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The pit smelled like piss and old blood.
Alto stood at the edge, hands still chained at the wrists. Shana hadn't bothered taking them off. Said it made the crowd bet higher when they saw a kid in irons. The sand below was pale gray, almost white in the afternoon glare, and the stands were just wooden planks nailed into a ring. Maybe two hundred people up there. Farmers. Traders. A few mercs in dented plate.
Shana leaned close. "You go down there and you win ugly, understand? No fancy shit. Make it look hard."
Alto didn't answer. He was watching the other fighter.
Big guy. Maybe thirty. Scars up both arms and a jaw that had been broken more than once. He wore leather straps across his chest and his knuckles were wrapped in cord. No weapon. Neither of them got weapons for the first fight. Shana said that came later, if you lived.
The crowd started yelling when the gate opened.
Alto stepped down into the sand and the sun hit him like a fist. His chains rattled. The big guy rolled his shoulders and grinned, showing gaps where teeth used to be.
"Fresh meat," the guy said.
Alto said nothing. He was counting steps. Measuring reach. The fighter was strong but he moved wrong, weight too far forward. Arlen had killed a hundred men who moved like that.
The bell rang.
The big guy charged.
Alto sidestepped and let him go past. It wasn't graceful. The body was too small, too thin, and the chains threw off his balance. But the instinct was there. Muscle memory that didn't belong to this body.
The crowd booed.
The fighter turned, slower this time. He was testing now. Not underestimating.
"You gonna run the whole time, kid?"
Alto watched his feet. Watched the way his left knee dipped before he threw a punch. Arlen used to drill his soldiers on tells like that. Make them fight blindfolded until they learned to read weight shift and breath.
The fighter lunged again. Alto ducked under the swing and drove his shoulder into the man's ribs. Not hard enough to drop him. Just enough to make him stumble.
Another boo from the crowd.
Shana was up there somewhere, watching. Counting her silver.
The big guy wiped his mouth. "Alright. No more playing."
He came in smart this time. Feinted high, kicked low. Alto took it on the thigh and his leg went numb. He went down on one knee and the fighter grabbed for his chains.
Bad move.
Alto twisted, looped the chain over the man's wrist, and yanked. The fighter's arm bent wrong and he howled. Alto stood, planted his foot, and drove his elbow into the side of the man's head.
The fighter dropped.
The crowd went quiet for a second. Then they started screaming.
Alto stood over the body, breathing hard. His leg was still numb. His wrists were bleeding under the irons. But the fighter wasn't getting up.
That should've been it.
That should've been the end.
But the sand under his feet started whispering.
It wasn't sound. Not exactly. It was more like pressure. Like something pushing up from below, trying to get inside his skull. Alto staggered and the chains swung loose. The whispers got louder.
*Kill him.*
*Finish it.*
*Blood. Blood. Blood.*
He looked down. The sand was moving. Not wind. Not footsteps. It was shifting on its own, swirling in tight little spirals around the fighter's body.
Alto's vision blurred.
For a second he wasn't in the pit anymore. He was standing in a canyon full of bones. The sky was red and the ground was screaming and there were faces in the sand, dozens of them, all with their mouths open.
*You're one of us.*
*You hear us.*
*Kill them all.*
He blinked and he was back. The crowd was still yelling. The fighter was still down. Shana was leaning over the rail, watching him with eyes like a bird.
Alto took a step back.
The whispers didn't stop. They never stopped. They just got quieter, like something waiting.
The handler climbed down into the pit and checked the fighter. He looked up at Shana and nodded. Fight over. No blood, no death, just a knockout. Clean enough for the first round.
Shana's voice carried across the sand. "Get him out."
They dragged Alto up by the chains and shoved him back toward the holding pen. His leg was still half-dead and his head felt like it was full of broken glass. He didn't look at Shana when she came down.
She grabbed his jaw and tilted his face up. "What the hell was that?"
"What?"
"You froze. Middle of the ring. Looked like you were gonna puke."
Alto pulled his face free. "I'm fine."
"You better be. You got six more."
She walked off and left him there, still chained, still bleeding.
Alto sat down on the bench and stared at his hands. They were shaking.
The voices hadn't been his imagination. He'd heard them before, back in the camp, when he'd first woken up in this body. But they'd been faint then. Distant. Now they were loud. Now they wanted something.
He didn't know what.
The other fighters ignored him. There were three of them in the pen, all older, all watching the next match through the slats. One of them had a brand on his shoulder. Another had fingers missing on his left hand.
Alto closed his eyes and tried to think.
Arlen Kash had been a commander. He'd led two hundred men through the Scorched Hills and held the eastern line for three years. He knew tactics. He knew how to read terrain and break formations and turn a loss into a win.
But he didn't know what the hell the Ashmar bloodgift was supposed to do.
He didn't know why the sand talked to him.
He didn't know if the voices were memory or madness or something worse.
The handler came back an hour later and unlocked his chains. "You're up again tomorrow. Get some water."
Alto rubbed his wrists and stood. His leg had feeling again but it still ached. He walked to the water barrel and drank until his stomach cramped.
When he straightened, Shana was there.
"Good work today," she said.
He didn't answer.
She smiled. "You fight like someone who's done it before. That's rare for a camp kid."
Alto set the ladle down. "I'm tired."
"I bet." She pulled something from her belt and tossed it to him.
He caught it. Dried meat. Expensive.
"Eat," she said. "You'll need it."
She left before he could say anything.
Alto looked at the meat. His stomach growled. He didn't trust her. Didn't trust the deal. Didn't trust the way she watched him like he was something she was planning to sell.
But he ate it anyway.
The next morning they brought him back to the pit.
The second fight was easier. Younger guy, faster, but he didn't know how to finish. Alto took him down in three minutes.
The third fight was a woman with a knife. She cut him twice before he got inside her reach and put her on her back.
By the fifth fight the crowd knew his name.
By the sixth fight they were betting on him to win.
Shana collected every piece of silver with a smile that didn't reach her eyes.
Alto stopped counting the cuts. Stopped counting the bruises. The voices under the sand got louder every time he stepped into the ring. Sometimes he could ignore them. Sometimes he couldn't.
The seventh fight was supposed to be the last.
Shana told him that morning. "You win this, you're free. You lose, we do the blood test."
"Who's the opponent?"
"Does it matter?"
It didn't.
The pit was full when they brought him down. The sun was setting and the sand looked red in the dying light. The crowd was packed in tight, maybe three hundred now. Word had spread.
Alto stepped into the ring and the voices hit him like a wave.
*Seventh blood.*
*Seventh gift.*
*Finish this and we give you the old way.*
He gritted his teeth and ignored them.
The gate on the far side opened.
A man stepped out.
He was tall. Broad-shouldered. Older than the others, maybe forty. His hair was shaved down to stubble and his left arm was covered in scars. He carried a short blade in his right hand, and the blade had markings along the hilt.
Alto stopped breathing.
He knew those markings.
Unit Seven. Eastern Line. Commander's Guard.
The man looked at him across the sand. His face didn't change. But his eyes did.
Recognition.
The bell rang.
Neither of them moved.
The crowd started to murmur.
The man tilted his head. "You fight like someone I used to know."
Alto's throat was dry. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." The man stepped forward, slow. "He's dead though. Died six months back."
Alto said nothing.
The man stopped three steps away. "So who the hell are you?"
The voices screamed.
*Kill him. Kill him. Kill him.*
Alto didn't move.
The man raised the blade.
And then the sand between them split open and something rose up from below.
It was metal. Old. Broken.
A blade.
The hilt was wrapped in cracked leather and the edge was chipped in four places. But the markings along the spine were clear.
Imperial make. Commander's issue.
Arlen Kash's sword.
The crowd went silent.
The man stared at the blade. Then at Alto.
"What the fuck," he whispered.
Alto stared at the broken sword rising out of the sand like a grave giving up its dead.
And the voices whispered, *Welcome home.*