The silence did not merely fall; it compressed the very air inside the stone colosseum until the atmosphere felt thick as cooling wax.
It was so profound and undisturbed by the horrific gallery above that if a single drop of sweat or a pin were to slip from my skin and hit the packed dirt floor, the echo would have traveled up to the dark rafters.
Two men, identical of their blood yet worlds apart in the alignment of their souls, remained locked in a visual duel that seemed to stretch the seconds into agonizing, unyielding minutes.
The Phantom or Ronan now known by name, stood with his feet planted wide in the dust, his chest heaving with a slow, toxic rhythm. The heavy iron helmet dangled from his hand, a useless shell now that the monster had revealed a human face.
He looked up at D
