The junkyard didn't sleep. Even at dusk, it rattled and hissed, a mechanical sprawl of rusted parts and boiled nerves. Fires bloomed in barrel-pits, and boys crowded the slum corridors that fed into the fight-ring arena. The air stank of sweat, grease, piss, and iron—a mingled scent of desperation and spectacle.
Ivar moved through it like fog through iron bars. Quiet. Unchallenged. But not unseen.
Whispers coiled in the alley gutters behind him.
"That him?"
"North Quarter boy. Pale as teeth."
"No scream, no limp."
"Still walks like he don't owe the dirt nothin'."
No names. Just fragments. Echoes.
Blackarm Runners roamed the rim of the pit, marked by tarnished vambraces and coal-eyed looks. Their job was to keep order—loose, brutal order—and to spot potential. The best fights bred contracts. Or conscription.
"Get your blood boilin'!" a scarred woman hollered from atop a crate. "Ten drams says the fireback melts him! Come see a boy become soup!"
Ivar stepped into the half-circle crowd. Mud squelched underfoot. Soot drifted down like burnt feathers. Inside the pit, two boys circled each other—one tall, scarred, jittery with too much muscle. The other, younger, leaner. Breathing hard.
The fight ended when the tall one punched straight through the other's shoulder. Bone snapped. Flame burst. Screaming followed.
The victor turned, still heaving, nostrils flared like he'd only just begun.
"Who's next?" he barked.
He was an esper. Already showing signs. Fire Affinity. The veins around his knuckles pulsed bright, like embers beneath skin.
No one answered.
Then a voice from the crowd: "The quiet one. Let him in."
A ripple. Heads turned. Boots scraped back.
Ivar didn't speak.
He stepped forward. Into the pit.
The flameboy—Murn, they called him—grinned like something broken inside.
"You the ghost, yeah? North orphan? Thought you'd be taller."
Ivar said nothing.
Murn spat, then cracked his neck. "That's fine. I like bones that break quick."
The crowd hollered. Coins clinked. Someone started a low chant. Others followed.
"Burn 'im! Burn 'im!"
Murn charged.
Ivar didn't flinch.
The first punch missed—barely. Ivar tilted back, let the force pass like wind through a frame. He saw the second punch coming before Murn's weight shifted. Duck. Step in. Palm to jaw.
Crack.
Murn stumbled.
He came back roaring, fists igniting. The heat scorched the air. A low flare hummed behind Ivar's teeth.
He moved again. Precise. Clean.
A foot behind Murn's knee. A hand at his elbow. Pressure—not hard, but exact.
Murn dropped like a snuffed flame.
Gasps. One scream. No one clapped.
Murn lay twitching, veins still pulsing firelight under his skin.
Ivar stood above him. Silent.
A cold weight sat beneath his ribs. Not fear. Not rage. Something else. Heavy. Patient. It shifted inside him like an animal rolling in its sleep.
"Is it done?" he asked. His voice barely rose above the whispering crowd.
The Blackarm Runner in charge nodded.
"Winner walks. That's the rule."
Ivar stepped back. Out of the pit.
Above, on the rusted catwalk scaffold, someone watched with glittering eyes.
Lysa crouched beneath a tarp, her breath shallow, a bit of cloth between her teeth to keep from making sound.
Others called it luck. She saw something else.
Precision.
That boy didn't guess where to strike. He knew. Like he'd been counting bones his whole life.
She pressed a finger to the scarred map she'd drawn in charcoal on the wall beside her. Noted his movement. His pace.
Stillness between explosions.
"He doesn't scream," she whispered to no one.
"He doesn't even brace."
The sensation stayed with him as he left the junkyard ring.
Not heat.
Cold. Cold like a stone settling in his gut. A discomfort he couldn't name.
The sensation followed as he moved through Junkrow's corridors. A flash of snow, the smell of pine—then gone.
He walked. Past stalls of boiled rat meat. Past men with gold-wire teeth and empty bowls. Past gutterboys hurling bones at a stray dog just to hear it yelp.
He saw a girl picking lice off her sister's scalp. A man hammering out rust from a nail that bent wrong. Someone was sobbing behind a tarp—soft and dry, as if the tears had dried years ago.
And still, inside Ivar, that thing curled tighter. No teeth. No claws. Just waiting.
A merchant stopped him at a corner where the oil lamps flickered.
"You fight?" he asked, lips pale with pipe soot.
"I did."
"You take coin?"
Ivar shook his head.
"Then why?"
He didn't answer.
A breath passed. The merchant leaned back.
"Boys who fight without payment are either saints or monsters."
"I'm not either."
"Then what are you?"
Ivar looked up. Fog drifted low across the rooftops. Something in it moved, but he didn't flinch.
"I'm walking."
Behind a sewer grate, a voice hissed:
"That one… that one's wrong. He walks like he's already fallen."
And another:
"No. He walks like he never hit bottom."
A slum corridor choked with broken shutters opened into a sunken courtyard.
A boy sat on a bench, bleeding from his mouth. Another stood above him, fists clenched.
They stopped when Ivar passed.
"Oi," the standing boy said. "You the one from the ring?"
Ivar didn't stop.
The boy stepped forward. "Don't walk off like I'm fog. That flameboy was weak. Pick on someone whose fists ain't full of sparks."
Still, Ivar walked.
The boy growled. "You even hear me?"
A rock flew. It struck Ivar's shoulder.
He stopped.
Turned.
"What's the point?" he asked.
The boy blinked. "What?"
"You hit me. Now what?"
The boy faltered. "You… you fight me."
"Why?"
Silence.
The boy stepped back, unsettled by the sheer absence in Ivar's tone.
"…Forget it," he muttered.
Behind Ivar, the air shifted. The city groaned.
A whisper rose, low and circular:
"He doesn't rage."
"He doesn't run."
"He just walks."
And the thing inside his ribs—not anger, not sorrow—stirred.
Awake.
But not yet hungry.
And still, he walked.
Behind him, on the scaffold, Lysa pressed her palm to her chest.
She could feel it.
Not magic. Not heat.
A kind of gravity.
She didn't know what she was watching.
But she wanted to see where it led.
So she followed. Silent as rot.
Through the steam-choked alleys. Through the slum's maze.
Wherever he went next.
Because some bruises weren't born of pain.
Some bruises were maps.
And bruises were warmer than silence.
Perhaps he doesn't even know the map on him that I do…