The Cost of Breath

How many minutes of life did a dead man need to buy a clean breath?

Kallias crouched behind a calcified pillar in the salt ruins of the lower ward, watching the chitinous bulk of a blighted crawler drag itself across the cracked stone. His ribs burned with every shallow intake of air. According to the System timer hovering in the lower periphery of his vision, his stage-two Rot debuff had exactly twenty-eight hours before it permanently excised another five percent of his base stamina pool.

[Status: Dust-Blight Contamination (Stage II)]

[Effect: -22% Maximum Stamina. Periodic lung necrosis.]

[Purge Cost: 40 Time Credits (Local Alchemist Rate)]

[Current Balance: 4 Time Credits]

"Forty credits," Kallias muttered under his breath, tasting the familiar metallic tang of purple salt. "And the beast has the courtesy to carry only one core."

The crawler hissed, its four segmented legs scraping the limestone. Most hunters in the lower ring would have rushed it with heavy bludgeons, burning through their stamina reserves in a frantic flurry. Kallias did not have stamina to waste.

When the beast lunged, its mandibles snapping wide, Kallias took a single half-step to the left. He shifted his weight along the balls of his feet, angling his notched bronze shortsword precisely thirty degrees. He let the creature's momentum do the heavy lifting. The blade slid into the soft gap beneath the crawler's thoracic plate, severing the nerve cluster with a wet pop.

The crawler crashed onto the dust, shuddering twice before going limp.

[Target Eliminated: Blighted Crawler (Tier 1)]

[Loot Harvested: Grade-1 Blighted Core (Purity: 88%)]

[Estimated Value: 40 Time Credits]

Kallias leaned his shoulder against the ruined archway, waiting for his pulse to slow. His chest felt full of crushed glass, but his hands remained steady. Forty credits secured. He pried the violet crystal from the carapace, slipped it into his leather pouch, and began the slow trudge back toward the sun-baked streets of the Skiron district.

The lower ward smelled of fried onions, stale beer, and copper-laced ash. Under the purple glare of the noon sky, the makeshift fighting pits behind the Broken Oar tavern were already drawing a shouting crowd.

Kallias pushed through the stained canvas curtain, intending only to cut through to the apothecary alley. The roar of the spectators stopped him.

In the center of the sunken stone ring, a girl in boiled leather was getting herself systematically cornered by a three-hundred-pound pit brawler wielding a spiked cudgel.

"Keep your chin down, idiot," Kallias murmured, leaning against the wooden railing.

The girl did not keep her chin down. Instead, she grinned, planted her heels squarely in the dirt, and took a glancing blow directly across her shoulder. The force cracked the stone beneath her boots, but she barely flinched. Her Agility stat had to be north of thirty, yet she stood completely flat-footed, relying entirely on raw passive resilience to absorb what should have been a broken collarbone.

The brawler raised his club for a downward smash. It was an elementary opening. Any novice with ten days of academy drilling would have slipped the strike and taken the kidney.

The girl did not slip the strike. She simply threw an overhand right straight into the center of the man's chest.

The air boomed. The brawler flew backward six yards, crashing through the pit's wooden partition and collapsing into a heap of splintered planks.

The crowd erupted in wild cheering. The girl shook out her bruised knuckles, tossed her dark braid over her shoulder, and collected her winner's purse without once checking her flank.

"Terrifying speed, zero balance," Kallias observed quietly to himself. "In the official arena, an apprentice spearman would gut her in four seconds."

He turned away from the railing and found an empty corner table near the back exit, pulling a wooden stool out to rest his throbbing knee. He laid his harvesting knife on the scarred pine table and began scraping the dried purple ichor from the fuller.

A shadow fell over the bench.

"You're Kallias," a voice said.

Kallias did not look up from his blade. "The tavern serves ale at the counter, girl. If you're looking for an autograph, you're seven years too late."

"I don't want an autograph." She pulled out the opposite stool and dropped into it with the heavy thud of someone who had never learned to moderate her kinetic output. Her knuckles were split and leaking pale blue System-stabilized plasma. "I want a coach."

Kallias raised his gaze. Up close, her eyes were sharp, bright amber, and completely devoid of fear. That was the most dangerous kind of rookie in Lymnos.

"I don't take students," Kallias said. "Students die. Then their relatives ask for refunds."

"I don't have relatives," she said. "And I don't die."

"Everyone dies in the sand, rookie. The difference is whether you wake up at a node remembering your mother's name or wake up wondering why you own a sword."

She reached into her tunic. With a sharp flick of her wrist, she slapped a heavy piece of cast bronze onto the wood between them.

The token bore the embossed twin hydras of the high-tier arena qualifiers.

[Item: Challenger's Mark (Culling Games - Bronze Division)]

[Entrant: Eulalia]

[Scheduled Bout: Tomorrow, Sunset]

Kallias stared at the metal plaque. A bronze qualifier token cost five hundred Time credits on the black market, or three straight victories against ranked district champions.

"Where did you steal that?" Kallias asked.

"Won it in a dice cellar off Harbor Street," Eulalia said, leaning forward. Her grin was entirely too wide. "First round is tomorrow at dusk. My opponent is a four-time survivor named Branis who fights with a hooked glaive. The bookmakers have my survival odds at twelve to one."

"Those are generous odds," Kallias said dryly. "Branis will hook your heel on your first clumsy charge, drop you on your spine, and take your throat before you finish blinking."

"Then teach me how not to charge." She pushed the token half an inch closer, alongside a velvet purse that jingled with heavy coin. "Two hundred Time credits upfront. Another three hundred when I win. Or you can sit in this corner, cough up your lungs, and let the Blight finish what the arena started."

Kallias looked from the gleaming bronze token to the velvet purse, then down at his own trembling fingers. The Rot in his chest gave a dull, throbbing twinge, reminding him exactly how little sand remained in his hourglass.

"First rule," Kallias said, his hand closing over the heavy bronze mark. "You touch your heels to the dirt like that again, and I break your leg myself."