In Hikmar, night falls like a guillotine — a clean cut, heat gone, only sticky humidity left. Our camp by the city wall resembled a plague ward: Tobias moaned in his sleep, Dieter scratched healing bites, and Gunther counted empty sacks by moonlight, trying to find unaccounted profit in them.

  The silence was torn by the ring of metal and a dull thud.

  The Sergeant, our left, healthy hand of justice, dragged Vain to the fire.

  The Anatomist resisted, but the Sergeant threw him onto the sand like a sack of shit. A bundle of heavy throwing axes fell out of Vain's pocket — the very same trophy ones, notched by barbarian bones. A waterskin filled with cheap palm wine flopped down next to them.

  "He tried to make a barter," the Sergeant reported in an icy tone. "Company property for personal antidepressant."

  Gunther looked up from his calculations. His eyes went dead.

  "That is Asset Embezzlement."

  "My hands are shaking!" Vain howled, trying to stand. "I can't sew people up while sober! I see how you all look from the inside! I need a drink, or I'll go mad!"

  "If you drink," came the calm, heavy voice of Greta, scraping the cauldron with sand, "your hand will slip, and you'll cut off something necessary from Dieter. Alcohol lowers motor skills."

  "Exactly," the Sergeant nodded. "Therefore, the therapy will be shock."

  The Sergeant took out a whip.

  "Tie him to the cart wheel. Disciplinary action."

  It was disgusting. Unlike whipping slaves on the march, this was a real execution.

  Whish. Thwack. For theft.

  Whish. Thwack. For endangering assets.

  Whish. Thwack. Because we need to sleep.

  Greta didn't turn away. She watched it with the same expression she used when looking at a poorly butchered carcass.

  "You are ruining the hide," she noted dryly. "It will hurt him to get into armor later. The padding will get soaked in blood, have to wash it. Extra waste of soap."

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  "But the liver will be more intact," the Sergeant wheezed, lowering his hand.

  Vain hung on the wheel. His back had turned into a map of pain. Gunther made a note in the ledger: "Temporary injury: Flayed back. Stat penalty for 3 days."

  But when the Anatomist raised his head, there was no longer a drunken haze in his eyes. There was ice. And pure, distilled hatred.

  "I understand," he whispered in a completely sober voice. "Pain sobers. I will remember this lesson, Sergeant. I will remember every second. I will treat you... especially thoroughly."

  Greta approached him with a bowl of water and a rag.

  "Stand still, fool," she said, washing off the blood. "You're a doctor. You should know that spirit is for instruments, not for the stomach."

  "Thanks, Greta," Vain hissed through his teeth. "Now I know exactly where a human's pain threshold is."

  Aside from this scene, in the shadow of the tent, sat a man with a pitchfork. Knut.

  He watched the whipping unblinking. He saw Vain's humiliation, his pain, and something inside him, rusted and old, suddenly shifted.

  He picked up a whetstone and began to hone the tines of his pitchfork.

  Scritch. Scratch.

  The sound was quiet, but in the silence of the night, it cut the ear.

  "His wife died," he suddenly said into the void.

  "Whose?" asked Jem, who was always nearby like a shadow.

  "Vain's? I don't know. But he drinks to forget. I drank too. When my Elsa left."

  Knut raised his eyes. They were dark and empty, like a dried-up well.

  "I am not Knut. Knut was my old dog's name. I took its name to hide. I thought if I was a nobody, if I was just a 'farmhand with a pitchfork,' grief wouldn't find me."

  "Who are you?" Greta asked quietly, wringing out the bloody rag.

  "I am Huber," he said. And in that name sounded something hard, like the blow of an axe. "Daytaler. Widower."

  He gripped the pitchfork shaft until his knuckles turned white.

  "I watched you beat Vain. And I realized: pain doesn't go away. You can't drown it in wine. You can only redirect it. I won't be a dog anymore. I will be the one who brings pain to others."

  Gunther, hearing this out of the corner of his ear, took out a pencil stub and crossed out a line in the register.

  "Rebranding of employee number two," he muttered to himself. "Asset 'Knut' deactivated. Activated Huber. Note to Sergeant: issue him a proper spear at the first opportunity. A pitchfork is too peaceful a tool for him now. The lad has acquired a Motive."

  That night, the camp divided.

  Vain lay on his stomach, sober and angry, planning revenge or treatment, which now meant the same thing to him.

  Huber sharpened his pitchfork, saying goodbye to Elsa.

  Only Talah slept. The giant snored because he didn't care — he had no past, no conscience, only a contract and a golden helmet.

  And we waited for morning.

  In the morning, the Arena opened.