Stratt

  The Call

  The fighting hall did not sleep.

  Even at dusk, when most of Lowreign dimmed its lamps and sealed its gates, this place breathed like a wounded animal—slow, labored, resentful. Steam hissed through cracked pipes. Iron beams rattled overhead like old bones. A low chant rolled across the arena floor as the crowd pressed in, hungry for spectacle, for hurt, for someone else’s brokenness.

  And at the center of it all stood a short, muscular man, wringing blood from his wrapped knuckles.

  Stratt.

  Not a surname. No title. Just the name he had claimed long ago—a word he believed belonged to a mythical instrument of thunder and rage. It suited him. Or so people said. The legend was always larger than the man, though even the legend underestimated him.

  His vintage black band tee stretched tight across his compact frame, clinging like a second skin. The cotton had survived three bouts and a thrown chair. Stratt made sure it did. He paid too much for these shirts, trusted only one old seamstress to repair them, and would sooner break a jaw than tear a sleeve.

  He cracked his neck, pushed his long braided hair back and rolled his shoulders as the next fighter limped out through the opposite gate. The man was twice Stratt’s height, covered in steel plating and tattoos of dead factions. His eyes gleamed with drugfire.

  The crowd roared.

  Stratt simply blinked.

  All he saw was the man’s heartbeat—too fast, too scared, too desperate. Stratt hated that. Violence wasn’t the problem; fear was. Fear made people sloppy, stupid, and cruel. Fear forced hands that didn’t want to harm. He felt it every time he stepped into this ring: the ache of a world constantly pushed into ugliness it never chose.

  The bell clanged. The tall man charged.

  Stratt didn’t move until the last possible heartbeat. Then he stepped sideways—a blur of precision—and drove his shoulder into the man’s ribs. Bone cracked like splintered stone. The giant crumpled, gasping. Stratt caught him before he hit the ground, softly, carefully.

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  “Stay down,” Stratt murmured.

  The words were gentle, almost apologetic. He lowered the man as if placing a friend into bed.

  The crowd howled in triumph. Stratt felt nothing. Their cheers slid off him like rain. He hated the celebration of hurt—hated it so deeply that sometimes it made his hands shake. Not from weakness, but from sadness.

  The announcer entered the pit, shouting Stratt’s name again and again. Coins flew. Drinks spilled. People chanted for more.

  Stratt climbed out of the ring without looking back, pushing open the door to the fighters’ corridor. Other fighters congratulated him, impressed by the speed of the match. He didn’t hear their words.

  Because then it hit him.

  A pulse—sharp, buried, and ancient.

  It struck behind his sternum like a fist made of lightning. His vision flashed white. Metal groaned in his ears. His knees buckled; the world tilted sideways. The collapses always came without warning, but this… this was different. Deeper. Hungrier. The pulse echoed through his bones like something calling him by a name he didn’t know he had.

  Stratt caught himself against a wall, breath shuddering.

  He did not bruise. His body did not fail. He could tear apart a reinforced steel door with his bare hands without even flinching.

  But sometimes… sometimes it felt like a piece of him was being dragged somewhere else. Somewhere below. A place he did not want to remember.

  “Stratt?” a voice called. “You alright?”

  Doc, the hall medic, jogged toward him, worry creasing his face. He had seen every kind of injury, but Stratt’s episodes left him helpless.

  Stratt forced a grin. “Just tired.”

  Doc snorted. “You don’t get tired.”

  “Maybe today… I do.”

  The medic opened his mouth to argue—but the lights overhead flickered. Once. Twice. The steam pipes hissed with a guttural rattle.

  Stratt stared up.

  That pulse again—distant but unmistakable. Something beneath the city was stirring. Doc didn’t feel it. No one did. But Stratt felt it in the gaps between heartbeats, in the echo behind his ribs.

  Like the world itself had knocked once, asking if he was awake.

  He straightened. The trembling faded. His vision cleared.

  “Take the night off,” Doc urged. “You’ve done enough.”

  Stratt nodded, though he already knew he wouldn’t sleep. He rarely did after a collapse—he rarely did at all.

  Outside, night wind scraped at the hall doors like a restless animal. He pushed them open, almost tearing them from their hinges. Cold air swept over him. Lowreign sprawled below the mountain, its lights flickering like dying embers.

  Somewhere beyond the city walls, in the wastelands where horrors walked, another pulse answered the one he’d felt.

  Two beats. Synchronized. Calling each other.

  Stratt rested a hand against his chest.

  “What is happening?” he whispered.

  The city did not answer. The wind whistled through metal grates. Distant bells tolled. A train wailed from an upper-tier track. And far beneath the earth, too deep for any normal man to hear, something old moved.

  Stratt stiffened, his breath catching.

  For a single heartbeat, the whole world seemed to hold its breath.

  Then—thump.

  He felt it, like a hand pushing upward from under the ground.

  He turned toward the waters, toward the unreachable land of the Slaughter Zone lost beyond the fog. He did not know if the sensation came from that cursed place, but for the first time in his life, Stratt felt afraid.

  Not for himself—but for everyone else.

  He took a single step into the cold night.

  The Quiet Beast had been stirred. The pulse beneath the world was calling his name.