The last thing Victor remembered was the taste of cheap carpet and his own blood.
He remembered the noise. The thumping bass of the nightclub in Vegas, the screaming of the VIP section, and the wet, gurgling sound coming from his own throat. He remembered the cold. It had started in his toes and raced up his legs, seizing his chest, squeezing the life out of his 240-pound frame until the world narrowed down to a single, blurry point of light.
Then, the light went out.
Victor Vance, the Undefeated Heavyweight Champion of the World, died. He knew he died. There was no ambiguity about a six-inch blade between the ribs.
So when he gasped, sucking in a lungful of air that tasted like rotten fish and burning garbage, his first thought was that Hell smelled worse than he expected.
Victor tried to open his eyes. His eyelids felt glued shut with grit. He forced them open, expecting fire, brimstone, or maybe a hospital ceiling.
He saw gray stone.
He was lying on his side in an alley. High walls stretched up on either side, blocking out most of the light. The ground beneath him wasn't the plush carpet of the nightclub or the canvas of a boxing ring. It was dirt, packed hard and slick with something wet.
He tried to push himself up.
That was the first mistake.
In his mind, he was Victor Vance. He was a tank. He bench-pressed small cars. When he told his arms to move, they usually launched him upward with explosive power.
This time, his arms trembled. They buckled.
He collapsed face-first into the mud.
"What the..."
The voice wasn't his. It was high, scratchy, and weak. It sounded like a boy who had spent the last week screaming.
Victor frowned. The movement sent a sharp spike of pain through his skull. He rolled onto his back, panting. The effort of a single push-up had exhausted him. His heart was hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird too fast, too frantic.
He held up his hand.
Victor stared.
The hand hovering above his face was small. The fingers were thin, the knuckles knobby and uncalloused. The skin was pale, smeared with grime, and mapped with tiny, fading scars. There was no tape. No swelling from the heavy bag. No championship ring on the pinky.
It was the hand of a starving child.
"No," Victor whispered.
He scrambled backward, crab-walking against the cold stone wall. He looked down at his body. He was wearing rags a tunic made of coarse, gray sackcloth that itched, and trousers that were more holes than fabric.
Where were his quads? His legs looked like sticks. He could see the outline of his kneecaps. He pressed a hand to his chest. He could feel every rib. His stomach was a hollow pit, aching with a hunger so profound it felt like a physical wound.
I'm dreaming, he thought. Coma dream. I'm in the ICU, doped up on morphine.
He slapped his own face. Hard.
The sting was sharp and immediate. His head snapped to the side, and his neck twinged. It hurt. It hurt too much for a dream.
Victor looked up. He needed an anchor. Something real.
Above the alley, the strip of sky was deepening into twilight. But it wasn't right. The stars were too bright, too dense. And there, hanging just above the jagged roofline, was the moon.
It was massive. Pale silver, cratered, and looming.
And right next to it was a second moon.
This one was smaller, tinted a bruised shade of red, looking like a bloodshot eye staring down at him.
Victor stopped breathing. The Vegas lights, the ring, the belt, the roar of the crowd they were gone.
"Where am I?"
The words came out in a language he shouldn't know. He hadn't said Where am I? He had said Valkor est naram?
The meaning was the same, but the syllables were foreign. Yet, they tasted familiar on his tongue, like a song heard in childhood.
A headache split his skull. It wasn't a normal headache. It was a sledgehammer cracking open a safe.
Images flooded his mind. Not his memories. Someone else's.
A dark room. A woman crying. The smell of smoke.
Running through rain. Begging for a coin. A boot kicking him in the ribs.
"Worthless," a man sneered. "Leaker."
Hiding in a barrel. The taste of moldy bread.
The name. Not Victor.
Elian.
The name echoed in his head. Elian Vane. Sixteen years old. Orphan. Street rat. The memories were fragmented, hazy, like scenes from a movie watched through a dirty window. He didn't feel the emotions attached to them he didn't love the crying woman, he didn't fear the man with the boot but he knew the facts.
He knew the layout of this city. Harborwatch.
He knew the rules of the Warrens. Don't look up. Don't speak. Don't fight back.
Victor Vance clenched his small, trembling fists.
"The hell I won't," he rasped.
He forced himself to stand. It was a production. He had to roll to his knees, brace against the wall, and slide upward. His head spun, black spots dancing in his vision. He waited for the vertigo to pass.
He checked his surroundings. He was in a dead-end alley in the lower district. The smell was overpowering a cocktail of sewage, unwashed bodies, and brine. This was the Warrens. The bottom of the barrel.
He needed water. The thirst was worse than the hunger.
His new memories Elian's memories supplied a map. There was a public fountain two streets over. The water wasn't clean, but it was free.
Victor pushed off the wall. His legs felt like they belonged to someone else. The center of gravity was wrong. He was too light. He took a step, stumbled, corrected.
Footwork, he told himself. Keep your stance wide. Chin down.
He shuffled toward the mouth of the alley. Every step was a calculation. He felt fragile. If he tripped, he might break something.
He emerged onto a narrow street. The architecture was chaotic wooden shacks built on top of each other, leaning precariously, connected by laundry lines and rope bridges. People moved through the gloom like ghosts. Most wore rags similar to his. They kept their heads down, eyes on the mud.
Victor didn't keep his head down. He scanned the area.
Threat assessment.
To his left, an old woman sorting through a pile of refuse. Non-threat.
To his right, three men gathered around a burning barrel. Laughter. Sharp movements. Threat.
Victor tightened his core or tried to. There was no core to tighten. Just skin and hunger pangs.
He turned left, away from the men, aiming for the fountain.
"Oi! Look who woke up."
Victor stopped. He didn't turn. He recognized the voice from the headache memories.
Durn. They call him 'Rat' Durn.
Victor turned slowly.
Three men detached themselves from the barrel and blocked the street. The leader, Durn, was a wire-thin man with yellow teeth and a knife tucked into his belt. He wasn't big maybe 150 pounds but compared to Elian's body, he looked like a giant.
"Thought you were dead, Leaker," Durn said, spitting on the ground. "We laid bets. I said you'd last the night. Lost five coppers."
Victor looked at Durn. In his old life, Durn wouldn't have been allowed to carry Victor's gym bag. He was sloppy. His shoulders were hunched, his chin was exposed, and his weight was all on his heels.
"Move," Victor said.
The word hung in the air. The other two thugs blinked. Durn's grin faltered, then widened.
"Did the little Leaker speak?" Durn stepped forward. "You owe me five coppers, Elian. Tax for breathing in my alley."
"I don't have money," Victor said. His voice was steady, despite the trembling of his legs. "And I'm going to get water. Step aside."
Durn laughed, a harsh, barking sound. "You hit your head hard, boy. Maybe I need to knock some sense back in."
Durn rolled his shoulder and stepped in. He telegraphed the punch from a mile away. It was a wide, looping right hook. Sloppy. Amateur.
Victor saw it coming before Durn even finished the thought.
Slip left. Liver shot. Hook to the jaw. Goodnight.
It was a combination Victor had thrown ten thousand times. It was instinct.
Victor's brain sent the signal. Slip.
His body tried. It really did.
But the muscles were slow. The nerves were sluggish. Instead of a crisp, lightning-fast slip, Victor lurched to the left like a drunk.
He cleared the path of the fist, but his feet got tangled in the mud. He stumbled.
Counter. Liver shot.
Victor threw the left hook.
It landed. His fist connected with Durn's ribs.
But there was no snap. No power. It felt like hitting a heavy bag with a pillow. Victor's wrist buckled on impact, shooting a bolt of pain up his forearm.
Durn looked down at his ribs, then back at Victor. He looked confused.
"Did you just... touch me?"
Victor stared at his throbbing hand. Zero power. Absolutely zero.
Then the air changed.
Durn stopped smiling. He took a breath, and Victor felt something strange. It was like the air pressure dropped. A subtle hum vibrated in Victor's teeth.
A faint, blue light flickered around Durn's fist. It wasn't electricity. It was like heat haze, but glowing.
Qi, Elian's memory whispered. Spirit Energy.
Durn wasn't just a thug. He was a cultivator. A bottom-tier, trash-level cultivator, but in this world, that meant he held a loaded gun.
"You little rat," Durn growled.
He swung again. This time, there was no telegraph. The blue haze on his fist left a trail in the air.
Victor tried to guard. He raised his arms in a classic shell defense.
The punch hit his forearms.
It felt like being hit by a sledgehammer.
Victor was lifted off his feet. He flew backward, air leaving his lungs in a whoosh, and slammed into the mud three meters away.
His arms were numb. He couldn't feel his fingers. He gasped, trying to find oxygen, but his diaphragm was paralyzed.
Durn stood over him, shaking his hand. "Solid bone. Surprising."
He kicked Victor in the stomach.
Pain exploded. Victor curled into a ball, retching.
"You're a Leaker, Elian," Durn said, his voice echoing from above. "You don't fight. You don't have the Spirit. You just leak. You're a waste of skin."
Durn leaned down, grabbing Victor's hair and yanking his head back. He brought the knife close to Victor's eye.
"Next time I see you, have my five coppers. Or I take an eye. Got it?"
Durn shoveled Victor's face back into the mud.
Laughter. Footsteps fading away.
Victor lay in the filth. The cold seeped into his bones. His stomach throbbed where the boot had landed. His arms felt like they were on fire.
He waited. He waited for his corner man to jump the ropes. He waited for the referee to start the count. He waited for the bell.
There was no bell. Just the distant sound of the ocean and the chattering of actual rats nearby.
He was alone.
Victor Vance had never lost a fight. 42 wins. 38 knockouts. He was the King.
Now, he was a sixteen-year-old boy lying in sludge, beaten by a street thug who didn't know how to throw a jab.
He spat out a mouthful of mud. It tasted metallic. Blood.
"Okay," he whispered to the dirt.
He pushed himself up. It took three tries. His arms were screaming. His ribs felt bruised, maybe cracked.
He sat back on his heels, wiping the mud from his eyes. He looked at his hands again. They were shaking uncontrollably.
He closed his eyes and focused. He tried to feel what Durn had used. That energy. That Qi.
He felt... something.
It was like a breeze blowing through an open window. He could feel the energy in the air a faint, tingling warmth. He inhaled, trying to pull it in, trying to store it in his gut like the stories Elian had heard.
He felt the energy enter him. It flowed into his chest, warm and vibrant.
And then it flowed right out.
It leaked through his skin, dissipating into the night air like steam.
He tried again. He visualized a box. He tried to trap the energy.
In. Out.
Nothing stayed. His body was a sieve. A bucket with no bottom.
A Leaker.
That's what they called him. A biological defect. A car without a gas tank.
Victor started to laugh. It was a wet, jagged sound.
"Perfect," he wheezed.
He dragged himself to the nearest puddle. The water was stagnant, reflecting the two moons above. He looked at his reflection.
The face staring back was sharp, angular, and dirty. Large, dark eyes that looked too big for the skull. messy black hair matted with mud. A bruise was already blossoming on the jaw.
It was a weak face. A victim's face.
Victor leaned closer to the water. He stared into those terrified eyes until he found the spark behind them. The spark that had taken a kid from the projects to the main event at the MGM Grand.
He bared his teeth at the reflection.
"You're soft," Victor told Elian's face. "You're slow. You're weak."
He dipped his hands into the freezing water and splashed his face, scrubbing away the blood and the mud. He washed until the skin was raw.
"But you've got good bones," he muttered. "I can work with bones."
He stood up. The pain was still there, a constant, dull roar, but he pushed it to the back of his mind. He had fought with broken hands before. He had fought with a cut over his eye that blinded him. Pain was information. Nothing more.
He looked down the street, toward where Durn had gone.
Victor didn't have magic. He didn't have muscles. He didn't have money.
But he remembered the feeling of Durn's punch. He remembered the sloppy footwork. He remembered the arrogance.
He knew something Durn didn't. He knew that strength wasn't just about how hard you could hit. It was about leverage. It was about timing. It was about knowing exactly where the human body was designed to break.
Victor Vance was dead.
But the bell had just rung.
He started walking toward the fountain. He needed water. Then he needed food. Then he needed to figure out how to do a push-up without passing out.
"Round Two," Victor whispered.
He vanished into the shadows of the Warrens, moving not like a ghost, but like a hunter who had just found a new jungle.