The air reeked of iron and rot.
A low fog clung to the cobbled bones of the old city, and beneath its cracked cathedral spires and vine-choked gargoyles lay the Bloodpit, an arena carved into the bowels of a plague-slain temple.
Torchlight flickered across soaked stones, painting the carved saints in strokes of gore. Hundreds pressed into the stands—peasants, soldiers, merchants, the dying. All come to watch men bleed for coin. All breathing in sickness and sin like prayer.
Zevrak Kain descended the spiral stairs in silence, wrapped in the black coat he had looted from a noble corpse three nights ago. His face was shadowed beneath a hood, but the eyes beneath it were wide open—golden, ancient, untouched by the filth clinging to the world.
His stride was calm. Every step purposeful.
The pit-master, a lopsided man with leprous fingers and a rusted bell, looked up from the blood-stained ledgers.
"You a fresh offering?" he rasped, voice wet with phlegm. "Name?"
Zevrak's lips barely moved. "Call me Kain."
"First time?" the pit-master asked, eyeing his slim build. "Betting opens in ten. Entry's one silver, survival's your own business."
Kain dropped a single coin into the man's hand. "Do I get to pick who dies first?"
The man laughed. A sickly, ulcerous sound.
"In this pit, fate chooses. Or the gods. Depends who you're trying to please."
Zevrak stepped through the iron gate and let it slam behind him.
The arena was a circle of cracked stone, lined with rusted spikes and open drains. A crowd chanted overhead, the rhythm of their cries primal, echoing through the dark like the heartbeat of some ancient beast. Candles burned in alcoves, wax blackened with ash. Chains dangled from statues. Symbols of the dead gods were smeared over every surface, desecrated and stitched with new meaning—plague saints, blood idols, divine slaughters.
Three fighters stood on the far side. One was a hulking brute covered in ash-scars and wielding twin butcher hooks. Another, a wiry woman wrapped in bone-trophies with eyes too still to be sane. The third was armored, silent, draped in red cloth that trailed like blood.
Zevrak smiled, eyes flicking over them.
Brute. Berserker. Veteran.
He knew their types. Had seen them die in dozens of lives. Had killed them.
He stepped to the center.
The gong struck.
The crowd screamed.
The berserker charged first, a scream in her throat and knives in both hands.
Zevrak didn't move until the last moment.
She slashed, and he slid under her reach, sweeping a leg. She fell hard, skull cracking against stone. As she snarled and rolled, he drove his knee into her throat and pressed. Her windpipe bent. Collapsed.
The brute was next. Fast for his size. Hooks gleaming.
Zevrak backed into a pillar and waited—calm, precise, eyes watching for the moment when—
Now.
The brute swung. Zevrak ducked, caught the hook with his bare hand, and pulled. The man staggered. Off-balance.
Zevrak twisted, slammed his elbow into the brute's jaw, then into his temple. The crack echoed.
Two down.
He turned.
The one in red was waiting.
They faced each other in the center, ringed by blood.
She moved with the poise of memory—balanced, deadly, still.
Then her blade flashed.
Steel shrieked as it scraped his coat. She spun, leg sweeping wide, and Zevrak ducked beneath it, pivoting on one foot.
She pressed forward—relentless, silent, almost graceful.
Each strike came faster.
She wasn't trying to kill—not yet.
Testing me.
Zevrak parried the next blow with his forearm, letting it slice deep. Blood spilled.
The red-blade paused.
Zevrak looked up.
And saw it.
The flicker behind her eyes.
Not recognition—but the soul beneath.
Serana.
General of the Blightfront. The Lioness of the Broken Gate. The woman who had once held a sword to his throat as his empire fell.
Zevrak had butchered her priests. Had watched her armies burn.
And yet here she stood, reborn like him—ignorant of her past life.
For now.
His smile returned.
"You're holding back," he said, voice low. "Why?"
She didn't answer. Just shifted her stance.
"I remember you," he whispered, letting the words drift like a chill. "You stood on the walls while the sun bled over the dead. You cursed my name as your gods died."
She froze.
A beat passed.
Then she moved again—faster, harder, a blur of precision and fury.
He let her cut him. Once. Twice.
He needed her curiosity more than her blade.
Their duel danced between grave-points and near-deaths. A symphony of red. Until—
Zevrak whispered: "Serana."
And stopped her cold.
Later, in the pit's bowels where oil-lamps wept soot and the sick nursed their wounds, she found him alone—half-bare, wrapping his ribs.
"You said my name," she said.
Zevrak didn't look up.
"I've heard it in dreams," she added. "In screams. In fire."
"You remember," he said.
"I remember... nothing real. But you. You're wrong." Her eyes narrowed. "You're dangerous."
He stood, bleeding still but straight-backed.
"You want answers."
"I want truth."
Zevrak stepped close. His voice was silk soaked in ash.
"The truth is buried beneath a thousand lifetimes. The truth is we were gods once, and now we crawl in our own filth."
Her jaw tightened. She didn't step back.
He smiled.
"You want purpose. Fight for me."
"Fight with you?" she spat.
"No. For me."
She stared long.
Then nodded, once.
"I want to remember."
"You will," he said. "In blood and shadow."
That night, as the city groaned in fever dreams and corpses washed into the rivers, Zevrak sat atop the pit's spire, eyes fixed on the cracked moon.
The stars had gone dim.
But beneath the clouds, something stirred.
A shape, burned into the heavens.
A sun—but black, bleeding shadow.
Zevrak Kain smiled.
"The wheel turns."
And below, Serana slept—and her dream was full of fire, and screams, and a name she did not yet understand was hers to hate.
To be continued…