After everyone finished, Crownface returned.
"Now that you've all got your ranks — some of you relics — you may rest. Everyone gets an individual room. A bed should be sufficient, no?" He snapped his fingers. The scene folded like a page.
Kade was somewhere else in an instant. A single bed. A narrow strip of floor to stand on. A weak light fixed to the ceiling, humming. The room smelled of ozone and something like old iron. It felt constructed. Artificial. Designed to be convincing and fail.
How did they shift a place in the blink of an eye? He didn't bother to puzzle it out. There was no point. Not now.
He lay on the bed. Jokes usually lined up the second his head hit anything soft; tonight they were absent, replaced by a small, precise weight in his chest. He thought of his mother. She couldn't have died in a day, could she? The thought came like a splinter — useless and sharp.
Gluttony, he thought next, as if naming it might steady him.
Status, Kade muttered.
[STATUS SCREEN – KADE]
Class: Lung Smuggler, apparently — You know the inside of people a bit too well.
Rank: BLADE
Stamina: 7
Intelligence: 18
Agility: 14
Strength: 11
Perception: 15
Trait: Slum Survivalist — Knows 27 ways to kill with a bottle cap. None of them pretty.
Special Ability: Gluttony — YOU CAN FEED ON THE DEAD.
Aspect: Emotional Scenting - unlocked
Restriction: Only affection feeds you — the knife goes in easier when they lean toward it.
He stared at the lines until the numbers blurred into possibilities. Gluttony. Take from what likes you. It sounded like a trick. It sounded like everything.
He checked inventory.
[SYSTEM INFO]
Item: {Duskveil} — Epic Relic
Effect: Improves Perception by 2 points and reduces chance of detection, especially in darkness.
Improved effect: [LOCKED]
Flavor text: This cloak used to belong to a servant of the Throne Leader.
He died wearing it, fighting the Light.
Notes: This relic can awaken — upgrade path locked.
Black as a bruise, wrong in the way new things are wrong. The flavor text stuck; a dead servant fighting the Light. He pictured a man in a torn cloak, teeth bared at something above him, and for reasons he didn't want to name, he liked the image.
Vox. Euthy. He rolled the names over. Vox was pliable — a tool, maybe a loose one. Euthy was different: she watched like someone tallying possibilities. He could feel it — she wanted to kill him. She already had the look of someone who tasted advantage and decided to swallow.
He fell asleep with that hollow, efficient kind of exhaustion the streets taught him.
Morning hit like a siren.
"Hehe… Have you slept well?" Crownface's voice threaded through the ceiling.
"The games continue in two weeks. Till then, you may rest where you call home." He paused, the little theatrical cruelty intact. "I'll drop you off exactly where I took you in. Okay. Good luck." Not meant.
He snapped his fingers and the world folded like a cheap map.
For a breath Kade had nothing but the taste of smoke and the beat of his own lungs. Then the warrens opened around him — low roofs, a lane half-swallowed by shadow, the thin sun trying to be honest and failing. He moved on instinct; his feet remembered routes his hands had taught them years ago.
There was no bag. Nothing to set down. His door complained the same tired creak and let him in as if nothing extraordinary had happened.
One room. A bed pressed against the far wall beneath a cracked window; a patchwork curtain kept the light blunt. A single-burner stove sat in the corner, a kettle dark at the lip. A wooden crate did duty for table and cupboard; two crooked boards were shelves. His pallet — a folded mattress on the floor — lay at the foot of his mother's bed. He'd placed it there like a small defense: near the door for an exit, close enough to reach a hand in the dark.
She was propped on pillows, the sheet tucked under her chin, hair silver at the temples. She could cook for herself — barely — and she kept her sovereignties: a tin of thyme, a ragged scrap with names, a neatly folded cloth. Rumors of the games had brushed her ears once or twice, like weather on the roof — interesting, distant, not worth patching for.
She looked up and smiled as if light had arrived in the room.
"Back so soon," she said, and it wasn't a question.
He let the weight in his chest fold into a half-truth. "Short trip," he said. No trophies to show. He set the cloak down for a moment, smoothed it with the heel of his hand, then folded it small and slid it into a hollow beneath the pallet — the loose board he'd kept for coins and small lies. He would not ask her to understand. He would not tell.
She moved with the quiet competence of someone who'd kept a household on scraps. She ladled porridge into a chipped bowl and pushed it toward him with hands that trembled at the fingertips but never at the intent. Steam rose, smelling of oats, thyme, and the honest smoke of the stove.
"Eat while it's hot," she said. "You look like you haven't had a proper meal in a week."
He ate because he was hungry and because not eating would have felt like abandonment in a way words couldn't fix. The porridge tasted of salt and heat and something that felt like memory.
Her fingers brushed his wrist while she straightened the blanket. The small pressure was a promise. For a second the edges of everything blurred and warmth slid under his ribs — useless and precious both.
"You staying?" she asked, voice careful, as if an answer might break the furniture.
He almost left the question open. Instead: "A few days." The lie sat easy in the room; she accepted it like weather.
She hummed the wrong words to a lullaby. He listened and let the sound thread through him. Before she lay back she came to the pallet, sat for a heartbeat, and rested a hand on his shoulder — not clinging, only enough to leave heat.
"Don't get yourself killed," she murmured, soft and ordinary.
"I'll be careful," he said. Promise and lie folded together.
He slid down onto the pallet. The hollow beneath his board held the cloak and other small, dangerous things. His mother's breath settled into a slow, steady rhythm. He lay there and, for once, pretended that whoever watched from crowns and spires could not reach this small, honest room. For now, that was enough.