I don’t cheer.
I don’t blink.
I just sip engine-filtered blackroot and wait for the point where one of them screams in thatfinalkind of way. The kind you can’t fake.
Because that’s justice on Jurtik. Ain’t nothing written down. Just pain, and how well you deliver it.
The big guy wins—barely. Rips the other’s ear clean off and holds it up like a trophy. His mouth opens, ready for some kind of war cry, but I raise a hand.
Silence drops like a guillotine.
“Crow calls guilt,” I say, voice low, thick, ragged from smoke and years of dust. “Pit gives trial. ButIjudge.”
The big man sneers. “He stole rations, Red Eye. That’s death.”
“Maybe.”
I rise slow. The armor creaks—a mess of burn-plated gauntlets and old Alliance plates I tore off a corpse three winters back. The left pauldron’s still got the insignia. Sometimes I think about ripping it off. Most days I leave it.
Just so they remember.
I step into the sand, boots sinking deep. The crowd backs away without being told. No one touches Red Eye’s shadow.
I look the bastard in the eye.
“You took his food?” I ask.
“He took mine first!”
“He have a mouth to deny it?”
The man glances at the corpse. Shrugs. “He had his chance.”
I nod.
Then I punch him.
Hard. In the throat.
He goes down choking, clawing at the dust like it owes him something. I let him wheeze. Let themallwatch.
“Justice ain’t revenge,” I say to the crowd. “Justiceain’tpanic.”
I turn to them, voice rising like a blade unsheathed.
“It’s order.”
They nod. Murmur. A few even salute. Because they know what happens to those who don’t.
I don’t rule by mercy. I rule by survival. And survival means fear. Discipline. Loyalty. My word—clean or bloodstained—is law out here. And Ikeepit.
Always.
Later, I sit alone in my tower.
It’s not a real tower. Just a repurposed refinery silo that’s half-collapsed and smells like old coolant and bad decisions. But it’s mine.
The wind outside howls like the dying. Inside, it’s quiet. For once.
