Chapter Text
The slums of Deivra never slept. They didn’t rest, or breathe, or pause to weep for the broken lives buried in their alleys. They festered. They writhed. The buildings leaned like drunks, stacked stone and rotting wood stitched together with rusted nails and desperate prayers. The air was a soup of piss, sweat, and smoke from cooking fires burning scrap. Children coughed like dying animals. Rats lived better than some of the people. And under it all—under the grime and rot—lurking like a shadow beneath the filth, ruled a man called Laughing Jack.
No one laughed when they said his name.
Not even Jack.
They said Laughing Jack cut out his own tongue just to prove he could still make people scream without it. That he once flayed a tax dodger and nailed the skin to the tavern doors. That he burned a rival alive in a barrel of pitch, then made his men drink the ashes in their wine. Truth or myth, it didn’t matter. Jack ruled the slums with fear, and fear didn’t need facts.
Deivra’s underbelly had its gods. Jack was one of them.
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Aven Belherd didn’t believe in gods. He believed in fists. Blood. Grit.
His back hit the dirt hard, and the sting of it snapped his head into focus. The boy on top of him—a lean, older teen with broken teeth and eyes like gravel—slugged him in the ribs again. The crowd around them jeered, forming a half-circle of shadows lit by the flicker of oil lamps stuck in broken bottles.
Aven rolled, throwing his shoulder into the teen’s chin. A short, meaty crack followed. The boy reeled. Aven climbed on top and started swinging. No rhythm, no technique, just raw, pounding rage. His fists split knuckles on the other teen’s jaw, forehead, throat.
“Enough!” barked the fight handler, a gaunt man with a tattoo of a cracked chalice on his throat. He tossed a coin purse at Aven’s feet. “Get outta here, rat.”
Aven didn’t reply. He just spat blood, snatched the purse, and limped through the maze of scrap and shouting. Later that night, when Ayla was deep in uneasy sleep, he’d slip the purse into her ragged satchel under the mattress.
She never saw the bruises. Or pretended not to.
She also never asked where the coins came from.
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Aven had never been farther than the Cracked Tooth Tavern. It sat three blocks from the hole he called home, which was exactly two blocks farther than he liked to go. Fifteen, medium height, thick brown hair cropped close to his skull, and piercing green eyes that always seemed too old for his face. The same eyes as his sister, Ayla.
She was twenty-two. Too young to be this tired. Her beauty still lingered beneath the layers of resignation, smudged makeup, and bruises she didn’t explain. She worked the night crowds for survival. Aven knew. The streets weren’t kind, and kindness didn’t pay.
Their bond was stitched together by silence and survival.
“Keep your head down,” she’d whisper like a mantra. “Don’t look at them. Don’t talk to them. And never touch a sword.”
That last one always cut deeper.
Because he couldn’t help it.
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The voice began when he was seven. A broken broomstick shaped like a sword. One moment of make-believe. Then the voice.
It didn’t speak like a man. It howled like instinct given form. Cut. Spill. Feed. Aven had dropped the stick and ran home screaming. Ayla didn’t laugh. She cried, then slapped him so hard he forgot how to breathe. Afterward, she held him so tightly he thought his ribs might crack.
“Promise me,” she whispered. “Never again.”
But it was already too late. Something ancient had slithered into his mind.
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The more he grew, the worse it became.
Every time he passed a vendor’s blade or saw a thug swaggering with a weapon on his belt, the voice returned. Not just as words. As pressure. It slithered beneath his skin, whispering in his ear, clawing at his spine. Even sticks became dangerous. Even jagged metal poles. It didn’t matter. Anything sword-shaped summoned it.
He feared it. Fought it. Wanted it.
He had no name for the thing inside him. Only that it was hungry. Not for food. For violence. For carnage. For Bloodshed. And it didn’t wait for permission.
---
The Belherd siblings lived in a ruined loft above a collapsed cobbler’s shop. One curtain divided their sleeping spots. One cracked mirror hung beside a bowl used for both washing and vomiting. Water came from a pipe two blocks over that sometimes flowed brown. Meals came from scraps, moldy bread, or—on lucky nights—the silent weight of copper slipped into Ayla’s purse.
Aven fought. Not in rings or sanctioned pits. In dirty back alleys. Behind taverns. Anywhere he could trade pain for coin. There was no glory in it. No crowd that cheered. Just grunts, spit, and the wet snap of knuckles.
He fought because he had to. And maybe, just maybe, because it dulled the edge of that voice. Bruises were easier to bear than madness.
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That night, Ayla came home early. Her lips were thin, eyes sharp. She moved stiffly.
“He’ll be at the Tooth,” she said. “The one from last week.”
Aven didn’t need more. She meant the man who followed her down two alleys. The one who said things with his eyes even before his mouth did.
“You want me to—?”
“No.”
But Aven followed anyway.
He knew every roof, every ladder, every path between shadows. He watched her from above as she slipped through the maze of filth and firelight, moving like prey in the den of wolves. His body buzzed. The voice stirred.
The Cracked Tooth leaned like it was ready to collapse. Inside: smoke, sweat, ale, and curses. A haven for the broken and brutal.
Ayla stood at the bar. So did he.
The man.
Big. Dirty-blonde hair. Filthy nails. Laugh like rusted nails scraping iron. He reached for her. She backed up. He laughed louder. Then he grabbed her hair, snapping her head back.
Aven saw the sword.
Short. Scarred. Hanging off his hip.
He didn’t even have to touch it.
The voice howled.
TAKE IT.
HOG TIE HIM TO THE CEILING WITH HIS OWN ENTRAILS
His feet moved. Through the door. Across the filth. Ayla’s eyes widened—pleading.
“Aven, NO!”
His hand reached for the hilt.
The world narrowed.
Everything else faded.
His fingers brushed metal.
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