The iron gate of the dungeon groaned open.
Valkira stepped through, soaked in blood from throat to toe, her stride slow, her breath calm.
Death clung to her skin like a second armor, thick and sticky. The light from the torches caught the smears on her cheeks, the blood on her lips, the darkened stains on her bare arms.
Not a scratch on her—but not untouched.
The gladiator hall fell to a hush as her footsteps echoed. Eyes turned. Conversations stopped.
Then, a voice boomed.
"That's it?! That counts?!"
Brusk.
He shoved past the others, approaching the row of guards near the gate. His massive body trembled with fury, chest bare, sweat-laced and tensed like a loaded trap.
"She just slaughtered kids and corpses! You counted that as a win?" He slammed his fist into the stone wall, cracks spidering across it. "She's at eighty now? EIGHTY?!"
The guards held firm, spears lowered—not toward Valkira, but toward Brusk.
"Calm it, Brusk. You don't choose your opponents. That's not our job."
He stepped in close—too close—and his teeth bared. "Then go fetch the bastard who does and tell him Brusk is ready to tear through thirty real warriors. Put me in a pit with forty if you dare. I'll break skulls faster than you can count."
A second row of guards emerged, spears clashing to form a wall of iron between Brusk and the hall's exit.
The tension crackled in the air.
One more twitch and—
"Enough," came Garrik's voice. His thick, battered hand gripped Brusk's shoulder.
Hask was behind him, his gaze calm, quiet, calculating. "Don't be stupid. Piss off the guards and it won't be forty you face. It'll be death in your sleep."
Brusk exhaled through his nose, loud and bestial. The muscles on his neck pulsed, but he stepped back.
The spears remained raised, just in case.
While the air still hung with threat, Valkira didn't stop. She walked right past Brusk without looking at him. She didn't even blink at the confrontation.
Because she wasn't headed to her cell.
She had somewhere else to go.
At the far end of the corridor, the shadows deepened. A single torch flickered above the last cell. Its light caught the glint of a blade swinging in slow, deliberate arcs.
Caelvir.
He was practicing again—his motions stiff, but more fluid than before. The sword he held, Seren's blade, was far too large for him. Its weight slowed him, threw off his stance.
But he kept moving. Training.
Valkira stood outside his bars, watching.
She noticed it. His bones weren't as visible anymore. His skin didn't sag as much over his ribs. He wasn't stronger—not really—but he was less weak.
Still. She didn't think about it too much.
"That blade is too heavy for you," she said, voice flat.
Caelvir stopped mid-motion. He didn't turn. He simply lowered the sword and looked at her, sweat dripping down his temple.
Valkira's eyes narrowed. Her gaze burned like coals.
"I've been thinking," she began, venom crawling in her voice, "that some people don't deserve a quick death."
Caelvir watched her, silent.
"No, some deserve more. To have their eyes gouged out with rusted nails. Ribs broken slowly—one by one. Their bellies split open and their own guts fed back to them. To be flayed until their skin peels like paper, screaming until their throat rips open." Her words bled with hatred. "Even then, it wouldn't be enough."
Still, Caelvir said nothing. But his eyes opened wider—only slightly—but enough to show it hit.
She took a breath, lips twitching with a cruel grin. "Your cell's a shit pit. Did you even notice?" She glanced around mockingly. "Look at your floor. I've seen corpses sleeping on cleaner ground."
No response.
She leaned in, letting the torchlight flicker across her bloodstained face. Her teeth showed behind her lips, red with dried blood. "Nothing to say?" she asked. "No clever little comment? No smug look? You're not much fun anymore."
Still nothing.
Valkira chuckled. Low and cold. "You know what?"
She looked down at her hands, soaked in blood. "Sometimes I wonder if I'm really that different."
Her voice trailed off. Her hands trembled slightly before she clenched them. "Look at me. I'm soaked in death. I reek of it. My blade's done things you can't even dream. And yet…"
She didn't finish. Just exhaled through her nose, her eyes fluttering shut for a heartbeat.
Then she turned to leave.
Caelvir spoke.
"I agree…"
Valkira stopped.
For a moment, she lingered. A single word had parted his lips—small, almost weightless—but it struck with unexpected gravity.
Her fingers twitched at her side, as if tempted to reach for something intangible between them.
A question. A conversation.
Maybe even a shred of clarity in this festering hole of steel and blood. She could ask him why.
Ask what he agreed with.
Ask if he still dreamt of light.
She didn't turn. She just smiled, her back to him. A strange smile. Gentle, but distant.
"I wasn't talking about you, you know," she whispered.
Her voice, softer than it had any right to be, slipped through the shadows like something meant for neither of them. Then she walked away.
Behind her, Caelvir said nothing more. The sound of her footsteps faded into the heavy silence of the dungeon, and the torchlight dimmed over the still blade in his hands.