CHAPTER 101: THE FIRST SPONSOR

I don’t remember breathing when it happened.

I think I might have forgotten how, as though my lungs had revolted at the idea of taking in air in a world where such a thing could exist.

The obsidian greatsword slid through Salem’s chest like parchment, clean, precise, inevitable. The sound it made wasn’t the scream of steel but the hollow note of reality cracking at the seam, a sound so sharp it seemed to echo inside my bones rather than the chamber, as if the blade had always been destined to pierce him, and time had merely caught up.

Salem’s body jerked as though electrified, his eyes widening, his teeth snapping together in a sound I hated more than any scream. He had never looked surprised in all the time I had known him—annoyed, yes, cold, yes, filled with that predatory calm of a man who lived for the cut and the kill—but not this.

Not the look of realization, the dawning awareness that he had not accounted for this enemy, this blow, this end. And then I saw it. The one thing I had never thought I’d see.

A tear—small, but bright, raw, and unmistakably human—traced down his blood-streaked cheek.

"Salem!" My voice cracked so hard it sounded like someone else’s, thin, shrill, and utterly panicked.

I lunged forward, only for the weight of my body to betray me, staggering through water slick with blood, my hand outstretched uselessly.

His eyes, wide and breaking, found mine, and for a moment it wasn’t the steel or the blood or the ruin. It was him, just him, the person he was behind the mask, and I hated it. I hated him for showing me it and I hated myself for seeing it.

The King-Class mage ripped the blade free with a grunt that carried no triumph. No flourish, no announcement, no joy. Just work. Just inevitability.

Salem crumpled to the floor with a wet sound that hurt to hear, and the figure let him fall as though he were weightless, as though he were nothing more than a loose scrap of parchment blown from the desk of history. And then he did what was somehow worse than killing him.

He ignored him.

Because the world wasn’t done tormenting us yet.

Something in Callow’s ruin began to pulse. His corpse—or what was left of it—twitched as though the laws of anatomy hadn’t finished with him. A sound came with it, not the throb of veins but the gurgle of a clogged drain, the obscene promise of something ready to crawl out.

My head whipped between Salem’s bleeding body and Callow’s twitching remains, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t know which horror I should be more afraid of.

But then—another sound.

A rumble. Not from Callow, but from the hall behind us. At first I thought it was more of those creatures, more pale-eyed abominations ready to feast on our misery. But no. This was deeper, heavier, a sound that filled the walls themselves. A low, rushing roar that rose and rose until I felt it in my ribs, in my teeth, in the marrow of my spine. And then the smell hit me. Damp, iron-rich, suffocating.

Water.

"Oh, gods," I muttered, and in that instant I understood. Of course Callow, paranoid little butcher, had his own kill switch wired into the walls. A failsafe, an autopsy note for his entire life’s work. If he couldn’t have his triumph, then no one would. He’d drown it all, bury it beneath the city, erase us like mistakes in his surgical notes.

The King-Class mage tilted his head at the sound, then let out a noise somewhere between amusement and boredom.

A grunt, almost dismissive, as though this was nothing but another minor curiosity in the menagerie of his eternity. Without a word, without so much as a flicker of spellcraft, his obsidian-clad form blurred. He was gone. No flash, no crack of magic, no thunderous exit. Just absence, cruel and complete, leaving us like broken toys tossed into a fire.

For a second, I simply stared at where he’d stood. My brain refused to acknowledge his departure as real, like maybe if I blinked enough he’d still be there, and I could demand an explanation for why he had spared us only to abandon us to this.

But he wasn’t. He had left. Because to him this was all a game, and we were pieces, and losing pieces was the only way he got to play.

I staggered forward, splashing through rising water, lungs tearing at me as though breath had become a crime. I had to reach Salem. I had to—

A hand stopped me.

No, not a hand. A whole damn wall of flesh. The knight—the naked knight, gods damn him—planted himself in my path, his palm pressing me back with surprising gentleness for someone who routinely introduced himself to stone columns with his forehead.

"Move," I snapped, the word breaking into a snarl. I shoved at him, panic clawing at my throat. "Get out of the way—I have to—"

"My Lady," he said calmly, crouching beside Salem’s limp form. "Please stay back."

I almost stabbed him. I really did. My dagger was in my hand, half-raised, because how dare he get in my way? How dare this ridiculous madman bar me from Salem when he was bleeding out into the sewer like spilled wine? But then he did something that made my rage falter into sheer confusion.

He plunged his hand straight into Salem’s chest.

Not a metaphor. Not a flourish. His actual hand, bare and slick, sliding through torn flesh with the casual precision of a man reaching into a pantry for bread. My stomach lurched, bile clawing my throat. For a heartbeat I thought he had betrayed us, that he’d chosen this exact moment to finish what the mage started, that he was pulling Salem apart like a butcher.

"What—what are you doing?!" I shouted, voice half-scream, half-laugh. Because really, what else was I supposed to say while watching a man elbow-deep in my companion’s ribcage?

Rodrick’s eyes went wide, his pale face draining what little color remained. He stumbled closer, ignoring the water that now licked at his knees. "Gods above," he breathed. "He’s—he’s a Flesh Weaver."

The words meant nothing to me. Flesh Weaver? What the hell was that supposed to mean? Some charming euphemism for ’deranged cannibal’? Because that’s exactly what it looked like. But Rodrick spoke the words with reverence, with fear, with the certainty of a man seeing a ghost crawl out of his history books.

"Flesh weaving?" I snapped, my voice cracking with hysteria. "What does that even—"

But I didn’t get an answer. Because the water roared louder, deafening now, closer. A wave surged down the hallway, black and foaming, a monster in liquid form ready to swallow us whole.

And then it did.

The flood burst through the chamber with a scream of stone and an avalanche of filth. It hit us like the fist of a god, tearing me off my feet, hurling me into the far wall with bone-shattering force. My skull rang, my lungs filled with sewage.

I didn’t have time to fight it. I barely had time to exist.

The water folded me, broke me, slammed me against stone until my ribs cried mutiny. Every breath was a war, every blink a drowning. I clawed and kicked, searching for air, for light, for anything, but the current tossed me like a rag doll in the claws of a giant. Somewhere, distantly, I saw flashes—Rodrick’s hand, Dunny’s pale face screaming bubbles, the knight’s wild silhouette bent over Salem’s body as the torrent dragged them all away.

My head smashed against stone, and for one horrifying heartbeat, everything went black. I thought: This is it. This is how it ends. Not glory. Not revolution. Not pen against tyrants. Just filth and drowning and the final joke of a city that hated me enough to take me back into itself.

But then my eyes snapped open and I saw it, just barely—a faint rectangle of pale light on the wall above us, broken wood rattling as the flood raged past. A grate. A hatch. Something. Hope, cruel and unreachable, flickering like a candle in a hurricane.

I kicked toward it, lungs burning fire, but the current dragged me sideways, slamming me against a half-collapsed pillar. Pain flared white-hot through my ribs. For a second, I thought I’d sink. But then—Salem’s limp body drifted past me, the knight clutching him with one arm while fighting the water with the other. I couldn’t let them all get dragged under. Not like this.

I angled myself against the current, teeth bared in a snarl I couldn’t hear, and thrust forward, digging my dagger into the pillar like a climbing pick. The steel screeched against stone but held, anchoring me just long enough to grab Rodrick’s sleeve as he was swept by. His eyes went wide, wild with terror, and together we caught Dunny’s flailing hand before he vanished into the dark.

The grate above shook harder now, the wood straining. It was closer than it had seemed. If we could just—

Suddenly, I released my dagger as the current shifted in reverse and let it fling me upward, twisting at the last second so my shoulder rammed into the grate. The wood cracked but didn’t break. My lungs screamed for air, my chest convulsing. Black spots flickered in my vision. I didn’t have another try left in me.

So I cheated.

Not with relics. Not with power. Just with the oldest trick in the book—rage. The kind of bone-deep, soul-eating rage that turns panic into teeth and claws. I braced my boots against the slick stone and slammed my head into the grate like a lunatic trying to headbutt salvation into existence.

Once. Twice. The wood splintered, stubborn. My skull rang like a bell, white sparks bursting in my vision, but the third strike sent cracks spidering across the swollen boards. I twisted in the current, got my shoulders beneath it, and heaved with everything left in me.

The flood wanted me dead. The city wanted me dead. But I had been told I was going to die so many times before that I’d grown allergic to the idea. My body screamed, my lungs howled, but the grate finally gave way with a wet shriek of tearing wood.

And then it happened—water funneled through the gap with a force that wrenched me up like a rag stuffed into a pipe. My body bent, slammed, battered, but I didn’t care. I was rising.

Together, we shot upward like cannonballs through the dark vein of the city, limbs tangled, screams drowned in foam. Together, the flood spat us into another chamber above, larger but no less foul, water crashing against the curved stone and flooding the floor around us.

I tumbled across the slick surface, coughing, retching, every breath a knife, my chest convulsing as though it wanted to turn inside out. For a moment I thought that was it—that we’d simply traded one grave for another—but then I saw it: a ladder bolted into the wall, its iron rungs glistening with rust and filth, leading up toward a trapdoor set in the ceiling.

"Up!" I croaked, voice shredded, throat raw. My arm pointed without thought, as if sheer will could drag us all toward it.

Rodrick hauled Dunny to his feet with a snarl, the knight hefted Salem over his shoulder like a sack of grain, and together we slogged, half-wading, half-crawling through waist-deep water toward the promise of iron. My fingers caught the lowest rung and I nearly wept. The ladder was slick, treacherous, but it was salvation disguised as rust.

One by one, we climbed until I shoved the trapdoor open with a guttural roar, and a pale shaft of light broke into the sewer like the hand of some half-interested god.

We spilled out together, gasping, drenched, collapsing onto the floor. My fingers dragged across splintered wood, my cheek pressed against the familiar grain of planks, and only then did I realize where we were.

A wearhouse. The stink of mildew and dried goods hung thick in the air, the faint light of lanterns bleeding through boarded windows.

I rolled onto my back. And then I saw Salem.

He was still. His body pale, eyes closed, chest rising—slow, shallow, but rising none the less. His wound was closed now. Not healed, not whole, but sealed, stitched together by something raw and wrong. His blood had stopped entirely, his form limp but not gone.

"What... what the hell did you do?" I rasped, my voice breaking. I turned to the knight, who stood dripping and unbothered, arms crossed over his scarred chest as though he hadn’t just reached inside another man’s body like it was carpentry.

Rodrick’s answer came first, his voice heavy with awe. "Flesh weaving. It hasn’t been seen since... since the Solaris Civil War." He swallowed, the words trembling as though they carried a weight that threatened to crush him. "A forbidden art performed by soldiers trained to re-alter the body at will to stabilize fatal wounds. A way to keep men alive long enough to drag them to safety."

The knight nodded once, nothing more.

I blinked at him. "So... you’re telling me you’re some kind of... illegal combat medic with a flair for dramatic nudity?"

He didn’t answer. He didn’t even blink.

I almost pressed further, but the silence told me enough. He wasn’t going to explain, and honestly, maybe I didn’t want him to. Because whatever had just happened, however grotesque, however wrong, it had saved Salem. And that was enough.

For now.

But the gravity hit me then, like a stone dropped into my gut.

Salem had been slaughtered. Not bested, not challenged—slaughtered. Torn through like parchment by a man who hadn’t even cast a single spell. A King-Class mage, in the flesh, strolling through the sewers as though it were nothing more than a midnight amusement.

If something like that entered the final bracket of the tournament—if that kind of existence could even be called a competitor—then there was no hope. No plan. No rebellion. Just annihilation dressed in armor.

The thought spiraled in me, clawing and tearing. My chest tightened, my vision spun, my body shook. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t stop the panic that surged like a second flood, this one rising from within.

And then I heard it—

Clapping.

Soft. Cheerful. Mocking.

I whipped my head toward the sound, hand fumbling for a dagger I didn’t even have.

A figure emerged from the shadows of the wearhouse, tall and lean, his black coat lined with feathers that shimmered faintly in the dim light, pinned together with a worn down medallion. His hair, long and blonde, was tied back into a ponytail that swayed as he walked. A beard traced his jaw, neat and clean, framing a smile so infectious it felt wrong in this ruin. He clapped with genuine delight, as though applauding a play we had just staged for his amusement.

"Well done," he said warmly, laughter dancing in his tone. "Truly well done. What a performance!"

I stared at him, drenched, shaking, half-dead, and completely out of patience. "Who the hell are you?"

He only laughed, waving a hand dismissively as if introductions were terribly gauche. "Don’t worry about that. Names are such small things. What matters is this—" His smile widened, his eyes finding me with unsettling focus. "You, my friend, are remarkable."

My gut sank. "Thanks, I try. Again, who are you?"

He ignored me entirely this time. His hand spread in a flourish, his coat feathers rippling. "Tell me," he said, his voice sharp with amusement, "how would you like to be sponsored?"