Kai was at a street market buying bread. The loaf looked like it could break teeth, but Kai wasn't in a position to argue with it. Ten smokes for a single loaf — robbery anywhere else, survival here.
The stall keeper, a wiry woman with sunken cheeks and a shiv strapped to her thigh, counted the cigarettes one by one before sliding the bread over.
"You're burning your trade too fast, stranger," she said without looking up. Her voice was like sand dragged over stone. "Smokes are for low-lives and first-timers. You want something that lasts, you need blood coins."
Kai had heard the phrase whispered in alleys, but this was the first time anyone had explained it. Blood coins weren't metal. They were resin disks, dark red and faintly warm to the touch, each one forged with a real soulprint. The soul trapped inside gave them weight beyond currency. You could spend them, trade them, or, if you were desperate enough, break them and consume the soul for power.
"Favors, information, blood," she continued. "That's what buys life here. Not paper. Not smokes. And if you're unlucky enough to see an LOD coin—" She smirked, mouth twisted into something cruel. "—pray you're not the reason it's changing hands. Those things don't show up unless the Legion of Death's got business."
Kai pocketed the bread, its weight heavier than it should have been, and moved on.
The market choked the street with voices and bodies. Stalls sagged under piles of scavenged electronics, jars of pickled organs, crates of ammunition, and bottles of murky liquid labeled as liquor. A man offered him teeth strung on wire. Another tried to sell him a child's shoe still slick with blood.
He ignored them all.
It was down the next alley that he saw the broker.
Two barefoot kids carried him in a sling of patched canvas, his torso swaying with each step. The man had no arms or legs. Just stumps wrapped in white bandages far too clean for this city. His eyes found Kai instantly, hawk-sharp, fastening on him the way predators fix on prey.
"You're new," the man rasped. His voice was soft, but it carried, like a whisper designed to be overheard. "Don't waste smokes unless you're trying to get robbed. You want something that matters, you come to me."
Then, with a tilt of his chin, the children swung him around a corner, vanishing into the press of bodies like smoke torn by wind.
Kai kept walking until he reached it — the noise spilling out into the street before the building came into view. Laughter. Clinking glass. The growl of a dozen conversations layered on top of each other. The building squatted between two leaning towers, its sign cracked but still legible:
The Gallows' Rest.
Inside, the air was thick with heat, sweat, and alcohol sharp enough to burn the lungs. The room was a patchwork of mismatched tables, patched leather chairs, and lanterns swaying from chains. Men and women in scavenged armor sat beside smugglers in sleek suits. No colors. No gang markings. Here, everyone was equal, or at least pretended to be.
The bartender, a tall woman with scarred knuckles, eyed Kai the way one sizes up a stray dog. "Neutral ground," she said. "You break it, you pay for it. You kill someone here, you'll wish you hadn't."
Kai nodded. He glanced at the board behind her — rates for drinks, weapon storage, and upstairs rooms.
"How much for the night?"
Her gaze flicked to the pouch hanging from his chest, then back to his eyes. "A blood coin." She looks down at my pouch "Seven smokes." She paused, then added, "Or one blood coin, if you've got it."
He didn't. Smokes it was. The weight of them leaving his pocket hurt worse than the pit ever had, but the thought of sleeping on the street was worse. She slid him a tarnished brass key, and he made his way up the groaning staircase.
The room was small and bare: a single bed, a crooked table, no windows. The mattress dipped in the middle, the blanket threadbare but cleaner than he expected. Kai set the bread on the table, placed the bone knife close, and lay down.
Sleep came fast.
The creak of the door woke him. Voices — low, rough, and threaded with the kind of laughter that made his skin crawl. Heavy boots thudded against the floor. He rolled off the bed without a sound, sliding into the shadows beneath it.
Dust clung to his cheek. The smell of sweat and cheap beer rolled down from above.
Two men. One woman. Their voices marked them clearer than their boots.
"You sure this room's clear?" one asked.
"Clear enough," said the other.
The woman's voice was nervous, too light. "You paid for the room. You paid for me. That's the deal. We're square."
Kai watched boots scuff against the floorboards. A bottle clinked down on the table. The men laughed — a sound that wasn't joy, just the sound of something circling a cage.
The mattress sagged above him. Her weight. Then another. The sound of her breath sharpened.
"Please—" she started.
The words ended in a short, wet gasp. The sound of a blade sliding in. A muffled choke. Her heels kicked once against the floorboards before going still.
The laughter overhead turned coarse, cutting, almost celebratory.
Something heavy was dragged across the bed. The table rattled. Coins spilled — clattering metal and resin rolling toward the edge. One of them was a deep crimson, warm even from a distance. A blood coin. Another was darker, nearly black, glinting faintly silver in the dim light. An LOD coin.
"What's the price?" one of them asked.
"Already paid," the other replied. "The rest is profit."
The sound of movement above him was wrong. Not violent anymore. Methodical. They handled her body like it was inventory — weight shifted, bones creaking, a hand slapping limply against the mattress.
Kai didn't breathe. The blood came next — dripping down through the mattress. At first one bead, then another. Fat drops, trembling, falling to the floor beside his face.
Each splash darkened the dust. The smell thickened, metallic and raw, coating his tongue.
The men above talked like merchants settling a transaction.
"Three coins' worth at least."
"Four, once we split the rest."
Their voices blurred together with the creak of the bed, with the steady drip of blood falling through.
Kai stayed still. Every muscle locked, jaw clenched tight. The red spread beneath him, soaking into his clothes.
He wanted to sigh. Wanted to close his eyes. But the city was watching, even here.
At last, the boots shuffled. The coins clinked back into a pouch. A bottle smashed against the wall. Then silence.
They left. The door shut.
Kai waited. Ten seconds. Twenty. Long enough for the building to groan and settle.
Then he slid out from beneath the bed. His hands came up first, then his shoulders, his face smeared with dust and blood. The air was heavy and sour. The sheet above was dark with it, sagging slightly in the middle.
On the floor near the table, one coin had rolled too far and been forgotten.
He crouched over it.
A blood coin. Resin dark red, faintly warm against his palm. Inside, something pulsed. Not alive. Not dead either.
He pocketed it, the weight burning against his thigh.
The room smelled of iron and silence.
Kai wiped his face, smeared more blood across his cheek, and sat with his back against the wall.
Sleep would not come again.