The rest of the night passes in a sleep-deprived haze. As the adrenaline wears off, my body crashes hard. My insides feel hollow and cold, and every pain I hadn’t been feeling before, I feel now. I shouldn’t, because my level up healed all my injuries. But maybe this kind of hurt isn’t entirely physical.

I numbly obey Cyros’s instructions when we make it back to the Guild. Others stop to stare when I step through the door, and I don’t blame them—I’m dyed crimson from head to toe. Cyros quickly ushers me down a set of stairs where there’s water basins with heating spell circles carved into the metal bins, and I climb into one, clothes and all, as the blood begins to stain the waters red.

I lay there, floating in warm nothingness, as Cyros hurries off to speak with Nieve. Halfheartedly, I run my hands through my hair and over my skin. Gore drips from my scalp. Not mine, though. My skin is perfectly smooth, not a scratch on it. I touch my neck, where the bruises should be, but there’s nothing there. Like I didn’t almost die. Like the trauma never happened.

I drift—never asleep, not entirely. But my mind goes blank. I stop registering my surroundings. Then, without warning, I snap back into the moment, and reality crashes down on me.

I sob.

I sit silently.

Finally, I mechanically clean myself with soap and a sponge.

At some point the night turns into morning, and by then I’ve nothing left to feel. I’ve cried and scrubbed it all out.

I sit in the guild hall wearing a borrowed tunic and trousers, my other clothes going through a magical blood-stain-removal cleaning session. Cyros sets some spiced oats with nuts and fruit in front of me; I take one bite without registering the taste, then leave the rest to go cold.

Nieve sits down across from me. “We were able to attend to the scene before anyone else discovered the target’s death. We recovered the pieces Cyros mentioned. There was also a cloak that we took with us that we believe must belong to you.”

Oh yeah. I had lost my cloak in the confusion. I’d forgotten about that. Another mistake.

Nieve waits, but when I remain silent, they continue. “By now the City Guard is aware and investigating. I would suggest you lay low for a time.”

“I’ll leave,” I say. “If the Starlight isn’t a good idea, then I’ll go to another city.”

“Is that so?” They touch a hand to their temple. “With such a mark, I doubt any distance would make much difference for long.”

I touch my own forehead, reminded again of the brand there. Crap, they’re right. It doesn’t matter where I go; the Gods’ Tournament will pull me back here in eight days regardless.

“However,” Nieve says, a faint smile gracing their lips. “I don’t believe such extremes are necessary. You are free to stay here, or leave—wherever you believe you’d draw the least attention in the interim.”

It takes a moment for their words to sink in. “I’m free to leave,” I say slowly. “So does that mean… I passed the test?”

Nieve snorts. “Pass is a strong word. I can at least allow that you didn’t fail. If this were a typical job, you would be collecting no coin for the hit that you butchered—literally.”

I think of the blood, of my knife, of the impact of each strike, and my stomach roils. I swallow, pulling my thoughts away.

“That said, I truly didn’t expect you to go through with it at all,” Nieve says. “And for that, I was proven wrong, and you’ve surprised me—a rarity, which deserves some praise. I am still unsure if the way you chose to prove yourself was out of ardent loyalty, or madness.”

I open my mouth to respond, but they cut me off.

“Please don’t respond to that,” they say, chuckling. “I fear I wouldn’t like the answer. Either way, you have earned access to the Guild and our resources, and so long as you follow our code, you will be accepted here as an apprentice. Congratulations.” They pass my scarf—Gugora’s scarf—back over to me. As the silk shifts beneath the light, I can make out the glow of a spell circle: the same symbol that’s on Cyros’s cloak.

The spell circle that grants admittance into the Guild Hall.

“A bit of advice,” Nieve says. “Choose your next job more wisely if you wish to keep that.”

I marvel at the mark. The gold shape of a gnarled tree fades from view, melting back into the black of my scarf. I actually made it. I’m in.

Despite everything, despite this pervasive hollowness, I feel a spark of hope ignite within me once more.

“So then… do I have access to the next floor?” I ask. “If I want to survive the tournament, there’s some potions I’ll need to prepare.”

“Hm.” Nieve appraises me with a smile. “Driven. I appreciate that. But no matter your need, exceptions cannot be made for Guild members. You currently have access to the base floor, which includes the job board and the general store. No more, no less. If this isn’t sufficient to your needs, you’ll need to earn your access to further areas of the Guild.”

“I think it will be enough,” I say, a little disappointed. There are plenty more interesting and useful things locked out of my reach, still. But if I can afford some of those rare herbs in the general store, then I’ll at least have a few new potions up my sleeve to try.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Slowly but surely, my resolve returns to me once more. I still feel fragile—hollow—like a jack o'lantern with all its guts scraped out. But that flickering flame of defiance remains in me. A possible road to survival. A path back to my revenge. I’m one step closer, even if I had to throw everything on the line to make it this far. I’ll just have to be willing to do this again, and again, and again, until I’ve crawled and scraped my way to the top, bruised and bleeding.

It doesn’t matter if I only survive by a hair’s width margin. All that matters is that I keep surviving.

I turn to Cyros. “You had to borrow stuff for me from the Alchemist Lounge before. Do I have access to it now?”

Cyros looks to Nieve, and they wave him on. “I’m done with her,” they say. “So long as you’re staying in the guild hall, you’re laying low, so whatever you explore is fine with me. And, Sal.”

I pause, already halfway standing up from the table.

“Anyone admitted to the Guild is to be mentored by the individual who invited them. Officially, you are now Cyros’s responsibility. However, he is not yet qualified to apprentice a pupil of his own. If you should wish to speak about anything, you know where to find me.”

A lump forms in my throat, so instead of replying, I just nod. Their sharp eyes follow as I step toward Cyros, then I turn away so I don’t have to see them anymore. Speak about what? Killing a man? Cutting him up into stew meat?

That nervous instinct to laugh takes hold of my chest again, but I fight it down.

I needed to gain experience taking a life, anyway. Now, there will be no hesitation when I confront Maru. I’m one step closer to being able to protect myself—one step closer to revenge.

“Come on,” Cyros says, pulling me out of the dark fog of my thoughts. “The Alchemist general store is this way.”

“Right,” I say. Even if I won’t be able to explore more of the interesting sounding areas, like the magical armory Cyros had let slip before, I should still be able to make some headway on a few of the spells in Lisari’s book. “There’s a few new ingredients I need to pick up.”

He leads me down the stairs to the lower floors, including the washroom I’d been in before. Beyond that are more staircases heading down, and though they’re all unlabeled, so far as I can tell, Cyros seems to know exactly which one to take.

He steps down the stairs, vanishing into the shadows, and I follow. The mark on my scarf seems to flash as my foot hits the bottom step, but nothing stops me from moving forward. We step into a new room.

This one is full of vials and tubes that look like the chemistry equipment in a mad scientist’s lair. Rather than herbs and dry ingredients, all the items behind the sales counter in this room are liquids of varying colors and opacities. I start having Echo Check them all, trying to gauge what I’m working with.

[Potion for enhanced strength. Draught of firebane. Necrotic bonefang poison. Potion of wind walking. Shadow elixir.]

So many things I want to try, so little time.

And money. Mostly money.

I lean against the counter, scanning all the other bottles. I can’t risk missing the one thing that might save my life.

The vendor, a dryad with aspen-patterned skin and yellow leaves for hair, wanders over to me. “Can I help you? If you need me to explain anything…”

Cyros shrugs. “Probably everything. She’s new to potions so she probably won’t even know what she’s looking at.”

“That one,” I say, pointing to a red liquid in a small bottle on the last shelf. “The augment. How much?”

Cyros gives me an incredulous look. “Seriously?”

The vendor grabs the bottle and sets it before me on the counter. It’s the size of a grapefruit.

[Potion Augment,] Echo says. [Efficacy: 98%. When incorporated in the brewing stage, the effects of the completed potion will be magnified.]

It’s exactly what I need to defeat Maru. I’ve won!

“The entire bottle is fifty gold pieces,” the vendor says.

Or maybe I spoke too soon.

“I only have a handful of silvers,” I groan. I glance hopefully over at Cyros.

He shakes his head. “No way. I don’t know why you’d think I have that kind of money, but I’m almost as poor as you.”

“I could sell you a smaller portion,” the vendor suggests. “A thimble is the smallest size we go. That would be one gold piece.”

I groan. “That wouldn’t be nearly enough. And I don’t even have any gold, anyway.”

The vendor shrugs, taking it back over to the wall.

I sigh, disappointed. “Well, can I get some of that underwater potion instead?” I ask.

The vendor takes a different bottle off the wall, this one a swirling blue-green, and sets it down before me. “This one is forty silvers for the bottle, one silver for a thimble.”

That, at least, I can afford. I’ve got seven silvers to my name from working in Iski and Gugora’s shop. “I’ll take five silver’s worth.”

The vendor grabs a smaller vial and takes both potion and container back to some measuring equipment on the back wall, beginning to prepare my order.

“A water breathing potion?” Cyros asks, perplexed. “You planning on going swimming?”

“Nope,” I say. “Did you know that potion actually transforms the water you breathe into air? And that it can do that no matter what kind of water it is—freshwater, saltwater, water filled with dirt. I read about it in my alchemy book. Isn’t that wild?”

Cyros frowned. “I suppose. I mean, that’s the purpose of the spell, so it’s not particularly surprising. But if you’re not planning to go underwater, why do you need it?”

“Experiments,” I say, grinning wickedly. “Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”

The look Cyros gives me indicates that he doesn’t, and I don’t.

The vendor returns with my water potion and I tuck it into a pocket. Before we leave, I look wistfully back at the augment potion with a sigh.

“Sorry,” Cyros says. “I know how much you wanted to check out the advanced draughts down here. You’ll just have to go on jobs and save up enough money the old-fashioned way.”

“I don’t have time for that,” I say. “There’s only eight days until the tournament, and I need to spend them practicing more and making new potions.” I used up basically my whole store during the fight with Enrold. Not to mention, nothing I currently have would be effective against a demigod—not without that augment.

Cyros shrugs helplessly. “Unless you’ve got some rich benefactor I don’t know about, I’m afraid I can’t help.”

“Someone rich?” I perk up. “I do know someone rich!”

Cyros frowns in confusion. “What? You do?” But he seems to understand who I mean even as he asks, and his eyebrows shoot up. “Wait, no. That’s a terrible idea. We’re using Talia to cover up my hit. And she’s a truth-sayer! If you start asking for enormous lumps of cash, she’ll definitely get suspicious. In fact,” Cyros says, “I forbid you from continuing to see her. We planted all the misdirections we needed to, and now you’re a member of the Blackcloaks. She’s dangerous to be around.”

“You forbid me?” I snort. “I don’t think you have any say. Besides, she trusts me. And I don’t need a huge lump of cash. Just enough for some of this potion.”

Cyros grimaces. “She’ll catch on. This is a bad idea.”

I shake my head. “Ye of little faith. Just watch me. I’ll be as subtle as a mouse.”

“Alright,” Cyros says, dubious. “But don’t forget; you’re supposed to be laying low. And you’re my responsibility now. If you do end up risking the Guild, that will fall back on me—and affording that potion will be the least of your worries.”

“Stop nagging. It’ll be fine,” I promise.