The wraith’s voice cuts through the chaos once more.
“Combatants are reminded: only the individual who lands the killing blow shall claim the bounty reward.”
The crowd ripples. Everyone draws their weapons.
“To marked targets,” the wraith says, its hollow gaze seeming to settle directly on me despite the distance, “survive the cycle and double your points… or be harvested.”
Then, he disappears.
And pandemonium erupts.
44
The crowd surges toward me in a violent wave. They brandish their weapons, hunger and greed painted on their expressions. Not a single person hesitates, driven by the prospect of one hundred and fifty points in one swoop.
I’m not sure I would, either.
“Run!” Moe screams.
I seize her wrist and yank her after me just as the first blade slices through the air where my neck had been. Metal whistles past my ear. Another strike comes from the side, and I twist away on instinct, my elbow driving into someone’s jaw hard enough to send him sprawling into the fighters behind him.
We bolt through the market.
Whatever order the market once had vanishes instantly. Stalls overturn as bodies slam into them in pursuit. Goods scatter across the ground—fruit, weapons, scraps of cloth—trampled beneath boots as fighters shove each other aside in their desperation to reach me first. The wraith merchants vanish in wisps of smoke, abandoning their stalls without protest.
A knife spins toward us.
I shove Moe down.
It whistles over her head and buries itself in the wall ahead.
“This is insane!” she gasps.
“Of course Aimaxion would notice something amiss with my advancement,” I say, quickly out of breath. “It knows someone of my level couldn’t possibly reach this far.”
A man lunges from my left, swinging a rusted cleaver with wild greed in his eyes.
I duck beneath it and drive my fist into his throat. He gags, stumbling backward, but another takes his place immediately, this one with a spear. I wrench the shaft aside and slam my forehead into his nose. Cartilage crunches. Blood sprays.
Moe serves as my eyes where I can’t see, directing me where to hit and when to dodge.
More people are upon us. We run faster.
The streets of the market twist into narrow paths between broken structures, but some fighters know the terrain better than we do. They appear from every direction—vaulting from rooftops, pouring from alleys, emerging from behind collapsed walls.
Too many. Far too many for just one person to handle; especially since some of them are at much higher levels than me.
“Nyk, behind?—!”
I turn just in time to see a woman leap from a crumbled balcony above, daggers in both hands.
I seize the shadow beneath a shattered cart and rip it upward.
The darkness lashes around her ankle.
It grasps onto her but the shadow flickers in and out of existence, my control feeble over it.
But it is enough.
