As Abo turned from the boy's body, Kalayo's vision blurred. The child's small frame—limp, unmoving—stirred something old and savage in him.
A memory he couldn't bury.
A scream tore from his chest, raw and broken.
"You heartless bastard!"
Kalayo's scream ripped through the air as he charged, bolo raised, all thought drowned in fury.
Abo turned. Calm. Too calm.
He moved just enough—the blade hissed past his ear.
In the same breath, his bolo swept upward. Quick. Precise.
A sharp sting split Kalayo's arm.
Kalayo stumbled back, gripping the wound, vision swimming.
"How?" he gasped, chest heaving. "How the fuck do you always see me coming?"
Abo moved like a shark in bloodied water—slow, sure, circling.
"Your hatred makes you predictable, Kalayo. I can hear your rage from a league away."
Kalayo's jaw clenched.
"Why would you kill that innocent child?"
Kalayo's voice cracked with raw anguish. "Do you need to haunt me with his ghost that badly?" him. Why?"
Abo tilted his head, listening to Kalayo's heartbeat.
A slow, unsettling smile crept across Abo's scarred eyes.
"Maybe I didn't like the way he cried. Maybe I just wanted to see what sound he'd make when he died."
Kalayo's stomach twisted.
"Or maybe," Abo whispered, "I wanted you to see your brother all over again."
"You fucking animal—!"
Kalayo lunged, swinging hard. Wild. Unrelenting.
Abo met him blow for blow, blades clashing, the air between them thick with heat and steel.
Their feet tore up mud and blood. Sparks lit the rage in their eyes.
"You remember Init?" Abo murmured between parries. "I do."
A flash of metal. Kalayo barely dodged.
"Little bastard was always smiling. Even when the worms were chewing through his gut."
Kalayo bellowed, eyes burning.
"Don't you dare speak his name!"
Kalayo's roar split the air.
Steel met steel in a blur of movement. Sparks lit their faces like fireflies in the dark.
Kalayo swung with wild strength—slashing, lunging, never letting up.
Abo moved with that same eerie grace, reading each strike by feel, by breath, by instinct.
"You're not fighting me," Abo said, voice calm between the clang of blades. "You're swinging at a ghost only you can see."
"Don't—"
Kalayo's bolo came down like an axe. Abo stepped aside—but not fast enough.
The blade bit deep into his shoulder.
He didn't cry out. Didn't flinch.
Instead, he turned with the blow, cutting a line across Kalayo's side. Blood splattered across the ground, the scent of iron thick in the air.
"You remember it, don't you?" Abo said, breathing harder now. "How we crawled through that swamp, starving."
Kalayo's next strike missed by inches.
"He was chewing the mud toys you made. Thought it was food. That was the last thing he ever tasted."
Kalayo's face twisted.
"You left him too," he growled. "You turned your back same as I did."
"And I made peace with it," Abo said. "You didn't."
Rage took hold. Kalayo charged.
But his swings were too wide now. Too loud.
Abo ducked, stepped in close, and slammed his elbow into Kalayo's gut. The air fled his lungs. He doubled over—
Abo's knee shot up.
But Kalayo caught it.
With a roar, he twisted hard, sending Abo crashing to the ground.
Kalayo didn't wait. His boot came down, hard, into Abo's ribs.
The crack was sickening.
Abo rolled, coughing blood, spitting red into the dirt—but his smile was still there.
"Better," he wheezed struggling up.
"You're finally fighting like you want to kill me."
They rose again. Faces bloodied. Breathing ragged. Hands steady.
The sun climbed behind them, casting their shadows long across the stained earth.
Kalayo said nothing.
But Abo did.
"I remember how cold his little hand felt in mine,"
Abo continued, his voice now an eerie lullaby.
"How his breath got shallow near the end."
Kalayo's hands trembled.
"He whispered your name."
"Stop."
"Right before his eyes went still."
"SHUT UP!"
Kalayo's bolo sank into Abo's side, deep and final.
Abo exhaled softly.
He fell forward into Kalayo's arms, like a brother returning home after a long absence.
His lips brushed Kalayo's shoulder. A breath. A whisper.
"I couldn't tell."
Kalayo froze.
"What?"
But the body in his arms had gone limp.
Only the sound of waves in the distance.
Only the scent of blood.
The world narrowed.
Abo remembered hunger.
Not the dull ache they'd grown used to, but the hollowing kind — the kind that made six-year-old Init eat fistfuls of mud just to feel something in his belly.
He remembered the heat of Init's small hands clutching his own, the boy's whistling gasps of breath.
Kalayo's voice, raw with desperation:
"We need a healer."
So Abo returned to what he knew.
The fighting pit reeked of sweat, blood, and stale bets. Men jeered as the blind boy stepped into the dirt circle again, coins clinking as they placed wagers on how many blows a bony little blind rat could take before falling.
The pitmaster grinned at Abo's broken form — there was always profit in desperation.
Day after day, Abo let grown men break his bones for copper coins. He fought until his body was bruised from head to toe, each breath tasting of blood. Still, the healer's price remained distant as the moon.
One evening, as Abo spat teeth into the dirt, a shadow fell across him. The crowd hushed.
The Datu stood at the pit's edge, his silk robes untouched by filth. He tapped a fingernail against his gold-capped teeth.
"They tell me you fight for a dying boy. How… amusing."
Abo crawled forward, pressing his forehead to the blood-stained earth.
"Please, my lord. My brother—"
"Your brother?" Datu Katio's laughter rang like struck brass. "Let's make this interesting. Bring me these brothers of yours."
His smile showed too many teeth.
"I'll give you a real choice."
When the Datu's men dragged them before his throne, the terms were clear:
"Kill one before the torch burns out, or watch them both die slowly."
A guardsman lit a rush torch and planted it in the dirt. The flame began its steady descent.
Smoke. Fire.
Kalayo shouting. Init crying.
Abo's hands shook.
He had been blind all his life — but never like this. Never so completely.
The world narrowed to the thunder of his pulse, just as it had years ago when a thief pressed a knife to his sister's throat.
"Where's the gold?"
But Abo couldn't tell gold from dirt. He'd fumbled helplessly as his sister choked on her own blood.
Now history twisted like a knife in his gut.
Through the smoke, he couldn't tell their voices apart. Couldn't tell which shape was Kalayo, which was Init.
His arm swung.
A small gasp.
"Brother?"
Then silence.
Now, in Kalayo's arms, Abo understood the truth.
He'd spent years sharpening cruelty like a blade because it was easier to be a monster than to face the terrible accident of that moment.
Better to let Kalayo believe it was deliberate. Better to be hated than pitied.
Abo exhaled — one last rattling breath.
The rising sun painted Kalayo's face in gold and blood.
Somewhere, a bird sang.
Kalayo would live.
And Abo?
Abo would finally rest.