The city of Daltarein smelled of spice, sweat, and old blood.
Asha pressed her face to the carriage window as they rumbled through narrow stone streets. The buildings were high and sun-bleached, stacked like bones. Bright silks hung from balconies. Drummers beat rhythms for fire-dancers in the plazas. Somewhere nearby, a man screamed and no one looked.
Dagon didn't speak much during the ride.
He just watched the streets, eyes alert, one hand always near the hilt of his curved dagger. When they reached the iron gates of the Gladiator School, he gave a single knock, then banged twice more.
The door opened.
A wall of a man stood there, shirtless, arms covered in faded battle scars. A broken nose. A jaw that looked like it had been carved from stone.
Kael.
His eyes landed on Asha immediately.
"That your stray?" he grunted, unimpressed.
"One with teeth," Dagon replied. "He'll bite."
Kael squinted.
"He looks like a corpse."
"Then make him a killer."
Kael grunted again, turned, and walked away.
No welcome. No name.
Asha followed him in through the gates. The world inside was different, harsher, louder. Men and boys of every shape and color trained in the yard. Sweat and dirt caked the air. Wooden weapons slammed against dummies. Real steel clashed in the pit where two shirtless fighters circled, blood already slicking the sand.
The gladiator school was less of a school and more of a forge.
"Name?" Kael asked, without looking.
Asha hesitated. "Ash."
"That all?"
"Ash is all that's left," she said.
Kael smirked at that, just a little.
"You'll sleep in the Pitborn barracks. Speak only when told. Eat only when allowed. You bleed, you clean it. You cry, you mop it up with your tongue. No one here cares where you came from. They only care if you can fight."
He stopped beside a wooden rack of training weapons.
"Pick one."
Asha stepped forward, eyes scanning the options: wooden swords, dull axes, practice spears. Her hand hovered... then reached for a short blade, light and balanced.
Kael raised an eyebrow.
"You ever used a knife?"
"Not well."
"You'll learn. Or you'll die."
Training began before dawn the next day.
Ash was thrown into the dirt with the rest of the "Pitborn", the youngest group of would-be fighters, all boys. She kept her head down, her jaw tight.
They called her runt, rat, ghost-boy, silent-worm. They tripped her, spat near her, shoved her during drills.
She never cried. Never yelled.
She watched.
Waited.
When they beat her, she memorized where their strikes came from.
When they mocked her, she studied the way they moved.
By the end of the first week, she could block three out of five blows. By the second, she could land one of her own.
Kael noticed.
One night, after drills, Asha sat alone sharpening her wooden blade with a rock.
Dagon appeared in the doorway, arms folded.
"You're not dead yet."
"Almost."
"Good. You bleed, you grow. Pain is how steel learns its shape."
He knelt beside her. For a moment, neither spoke.
Then he handed her something.
A small cloth bundle. Inside: a real dagger, plain but sharp.
"Don't let anyone see it," he said. "And don't use it unless you're ready to kill."
She looked up at him. "Why are you helping me?"
His face darkened.
"Because I've seen too many girls die screaming. You're the first one I've seen who didn't."
He stood.
"Train harder than the rest. Hide who you are. If anyone finds out... even Kael won't protect you."
Asha nodded.
"I'll kill them first."
Dagon grinned.
"That's my girl."
That night, Ash fell asleep on a straw pallet, surrounded by boys who would kill her if they knew the truth.
But for the first time since Virehold, she dreamed not of fire...
But of steel.