"No, friend. I know what it is that we paid."

  Riccardo gazed at Giovanni, his blistered fists clenched over the table. "You do?"

  "Giovanni smartest!" Tonio patted Giovanni's back with a gentleness that didn't match his rat-man's furred muscles.

  Across from them, Kael left the sweat-drenched sheet to join them at the table. He sat on a rock, elbows pressed against the stone, hands crossed beneath his chin, and back leaning forward.

  Giovanni let the silence linger for a couple of seconds. No, he didn't. His fingers, barely kept from clenching, twitched in self-reproach as his mind churned for the right words. At least, that's what Kael felt.

  Eventually, Giovanni's voice cracked with the answer. A painful crack that mirrored the arm that fell off his shoulder. "It's so normal that it has no name I know of. I wouldn't even have thought about it if not for the d. Listen, st night, flesh squirmed with pus around your wounds, and illnesses took over your skin and mind. But today? You're back to how you were before—to your normal state. That's what we paid for, this basic ability everyone has without noticing it."

  Kael frowned. So did the others.

  Giovanni bit his lip, but without teeth, Kael jerked back when they vanished into his mouth.

  "Easy. It's not conceptual at all. Look at us." Giovanni's lips returned with a soft plop as he drank from his tin of stale water. "We drink poison but never fell ill. Our wounds never bled either. But did we truly heal ever?"

  He shook his head when Riccardo's eyes widened. "You get it. The truth of the survivor keeps us alive by making our bodies adapt, by making them live with what tries to kill them. At the price of rewriting our normal state constantly."

  "Fuck!" Riccardo smmed the table. Blisters burst open, raining corrupted blood everywhere. "It was our power all along. By Kraghor's frost, this truth is a curse."

  Kael remained silent, lost in his racing thoughts. When he read in his ledger that body-reted prices existed, he thought they were better than what he paid. After all, trading a powerful truth for an eye or a hand was much better than losing the warmth of his memories of his mom.

  Now? He belled the truth of the survivor a scam. His endurance, even if passive, was stabler, without side effects, and made his muscles st longer physically while reducing his need for food. Not just a scam. It was junk.

  The comparison made him consider another question. Had truths a cost-based hierarchy, or were Giovanni and his friends unlucky? He was on the brink of understanding the core of prices, yet it slipped between his fingers like steam. He missed a piece, an important one.

  His eyes trailed to Tonio's gray fur, lean muscles through the holes in his ragged tunic, and red eyes. Something didn't add up.

  With a raised hand to focus attention on him rather than Riccardo's outburst, he asked, "It makes sense, but Tonio looks like a... Well, a rat. Why only him? Why didn't his condition worsen like yours if his normal state changes?"

  Tonio blinked without a trace of understanding in his red eyes.

  "That..." Giovanni lifted his sagging temples only to massage the sunken eyes hidden beneath. "I told you Garrick's men experimented on us."

  For a moment, Kael scowled. Then, he nodded. "I remember now. Sorry, more than half of what you say is quite hazy."

  "Ah! Fever's fault, not yours. Anyway, they injected the blood of a beast called a rhinoceros into me. What was it for you again, Riccardo?"

  Riccardo clicked his tongue, his face distorted in rage. "A pangolin or some bullshit like that."

  "Where did they even come up with names like that?" Giovanni snarled. "Tonio was given rat blood. A ton of it. Punishment for pnning to rebel against Garrick, they said. A humiliation on the very grounds he built into a haven. But do you know what rats are best at?"

  "What? Why beast blood? What is this madman trying to do?" An icy shiver ran down Kael's spine.

  "One question at a time." Giovanni's voice grew bitter. "Carrying diseases without suffering from their symptoms. Tonio's normal state didn't change as much as ours because diseases make him more lethal instead of crippling him. The thing inside him... You called it an anchor. His anchor didn't crack as ours did. Can you expin why?"

  Kael gnced at Tonio, who grinned foolishly. The rat-man praised himself as strong to Riccardo, the rest of the conversation passing over his head.

  "Because he's dumb..." Scratching his cheek, Kael turned away from Giovanni's gre. "Sigh. Anchors are a hassle to understand. Again, just suppositions, but your truth is passive like mine, which means active pnning or acting stresses its anchor... something like that. Tonio's dumbness makes him ignore these stressful factors since he likely eats, kills, and thinks to survive."

  "In short, if you go against your vow, you stress what holds it together," Riccardo muttered with his knuckles in front of his mouth.

  "I believe." With a final nod, Kael let a heavy silence settle. Though he wanted to ask about Garrick's ambitions, he focused on his true goal.

  Among the three monsters in front of him, he studied Giovanni's crumbling form. He was as good as dead. A death he could either leave as meaningless in the depths of the sewers or turn meaningful. Yet, his lips twitched when he tried to speak.

  Was he trying to manipute Giovanni?

  He pinched the bridge of his nose, then shook his head. Not really, at least not when success could save them all, him included. But failure... meant death or worse. The idea made him feel horrible. The thought of experimenting on himself was worse.

  Clenching his jaw, he knocked on the table. "There's something else."

  Everyone gazed at him, and he continued. "It's not a matter of whether our anchors will break, but when they will. That's why I'd rather try something, anything, to either prevent it or to avoid the consequences."

  "What do you have in mind, d?" Giovanni asked, while Riccardo's eyes narrowed.

  "Rewrite or change our truths to active ones."

  "How? Will it... save us?" Riccardo's voice carried none of his earlier anger. Instead, it was warm with hope.

  "You'll likely die." Kael paused, letting the crackle of the torch fill the silence for a heartbeat. Then, he pressed his palms on the table, his blue eyes bearing into theirs before he focused on Giovanni alone. "You'll die anyway. Look, I'm not asking you to sacrifice yourself for me, but to carve a path for your friends. They need it. You need it more. Maybe it'll work. Maybe you'll survive, but I won't lie to you: chances are low."

  Giovanni sighed. "You still haven't told me what that chance needs me to do."

  Kael's hands trembled on the table, and each word felt like a needle prickling his throat when he spoke. "Break your anchor yourself. Anchor a new definition of your truth on the fragments of the previous one. That's... my only idea."

  "No!" Tonio leapt between Kael and Giovanni, teeth out and whiskers trembling. "Family and friend live. Sewer peace. Lots of rats, lots of food. No break."

  Riccardo looked at them in turn, his lips quivering until he eventually turned. "Your choice, brother. I just hope we can be something other than monsters waiting for our deaths. I hope we can one day smile as we used to, the three of us. Together..."

  Giovanni covered his forehead with his good hand.

  He's considering it. Should I press a little more?

  Kael's left foot began to stamp the ground faster with each drip of the sewer water behind him. His fingers cmped the edge of the table, released it, and cmped it again, his arms painful from the tension.

  I said everything. More would sound selfish. Please, accept on your own...

  For what felt like an eternity, Tonio gred at him. It was also him who shattered the tension with a squeak. "Friend bad! Tonio's family happy. Leave!"

  He pointed his dark nails at Kael, tears trailing down his face. He felt betrayed. Sad, too. But experimenting on the doomed Giovanni was the only right call.

  As Kael stepped back, Giovanni pulled Tonio into a fragile hug. "Enough. The d has a point, and so do you, Tonio. I need... time. Three days. Give me three days to answer."

  "Don't die..." Tonio shared the hug, tears wetting Giovanni's ragged tunic.

  "I don't want to." Giovanni patted Tonio's back, whispering. "But I want you two to die less. We're family."

  Riccardo joined them in the hug, awkwardly trying not to smear them with the pus dripping from his blisters. "We've always been and always will be like all the others who left us before. Don't take your anger out on the d. He's just offering us a new choice."

  Tonio sobbed until he calmed down. For the next three days, he never talked with Kael. Anyone barely did, in fact. Not just with him; they just sat at the table with thoughtful frowns, and lips twisted with words they didn't want to speak.

  Though the wait was killing him, he didn't disturb them. They were his only chance to experiment safely, as horrible as it was. If Giovanni refused... should he hope to stumble on another group of desperate, monster-looking, truth owners? Unlikely. Then, he'd have to experiment on himself. Maybe chip at his anchor, or bind a compatible truth while trying to merge it with his endurance?

  Was it even possible? The ledger showed him other truths, but never once mentioned anything about merging them. No, his best bet was to hope he could redefine his truth after shattering the damn anchor. That's why he almost jumped to his feet when Giovanni called him to the table.

  Everyone sat, their somber faces made creepier by the torchlight.

  "I have chosen." Giovanni didn't speak; he decred as if anchoring a new truth.