The marketplace reeked of wet stone and boiled cabbage. Rain had ended hours ago, but the cobbles still gleamed like spilled ink, every footstep sucking up the stench of rot clinging to the gutters.
Ashen kept her hood low, pushing through the crowd. The patched satchel at her side rattled with scraps of metal—hinges, broken triggers, bits of ruined cindertools scavenged from alleys. Worthless to most, but maybe enough to buy food. If not, tonight they went hungry.
Behind her, Lucen's voice cut through the marketplace noise.
"Three copper on the left one! Look at his stance, he's begging to fall!"
Ashen turned, already scowling. Her brother had gathered a ring of onlookers, all shouting and cheering as two men squared off bare-knuckled in the mud. Lucen wasn't fighting—yet. He leaned against a post, grinning like he owned the place, flicking their last coins between his fingers.
Ashen shoved through the crowd until she reached him."Really?" she hissed. "You couldn't wait until we ate before throwing what little we have on a fight?"
Lucen's grin widened. "Relax, Ash. I know how to read a fighter. Look at that guy's knees—he's already dead."
The smaller fighter lunged, missed, and caught a fist straight to the jaw. He crumpled. The crowd roared. Lucen slipped away before anyone thought to demand a cut, pocketing the winnings with a smirk. He tossed Ashen a coin.
"See? Dinner money. You worry too much."
She caught it, glaring. "And when you're wrong?"
"Then I fight," he said simply, like that solved everything.
They bought fried root cakes from a bent-backed woman whose stall leaned on two broken wheels. The cakes were black at the edges, oil-soaked and bitter, but hot enough to burn their hands.
Lucen devoured his in two bites. "We could do more than this, you know. Ember Trials are coming up. Even the gutter academies pay stipends. Real meals and even offer real weapons."
Ashen chewed slowly, forcing it down. "Those trials chew people up, Lucen. They're meant to weed out the desperate. We wouldn't last a single round."
"All the better. If it's rigged for us to die, then we just don't die." His eyes gleamed with that reckless brightness that always made her uneasy. "Better than rotting here."
Ashen didn't answer. Not because he was wrong but because he might be right.
Thugs found them in an alley. Three of them, broad-shouldered and scarred, the kind who made a living bleeding people poorer than themselves.
"Oi," one called, stepping forward. "You the brat who threw that fight last week? Cost us good coin."
Lucen rolled his shoulders. "If you lost, that's on you. Don't cry about it now."
The thug spat, lunging. Lucen met him head-on, twisting, driving an elbow into his ribs hard enough to send him staggering.
Ashen dropped her satchel and drew her pistol—a battered thing with a faint ember-glow. A cindertool with maybe three charges left before it crumbled for good. She fired once, the crack snapping through the alley, sparks bursting as the shot grazed another thug's shoulder.
The fight was messy and fast. Lucen laughed as he slipped past punches, landing his own until one man folded. Ashen's hands shook as she fired again, the pistol glowing weaker. When the third thug fled limping, the air stank of blood and sweat.
Ashen holstered her pistol, chest heaving. The glow in the barrel flickered, almost gone. One more fight like that and she'd be holding scrap metal.
Lucen wiped his knuckles clean on his shirt, still smiling. "Told you. Fighting pays."
"One day, it won't." Her voice was low.
They heard it before they saw it: a wet, broken sound, halfway between a cough and a cry.
At the far end of the alley, two wardens dragged a Hollowed in chains. Its body twitched like it couldn't remember how to move. Its eyes were pale, empty, lips trembling. A sound escaped—thin, almost human:
"…Lina… Lina…"
The name carried down the alley like smoke. Ashen froze, hand on her pistol without realizing. Lucen's grin faltered.
The wardens pulled it past, the chains sparking against stone. The Hollowed's whispers faded into the dark.
Ashen's fingers dug into her pistol grip until Lucen's hand touched her shoulder."Don't," he said quietly. For once, no joke followed.
That night, they huddled in their usual refuge—a half-collapsed chapel basement, stone damp with mold. Above, a hole in the ceiling showed a strip of sky, stars faint through the smoke.
Lucen sat down, flicking a coin between his fingers. "Face it, Ash—we've been starving since the day we were born. The world hates us."
Ashen leaned against the wall, pistol across her lap. "No. It hates me. You just get dragged along because we happened to show up in the world at the same damn time."
Lucen turned his head, grinning sideways. "Best accident of your life, sis."
Ashen didn't answer. The silence between them was an answer of its own.
And above their heads, the stars burned like cold fire—distant, unreachable, and utterly indifferent.