Chapter 7: Hunger Rot!!
Hunger caught them before the scouts did. It came quietly at first. A hollow pull under Kael’s ribs. A tremor in Renn’s knees. A sharpness in Vaela’s voice that made every word look for a throat. By the time they reached the old paste lanes, hunger had become a fourth person walking with them.
The paste lanes made hunger physical. Sour vats breathed through cracked lids, and every empty stomach in the group answered with a small, humiliating twist.
Renn’s stomach answered before his mouth did.
GRRRK!
He flinched at the sound like it had betrayed him. Vaela heard it. So did the debt hands near the torn mesh. Hunger had made an announcement for him.
Hunger rot had a color here: green-black mold in the seams, gray paste drying on ladles, children watching food like it might accuse them first. A ladle scraped behind the mesh, and every head turned before pride could stop it.
HISS!
Kael counted the corners before he counted the food. Hooks over the vats, rust beads on the rails, a spill groove leading toward a drain wide enough for a hand.
The lanes sat below the eastern wash vents, where furnace heat leaked through cracked pipes and fed rows of gray fungus grown in troughs of bone dust. Workers used to line here at dawn for measured paste. At night, the sellers locked the fresh barrels behind chain mesh and left the spoiled scrape for rats, children, and anyone desperate enough to fight over rot.
Tonight the mesh was already torn.
The smell hit first: sour fungus, wet ash, old salt, and the sharp stink of bodies that had stood too close to heat for too many hours. Kael’s mouth watered before his pride could stop it. That angered him more than the pain. Hunger made a man simple. It dragged the mind away from plans, away from caution, and pressed it down into the belly where every thought became food or threat.
Three men stood around the breach with weighted clubs. Their arms were wrapped in Black Ledger thread. Not full members. Debt hands. Cheap muscle rented by hunger. One of them held a paste brick and ate with both hands.
Renn stared at it like it was sunlight.
Vaela caught the look.
"Do not drool. It adds weight to your face."
"I am not."
"You are thinking wet."
Kael leaned against a pipe and studied the men. His body wanted food so badly it made the idea of fighting seem clean. That was dangerous. Hunger lied. It told a broken man that one full bowl was worth a death in the gutter.
The biggest debt hand saw them.
He lowered the paste brick and smiled around gray teeth.
"Well. The route girl. The broken child. And the press ghost limping like a half priced miracle."
Vaela sighed. "I hate famous people."
The man tapped his club against his thigh.
THUD!
"Price says alive if convenient. Dead if noisy. Which are you planning to be?"
Kael pushed off the pipe.
Vaela caught his sleeve.
"No."
He looked at her.
"You can barely stand," she said. "And I am not dragging your heavy body if you decide to learn another lesson."
"Renn needs food."
"Renn needs both legs more."
The boy whispered, "I can run."
"You can trip creatively," Vaela said. "Different skill."
The debt hands spread out. One moved toward the left trough. One circled near a stack of empty barrels. The big one came straight, confident because men with food often mistook fullness for strength.
Kael did not rush.
That restraint felt worse than charging. His whole body wanted the paste, wanted the clubmen gone, wanted one clear thing to break after hours of running through filth. But the Root’s warning still sat in him. Severe injury. Misalignment. He could not treat every scrape like fuel and every enemy like a ladder rung.
He let the man come close.
The club swung for his ribs.
Kael stepped inside instead of away.
Bad ribs screamed.
Good choice anyway.
The club struck his back instead of his side.
BANG!
Pain flashed white. The Root stirred, but no chime came. Not enough. Or not hostile enough. Or his body had already learned that kind of strike. Kael drove his elbow into the man’s stomach.
The debt hand grunted.
Kael followed with his forehead into the man’s mouth.
CRACK!
Teeth broke. The paste brick fell.
Renn lunged for it.
Vaela caught him by the collar and yanked him back just before a hook blade cut through the air where his neck had been. The second debt hand snarled and came after her. Vaela met him with irritation sharp enough to cut before her blades did. She slipped under his hook, drove one crescent across the inside of his thigh, then planted her foot behind his ankle and shoved.
RIP!
The man fell screaming. His leg opened red from knee to groin.
"That paste is mine now," she told him.
The third debt hand threw a barrel.
Kael raised both arms.
The barrel hit and broke across him.
CRACK!
Rotten paste splattered over his chest. The smell punched harder than the wood.
Renn gagged.
Vaela looked personally betrayed. "That was food, you waste born idiot."
The third man charged her.
Kael caught the man’s belt from the side and used his own movement to turn him. Strength had little to do with it; angle, desperation, and the extra density in Kael’s legs kept him planted when he should have slid.
The man crashed into the trough face first.
SPLAT!
His head went under spoiled paste.
Kael grabbed the back of his skull and held him down for two breaths.
The man thrashed.
One breath more.
Vaela watched, blades low.
Kael let go before death.
The man rolled away, choking and blind with fungus sludge.
"Mercy?" Vaela asked.
Kael picked up the fallen paste brick and tossed it to Renn.
"Noise control. Dead men get counted. Humiliated men run and confuse the count."
Vaela smiled a little. "That is almost clever."
The big debt hand spat blood and reached for his club again.
Kael stepped on his wrist.
CRUNCH!
The man screamed through broken teeth.
This time the Root answered.
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ KINETIC FRICTION DETECTED: WEIGHTED CLUB IMPACT AND JOINT RESISTANCE
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: 1
--------------------------------------------------------------------
▶ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND: NONE GIVEN
▶ UPDATE COMPLETE: UNALLOCATED EXISTENTIAL SHARDS → 12
====================================================================
Kael breathed through the pulse behind his eyes.
One shard.
Not enough to celebrate.
Enough to confirm danger still had rules. Renn ate too fast. Vaela slapped the back of his head.
"Slow. You vomit, I charge you for the wasted paste."
"With what money?"
"Future money. I am patient when debt is funny."
Kael took half the paste brick when Renn offered it. He did not want to take from a child with broken fingers, which meant he had to. Pride was easier to carry than a fainting body, and it got men killed in holes like this. Staying alive was not nobler than dying hungry. It was only harder to explain to the part of him that still hated taking from smaller hands.
The paste tasted like damp ash and old socks.
His stomach accepted it like treasure.
For three breaths, no one chased them. They crouched behind the torn mesh with stolen food in their mouths and blood under their nails. It was almost a meal. That almost made it dangerous. Comfort, even ugly comfort, invited the body to slow down.
Vaela did not allow it.
She ate standing, eyes on both lane mouths, blades tucked against her forearms.
"Chew faster," she said.
Renn mumbled through paste. "You said slow."
"I changed the lesson. Try to survive the curriculum."
A thin woman appeared at the torn mesh, saw the fallen debt hands, and froze with an empty bowl in both hands. Kael looked at the bowl, then at the paste left in the broken barrel. Vaela followed his gaze and clicked her tongue.
"Do not start collecting mouths."
Kael broke a small piece from the paste brick and tossed it toward the woman. She caught it badly, almost dropped it, then clutched it to her chest and ran without saying thank you.
"That was stupid," Vaela said.
"Probably."
"Hungry people talk."
"Then let them talk while chewing."
The woman did not thank him. Her teeth were already working. That was better. Gratitude wasted breath; chewing kept a witness alive.
Vaela stared at him like she wanted to cut that thought out and examine it. Footsteps sounded from the lane behind them.
Not scouts.
Too many chains.
A group of haulers entered the paste lane, dragging furnace links across their shoulders. At their center walked a broad man with a ruined left shoulder strapped tight under rust chain. His face was split with old scars, and he was laughing despite the two collectors beating him with short clubs.
One collector shouted, "Orrek Sain, kneel and the debt doubles clean!"
The broad man spat blood and laughed harder.
"Make it triple. I want the number to look impressive when I ignore it."
Vaela went still.
Kael watched the man take another club to the ribs without dropping.
THUD!
Orrek Sain did not kneel.
For the first time that night, Kael forgot his own hunger. The paste sat heavy in his stomach, already becoming strength or sickness. His wounds had not closed. His hands still burned.
But watching Orrek take the beating with laughter in his mouth did something stranger than food. It reminded Kael that refusal had other shapes. His had been quiet until it broke the press. Orrek’s was loud enough to make collectors angry before the fight even started.
The collectors around Orrek had not noticed Kael yet.
That would change soon.
Everything in Furnace Sink Nine changed once blood learned a new direction. Kael swallowed the last of the paste and tasted smoke, salt, and trouble coming. Above them, Furnace Sink Nine kept ringing its ugly bells, turning every breath into borrowed time and every shadow into a possible buyer.