"He who chases coin will find himself the debtor of his own soul. To chase less is to owe less." — The Tao of Idleness, Book 4, Verse 23

Outside the casino, the Eldhaven night was quiet.

After all the excitement that Jorgen’s aborted crucifixion had brought, the locals had obviously decided to shut up shop for a good old-fashioned gossip for the evening.

It didn’t take much investigation to locate Lia sitting alone on the rim of a fountain in the town square, her head bowed, shoulders slumped. Although, for a moment, I didn’t recognise her. For the first time since we’d met, she didn’t look like a relentless, undaunted Warrior. She looked . . . worn.

For a moment, I stood watching her, unsure how I wanted to play things. I didn’t think we were exactly at the stage of our relationship where a ‘heart-to-heart’ would be appreciated, but it didn’t seem like anyone else was looking to step into that particular breach.

Slowly, giving her plenty of a chance to tell me to ‘fuck off’ if she wanted, I moved to sit down next to her. Well, not ‘next’ to her. I’m not stupid. But close enough for her to be able to reject my overtures in an effective but non-lethal manner.

Lia didn’t move.

She didn’t even glance up. Then her shoulders shook slightly, and I realised she was crying, the sound muffled as if she was trying to hold it in. And failing.

Oh, Christ. This was very much not my area of expertise. I was all for a bit of supportive loitering in silence, but I was really not sure what I was supposed to do with a sobbing, lethal Warrior . . .

I readjusted my position on the edge of the fountain, scooting up a touch closer to her. I still didn’t say anything. If there was one thing I’d picked up from the Great Slacker, it was that, sometimes, not being the first person to speak was the way forward.

So I just sat. Listening to the trickling water of the fountain and her quiet, broken breaths.

And then, because Great Slacker of no Great Slacker, I am very much not able to handle silence, I ended up pushing out a tentative, “Rough day?”

Lia’s response was a bitter laugh, and a swipe at her eyes with her sleeve. “You could say that.” But then nothing else.

But never let it be said that your Boy Brook doesn’t know when to quit. “Look, I’m not trying to pry or anything, but . . . you don’t have to brood on all of this alone, you know? Whatever’s going on here, it’s not all on you to fix.”

She laughed again, but there wasn’t an awful lot of joy it. “You don’t get it, do you? It’s always been on me. Just me. And for my whole life.” Lia looked up at the sky, her eyes streaming. “Do you have any idea what it’s like, from the moment you are born, to already owe a debt so large you aren’t ever going to get out from under it? And then to spend every day of your life working as hard as you can just so that a hole someone else dug for you doesn’t get any bigger?”

I didn’t. Not really. But I did feel I had experience in life not working out the way that I would have hoped. I might not have spent years labouring under an inter-generation debt, but I definitely felt I could swap ‘being fucked over’ by your nearest and dearest stories until the cows came home.

I opened my mouth to point this out, but she beat me to it.

“My father . . . he’s always been like this. The debts. The gambling. The schemes. I don’t think he has another way to be.” Lia shook her head, her face twisting as if she’d bit into a whole bushel of lemons. “As soon as I was old enough to stand, it was like my only purpose was to earn enough to keep his head above water. You know what my earliest memory is? Running betting slips for him – can you imagine? A five, six-year-old trading scribbled pieces of paper for a lollipop?”

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

Okay so that is slightly worse than my dad never turning up to my football matches. She can have that one.

“And then, once I was old enough to swing a weapon, he started to sign me up for contracts. For Dungeon Delves. Escort missions. Things that scared the life out of me at first. But after a while . . . you get numb, don’t you? You stop thinking about the dangers. You stop caring. Because if you care, you lose something of yourself, don’t you? If you’re just a tool, then it’s not you doing it. That’s how I made sense of it all. It’s not ‘me’ that’s the Dark Wren. That’s a weapon the Empire can wield however it wants. Not me. Everything I have done is nothing to do with me.”

Lia paused them, her eyes locking onto mine. “You’re still new in this land, James. You have absolutely no idea what it’s like to be tangled up with the Empire. Don’t get me wrong, the Rebellion is no better, but . . . ” she shivered at that. “There’s so much blood under the bridge, and all of that is dictated by a debt I never chose and can never – ever - pay off.”

“Doesn’t sound easy,” I said. The Empathic Wonderdog that I am.

“Easy? Nothing about my life has ever been ‘easy’. Every level, every bit of power I have . . . it was all forced upon me. I didn’t get to choose this path. My dad did. But only because being a Warrior was the most lucrative thing he could think of me to be. Because being like this makes me useful. Because he could sell me to the highest bidder. I guess I should be grateful he didn’t see a different path for me . . .”

Yeah, I didn’t have anything I wanted to say about that.

“And now you!” Lia turned to me, her eyes flashing. Fuck! How was this my fault! “You just stroll into this land, bumbling your way up the levels like it’s some kind of game. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. You’re going catch up to me soon enough, aren’t you?” There was a note of resentment in her voice, but beneath it, I thought I heard something else. Regret, maybe. “And you won’t even have to dirty your hands like me for a moment, will you!”

“I mean, I wouldn’t say I’m strolling,” I said, lamely. “Sauntering vaguely upwards, perhaps.”

Lia let her gaze fall back to the ground, and she whispered something. I didn’t quite hear it, so I leaned a little closer, and she said it again.

“Do you know the worst part?”

I had thought seeing your dad crucified in the city centre probably might be right up there, but I sensed now wasn’t the time to mention it.

“The worst part of it all is that after a while, you stop questioning. You just accept it. You do what you’re told. You take the contracts. You follow the orders. And you hand the cash over to your dad so that he can pay one loan shark off whilst borrowing from another. I used to think that one I grew up, I’d only take on contracts that were fair and that didn’t hurt innocent people. But that line . . . it blurs. You take one bad job, and it becomes easier when the next one comes around. Then, before you know it, you’re doing things you swore you’d never do. And then it isn’t a choice anymore. It’s an inevitability.”

I didn’t know what to say. I’d never seen Lia like this. Vulnerable. Exposed.

She continued, her voice barely more than a whisper. “There are things I’ve done . . . things I’ll never be able to undo. People I’ve hurt. Families I’ve broken. And all because my dad sold me to the Empire when I didn’t have any say in the matter. Just for the money.”

It was easy to think of Lia as this invincible force, a Warrior who could take on anything – I thought Berker would agree with that. But sitting here beside her, I saw a very different side to her. She was a young woman who’d been worn down, chipped away piece by piece.

“Why stay?” I asked softly. “Why keep doing all this, if it’s breaking you like this?”

“Because I don’t have a choice!” I jumped up at her angry shout. “I’ve never had a choice! If I run away, the debt doesn’t disappear! The Empire doesn’t disappear, and it certainly doesn’t forget. They’ll come for me, and they’ll come for anyone I care about.” She glanced at me, her expression hard. “I’m not putting that on anyone else.”

A silence settled between us, broken only by the sound of the fountain trickling.

And then, suddenly, her expression shifted. The anger in her eyes bloomed into something darker. And into something profoundly more dangerous.

“You know what?” Lia said, her voice an unsettling growl. “Maybe it’s time I stopped playing by their rules.”

“What do you mean?”

She stood up, her jaw set, her eyes blazing with determination. “The moneylender. The one who has my father wrapped around his finger. The one who’s kept us in this mess for years. I’m going to do what I should have done years ago. I’m going to kill him.

Before I could respond, she turned and walked away, leaving me stood by the fountain.

And just like that, the stillness of the night was shattered.