Chapter 89: The Welcome
Chapter 89: The Welcome
The room was smaller than he remembered.
Alex stood in the doorway for a long moment, his hand still resting on the rough wood, his body heavy with exhaustion.
The shared room was exactly as they’d left it—the two straw beds pushed against opposite walls, the small window letting in the afternoon light, the familiar smell of old sweat.
But there was a layer of dust over everything now, a thin grey film that spoke of weeks of absence. The air was stale, untouched, waiting.
He stepped inside. The door creaked shut behind him. For a moment, he just stood there, listening to the distant sounds of the training yard—the clatter of wooden swords, the bark of Akosa’s commands, and the strained grunts of men. It was strange, hearing those sounds again. They were the sounds of his old life, the life he’d had before Macedonia, before the crocodile pit, before the void. It had only been a few weeks, but it felt like ages ago since he’d left.
He walked to his bed. The blanket was rumpled, the way he’d left it. He slapped the straw mattress a few times, watching the dust puff up into the pale light, then dropped onto it with a sigh that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than his chest.
"Home," he said. The word hung in the air, strange and unfamiliar. He turned the thought over in his mind, testing its weight. "I guess."
He rolled onto his side, facing the wall. The plaster was cracked, the same cracks he’d stared at a thousand times before. But now they seemed different. More distant. Like he was seeing them through someone else’s eyes.
The system UI pulsed at the corner of his vision, patient and waiting. He opened it with a thought, pulling up his stats.
[Sands of Fate System Level 4
Host: Human
Name: Alex Norman
Skills: Temporal Dilatation Lv3, Blade Work Lv2
Points: 90/10,000
Status: Fatigued]
The points were low. He’d been inconsistent with the daily tasks, missing them a few times during the journey, and completely during the recovery. The system had deducted its penalties silently, the numbers ticking down without comment. He stared at the [90/10,000] for a long moment. It felt like a mountain he couldn’t climb.
He closed the stats window. Then, almost against his will, he opened the mission prompt. The one from "Fate". The one that had been burned into his mind since the void.
[Mission Prompt]
[Goal: Upgrade to Level 10.]
[Required Points: 100,000.]
[Current Points: 90.]
The numbers were astronomical. Impossible. He stared at them, feeling the weight of them settle onto his chest like a physical thing. One hundred thousand points. It wasn’t a goal. It was a sentence.
He closed the UI entirely, letting the golden light fade from his vision.
The sounds of the training yard had faded, replaced by the distant murmur of the city beyond the ludus walls. Somewhere out there, people were still celebrating his return.
But here, in this small, dusty room, Alex was just a man lying on a straw bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to remember what it felt like to be normal.
He turned onto his back. His body ached, but it was a good ache—the ache of a body that had fought and survived. His eyes grew heavy. The weight of the mission prompt was still there, pressing down on him, but it was fainter now, blurred by exhaustion.
He closed his eyes.
Sleep came slowly, dragging him down into a darkness that was, for once, quiet. No void, no entity, no voice speaking like mountains shifting. Just the soft, familiar silence of a room he used to know.
And for now, that was enough.
---
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The new slave was chained to a post at the edge of the courtyard, his wrists bound behind him, his grey eyes fixed on the men training in the ring. He had been there since his arrival, watching.
The men of Ludus Ignatius had formed a loose circle around two fighters—the lean man Gaius had once insulted, and another gladiator.
Their wooden swords clattered and scraped against each other, their feet shuffling through the sand, their grunts of exertion filling the air. It was the same rhythm the ludus had always had—steady, disciplined, familiar.
But the slave watched it all with hollow eyes and a face utterly devoid of interest. He didn’t look impressed. He didn’t look bored. He just looked... empty. Like a man who had seen everything the world had to offer and found none of it worth his attention.
Spartacus noticed. He stood at the edge of the ring, his arms crossed. He threw a glance at the slave, then another, then a third. The grey-eyed figure didn’t react.
Oseka sidled up beside him, following his gaze. "He looks a bit strange, doesn’t he?" he said, his voice low.
"I guess," Spartacus replied.
"He looks bored." Oseka tilted his head. "Like he’s seen better."
"He looks like he’s never held a sword in his life," Spartacus said, his voice flat.
Oseka glanced between the slave and the fighters. "He looks just like Albius when he first arrived."
They both shared a look. Oseka fought to hold back his laughter, his shoulders shaking with the effort. Spartacus just let out a small, quiet chuckle.
But across the yard, Akosa had noticed too.
He stood near the training posts, his whip coiled at his hip, his eyes narrowed. The slave’s expression—that calm, unimpressed stare—was an insult. It said, without words, that none of the men in this yard were his equal. That the training, the discipline, the blood and sweat of Ludus Ignatius meant nothing to him.
The crack of his whip split the air.
Everyone froze. The sparring men stopped mid-fight, their wooden swords still raised. The gladiators in the ring turned, their faces tense. Even the guards at the perimeter shifted uneasily.
Akosa walked toward the chained slave, his steps slow and deliberate. The sand crunched under his boots. He stopped directly in front of the blonde-haired figure, his hand resting on the handle of his whip.
"What’s with that look?" he asked, his voice low and dangerous.
The slave said nothing. His hollow eyes stayed fixed on Akosa’s face, unblinking.
Akosa’s jaw tightened. "You think you’re better than these men?" he demanded. "You think you’re above them? Above me?"
Still nothing. Just that empty, unimpressed stare.
The whip cracked again, this time across the slave’s face. A thin line of blood appeared along his cheek, dark red against the grey pallor of his skin. The slave didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. Didn’t even seem to notice.
Akosa’s grip tightened on the whip. "Very well," he said, his voice dropping to something colder. He turned to the guards. "Unchain him, and drag him to the middle of the ring."
The guards scrambled to obey. The chains fell away with a clatter. Two of them hauled the slave into the center of the ring, then stepped back, their hands resting on their swords.
Akosa turned to the sparring men. "You two—out. Join the circle."
They didn’t need to be told twice. The lean man and his partner melted back into the crowd, their faces pale.
Akosa’s eyes swept the yard. They landed on Brennus.
"Brennus." The name was an order. "In."
Brennus stepped forward, his wooden sword held loose in his hand. He was a good fighter—one of the best in the ludus. But he hesitated as he entered the ring, his eyes darting between Akosa and the unarmed slave.
"He has no weapon," Brennus said.
"Then it should be easy for you," Akosa replied.
Brennus’s jaw tightened. He raised the wooden sword, settling into a fighting stance.
At the edge of the ring, Spartacus spotted something. A look in the slave’s eyes. A look he knows very well. "He’s gonna whoop his ass without a weapon."
Oseka’s head snapped around. "What?"
But Spartacus just watched the ring, his expression unreadable.
Brennus lunged.