The Seventy-Third

In the Abyss, you don't get a name. You get a hot iron to the flesh.

My warlock father took one look at my thin human blood, called me a bad batch, and sold me to the demon lines for three wretched crossbows. I was built to rot in the camp muck—a ditch where the old iron-hides don't waste breath on mercy. Down in those tents, the math is crude: you either carry the weight, or you feed the crows.

They stripped me of everything and left me with a number. The Seventy-Third.

To stay off the butcher's block, I had to choke down their brutal drills and prove my wits could cut deeper than an overseer's cleaver. A man has to be realistic out here—no one is indispensable, and the mud doesn't care who it swallows.

But you can't buy cold, concentrated malice for three cheap bows. You can't trade away the raw spite that keeps a man breathing when career soldiers are drowning in their own blood. As long as my calculations hold, I keep my head.

The rules change with every breath, and a single slip puts you under the axe. Let's see who bleeds first.