Varentis was built on blood, gold and knives, but mostly knives.
Some were gilded, resting in velvet-lined scabbards at the hips of men who had never drawn them. Others were crude, rust-bitten things clutched in the fists of men who had never known another way to live. Some knives carved names into history, while others slit throats in dark alleys, only to be discarded in the river come morning.
The streets weren't paved with marble like the roads in Basstadt, the city of pompous pricks, no, Varentis was built from the bones of men who thought they could own it. Some still did. Some had names carved into the city's history with steel and coin, while others rotted in the gutter, their names already forgotten.
And then there were the ones like him.
Darian Valcoris had no knife. Not now at least.
Instead, he had hunger.
It gnawed at him like a feral dog, hollowing out his stomach, making his limbs weak and his head light. Hunger was worse than any wound, it robbed you of thought, of control, of dignity. It made you do things you once swore you never would.
That was why he was here, At least partially.
Darian stood on the edge of the pit, barefoot on cold stone, the scent of old blood thick in the air. The underground arena wasn't anything grand, just a ruined bathhouse from the days when the Marmalossi still ruled, before the rise and fall of Winterfyre and the Empire got its hands on the Eastern Lang. The mosaics on the walls, once depictions of priests of decay long dead, were cracked and faded, the tiles replaced with soot and filth.
He didn't look like much.
Black hair tied back in a top knot. Green eyes that didn't blink enough. Skin stretched tight over muscle, thin, but strong. The kind of build you got from running more than resting. Scar on his chin, another across his ribs. Bare chest rising slow and steady.
Above, the tightly packed crowd surged with energy. Merchants, cutthroats, and off-duty garrison men jostled together, their voices rising in a cacophony as they howled their bets. They clutched their coin with the desperation of graverats feasting on a fresh corpse, eager to gamble their fortunes on the brutal spectacle below.
The pitmasters had orchestrated these fights for years, harking back to a time when the Viceroy of Blackmount still possessed a spine. Now? They barely even hid it. The guardsmen stationed outside got their cut, same as the Magistrates who pretended they didn't know where their tax money came from.
A fight like this? It was just another business.
"You listenin', gutterboy?"
A heavy hand landed on Darian's shoulder. He didn't flinch. Just turned his head slightly, meeting the dull, piggish eyes of the fight master. Thick-necked, face like a butcher's block, breath reeking of old ale and bad teeth. A man who'd sent hundreds of poor bastards into this pit, most of whom never crawled back out.
"Your turn."
Darian exhaled slow. His ribs still ached from a scuffle two nights past, a cracked lip stung from the cold air. He'd gone without a real meal for three days, that's if you don't call boiled rat a real meal. Just water and whatever scraps his crew could scrape together.
Hunger made men foolish.
But this wasn't about hunger, not really.
This was about knowing what it meant to survive in a city like this.
A city that didn't want him alive.
Varentis had never been kind to the fallen. It didn't care that his family name had once meant something. Didn't care that his father had once brokered deals with the highest of lords, that his mother had worn the silks of Tyrellis before they'd been burned to ash with the rest of his bloodline.
The Empire didn't care. The Viceroy didn't care. The Palatine didn't care. And the nobles who'd carved up his family's fortune cared least of all.
The pit was a test. He knew that much.
That was the thing about gutterborns and fallen lords alike, if you proved you could take a beating and crawl back up, someone always found a use for you.
"Go on, then," the fight master grunted, giving Darian a rough shove between the shoulder blades. "Try not to piss yourself, yeah?"
Darian didn't answer. He stepped forward.
The gate loomed ahead, a slab of iron warped by time and violence, its hinges screaming like something dying as it groaned open. Rust flaked off in wet clumps. The torchlight behind him didn't reach far; shadows spilled into the pit like ink pouring from a broken bottle.
The air changed as he crossed the threshold, colder, thicker, touched with the iron stink of old blood and sweat that had soaked into stone. Every fighter left a piece of themselves in here. Some never got it back.
The pit was a sunken thing. Its walls were scabbed with deep scratches, half-erased chalk marks, and smears of something dark that never quite washed off. Bones had broken here. Men had screamed here. Some still haunted the floor in pieces, ground into the sand underfoot.
Another gate creaked open across from him, mirroring his own. From the blackness beyond it, a shape emerged, first shadow, then flesh.
The Butcher stepped into the light.
He was massive. Built like a siege ram and just as subtle. Every inch of him was scarred, across the chest, the throat, the brow. Some were jagged and brutal, others neat and surgical. A map of violence etched in skin. Tattoos snaked over his arms in faded black lines, symbols Darian didn't recognize and didn't want to.
The Butcher's face twisted into a grin, all split lip and yellow teeth. His eyes were dead things, flat, empty, hungry.
Laughter rose from the crowd like crows on a corpse. "Hope you bet smart, boys! Gutterboy's dead before the sand drinks his blood!"
More voices joined in. Some jeering. Some cheering.
Darian's eyes stayed locked on the Butcher.
He could feel the weight of him already, the sheer bulk of it, the way the sand groaned under his steps. The man wasn't just big. He was seasoned. Too many fights, too many wins. The kind of fighter who didn't swing wild, he broke you, piece by piece.
The kind of man who had killed before. The kind of man who would kill again.
Darian's stomach twisted, but he didn't back away. Couldn't. The gate behind him had already shut.
This was it.
No steel. No shield. Just him, his fists, and his hunger.
Let them laugh. Let them bet.
They hadn't seen what he'd survived. What he'd crawled through to get here.
And Basst willing, they hadn't seen what he was willing to become to leave this pit alive.
As he stepped further into the arena, the stench of sweat and blood enveloped him, suffocating yet familiar. The cheers and jeers of the crowd blended together into a cacophony of noise, drowning out any rational thought.
Darian knew he had to rely on more than just his physical strength to survive this fight. His mind raced, calculating possible moves and strategies.
His gaze flicked past the crowd, up to the balcony above, where the real players sat. The ones who didn't have to fight for coin, the ones who owned men like the Butcher and bet on boys like him, shaping destinies with the flick of a wrist.
And there... in the shadows, half-hidden by torchlight, stood a man in fine black leathers.
He wasn't drinking. Wasn't gambling.
He was just watching.
A slow, creeping feeling curled in Darian's gut.
This wasn't about the fight. This was about what came after.
He finally had a shot to prove he wasn't just another nameless corpse-to-be.
The horn sounded, a deep, ugly thing cut from the bone of some beast long extinct.
There were only three rules in the pits.
First: don't run. Nobody bet coin to watch a coward flee. They wanted blood. Screaming. The dull, wet sound of a skull cracking open on the sand. If you ran, you might live a little longer, but only long enough for the pitmasters to drag you back, cut off a finger, and throw you in again the next night.
Second: don't beg. Nobody respected a man who whimpered. If you were lucky, the Butcher would make it quick. If you weren't, the pitmaster would make sure your next fight was worse.
Third: make the crowd love you, or make them hate you. Didn't matter which. If the crowd remembered your name, you got another fight. Another fight meant another purse. Another purse meant another meal.
Darian knew all three rules.
He wasn't here to run. He wasn't here to beg. And before the night was over, every bastard in this room was going to know his name.