The medic’s tent smelled like antiseptic and burnt hair, which I decided not to ask about.
She was an older woman with steady hands and the kind of tired eyes that had clearly seen worse than my palm, though she still hissed through her teeth when she peeled back the field dressing to look at it.
“Whoever packed this wound with resin from a supply crate deserves a bonus,” she said, cleaning around the edges with something that stung enough to make my eyes water.
“And whoever let you keep swinging a hook afterward deserves a smack.”
“That would be me on both counts,” I said.
“Different hands, same idiot.”
She didn’t laugh.
She wrapped my palm tightly enough that I could feel my pulse in it, then moved to my shoulder, testing the range of motion with a grip that made me understand exactly how much worse it could get if she wanted it to.
I told her about the stretcher, the incline, the moment I’d locked my hand around the frame and let my shoulder eat the whole weight of a sliding body.
She nodded as if she’d heard the story a hundred times with different names attached.
“The joint’s not dislocated. It’s close, though. I’m splinting it so you can’t get the idea to test that again.” She fitted a brace along my arm, buckling it with quick, practiced motions.
“You so much as think about lifting anything over your head, and I will personally make sure the next swap sends you somewhere with worse company than the dead.”
“Understood.”
“The palm worries me more,” she added, tying off the last strap.
“The resin sealed the bleeding, not the wound. You’ve got dirt and God knows what else cooked into that skin. If it turns, and it might, you’ll feel it before you see it. Fever first. Then the smell.” She looked at me the way people look at machines they don’t fully trust.
“Come back the second either happens. Don’t wait for it to be convenient.”
I told her I would, and meant it, because infection wasn’t the kind of problem I could out-negotiate.
The rest of the hunters had chalked a two-hour sleep rotation across the mess hall wall.
I ate first—something gray and filling that I didn’t ask questions about—then lay down on an empty cot and slept harder than I had any right to.
The two hours felt like ten seconds.
I woke up to someone shaking my splinted shoulder, which I did not appreciate, and a voice telling me my block was over.
I sat up, blinked the fog out, and noticed a man across the room crouched over three unopened supply crates as though he were guarding a nest.
I recognized him vaguely from earlier, one of the contestants who’d been loud about his kill count near the ballista lines.
He had the crates pulled into a corner behind a stack of empty barrels, half-hidden, and he was checking the latch on the third one with the kind of possessive attention you give something you don’t want anyone else touching.
“Those the reload crates for the harpoon line?” I asked, walking over before my brain had fully signed off on the idea.
“Found them. Figured I’d keep them close in case the dragon circles back.”
“Close as in behind the barrels where nobody else can find them.”
“Close as in mine,” he said, and at least he was honest about it once pushed.
“Look, I put three good hits on that thing already. If I’ve got the ammo when it comes back, I land the kill shot. That’s the whole broadcast, right there. That’s the highlight reel. That’s the sponsor money.”
I looked at the crates, then at him.
“How many harpoons in those three?”
“Enough.”
“Enough for you. Not enough for the line, if the dragon comes in from a different angle and the gunners on the east rampart need a reload mid-fight.” I crouched down next to him, keeping my voice level.
“You know how this works. Nine cities, three sectors. Kharvoss doesn’t validate, the whole arena stays sealed. Doesn’t matter how good your videos look if you’re still locked in here when the clock hits zero.”
“That’s not my problem. I’ve got my own contribution score to worry about.”
“It is your problem, because your contribution score is measured against sector completion, not individual kill shots. Check your own bracelet if you don’t believe me.” I tapped my own for emphasis.
“A validated sector spreads credit across every contestant who contributed to it. A failed sector locks the exits for everyone, including you, including whoever’s watching your highlight reel from a couch somewhere with popcorn.”
He went quiet for a second.
“You share the crates,” I said, “the harpoon line gets fed no matter who’s holding the trigger when the dragon shows up again. That means the fight ends faster. That means Kharvoss validates. That means your score, my score, everybody’s score goes up together instead of you gambling on being the one lucky shot that never comes because you burned the reload standing behind a barrel.”
“And if I share, what do I get?”
“Logged credit. Right now, in the certified journal, with your name on the entry, so nobody can claim the crates were theirs after the fact.” I pulled the log out and held it up so he could see the blank line waiting.
“I’m not asking you to trust me. I’m asking you to trust the entry.”
That did it—it was the paper.
He watched me write his name next to the crate count, watched the timestamp lock in, and something in his shoulders came down half an inch.
“Fine,” he said.
“Fine, take them to the line. Just make sure my name’s on the entry big enough that the cameras can zoom in on it.”
I didn’t bother telling him the journal wasn’t built for zoom-ins.
By the time the crates were moved and split between the two ballista posts, the sector captains had gathered around the terrace map to sketch out something more permanent than one man’s private stash.
They set the crates into a shared stockpile at the midpoint between both firing lines, with a second, smaller reserve kept farther back in case a swap pulled the best shooters out mid-fight and left green hands holding the harpoons.
Somebody wrote the protocol down in block letters and pinned it to the post like a warning sign, which, given how many of us had already been swapped without warning at least once, felt less like caution and more like inevitability.
With the shoulder brace on and my palm throbbing under fresh wrapping, I found a quiet stretch of wall and finally did the thing I’d been meaning to do since the first blackout dumped me into a dormitory with no memory of how I’d gotten there.
I closed my fist around nothing, empty air, and let Dead Grip trigger.
Four seconds.
The countdown in my head ran clean and even, and when it hit zero the grip released on its own, my fingers loosening without my telling them to.
No extra strength behind it, no crushing force, nothing but a lock that held whatever it closed around exactly as hard as I’d already been holding it.
Useful for not dropping something under stress.
Useless for turning me into anything stronger than I already was.
I wrote it down anyway, four seconds, no strength bonus, one-minute severe numbness penalty.
Vassago’s voice cut into the terrace speakers before I’d even finished the entry, bright and unbothered by the fact that half the hunters around me were running on two hours of sleep stacked over sixteen without it.
“Fun fact for our viewers at home: every hour your favorite contestants spend snoring is an hour our sponsors don’t get to enjoy the good stuff. Somewhere a marketing team is crying into their quarterly projections. But don’t worry, folks, the tactical map’s still crawling forward, so I suppose sleep isn’t a total scam.” A pause—the kind she used for effect.
“Kharvoss progress up two points since the last check-in. Odrance holding steady. Vhaldrèche’s rebellion still refuses to die on schedule. Everyone’s doing just fine without you, Veyr.”
I didn’t answer her.
Answering Vassago was like arguing with a vending machine that had already taken your money.
The tactical map, when I checked it properly, backed up her numbers whether I liked her delivery or not.
Progress across all three sectors, slow but real, the kind of crawl that meant nobody had died fast enough to erase what the living had already earned.
The bracelet buzzed against my wrist a moment later, the countdown warning sharp and short.
Five seconds.
I barely had time to brace before the terrace, the crates, the chalked rotation on the mess hall wall, all of it dissolved out from under me, and I landed somewhere colder, darker, and reeking of stone dust and old blood.
Vhaldrèche again.
Somewhere nearby, in whatever position I’d left behind, the partner was about to inherit a splinted shoulder, an infected palm, and a very specific set of instructions about not lifting anything over his head.