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Spheres of water formed around him, gathered from the moisture in the air, and he launched them towards Seraph. Sprinting as fast as he could, Seraph narrowly dodged the incoming bombs, each bursting like a water balloon when it hit the ground. The drenched ground would immediately begin to smoke as the sand was dissolved. Watching from the edge of the ring in his invisible state, Noah decided to investigate one such puddle nearby to test a theory.

Seraph gripped his head, threatening to rip out his hair as tears poured from his eyes. “I am a coward, remember? I ate that plum because I wanted to escape the pain I now know I deserved. But I wish that plum really had killed me. I wish I had died that day. It would have been better than a life with no hope of redemption. Every morning, I open my eyes and remember waking up after the fight. Realizing you’re alive after trying to end it all, I never knew something could be so painful. Every breath hurt, every beat of my heart was agony, every thought in my mind felt like hot lead, and it all comes again fresh every morning. All I’ve wanted to do since then is… finish what I started.”“I know how you feel.”

After Cain’s fight, the seventh match proceeded without a hitch, and as always, Seraph stepped into the ring for the final battle of the round. Though his earlier wins had been desperate and narrow, the prince’s arrival brought a chorus of cheers from the audience. One might expect this noisy support to bolster his confidence and turn him back to how he was, but he remained humble, or perhaps ‘fearful’ would be a better word. Every win would plague him with doubts, doubts that he was really strong enough to have defeated his opponents. All of his accomplishments were surely due to plain luck, or maybe his enemies had been paid off to let him win.