Azurehaven woke with iron.
Hammers started before dawn—light taps, then real strikes—like the city warmed its knuckles before making a fist. The ring announcer took the second bell as a dare and started shouting into air that didn't need help carrying sound.
Goose ate a roll Joram swore wasn't yesterday's and drank water from a canteen that kept trying to be a mirror. Freedom perched on his shoulder and preened one scale until it squeaked.
"You can't fight with that," Joram said, nodding at the dragon with the sympathy of a man who hides soft things in rough rooms.
"He supervises," Goose said.
"Uh-huh. Don't get cut in front of him. Little ones learn from panic." Joram slid a small clay jar across the cloth. "Rosin. Drum skin gets slick when nerves lie. Don't let your hands believe your pulse."
Goose pocketed it. "Bill me later."
"I already did," Joram said, deadpan. "And you already paid. Go be interesting."
"Time to show them what we're made of," he muttered, patting Freedom's iridescent scales. The hatchling nuzzled his chein affectionately.
The arena didn't pretend to be a coliseum. It was a ring sunken into the plaza where four roads met, with tiered stone seating and a floor of packed white sand. A chalk circle held the center like a coin. Old scars radiated out in patterns fighters recognized and tourists called "decorative."
Khalid Rune stood at the far edge, speaking quietly with the bout master. He moved like hinges freshly oiled; no chaff in his steps. He wore no heavy armor—just a sleeveless vest, wrapped hands, and a look like prayer in a language no one else insisted on learning.
Goose touched the drum at his hip, checked the knife at his belt, and set his palm to the arena rail. Under the stone's cool, the floor had a heartbeat—not mystical, just weight, grain, the memory of a hundred thousand feet. He inhaled on its up-beat, exhaled on its down, and felt his bones say yes, this is ground.
Aria was there, five rows up, hood shadowing her face. She didn't wave. She lifted two fingers and set them down in the air, then rested her lute across her knees like a promise.
Goose received the message—don't let him set the pulse—
"First bout!" the barker howled. "Khalid Rune of the South Steps—clean hands, cleaner record—versus…uh…Goose the outlander," He hesitated. "That's the name, folks."
Laughter. Not mean. Curious.
Goose stepped into the chalk.
Text flickered and stayed small:
[Arena Rule: No killing. No outside buffs. First to disarm, pin, or yield wins.]
[Floor Trait: City Pulse — Rhythm bonuses available.]
Goose raised his brow. This city truly valued the arts.
Khalid came forward and bowed with the exact amount of respect required by a ring and not an inch more. Goose bowed the same. He kept his eyes on the slope of Khalid's shoulders and the line from hip to heel that tells you when someone's weight will lie for them.
"Form," Khalid said.
"Form, not blood," Goose returned.
The bout master cut the air down with a hand. "Begin."
Khalid didn't rush. The good ones don't. He stepped in, weight on the ball of the foot, hand up—not reaching, offering an answer and waiting to see if Goose would ask the wrong question. He wouldn't give him one. He set the drum with his left hand and let two ghost notes ride under his breath—softer than sound, more muscle memory than music.
Khalid's gaze flicked there and back, logging the drum as a limb.
They tested range. Khalid's jabs were honest, straight, clean, and exploring. Goose's knife stayed low and unthreatening, an extension of a wrist and not an idea about someone else's blood. The crowd murmured approval at people who didn't start by proving their fear.
The floor hummed. Goose found the City Pulse and laid Hold-Fast under it, a tiny brace for his own knees, a permission for his own hands. He shifted off-beat a half-hair to make Khalid decide between rhythm and target. The latter decided on both.
He came in on the two-and, rolled his shoulder through an elbow that would have turned a worse man's face into a lesson, and found Goose not where he'd been a blink before. Goose didn't answer with a cut. He replied with silence—a skipped strike that made the next one land harder when it finally arrived.
The crowd inhaled as one, like children watching a vase wobble on a shelf's edge before steadying.
Khalid's grin was quick. "Good."
He brought a low kick, testing calf and balance. Goose let it take him a fraction and then returned the weight with his palm—dum—on the drumhead, controlling his own stagger so the fall became a step. He pushed the knife forward a thumb's width to say yes, I could, not yet and took his own measure of Khalid's guard.
They circled. Khalid feinted low, came high, and found a drum rim there, not a temple. Goose's world narrowed to the rectangle of Khalid's chest and the angle of his hips. There—a tiny, habitual overcommit when he changed direction clockwise. He filed it.
"Where did you train?" Khalid asked between breaths, as if they were making small talk at a stall.
"In a building that squeaked," Goose said. "You?"
"Monks," Khalid said, and snapped a front kick that had no malice in it at all and would have broken a rib if it landed. Goose let the kick pass, spun with it, and let his forearm tap the shin just enough to steal a breath of power.
tak-tak— he laid on the drum, barely heard, but the pulse of the floor answered: —mmm.
Khalid adapted. Good fighters do. He adjusted his breathing to Goose's backbeat, then broke it on purpose to keep from being led. He cut his rhythm in half for three beats, stuttered his footwork, and came through the gap with a shoulder check that took Goose to the chalk.
The chalk isn't the ring. The men know this. The crowd groaned for show.
Goose rolled, knife a line between them, and came up into space he'd built with the roll. He didn't run. He stepped back in, patient.
Khalid's left hand twitched before his weight did. That was all. Goose wrote the note on his wrist and let it go for later. They blew past three exchanges, four, five, each showing the other just enough to test greed.
Then Khalid tried to set the pulse—just a hair. He pressed with slight, consistent pressure, step-2-3, breath-2-3, and the floor began to prefer him. Goose felt his hands wanting to obey and almost smiled. He let his heel skip a single grain of sand and wrote Unseen Step under his own feet. The floor forgot him for a breath. Khalid's pressure found no place to grip.
Goose took that instant and pivoted not to Khalid's open side but through the empty one—where the man thought he wasn't. The knife came up and kissed the heel of Khalid's wrapped hand. Not a cut. A reminder. Khalid's fingers tightened reflexively, and Goose's drum tap landed on the tendons at the same time his knife touched cloth.
The wrap loosened.
Khalid disengaged clean. He looked at his hand, then at Goose, then nodded respect at a petite theft.
He came in sharper. Aggression without anger, acceleration without slop. He chained a low kick into a hook into a palm strike that would have rung a bell if Goose had offered a head. Goose offered arm and shoulder instead, took the pressure into Hold-Fast, and returned only the thing the floor had given him.
The crowd leaned as one organism.
"Stop thinking," someone yelled helpfully.
Khalid's left hand twitched again, then committed. Goose let the tell lead him by a step—just one—then didn't go where the tell wanted. He slid the knife into the space between wrap and wrist when the hand overcorrected and, with the same economy Elira used when removing a knot from a shoelace without making the child feel stupid, pulled.
The wrap unwound.
Khalid's practice saved him a drop. He flowed the failure into a backfist that Goose ducked, and then both men stepped out and breathed.
"Yield on disarm?" Khalid asked dry and wry.
"Only if you insist," Goose said.
Khalid's smile showed teeth this time. He flicked the loose wrap aside and raised both hands bare. He gave Goose one more exchange—a clean, upright series that proved nothing and everything—and then he pushed forward as if to clinch.
Goose put the flat of his blade against Khalid's throat—not cutting, not pressing, simply being there—and tapped the drum once.
The bout master's hand cut the air. "Point! Disarm and decisive line! Rune yields. The Goose wins his chalk."
The plaza went up. Not like a carnival—like a kitchen where someone competent just did something bold with a knife and didn't spill blood. Cheers, laughter, a tuned few jeers because that's a city's immune system, but most celebrated. Coin changed hands in clatters.
Khalid bowed and did not look humiliated. He looked alive.
"Second bell tomorrow won't save you," he said, not unkind.
"I hear Even-days are for pride," Goose said.
"Mm." Khalid glanced at the drum and then at Goose's stance again, this time taking the angle the way a carpenter takes a measure before cutting: so he can cut cleaner next time.
"Don't be late."
He stepped back, accepted a towel from a boy in the bout crew, and wrapped his right hand anew with economical neatness. He didn't leave; he watched the next fighters, not out of pettiness, but because learning is a habit.
Aria stood, stretched like a cat, and ghosted away, satisfied enough not to teach him right away how he'd nearly rushed in the third exchange.
Goose let the City Pulse bleed out of his knees and hands. He stowed the knife. Freedom reappeared from somewhere he'd pretended to be needed and reclaimed the perch at Goose's collar, very deliberately ignoring the cheering people who wanted to coo at him.
"Show-off," Goose whispered. Freedom preened.
That was when the crowd did the quiet wrong thing again.
It wasn't a hush. It was a suck, like air stepping back to make room for a decision. Goose turned just enough to put his shoulder between the incoming and his belly. He didn't see the knife until it was already leaving a jealous man's hand in the third row, hard and low and stupid. He didn't need to see it.
The air knotted.
Not heat-shimmer. Not luck. A wrinkle in the weave tugged the dagger off line a hair's breadth early, then again, then let it clip the ring rail where Goose's hip had been on the last beat, not this one.
tsk.
The jealous man swore and tried to stand. The nearest guard sat him down with a gauntlet and none of the tenderness Elira used for knots.
Goose didn't look up. He knew better than to chase mysteries while standing in chalk. He clapped palms with the bout crew who moved in to rake the sand, thanked the master with a nod, and eased out of the ring into heat and citrus and the particular flavor of sweat men wear after deciding not to kill each other.
"Message for you," someone said at his elbow.
The Guild courier was too young to be that tired and too tidy to be anyone's errand boy by choice. He held a wax tablet engraved with the Azurehaven crest and a waxed paper packet that smelled like mint to disguise whatever else was in the wax.
"From the Aerie of Scales," the courier said. "Request for assistance. You've been flagged as 'calm under pressure and potentially draconic-friendly.'"
He looked up, saw Freedom, decided the universe was lazier than he'd expected, and shrugged. "They have an injured young sky-serpent thrashing itself stupid on the south cliff. If it slides, it'll take handlers with it."
"Why me?" Goose asked, already knowing the answer.
Bridges talk—markets gossip. Dragons remember.
"Because I get paid to ask questions and you get paid to fix things," the courier said, without malice. "Do you accept?"
A prompt appeared, but Goose didn't notice it.
Freedom grabbed the wax tablet in both front claws and shoved it into Goose's chest with the air of a tiny foreman.
"Looks like yes," Goose said.
The courier cut the seal and handed him a thin ribbon of woven thread with a brass clip. "Badge. Gets you past the second gate. Don't make me file a casualty report; the guild stationery is terrible."
He moved on, exchanging the same two jokes with three more people, leaving Goose with a badge and a direction.
In the shelter of the arena's back archway, a man leaned in shadow with his arms crossed and an easy weight in his spine. Cassian Drex wore no uniform and all the signs of command—no jewelry but a single ring not of this city, boots that could be cleaned but usually weren't, an expression like a coin you can't reasonably guess the mint of.
He clucked his tongue once, amusement without teeth.
"Nice hands, kid," he said, voice low, accent from a map that didn't care about borders. "You make money with them yet?"
"I make sounds with them," Goose said.
"Sound buys dinners," Cassian said. His gaze flicked to Freedom, to the badge, to the wax smudged on Goose's thumb. He lifted a palm as if weighing options. "If the Aerie doesn't eat you, I'll have a job you won't hate. Clean work. Most of the blood belongs to people who deserve it."
"I'm busy not dying this afternoon," Goose said.
Cassian's smile acknowledged the refusal like a man who enjoys being told no by someone with the right reasons. "Good. Spend the rest of the day staying that way. Come find the Wayfarer's Step in two nights if you want coin that doesn't smell like sermons."
He peeled himself off the stone and walked into sunlight without casting the kind of shadow you can step on.
Goose blew out a breath he hadn't meant to hold. He hadn't meant to hold a lot of things.
Freedom leaned out from his shoulder and nipped his ear as if to say Move.
"Right," Goose said. He adjusted the drum strap, rechecked the knife because habits are chains you forge on purpose, and turned toward the south terraces where the cliff opened its throat to air and the Aerie hung like a necklace at Azurehaven's collarbone.
As he left the ring, the city shifted in tiny, telling ways: a stall keeper turned his sign from CLOSED to LUNCH SOON, a chalk mural gained one more careful line (the child's hand now resting on a single scale), and somewhere very high up where the breeze made a low sound nobody hears unless they came from buildings that sang, a man with knives and vows stepped back into a shadow that had listened with him.
"Form, not blood," Goose said to himself, and the floor under his palm answered —mmm like a promise.
He didn't look back at the ring. He didn't have to. The chalk would still be there when he needed to draw another circle and step into it.
Freedom tugged his collar. The Aerie of Scales waited on the cliff, and the wind already knew their names.
But before Goose could step forward, a hand clamped down on his shoulder. He spun, hand dropping to the hilt of his knife, only to freeze at the sight of the silhouette before him.
"Aria," he breathed, trying to figure out how she'd gotten so close without him noticing. "What are you doing here?"
She glanced at the badge in his hand, and the faint scrape of a smirk graced her lips. "I could ask you the same thing, Goose. You're quite the popular one today."
He tugged his arm free, irritation warring with curiosity. "Cut the cheese, Aria. I've got an appointment with a panicked sky-serpent."
"The Aerie has a problem, I know," she said, seemingly unruffled by his brusque tone. "But this might be related."
Goose narrowed his eyes. "Related to what?"
She pointed to his chest, her finger hovering just above the leather-bound codex that hung from a braided cord around his neck. The morning light caught on the worn edges of its copper-reinforced corners.
"I've been noticing that you touch your codex a lot," she said, tone laced with curiosity that didn't hide behind her violet eyes. "Didn't the admin tell you that we can use our thoughts? Just a mental command and the pages flip themselves."
"Admin?" Goose thought for a moment, his fingers instinctively rising to brush against the warm metal clasp of the book.
It seemed...he hadn't actually talked to an admin at all. The realization settled like a cold stone in his stomach.
Aria looked at him with concern, the wind from the cliffs tugging at her indigo-streaked hair as she said, "Goose, you should go to the Scriptorium. The librarian there is a player liaison—old man with silver spectacles and hands stained with ink to his wrists. He can help you."
"The Scriptorium…" Goose pondered.
He would head there first, then.