The air reeked of blood and wet iron.
Garrik stood at the edge of the sand, the roar of the crowd already muffled in his ears. His thoughts weren't here. Not yet. Not with the man across the field, wiry and small, barely holding the hilt of his little sword. No, Garrik was remembering the day he earned the weapon strapped to his back.
A knight in steel, a mountain of polished pride—that man had cried as his claymore fell from limp fingers. Garrik didn't remember the face. Only the final scream, and the way the armor crumpled beneath the blow. The sword had a name, probably. They all did.
That was a long time ago. Back when he was still fresh.
He remembered the first days as a slave. The whip had cracked. He hadn't liked that.
So he chopped off the slaver's head. Simple. Natural.
The strong live. The weak die.
That was all there was.
But a single strong man meant nothing to a dozen armed with steel. They had come like hounds, pinned him like prey, and brought him here in shackles. That was the price. It always was.
The strong are free. The weak are slave.
He remembered his first fight with Brusk, back in the chamber. No rules. No mercy. Just grit. Brusk was bigger. Just a bit. Enough. Garrik tasted a miserable defeat that day, and Brusk had laughed.
In the end, the strong win. The weak lose.
Always.
Now he stood again, sword in hand, feet sinking slightly into the sand, blood from earlier matches soaked deep into the ground beneath.
Across from him, a man stood—fragile, sharp-eyed, trembling in his skin. He had a kill count of thirty. Thirty lives. All stolen with that toothpick he held in shaking fingers.
Garrik's kill count was fifty.
Their steps closed the distance slowly, the silent ceremony of killers about to test the truth.
The man darted left. Then right. Rolling. Circling. Feints and bait.
The strong attack. The weak run.
The man danced like a ghost, but ghosts didn't bleed. His blade darted, looking for gaps. It found none. Garrik didn't swing. Not yet. He waited. Measured. Not out of mercy, not from arrogance. He was tired of the circling.
Then, with a shift of weight and a deliberate breath, Garrik lunged forward—quick for his size, fast like an avalanche when it knew its path. The claymore swung low and caught the edge of the man's blade.
Steel met steel. The man's sword flew—up, end over end—into the sand, ringing as it landed.
The man's eyes widened, throat twitching. He took a step back.
Garrik saw it. The fear. The hope.
Hope always lingered in the weak.
The strong decide the fate. The weak entitled only to hope.
The man tried to speak. Maybe to plead. Maybe to scream. Garrik didn't wait to find out.
The weak beg for time. But the strong don't wait.
He moved in a single fluid arc, claymore singing as it carved through air, through muscle, through bone.
The man's head rolled.
The weak die. The strong decide how.
The crowd erupted. Roars and cheers rained down like arrows—some in joy, others in loss. Their bets had lived or died in that moment, too. None of that mattered.
Garrik looked down at his weapon.
Fifty-one. The blade had served him well.
But something else called to him now.
There, in the center of the arena, half buried in sand like the bones of a fallen god, was the blade—his sword.
Not his yet.
The claymore of the blind commander. Left behind after his defeat to that cannibal boy, the one who devoured men and vanished for three days. It had lain there for days, untouched. Many had tried to lift it. None with success.
It was bent, its tip curled slightly upward, warped from some unspeakable clash. Golden engravings snaked across the flat of the blade—symbols foreign to this land, etched with artistry no slave could afford and no beast could earn. Curves and lines whispered secrets in a language too beautiful for the bloodied sand.
No one had lifted it. No one could.
Until now.
Garrik dropped his old weapon. Just like that.
The claymore that had fed on countless souls.
Discarded.
The thrown away blade did not call back to its master. And the master had no intention to use it again.
It clattered to the sand with no ceremony. Like bones tossed to dogs.
He approached the fallen titan of a sword. Its weight seemed to hum in the ground, even still. The hilt was dark and smooth, the guard shaped like wings reaching downward.
Garrik crouched. He took it in both hands.
It was heavy—not just in steel, but in something else. Age. Purpose. Memory. Power that didn't belong here. Not in this filth of sweat and screams.
It wept in the sand.
The moment it left the earth, the crowd hushed.
It rose slow, reluctant, like it remembered being wielded by gods and resented being handled by a brute. The weight made Garrik's muscles burn. But he stood straight.
He lifted the blade toward the sky. Light caught its edge and curved down into his face, where sweat mingled with the grin creeping across his lips.
The blade's mirror surface reflected him back. His twisted face. His broken nose. His scarred lips. His body, grotesque and proud. There he was. A monster. A thing of muscle and meat.
And yet...
A strange feeling stirred in him. Like he had stolen something divine. Like the heavens had once bestowed this gift... and then cast it aside.
Now he had plundered it.
The weak are thrown away. The strong are picked up.
His grin remained, but something hollow spread inside his chest. It ached, deep and quiet.
Behind him, in the sand, his old blade lay like waste. Like the bodies he'd carved apart. Forgotten.
A relic of a lesser time.
A grave with no name.