw and the other with half of both forearms missing, were fighting over the corpse of a large native. The sound of flesh and bone being torn apart resounded off the shadowy interior of the arena.

All 6 intruders were currently engorging themselves on the bodies of their victims. From within the room that had been assigned to them the horrified Faifekau and trainee watched. The trainee had just finished vomiting and the Faifekau was fighting the urge to do the same.

They watched as Mr. Bel, in his now blood-stained white suit, ripped the head of a candidate clean off and held it over his gaping mouth. He greedily drank the blood that dripped into his mouth before casually taking bites out of the dismembered head, chewing bones and all.

A few feet away from him the intruder with the large lips was busy toying with another candidate. The candidate was lying prone, completely frozen after it had kissed them with it’s now pulsating lips. The intruder took its time torturing the candidate, feeding off the candidates fear. It slowly bit off one finger at a time, languidly chewing the extremities like they were delectable treats. The unfortunate candidate had been conscious for the first few fingers but had quickly lost consciousness at the sight of the intruder eating them.

The intruders would continue to repeat this for each and every match they were involved in throughout the first round. Under directions from the Tu’i, the Faifekau were not allowed to interfere.

______________________________________

The first part of the tournament progressed smoothly. Apart from the grotesque debacles that were the intruders and their constant feasts, all the other candidates continued to compete earnestly.

Sone and Mai found that their preliminary opponents were nothing more than cannon fodder. It perplexed the siblings. Either something was wrong with the other candidates or they had truly grown in their understanding of mana, their tatau usage, and Sone’s control of his Le’o.

They earned a momentary reprieve after sweeping through their seeding matches untouched. The training they had received from Manawa and Alika made all the other candidates seem amateurish. Over and over, they followed the same playbook. Sone would draw the attention of all the opposing candidates with his Le’o and Mai would quickly take them down with well placed strikes. Everything they did was efficient. Almost robotic.

And yet, the siblings couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was going on. A month wasn’t enough for both of them to so drastically change.

Having become used to the presence of the Faifekau and the trainee they found it easier to have normal conversations than when they had first entered the room. The two members' attitudes remained consistent. The only one who showed any interest in the candidates was the trainee but it was obvious he was under strict orders from his superior.

“You been able to piece anything together?” Sone asked as he relaxed on one of the couches facing the window into the arena.

Mai shook her head as she answered. “I just know I don’t feel all here.” She pointed at the ground, emphasizing the last bit of her sentence.

Sone sighed at this. He knew what she meant. They had both noticed that they felt as if they were being funneled further into the tournament. They also felt as if they weren’t in full control of what they were doing during their matches. Their bodies were reacting autonomously and they were able to achieve even greater synergy than they had at any other point before entering the arena. They were the marionettes being skillfully danced along by some invisible hand and they couldn’t figure out what it was. And it seemed he was better at ignoring it than his sister.

“We just needa stay aware.” Mai mused as she stared at the tall, foreign trainee who was trying really hard not to pay too much attention to their conversation. Staring at him brought up a fleeting, hazy memory. One of a small island and of the two siblings talking on a sunlit porch.

“Do you remember why we came here?”

Sone chortled. “Of course, what kinda question is that?” He hadn’t thought about it much but they were here for the same reason everyone else was here. The Advent tournament. It was pretty important. They’d been invited, despite being so young and barely being exposed to much outside of their little island home.

“It’s a question.” Mai stated absentmindedly. She only started noticing the odd feeling fairly recently. Even before the tournament began. She had been busy thinking on why they specifically had decided to enter the tournament. And she couldn’t come up with a single answer. The more she thought back, the less she could clearly remember beyond that first day of arriving on this strange island. “Can you remember the name of our island?”

Sone gave her an odd look. “What? Are you feeling ok? Why would I forget?”

“Really? Then what’s the name?” Mai asked, trying to stifle the rising feelings of panic. Hoping he had an answer.

Sone gave a half-hearted chuckle as he tried to wave off his sister's question. “You’re being stupid. We both know the name of our ow--”

“Do we? Tell me the name of our island then.” Her tone grew a bit more serious as she fought the shaking, fought the sadness that welled up within her.

“Why do you want me to say it so bad?” Sone asked, looking at his sister. He didn’t want to admit to the hazy doubts that he’d been so deftly ignoring. Doubts that bubbled and roiled and threatened to overflow.

Mai avoided his gaze, looking down at her hands as tears dripped onto them. “Cause I don’t remember.”