We met before dawn at the eastern gate as usual. Alen was already there, leaning against the stone with a cloak dusted in Spire ash. Mira was loading the last crate onto the wagon. Halven checked bolts. Jori whistled under his breath and Rook stayed in the shadows like a promise. The merchant waited with a purse fat enough to make any crew forget conscience for a day.
"You sure about this route?" I asked. My voice did not carry the worry I felt. I had learned to hide that.
Alen glanced at me and smiled in the way men smile when they imagine they own the horizon. "Floor two hundred one pays well. Bloom cores and sap jars. The wards on the wagon will hold until the city gates. We move light, we move fast, we get paid and sleep warm."
I nodded. I kept Kuraihane wrapped and close beneath my cloak. The cloth was a second skin now.
The ascent began smooth. Floors blurred into each other until the air changed and the map lines messed with perspective. By the time we reached Floor One Hundred Eighty the Spire felt older. The light was thinner. The walls hummed like a throat with a word stuck behind it.
A trio of Stonegrubs came out of a fissure and met us head on. They were squat, armored beasts with jaws that folded like bellows and a hide that scattered light into tiny shards. Jori tried to loop a rope and missed. Mira lunged with a blade honed for city fights and found the Stonegrub almost immovable.
I moved where I needed to. Kuraihane came free into the air with the same cold comfort it had given me before. The blade bit into the shattered plates of the nearest grub and found a seam. The creature recoiled and sprayed crystal dust that stung my eyes. Halven fired two bolts and one found a soft throat. Rook stooped to pry a crate free that had been pinned by a tumbling rock.
We took the cores. They were dull and honest. Nothing glamorous. The merchant thanked us. Alen said nothing about the grubs. He watched me as if he was reviewing an old contract.
We pushed on.
By Floor One Hundred Eighty Four the corridor narrowed. Luminous fungus leaned like a congregation and the ceiling oozed drops of sap that smelled sweet and sharp. A Vinewretch dropped down with a sound like wet leather. It lashed its tendrils like whips and tried to pull a man toward its mouth.
Mira ducked under a lash and cut, but tendrils wrapped around her boots and dragged her toward a bloom. I kicked a tendril and it snapped like a string. Kuraihane flashed and severed the thing that had an eye, and then I sliced again to free Mira as Halven fired and Rook hauled. Jori moved with surprising steadiness. We cleared the corridor with a rush of motion that left sweat in my hair.
We were getting closer to Paradise. The merchant hummed under his breath at the signs of rare growth. Crates were lighter. The wagon moved faster. I told myself that meant safety.
Floor One Hundred Ninety Two hit like a change of weather. The stone underfoot became glassy and the air tasted like frost on the tongue. A pack of Aurora Stags charged through a grove of crystallized reeds. Their antlers were faceted with light and when they struck the air rang like a bell.
They were beautiful and they were lethal. The first slammed into the wagon and sent a crate skittering. Jori rolled to catch it and came up with a shard cutting his palm. One stag reared and smashed its head into the side of the cart. We fought with a desperation that was part protect and part greed. The bargain was clear. Get the goods and get paid. Let the wagon fall and a dozen hands would be empty.
I found a flank on a stag and ran a blade of Kuraihane along the base of its throat. The antlers thudded and the creature folded into a spray of glass and light. Another charged and I met it with motion and a step that meant the difference between our backs and the abyss. Halven took some wounds. Rook moved slower but his hits landed where they needed to.
When the last stag fell the meadow was littered with sparkling fragments and the smell of dried blood that tasted sweet and sharp. The merchant knelt and gathered what was left of a sap jar that had not shattered. He breathed like a man in love with coin.
We reached Floor One Hundred Ninety Nine with the wagon lighter and the crates mostly intact. Two floors shy of the market city and the drop zone, the Spire opened into a wide bowl of carved stone where the light pooled like oil. The merchant pointed to a narrow path that led around a vine-choked ridge and said this was the safe line.
The first warning came as a taste. A slip of thought that did not belong to me came close enough to my skin to feel like a finger tracing my spine. An intent to end something. I turned my head almost without thinking and saw Alen looking at me. For a moment his expression was simply business. Then it opened up into something that made my stomach hitch.
Halven tightened his hand on a bolt. Jori's grin went wrong. Mira's stance widened. Rook slid from the shadows like someone who had been waiting.
"You sense it?" Alen asked me.
I did not answer. I had been bred by alleys where the lean marked a man for what he wanted. You could read the shape of murder if you learned how to feel the edges of a thought. This thought belonged to men who had decided to reshape the rules in their favor.
Halven fired at my throat. The bolt skipped off a rib and grazed. Jori lunged with a rope meant to entangle. Mira threw herself at me like an ax with a mouth. Rook came from behind and struck with leather pads meant to break kneecaps. Alen moved through the edge of it all and his short blade came hot with greed.
"You owe," Mira hissed between panting breaths. "You owe for each floor you slink through alone. You think you keep treasure for yourself."
"You think you own me," I said. Words are cheap when blood is on the wind.
They moved together as if they had practiced this betrayal. Five against one is a mathematic that favors the few unless the one has another kind of ledger.
I drew Kuraihane fully. The cloth fell and the blade sang its first cold note. It did not grow or glow. It just was mine and that was enough.
Mira struck first and our blades clacked. She came with a practiced cruelty I recognized in alley brawls and hired fights. I angled away and used her momentum to push her past a rock. Rook's hand smashed into my back and I rolled, driving my elbow into his wrist until it bent backward with a sound like wood cracking. He cursed loud and fell with a grunt.
Jori tried to loop me from the flank. I slid under the rope and brought the flat of Kuraihane up under his chin. He coughed and staggered. Halven fired again and this time the bolt tore through sleeve and into flesh. I felt heat and the metallic splash of blood. The pain was bright and immediate and I answered it by closing distance, the only thing that made Halven's crossbow less useful.
Alen came at me open handed and I saw something like regret flicker across his face before it hardened into commitment. He wanted a fair split of a future he had already written for himself. He did not want the consequences.
"You could have chosen otherwise," I said and the motion was the least of me and the sharpness of the blade the rest.
The fight lengthened. Each confrontation was a small war. I picked apart their coordination. I kept moving my feet because feet are where fights are won. I used the wagon to block line of sight and forced them to come at me through splinters and broken crates. I used their momentum against them and I kept Kuraihane precise. No waste. No flourish.
Mira found a seam in my defense and her knife nicked deep along my side. Pain lanced and my breath came ragged. I answered by driving my hand into the space between her ribs and the wagon's axle. The blade found the heart of the movement and she fell with a sound that was almost a gasp.
Rook tried again and I broke his arm with a twist and a foot. He howled and tried to crawl, but I did not let him. Jori made a desperate leap and I caught him at the throat and flattened him into the stone until his eyes rolled. Halven's crossbow cracked under my boot when I stomped it, metal screaming as it bent. He rose with a broken jaw and lunged. I met him with the flat of Kuraihane and his knees gave and the fight drained out of him like water from a bowl.
Alen did not fight like the others. He fought like a man who had rehearsed how to feel his hands when they had to do wrong. He swung and missed. He begged and cursed. He looked at me with a mixture of betrayal and the strange pleading of a friend who had miscounted his luck.
"You do not have to do this," he said. His voice broke on the last word.
I had no mercy to spare that night. I had eaten too many nights of being prey. I had learned how men sold you to a future they could buy. I had learned the sharp mathematics of trust in gutters.
He lunged. I stepped and my blade answered and found his side. The cut was clean and deep. He staggered and knelt and reached for me as if for a rope that might have been a promise.
"Please," he said. "Hakari. I did not think you had it in you. I wanted to keep the crew. We can split the pay. We can leave the city."
The world narrowed to the sound of his breath and the wet print his palm made in the dust. I looked at the people he had tried to sell me to greed and at the way blood made prophets of all of them.
"You sold me," I said. My voice sounded far away to my own ears. "You sold me for coin and an easy life."
He tried to crawl toward me, a broken thing with a name, and I watched the light leave his eyes in slow pulses. The blade came down a final time and it did not sing. It simply closed a ledger.
When the fight was over the bowl of Floor One Hundred Ninety Nine was quiet and the crates were broken and the wagon held its scars like a tested animal. The bodies of the crew made shapes on the stone and the merchant stood with his hands at his mouth and wept for the money he had wanted more than mercy.
I wrapped Kuraihane and pushed the cloth tight, and for a long time I stood with my back to the Spire and let the weight of what I had done sit like a stone in my chest. Two floors from paradise and everything had been paid in blood