The basalt cliffs sweat in the dark, their black stone weeping salt and moisture under the pressure of Akura’s evening heat. I strip my jacket off and sling it across the hook nailed crooked above the doorway, where the heavy iron hatch leads down.
No guards or sensors. Just a retinal scanner buried behind a rusted panel and the stench of blood-soaked sand waiting below.
The fight club’s not officially sanctioned, of course. Chamberland would never admit something like this seethes beneath its borders. But everything festers when it’s sealed too tight. I need it. The noise. The hurt. Therelease.
I press my palm to the scanner. It clicks. The door hisses open with a sigh like a dying animal.
The stairs spiral into shadow, thick with heat and the musk of too many bodies and too little air. Somewhere below, a crowd roars. It sounds like wolves ripping something apart.
I wish they’d rip me.
At the bottom, the hall opens wide and dim, lit by flickering strips that strobe like damaged stars. The walls are metal, scorched and dented, every surface sweat-slick. The stenchhits harder here—blood, oil, burnt ozone from malfunctioning shields. And something else. The copper tang of anticipation.
“Rayek,” someone grunts. One of the attendants, a tall, grim human with a face like cracked stone. “Didn’t think we’d see you again so soon.”
I say nothing. Just nod once and strip the rest of the way down. Combat trunks. Wrists wrapped in nanoweave.
The ring’s not really a ring. It’s more of a pit, sunken and circular, surrounded by roaring bodies stacked up to the ceiling. No rules. No time limit. No mercy. First man down loses consciousness—or their will to keep breathing.
Tonight, I don’t plan to lose.
Not because I want to win.
Because I don’t want tofeel.
The announcer’s voice blares overhead, static-filled and frantic. “In this corner, hailing from the Odexen jungles of Gratha Four—Thraag! Nine and oh, four-time skull breaker, three-time crowd favorite!”
The pit shakes as the Odex lumbers out, tall even for his kind—eight feet of bristling muscle, purple-skinned and tusked. Spikes on his knuckles. Something wet and sticky drips from his mouth.
He grins when he sees me. Probably thinks I’m the warm-up act.
I drop down into the pit, feet sinking slightly into the blood-soaked grit. The door seals shut behind me.
“And in this corner,” the announcer says, voice dipping like he’s trying to sell a myth, “The Nightmare of Akura… the Reaper’s Bane… Rayek.”
The crowd erupts. I don’t hear it.
All I hear isherlaugh. The way her lips curved when she teased me about losing. The sparkle behind her lashes when shesaid his name like it was just another chess piece she’d moved across the board.
Kaspian’s coming.
The Odex lunges.
I move faster.
He swings low—I duck and pivot, letting his claws scrape air. My fist slams into his gut, and I feel something shift inside him. Cartilage, maybe. Something important.
He grunts. Stumbles.
Comes back twice as hard.
I let him.
I let his fist glance off my jaw, let the pain wake up the parts of me that have gone numb. I taste blood. It’s warm and real andmine.Good.
He overcommits. Big mistake.
I slam my elbow into his throat. He chokes. I twist, grab his arm, yank it the wrong way until something pops. He howls. The crowd is a blur of limbs and mouths and noise I still can’t register.
