They weren't friends.
Not really.
But in the arena, the difference between an ally and a corpse was sometimes just a heartbeat.
And Asha was learning fast that no one survived alone.
Her first was Corin, of course, the cold-eyed dagger from Serathane. He didn't talk unless it was worth saying. He watched everyone and everything, like he was always one step ahead in some invisible game. The other trainees had stopped challenging him after a week. His fights never lasted long. He didn't just win, he dissected.
He never spoke of his past, but Asha had seen the way his hand twitched near his hip whenever a certain guard walked by. She filed that away.
Useful.
The second came as a surprise.
Lira was a scullery slave. She wasn't a trainee — wasn't even allowed in the training yards. But she saw everything.
Slim. Older than Asha, maybe thirteen. Always smelled faintly of soap and old straw. Her hair was shaved close, probably to keep lice away, but her eyes were like flint, hard, dry, ready to spark.
She brought Asha food after bruising sessions. Wrapped her cuts when no one was looking. Once, Asha asked her why.
"Because you're the only one in this pit of piss-blooded worms who doesn't look at me like I'm furniture," Lira said, tying a bandage tight. "Besides… when you get out, I'm hoping you'll burn this place down."
"I won't burn it," Asha replied, quietly. "I'll gut it from the inside."
Lira grinned. "That's the spirit."
Then there was Skarn.
He wasn't human. Not really.
Kael said he was rakka-blooded, some forest kin from the eastern mountains. Short. Broad-shouldered. Pale blue skin like frostbite, with tiny horns along his temples and long, narrow black eyes that never blinked.
He didn't talk much. Just watched. Smiled when people bled. Smiled more when it was him causing it.
During his first arena match, Skarn tore a boy's ear off with his teeth and then offered it to Kael like a dog bringing a gift.
"You keep him in the barracks?" Asha whispered to Dagon.
Dagon shrugged. "You keep snakes in pits. If you need something dead, you let them loose."
Skarn followed Asha around after that. Not because he liked her, exactly but because she didn't flinch when he stared. She stared back.
Sometimes they sat in silence, side by side, while the others trained. He carved runes into bones. She sharpened her blade.
And somehow, that was enough.
The last was the loudest.
Tennic, a boy with dusky violet skin, long ears, and teeth just slightly too sharp. Some offshoot of the Vaelin, Dagon said, desert-born tricksters and sun-singers who worshipped laughter as a god.
Tennic had a joke for everything.
"What's the difference between a Varn officer and a corpse?" he once whispered during drills.
"The corpse is less stiff."
No one laughed harder at his own jokes than he did, except maybe Lira, who pretended she hated him.
But behind the smile, Tennic could move. Fast. Precise. He liked knives the way some people liked music. Had a dozen hidden in his tunic at all times. Once tossed three into the backs of fleeing wolves when the training grounds were ambushed.
"I'm not a killer," he told Asha with a wink. "I'm just a very aggressive pacifist."
She didn't trust him. But she didn't distrust him either.
Tennic was a mirror. A reflection of what Asha might've been in another life.
They didn't call themselves a team.
But the others started noticing the way they gravitated to one another. The way they trained longer. Watched out for each other. Laughed at their own inside jokes.
Even Kael had noticed.
One night, after a brutal team trial where Asha's squad had broken two ribs and cracked a boy's jaw, he leaned against the fence and muttered.
"You're becoming a pack."
"No," Dagon said beside him. "Knives. A pack of knives. Pointed outward."
Kael grunted. "Let's see how long they stay sharp."
The moon sat heavy and round above the training yard, casting pale light across the dust and bloodstains. Most of the other trainees were asleep, bodies slumped on straw mats, groaning through broken dreams.
But not Asha.
Not Corin. Not Lira. Not Skarn. Not Tennic.
They sat just beyond the edge of the barracks, crouched on old crates and broken stone, cloaked in stolen wool and silence. A cooking fire burned low between them, nothing but embers now. The stars stretched out overhead, sharp and infinite.
For a while, none of them spoke.
Then Tennic broke the quiet. Of course he did.
"Skarn, don't take this personally, but if I wake up with my kidneys missing, I'm blaming you."
Skarn didn't even blink. "Your blood smells wrong. I wouldn't eat you."
Lira snorted. "Romantic."
Asha poked at the dirt with a stick. "You ever wonder if we're all dead already?"
They looked at her.
"Like… this place," she continued. "This pit. Maybe it's not a school. Maybe it's just where the dead go to rot."
"Pretty sure hell would have better food," Lira said, rolling her eyes.
Corin, lying back with arms behind his head, said quietly, "If this is hell, at least we're not alone in it."
Silence again.
The fire popped.
Then Tennic looked up, pointing lazily. "See that? That's the Veil Star. My grandmother said the dead use it to find their way home."
"Do you believe that?" Asha asked.
"Nope. But it sounds poetic. She also believed snakes were just really angry ropes."
Lira smiled, despite herself.
"I used to live in a temple," Tennic added after a moment. "Up in the dunes. Real sacred place. Vaulted ceilings, silver bells, and sand everywhere. I stole a priest's robe and wore it for a week before they figured out I wasn't a prophet."
"What happened?" Corin asked.
"They beat me half to death," Tennic said with a grin. "But I got to sleep on feather cushions, so it was worth it."
Asha turned to Lira. "What about you?"
The girl stared at the fire for a long time.
"I don't remember much. Just… cold stone. My mother scrubbed floors in a magistrate's court. My father was hung for stealing a blanket. After that, they sold me here."
"I'm sorry," Asha murmured.
"Don't be. If they hadn't, I wouldn't have learned how to sneak bread from the guards' kitchen." Lira smirked. "Or how to poison their wine."
Skarn leaned forward slightly. "I remember the smell of wet leaves. And teeth. My clan used to hunt by night. We wore masks carved from bark. I was the smallest. They said I'd never kill."
"What happened to them?" Asha asked.
"I killed them."
Everyone went still.
Skarn tilted his head. "They were weak."
Tennic let out a low whistle. "Stars above. Remind me never to arm-wrestle you."
Finally, Corin spoke. "I was born in Silvahar. House Drel. Minor nobility. My uncle sold me to settle a debt with the Faceless Saints. They trained me in silence, in shadows. I killed my first tutor when I was nine."
"Did they deserve it?" Asha asked.
"No," Corin replied. "But I needed to move up."
No one laughed.
Asha looked up at the stars, the constellations unfamiliar here in the south. She wondered if her family had looked up at the same ones. If Halric had named them for her. If Lina had pointed to them in wonder.
"I came from Elaria," she said finally. "Before the Varn burned it. Before the screaming. I was someone else."
They didn't ask for more.
They didn't need to.
They sat together, in the quiet, beneath a sky older than kingdoms, and let the ghosts stretch their legs. They didn't cry. Didn't hug. Didn't promise things would get better.
But they listened.
And in this place, that was something close to love.