The Sinks did not have the luxury of marble or gilded promises. Here, in the belly of Silvenora, the architecture was a testament to gravity and neglect. Houses leaned against one another like tired drunks, held together by rusted iron braces and the desperate hope that the wind wouldn't blow too hard from the northern peaks.
Ren walked with his hood pulled low, his boots finding the dry patches in the mud. Beside him, Miko moved with a surgeon's economy of motion, her eyes scanning the shadows not for enemies, but for the sick. In the Sinks, the two were often the same.
"The Union is taxing the breath now," Miko said, her voice barely audible over the distant hum of the city's upper gears.
Ren stopped. He looked at a group of children huddled around a rusted barrel fire. They looked smaller than they should have been, their skin translucent, their ribs tracing sharp lines against their tunics. "How?"
"A minor Jusen," she replied, her jaw tightening. "They call it the 'Civic Contribution.' To live within the city walls, you must wager five percent of your lung capacity every month. It's a Risk Level 0. Minimal power gain for the Union—just enough to keep the streetlights burning in the Spire—but for these people, it's a slow suffocation."
Ren looked at the silver coin in his hand, then pocketed it. The injustice wasn't loud. It wasn't a sword to the throat. It was a ledger. It was a series of small, polite subtractions that eventually left a person as a hollow shell.
"They don't even fight it," Ren muttered.
"Why would they? If they refuse, they're cast out into the Barrens. Out there, the debt collectors are less patient than the Union. Out there, you wager your skin just to stay warm."
They reached a heavy wooden door marked with a faint, chalked cross. Miko knocked—three quick beats, a pause, then one. The door creaked open, revealing a cramped room smelling of vinegar and old blood.
In the center of the room, lying on a threadbare cot, was a man whose skin was turning a bruised, sickly shade of indigo. His eyes were rolled back, and his breath came in ragged, wet rattles.
"Kekkon Kake," Miko whispered, dropping to her knees beside him. "A Broken Wager."
"What did he try to buy?" Ren asked, staying by the door, his hand instinctively resting on the hilt of the short blade hidden beneath his coat.
Miko checked the man's pulse, her fingers trembling slightly. "His daughter was taken to the Spire for 'servitude.' He tried to wager his sight to gain the strength to break into the transport. He failed the execution of the bet. He didn't lose his sight—the Jusen inverted. Now his body is trying to exist in two places at once. His internal organs are shifting. He's being crushed by the weight of his own failed intent."
The man suddenly gasped, his hand flying out to grab Miko's wrist. His grip was inhumanly strong, the desperate strength of the dying. "Save... her..."
Miko didn't flinch. She closed her eyes. "I accept the stake," she murmured.
Ren stepped forward. "Miko, don't. You've already taken on too much this week."
"He's dying, Ren. If I don't balance his flow, he'll implode, and the blast will take half this block with him."
The air in the room grew cold. Ren watched as the indigo bruising on the man's skin began to migrate. It didn't vanish; it flowed. Like a slow-moving ink, the darkness crawled up the man's arm, through the point of contact, and onto Miko's porcelain skin.
She let out a strangled sound, her back arching. Her eyes didn't turn amber like a gambler's; they turned a flat, dull grey. This was her Jusen—the Wager of the Healer. To save a life, she didn't erase the injury; she leased it. She took the agony into her own nervous system, betting that her will was stronger than the trauma.
The man's breathing stabilized. The indigo hue faded from his face, leaving him pale but alive. He slumped back into the cot, falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Miko collapsed. Ren caught her before she hit the floor, her body shivering violently. Her arms were now covered in the bruised indigo patterns, the phantom weight of the man's failed gamble now crushing her own ribs.
"You're a fool," Ren said, his voice thick with a mixture of anger and a rare, sharp grief. He lowered her to a chair, his hands hovering, unsure of how to help. He couldn't take her pain. His power was the power of 'Zero'—he could only negate, not transfer.
"I'm... a doctor," she wheezed, clutching her chest. "The math... still works. I'll hold it for three days... then it dissipates. I just have to... survive the weekend."
"And if you don't? If your heart stops because you're carrying the weight of ten men's failures?"
Miko looked up at him, a weak, cynical smile touching her lips. "Then I'll be the most honorable corpse in the Sinks. Isn't that what we're all playing for?"
Ren turned away. He hated her logic because it was the only logic that made sense in a world governed by Jusen. Everything was a trade. Kindness was just a debt with a different name.
He walked to the small window. Through the grime, he could see the Spire of Silvenora, glowing like a jagged tooth against the night sky. Up there, Kuroshi was likely sitting in a room of velvet and silence, planning the 'Paradise Project.' Kuroshi didn't believe in pain. He believed that if you wagered enough of the world's freedom, you could buy a peace that never ended.
"The Union is moving their heavy hitters toward the Eastern border," Ren said, his back still to her. "Oshido is resisting the new currency. The tribes there... they still believe in the Base Flow. They think the earth will protect them."
"They're wrong," Miko said, her voice regaining some of its strength. "The earth doesn't care about wagers. The earth is just the table we're playing on."
"Maybe. But Hajime says the Hushers are moving too. Not just in the shadows anymore. They've been seen near the Spirit Woods. They're watching the Union patrols."
Miko sat up, rubbing her indigo-stained arms. "Why would they watch? They don't have eyes, Ren. Not really."
"They have something else. They have memory. The real kind. The kind that doesn't disappear when you flip a coin." Ren pulled the silver coin out again. He looked at it, the blank surface reflecting nothing. "I used the Zero Wager at the Arena. Just a flick. To dampen the blow Valerius dealt that kid."
Miko's eyes widened. "Ren, you promised. Every time you use it—"
"—I lose something," he finished. "I know. I can't remember the name of the street I grew up on. I remember the house. I remember the smell of the kitchen. But the name is gone. It's just a blur of white noise."
"Is it worth it? Saving a boy who will just go back and bet his eyes next week?"
Ren looked at the indigo marks on Miko's arms, the physical manifestation of her own refusal to let the world bleed out. "I don't know," he admitted. "But if I stop, then the Union is right. If I stop, then the only thing that matters is the size of the stake. And if that's true, then we might as well all jump into the volcano at Volgara and be done with it."
A sudden, sharp thud echoed from the roof.
Ren was across the room in a heartbeat, his blade drawn. It wasn't the heavy footfall of a Union Enforcer. It was too light, too rhythmic. It sounded like the beating of a drum, or the galloping of a horse.
"Luna?" Miko whispered.
The door burst open, not with violence, but with a rush of freezing air that smelled of ozone and high altitudes. A young woman stood there, her hair a wild tangle of silver and blue, her clothes tattered. She was gasping for air, her eyes wide with a terror that Ren had only seen once before.
"The horses," Luna choked out, clutching the doorframe. "The Winged Horses... they're screaming, Ren."
Ren felt a chill that had nothing to do with the night air. The Winged Horses of the Skylands were the barometers of Alvessia. They only screamed when the balance wasn't just tipped—they screamed when the table was about to be flipped.
"What did you see, Luna?" Ren asked, stepping toward her.
"The Union... they didn't just capture a Husher," she said, her voice trembling. "They tried to bet with it. They tried to use a White Creature as the stake for a collective wager."
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the indigo-stained air in the room seemed to freeze. To wager a Husher was to wager the vacuum. It was an impossibility, a mathematical sin that the Kikinkai system shouldn't even recognize.
"Who?" Ren asked, though he already knew the answer.
"Kuroshi," Luna whispered. "He's not trying to the suffering anymore. He's trying to wager the world's existence against a paradise he's built in his mind. And the Husher... it didn't resist."
Ren looked at his silver coin. For the first time, the metal felt hot against his palm.
"The game is changing," Ren said, his voice flat. "The Union isn't gambling with lives anymore. They're gambling with the 'Always.'"
He looked at Miko, then at Luna. They were a broken doctor and a terrified scout, led by a man who was slowly forgetting his own soul. They were the worst bet in the history of Alvessia.
"Get your things," Ren commanded. "We leave for the Eastern border at dawn. If Kuroshi is using the Hushers, we need to find Giraiya. Only he knows what happens when the house loses a bet against the Void."
As they began to move, Ren looked one last time at the Indigo man on the cot. He realized with a jolt of horror that he couldn't remember why they had come here in the first place. The memory of the man's daughter, the reason for the wager—it was gone.
The Zero Wager had taken its price. Ren Kurokami was saving a man he no longer knew, for a reason he could no longer name.
He gripped the coin until it bit into his skin. The pain was sharp. The pain was real. For now, it was enough.