A Reckless Wager

The question was whether forty credits of distilled sulfur and star-iron would clear the rot from his lungs or simply burn through his ribs.

Kallias sat on a cracked stool in Myrrha’s back room, breathing through a mouth that tasted of rusted copper. Sunlight cut through the warped shutters, illuminating motes of violet salt floating in the stale air. Across the copper table, Eulalia leaned against a shelf of drying roots with her arms crossed, tapping the hilt of her short sword against her thigh in an impatient cadence.

"Drink it in one pull," Myrrha said, sliding the blue glass vial across the counter. Her fingers were stained dark yellow from sulfur paste. "If you gag halfway through, the reagent curdles in your throat, and you waste forty credits for nothing."

Kallias tapped his wrist against the counter's brass transfer node.

[Transaction: 40 Time Credits Transferred to Myrrha]

[Current Balance: 164 Time Credits]

He pulled the wax stopper and knocked the liquid back.

It felt like swallowing crushed glass mixed with kerosene. Heat tore down his esophagus, settling behind his breastbone in a fiery knot. He braced both hands against his knees, teeth locked, while his ribs seized in a violent spasm. When he coughed, the spit hitting the floorboards was thick and stained a muddy violet.

A cool, chime-like ping resonated in his mind.

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

[Purge Successful. Necrotic lung tissue expelled.]

[Rot Debuff Suspended: 336 Hours (14 Days) Remaining]

[Stamina Regeneration Restored to 94%]

Kallias exhaled a long, shuddering breath. For the first time in three weeks, the iron band around his chest loosened. Air filled the lower lobes of his lungs without the familiar knife-edge sting.

"Color is back in your cheeks," Myrrha observed, wiping the counter with a vinegar-soaked rag. "Now, are you going to sign her mark, or do I have to patch two corpses tomorrow night?"

Eulalia pulled the bronze challenger token from her tunic and tossed it onto the wood. "Witness it, Myrrha. Two hundred credits paid upfront. Three hundred upon my survival tomorrow at dusk. He coaches; I execute."

Myrrha took a bone stylus, pressed it to the bronze disc, and nodded as a thin line of blue light etched across the rim. "Witnessed. Don't bleed on my rugs if you bring her back in pieces."

"Out back," Kallias said, rising from the stool. His legs felt lighter, the purge already returning a fraction of his old cadence. "Let us see what fifty credits of raw stats bought you."

·  ·  ·

The yard behind the clinic was ten paces of hard-packed yellow clay bounded by a crumbling brick wall. It was hot, narrow, and smelled of dried dogbane.

Kallias picked up a pair of ash-wood practice batons from a barrel beside the door. He tossed one toward Eulalia. She caught it out of the air with a flick of her wrist, spinning it twice before settling into a low, forward-tilted crouch.

"I have eighteen points in Agility," she said, a sharp grin tugging at her mouth. "Fourteen in Strength. The brawler in the tavern could barely track my blade."

"The brawler in the tavern had twelve points in Agility and forty pints of cheap ale in his liver," Kallias said, resting his baton across his shoulder. "Show me your burst."

Eulalia did not hesitate.

Her boot kicked up a spray of yellow dust as she lunged. The movement was explosive, fueled by raw system attributes—a blur of speed that carried her forward in a direct, aggressive line. Her baton cut an arc aimed straight at his collarbone.

Kallias did not raise his weapon to block.

He shifted his weight two inches to the left, letting her momentum carry the strike past his shoulder. As her right heel planted hard into the dirt, he brought his own baton down in a short, snapping tap against the back of her knee.

Her leg buckled. The speed she relied on worked against her, driving her shoulder hard into the clay. She rolled, spitting dirt, and scrambled back to her feet with flushed cheeks.

"You tripped me," she hissed.

"You tripped yourself," Kallias corrected. "You plant your back foot like an anchor every time you swing. Against a short sword, you get away with it. Against Branis and his eight-foot hooked glaive, that heel stays pinned for half a second. That is all he needs to hook your ankle and split your chest."

"Again," she snarled, dropping back into her stance.

She came at him three more times. Each charge was faster than the last, her high Agility allowing her to change direction mid-stride. And each time, Kallias moved no more than a half-step.

On the second attempt, a lead-foot pivot deflected her thrust, sending her scraping against the brick wall. On the third, he caught her overextended wrist with the butt of his baton, leveraging her forward weight to flip her onto her back.

The dust settled around her. Eulalia lay on the hard clay, chest heaving, staring up at the harsh Aegean sky.

"It makes no sense," she muttered, her knuckles white around the ash wood. "My numbers are higher than yours. I felt your stats—your Strength is barely nine."

"Numbers are fuel, girl. Footwork is the furnace," Kallias said, his breathing steady. "You burn everything in the first three steps. In the arena, if you don't kill a veteran in four seconds, you die in five."

"Then I respawn," she said, pushing herself upright with stubborn defiance. "The bronze mark comes with a tier-one respawn clause at the southern temple node. I lose a few days of coin, study his pattern, and challenge the bracket again."

Kallias froze.

The quiet in the yard turned brittle. The afternoon heat thickened between them, heavy with the stench of salt.

"You think the node is an hourglass you just flip over?" Kallias asked, his voice dangerously low.

"Everyone uses it," she said, brushing grit from her tunic. "The high-tier champions die dozens of times during the qualifiers."

Without a word, Kallias raised his left hand and willed his primary interface to expand, projecting his core status block into the open air between them.

Eulalia blinked as the shimmering blue light coalesced.

[Name: Kallias]

[Class: Duelist (Dormant)]

[Physical Integrity: 78%]

[Dust-Blight Accumulation: Stage II (Purged - 14 Days)]

[Resurrections Recorded: 4]

[System Memory Integrity: 74.2%]

[Excised Memory Sectors:]

• Sector 04: Maternal voice and countenance (Irretrievable)
• Sector 11: First instructor's third footwork treatise (Irretrievable)
• Sector 19: Childhood residence and native district layout (Irretrievable)

Eulalia stared at the floating lines. The stubborn arrogance in her posture drained away, replaced by a sudden, rigid stillness.

"Every death takes a slice," Kallias said quietly, his hand steady as he dismissed the window. "You do not lose the pain. You lose the pieces that make you who you are. When I stand in the arena now, I do not remember why I started fighting, or what my mother called me when I was small. I only know how to kill."

He tapped the ash baton against the dirt between them.

"You want to win tomorrow, Lia? Then you forget the node exists. You fight like you have one life, because the person who wakes up on that altar will not be you."