My girlfriend didn't cry when she drove the dagger into my lung. She only checked whether she'd gotten my blood on her shoes.
"I'm sorry, Varen," she said, but her eyes were bright with greed. "There's a bounty on your head. Someone important wants you dead. I don't have a choice."
I lay on the cold concrete, choking on red foam. Above her head floated a hologram: [Value Increased: +5000 SC].
She sold me. The same Sera who cried in my arms a year ago when she thought we were going to die in the Red Zone. The same one whose brother I pulled out of debt, whose medical bills I paid after that first raid. She sold me for a bounty from someone I'd never even seen.
My brother stood beside her. Dorian, the one I'd pulled out of the gutter before the Debut. He looked down at me like I was a line item in a report.
"The Guild gets five percent commission," he muttered to Sera, kicking me in the ribs. "Good opening to the week."
I felt the warmth draining from my hands. The System screamed in my head.
*[WARNING: Life Valuation has reached 0.]*
*[Liquidation Procedure initiated.]*
*[Debt Collectors incoming.]*
I wanted to scream. Not because I was dying. Because I didn't know who. Didn't know *why*. We were high up — not at the top, but high. The Silver Guild, fourth tier, solid Valuation, good contacts. We'd built something. Or so I thought.
Someone decided that was too much.
The pain vanished. Darkness took its place. And then, in that void, a blue error appeared. Not a System message from the gods. Something older. Something that had no business being there.
*[CRITICAL ERROR.]*
*[Anomaly detected: Rage parameter exceeded algorithm scale.]*
*[Activating Hidden Package: "Insider".]*
*[Do you want to restart the market?]*
I didn't hesitate for even a fraction of a second.
YES.
*[Reloading...]*
---
Sera was laughing at something on her phone.
Varen stood at the window and stared at the city. Hands on the sill, forehead almost against the glass. Outside: an ordinary night — streetlights, traffic, someone downstairs arguing on the phone. Normal. Like nothing.
Four minutes and this would be over.
He remembered this night. The three of them had stood in this same spot — him, Sera, Dorian — and watched the city blaze gold and laughed and shouted *what is that, what is that* like kids on New Year's Eve. Thought they'd go through it together. That they were a team.
He turned around.
Pale numbers hung above her head. Almost transparent, like something drawn on air.
*[Sera Nacht. Valuation: 12 SC. Projection +24h: 4,800 SC.]*
Sera put down her phone and reached for the remote. Her hair was a little messy — she hadn't had time to braid it and left it as it was, one clip crooked. A small detail. One of the ones Varen had spent two full years after the Debut trying to forget.
He hadn't forgotten.
"Dorian!" she called toward the kitchen. "It's starting!"
"Coming, relax!"
Varen walked to the counter.
The knife was by the cutting board — ordinary, for vegetables, bought a year ago when the old one went dull. Sera said it was too small. Dorian said too cheap.
He took it and walked into the living room.
Sera didn't look up. She was scrolling through something on screen, thumb moving up and down the remote. Varen sat beside her — close, shoulder to shoulder, the way they always sat. He felt her shift automatically to make room, no look, no thought.
Three years of gestures like that.
He kept the knife at his side, away from her line of sight.
The clock on the wall. 23:56.
Sera muttered something — the film was buffering, it annoyed her like it always did. Varen watched her profile. That one crooked clip. The way she bit her lip when something didn't work the way she wanted.
23:57.
Dorian came in from the kitchen with a can, dropped into the armchair, said something about the internet being slow again, Sera said it was his router, Dorian said hers, both of them laughed.
Varen sat and listened and felt something go very quiet inside him.
Not anger. Something calmer and worse.
23:58.
"There we go," Sera announced with satisfaction and set the remote on her knee.
Varen stood up.
He came around the back of the couch. Slowly, no hurry, like he was heading to the kitchen for water. Sera didn't react — the screen had her, opening credits rolling. Dorian was looking at his phone.
He stopped behind her.
23:58 and forty seconds.
He grabbed her hair with his left hand — hard, no warning, one sharp pull that yanked her head back. Sera cried out and grabbed his wrist with both hands, nails biting into skin, pulling with everything she had.
"What are you— let go— Varen—"
Dorian shot up from the armchair.
"What's—"
"Stay," said Varen. Flat. Dorian stayed.
Sera kept pulling at his wrist. Strong — she'd always been strong, that was one of those things. Varen held, waited for her to tire, didn't let go.
"Let go of me — please — what are you doing — let go—"
The clock. 23:59.
One minute.
Varen pressed the knife to her throat and felt her pulse under the blade. Fast. Scared. Steady.
Sera went completely still.
Silence.
She was breathing through her nose, short and shallow, hands still on his wrist but no longer pulling. Dorian stood by the armchair with a face wiped clean of everything.
"Varen," Sera said. A different voice than usual. Small. "What are you doing."
Not a question. A statement.
Varen said nothing.
Because what was he supposed to say — *because in two years you'll check whether you got my blood on your shoes*?
"Varen, please." Tears ran down her face on their own, no sobbing. "Tell me what happened. Anything — just tell me, we can—"
"Whatever you think is going on—" Dorian started, quiet, careful, like someone talking to a person standing on a ledge. "We can work it out. She hasn't done anything to you, Varen, she's your—"
"I know."
"Then—"
"I know, Dorian."
Silence.
Sera was shaking. Varen felt it through the hand in her hair — steady, small, constant. The pulse under the blade didn't slow.
The clock. 23:59 and thirty seconds.
Thirty seconds.
"Varen," Sera whispered. Almost no voice left. "Please."
That one word. That voice. For a second something in Varen wanted to stop — something stupid and irrational and human — and he clenched his jaw, and remembered the concrete, and the cold in his hands, and his watch in Dorian's fingers.
Twenty seconds.
He drove the knife in.
Not deep — shallow, angled, enough to wound, enough to bleed, not enough to kill. Not yet. Sera wrenched herself sideways so hard she nearly broke free — Varen locked his grip, pulled her back, pressed his palm over her mouth.
The scream became a muffled wail.
"Shh," he said. "Stay with me. Just a little longer."
Dorian lunged.
"Let her go, let her go—"
"Stay." Varen turned to keep him in sight. "Stay back or I push deeper."
Dorian stopped. Breathing hard, hands out in front of him, face red.
"She's dying—"
"She's not."
"She's bleeding, Varen, she's—"
"I know."
The blood was warm on his hands. Sera had stopped fighting — too weak, too scared, too close to the blade. She was shaking all over and crying quietly and saying something under his palm, no words, just sound.
The clock.
Ten seconds.
Varen held her and felt how fast her heart was beating and thought about how for three years that heart had beaten next to his, and how in a moment that wouldn't matter anymore.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Gold poured through the window.
The whole city at once — every screen, every pane of glass, every streetlight shifting to something else. Shouts from below, surprised, excited, *look at that, look*.
The System detonated a wave of notifications in Varen's skull.
*[Welcome to the Soul Market.]*
*[Your Valuation has been calculated.]*
*[Varen Dahl — Starting Valuation: 88 SC.]*
He took his hand from her mouth.
And drove the knife home.
Sera wrenched once, hard, then once more with nothing behind it, then stopped. Blood came in a wide arc — across the couch, across the television screen, up his arm to the wrist. She slid down and he let her and she folded onto the floor and the gold light from the window lay across her and across the blood and across that one crooked clip in her hair.
Dorian didn't scream.
He made a sound that was neither word nor scream — something from deep down, something without a name — and lunged forward and Varen was between them and Dorian stopped, breathing in ragged pulls, eyes that Varen didn't want to read right now.
The System exploded with notifications.
*[You have killed Participant #77,204.]*
*[Achievement unlocked: FIRST BLOOD — SERVER EARTH. Rank: #1.]*
*[Reward: loading...]*
*[Special Reward Package: INSIDER PRIME.]*
*[True Valuation: active.]*
*[Dead Market: active.]*
*[Ability 3: locked — level 10 required.]*
*[Ability 4: locked — level 25 required.]*
Varen closed the notifications.
He looked at Dorian.
His brother stood in the gold light wearing a face Varen had never seen on him — not the confident one, not the one with calculations running behind the eyes. Broken. Plain.
"What did you do," Dorian said quietly. "Varen. What did you do to her."
Outside the city was still screaming gold. But other sounds were starting to come through now. The first sirens. The first shouts of a different kind.
"The System just went live," Varen said finally. "That number above your head is your Life Valuation. When it hits zero, they come for you."
Dorian looked up. At the hologram. At Sera. Back at Varen.
A long moment.
"Asset or liability," Dorian said.
Varen turned.
There was no question in his brother's voice.