Chapter 23: The Dream of Blood
Chapter 23: The Dream of Blood
The battlefield smelled like iron and wet earth.
Alex wasn’t himself. He knew that much, even though he couldn’t quite remember who he was supposed to be. His hands were different; larger, scarred, calloused in places his own hands had never been. His skin was darker, weathered by sun and wind. He was wearing armor that felt heavy and unfamiliar, and the sword in his grip was slick with blood that wasn’t his.
All around him, men screamed.
Not the distant roar of a crowd. Not the controlled violence of the arena. This was real and ugly. The sound of men dying in the mud, their cries swallowed by the clash of steel and the wet thud of blades finding flesh.
The sky was grey and low, pressing down like a bruise. Rain was falling, cold and thin, mixing with the blood that ran in rivulets across the ground. Bodies lay everywhere, some still moving, some not. A horse screamed somewhere to his left, a sound that cut through the chaos like a blade.
Alex—or whoever he was—took a step forward. His sandals sank into the mud. Something squelched underfoot. He didn’t look down.
A man ran at him, face twisted with rage, sword raised. Alex moved without thinking, like his body knew what to do. He sidestepped, drove his blade into the man’s chest, felt the resistance of flesh and bone, and pulled it free. The man fell. Alex didn’t watch him hit the ground.
He was already moving toward the next.
The battle was a blur of motion and noise. He couldn’t see the enemy’s face, couldn’t hear their voices over the roar in his own ears. He just fought, killed, moved and killed again. His arms were heavy with exhaustion, but they didn’t stop. His breath came in ragged gasps, but he didn’t slow.
Then he saw it.
A flash of movement in his peripheral vision. Too fast. He turned, but his body was too slow, too tired, too heavy, too—
A blade punched through his chest.
Alex felt it. Not as a distant sensation. Not as a dream. He felt the cold steel slide between his ribs, felt the sharp, burning pain as it pierced his lung, felt the warmth of his own blood spilling down his chest. He tried to breathe. He couldn’t. His lungs filled with something thick and wet. He tasted copper on his tongue.
He fell to his knees.
The mud was cold against his face. The rain was still falling, pattering against the back of his neck. He could hear his own heartbeat, slowing, fading, as the darkness crept in from the edges of his vision.
And then—
’Ping! Ping! Ping!’
Alex’s eyes snapped open.
He was in his bed. His chest was heaving. His heart was pounding so hard he could hear it in his ears. Cold sweat soaked through his tunic, plastering it to his skin. His hands were shaking.
The system notification was still pulsing at the corner of his vision, waiting for him to acknowledge it. But he couldn’t focus on it. Not yet.
He pressed a hand to his chest. The place where the blade had gone through, but there was nothing there. No wound, no blood. Just the phantom ache of a pain that should have killed him.
He sat up slowly, his breath still coming in short, ragged gasps. The room was dark. The moonlight was pale through the high window. Oseka was a still shape in the corner, breathing slowly, lost in sleep.
Alex stared at the wall for a long moment.
"What the fuck was that?" He whispered.
He could still smell the battlefield. The iron, the mud, the rain. He could still feel the weight of the sword in his hand, the exhaustion in his arms, the cold steel sliding into his chest—
He shook his head, trying to clear it.
’It was a dream.’ He thought. "Just a dream." He heaved.
But it didn’t feel like a dream. It felt like a memory.
He looked down at his hands. They were pale, and familiar. His own hands. But for a moment, just a moment, he could have sworn he saw the scarred, weathered hands of the man in the battlefield.
The system pinged again, insistent.
He focused on it.
Daily tasks: 20 pushups. 20 situps. Time remaining: 00:19:47.
He stared at the notification.
Then he got up.
"You weren’t going to wake me?"
Oseka’s voice cut through the silence just as Alex’s hand touched the door handle.
Alex turned. Oseka was sitting up in his bed, blanket pooled around his waist, eyes already sharp despite the hour.
"I thought you were still asleep." Alex said. "I didn’t want to disturb you."
Oseka let out a long, slow sigh that seemed to carry the weight of the entire night. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood, stretching his arms above his head with the particular stiffness of someone who had been awake for longer than they wanted to admit.
"I was." He said, crossing the room toward Alex, his voice dropping to something quieter, more serious. "But I’m not anymore."
Alex looked at him for a moment. The dream was still clinging to the edges of his mind, the phantom ache of the blade still lingering in his chest. He wanted to say something—to tell Oseka about the battlefield, the mud, the cold steel—but the words wouldn’t come. ’Don’t even know what to share, and what not to’
So he just nodded with a sigh.
"Let’s go."
---
The courtyard was silver and still under the moonlight. The palus stakes cast long shadows across the sand, and the pull-up bar waited by the wall, worn smooth in the middle, patient and unbothered.
Spartacus was already there.
He was leaning against the wall, arms folded, his broken arm still wrapped in linen but held differently now—less cradled, more present. He looked up as they approached, and something in his expression softened.
"You’re late." He said.
"You’re early." Alex replied.
Spartacus’s mouth pulled sideways. "Same thing."
Oseka snorted, and Alex felt something loosen in his chest. Something that made the cold sweat feel less like a warning and more like the remnants of a bad night.
They stood in the courtyard, the three of them, and for a moment, no one spoke.
Then Alex took a breath.
"Alright." He said. "Let’s start."
---
Alex moved through the warm-up with the same economy he always did—stretching his arms, rolling his shoulders, loosening the tight muscles in his back. But something was off. His movements were jerky, less controlled than usual. His eyes kept drifting, unfocused, as if he were seeing something that wasn’t there.
Oseka noticed. He glanced at Spartacus, a silent question passing between them.
"Is he alright?"
Spartacus shrugged, his expression unreadable. But he was watching Alex too, his eyes sharp and patient, the way they always were.
Alex dropped to the ground for the first push-up.
His arms shook.
Not from exertion. From the dream. The phantom weight of the sword, the pain of the blade in his chest, the exhaustion of a battle that had never happened.
He pushed through it.
"One." His voice was tight. "Two."
Spartacus and Oseka joined him on either side, matching his rhythm. They didn’t ask questions. They just followed.
But Alex could feel their eyes on him.
He pushed harder.
---
In the shadows near the eastern wall, a figure watched.
Akosa had been making his rounds when he’d heard the soft shuffle of feet in the courtyard. He’d stopped, pressed himself into the darkness, and watched as the three gladiators had emerged from the sleeping quarters.
He’d watched Albius move jerky, and unfocused. Something was wrong with him.
He’d watched the other two: the Thracian and the boy, exchange glances, asking questions they didn’t speak aloud.
"There’s three of them, now." He muttered, the familiar wave of contempt tugging at him.
Bonding, trust, shared secrets. This was weakness. The kind of weakness that got men killed in the arena. The kind of weakness that made them hesitate, that made them slow, that made them bleed.
Akosa let out a soft sigh, barely audible, the sound of a man who had seen this before and was already tired of watching.
His eyes drifted upward, toward the window of Ignatius’s office.
A silhouette stood there, still and watchful. The Lanista.
Akosa’s jaw tightened.
He looked back at the three gladiators in the courtyard—Albius pushing through his push-ups, the others following, the small, fragile bubble of trust forming around them like a shield that would do nothing to stop a blade.
He sighed again.
Then he melted deeper into the shadows, disappearing into the darkness, leaving the courtyard to its moonlight.
---
The workout continued.
Alex finished his push-ups. Rolled onto his back for the sit-ups. His chest was still tight, the ghost of the blade still burning beneath his ribs. But he pushed through it.
Spartacus and Oseka followed, their breathing heavy, their presence a quiet anchor in the dark.
And in the shadows, the silhouette in the window remained.
Watching.
And in that instance—
’Ping!’
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