Sands of Fate: The Wrong Side of History

Chapter 36: Sand And Water

The ward was quiet when Alex returned.

Oseka was till slumped on his stool, chin on his chest, breathing slow and steady. Spartacus lay on the straw bed, arm bound, face peaceful, lost somewhere deep in exhausted sleep. The torch had burned low in its bracket, the flame guttering. Gaius was nowhere to be seen.

Alex crossed to the stool beside Oseka’s and sat down, folding his arms against his chest, letting his chin drop, and closed his eyes.

[Ping!]

He opened one eye. The system UI pulsed in the corner of his vision.

[Daily tasks: 30 pull-ups. 30 squats. Time remaining: 00:19:58.]

Alex stared at it, then at the dark room, and finally at the high window.

"Really?" he muttered.

The system, predictably, said nothing.

He sighed, and pulled up his full status

[Sands of Fate System level 3:

Host: Human

Name: Alex Norman

Skill(s): Temporal Dilatation lvl3, Blade Work lvl 1

Points: 100/600

Status: Stable ]

"You really do get on my nerves. You know that?"

Silence.

Alex let out another sigh, before standing up, and walked out into the courtyard, alone, under the pale sliver of moon.

---

Morning light crept through the high window, pale and grey, carrying the faint promise of a sun that hadn’t yet broken through the clouds. The torch in its bracket had long since burned out, leaving only the cold smell of old smoke.

Alex’s eyes opened.

His neck was stiff from sleeping on the stool, his back aching, his arms heavy from the late-night pull-ups and squats the system had demanded. He rolled his shoulders and heard something crack.

Beside him, Oseka stirred. A low groan escaped him as he straightened, pressing a hand to the stitches above his eye.

"Tell me I didn’t sleep on a stool all night," Oseka muttered.

"You slept on a stool all night." A voice said from across the room.

"Fantastic." Oseka said. Then paused. He quickly turned toward the straw bed, and saw Spartacus sitting upright.

His right arm was still bound against his chest, the linen wrap fresh and tight. The bruises on his ribs had faded to pale ghosts of themselves. His eyes were clear, sharp, and fixed on the two of them with the patient amusement of a man who had been awake for some time. "Took you both long enough."

Alex blinked. Oseka let out a startled laugh. And then they were all laughing—tired, rough, the kind of laughter that came after surviving something that should have killed them.

"You’re one to talk," Alex said. "You’ve been unconscious since yesterday."

"Resting," Spartacus corrected. "There’s a huge difference."

Oseka leaned forward, his exhaustion momentarily forgotten. "Bro, you missed a lot. This bastard..." he jerked a thumb at Alex, "...killed five giants. Five! While you were napping."

"Oh, really?"

"For real. The whole arena was chanting his name; Albius! Albius! Like a god."

Alex waved a hand. "It wasn’t—"

"Don’t." Spartacus’s voice was quiet, but it cut through the room. His eyes met Alex’s, steady and unreadable. "Don’t diminish it."

The words echoed Ignatius’s from the night before. Alex closed his mouth.

Then suddenly, the door slammed open.

Akosa filled the doorway, whip coiled at his hip, face carved from stone. His gaze swept the room; Spartacus awake, Alex upright, Oseka already on his feet, and something flickered behind his eyes. Confirmation.

"You’re all up.Good." His deep voice left no room for argument. "Albius, Oseka. Training yard. Now."

Oseka sighed. "It’s barely morning."

"And you’ve barely trained in two days. Move."

Alex exchanged a glance with Oseka. A shared, silent surrender. They fell in behind Akosa, footsteps echoing down the stone corridor, leaving Spartacus alone in the quiet ward.

Just before the door swung shut, the Thracian’s voice followed them out.

"Try to keep up, Ghost."

Alex smiled despite himself.

---

The courtyard was already full when Alex and Oseka stepped through the archway. Men were stretching, sharpening blades, pairing off for warm-up drills. The usual morning noise; the clatter of wooden swords, the grunts of exertion, the low murmur of conversation, filled the air.

Then they saw him.

The noise didn’t just fade, it died. All at once, as if a hand had closed around the throat of the courtyard and squeezed. Every man stopped what he was doing. Every head turned.

Alex froze. Oseka, beside him, went still.

The lean man from the infirmary—the one who had cursed Gaius and gotten his mother insulted in return—was the first to move. He straightened from his stretching, squared his shoulders, and pressed his fist to his chest in a crisp salute.

"Ghost," he said.

The word rang across the silent courtyard.

Then another man saluted. "Ghost." Then another. "Ghost." The word rippled through the ranks, one fighter after another, fists pressing to chests. He met Alex’s eyes in recognition.

These were the men who had followed him into the slaughter. These were the men who had picked up broken swords and rallied behind a white-haired boy who refused to die. They were alive because of him. And they knew it.

Oseka let out a breath beside him. When Alex glanced over, his friend was wearing a smile that was trying very hard to be casual and failing completely.

Alex didn’t know what to do with his hands, so he settled for a small awkward nod, and kept walking.

Above them, on the office balcony, Ignatius stepped out into the morning light. He looked down at the courtyard, at the men saluting, at the white-haired figure moving through them like a blade through water. For a long moment, his face was unreadable. Then the corner of his mouth lifted. A small, private smile. The smile of a man watching an investment mature beyond all projections.

Across the courtyard, Akosa saw it. His eyes flicked from the Lanista to the Ghost and back again. He said nothing.

He let the salutes die down naturally, the silence stretching until the last fist dropped. Then his voice cut through the morning air.

"Enough! Pair off, and resume warm-up drills. I want every man sweating before the sun clears that wall."

The courtyard erupted back into motion. But something had changed. The air was different now... charged. The men moved with a little more purpose, a little more pride. They were no longer just the survivors of Ludus Ignatius. They were the men who fought beside the Ghost.

Alex picked up a wooden training sword and turned to face his first partner.

---

The bath house was thick with steam and the smell of olive oil soap, the air heavy and warm against the skin. Water dripped from the stone ceiling in slow, rhythmic beats, and the low murmur of conversation echoed off the walls.

When Alex and Oseka stepped through the archway, they found Spartacus already there.

The Thracian was sunk up to his chest in the large communal pool, his right arm resting carefully on the stone edge, still bound but no longer cradled. His head was tilted back, eyes closed, the tension that usually lived in his shoulders finally, briefly, gone.

"Look who decided to join us," Oseka said, already stripping off his sweat-soaked tunic. "The man who was ’resting.’"

"I’m still resting," Spartacus said without opening his eyes. "As you can see."

Alex pulled off his own tunic and slid into the pool beside him. The heat hit his sore muscles like a balm. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and felt the ache in his ribs, his shoulders, his back begin to loosen.

"You’re going to prune," Alex said.

"Worth it."

Oseka slipped into the water on Spartacus’s other side, wincing as the heat found the fresh scar above his eye. "Akosa’s taking us into the city. The Lanista’s treat."

Spartacus cracked one eye open. "I heard."

"You’re coming?"

"Of course. Why would I pass up such an offer?" Spartacus replied, and they all laughed.

Alex reached for the small bowl of sand beside the pool’s edge. He scooped up a handful, gritty and rough, and gestured vaguely at Spartacus’s back. "Turn around."

Spartacus turned without argument. Alex began scrubbing the sand across his shoulders in slow, circular motions. The grime of the arena; dried sweat, old blood, the faint dust of the sands, came away in dark streaks that dissolved into the water.

For a moment, no one spoke. The steam curled around them. The distant sound of other men laughing, splashing, washing the morning’s work from their skin filled the silence.

"You really killed five of them." Spartacus said quietly.

"It was the spur of the moment." Alex said.

Oseka snorted. "He threw a mace like it was nothing. You should have seen it."

Spartacus was quiet for a moment. Then spoke, ever so lightly; "I should have been there."

Alex’s hands paused. He looked at the back of Spartacus’s head, at the tension that had crept back into his neck.

"You’re the reason we all fought through." A pause. "We didn’t want to smear the reputation you broke an arm to build for the ludus."

Spartacus didn’t answer. But the tension in his shoulders eased, just slightly.

Oseka broke the silence. "Well, I’m just glad we made it out alive. Even though you both had to be carried out like babies."

"Babies?" Alex raised an eyebrow. "Look who’s talking. You could barely hold your own sword."

"Hohoho! You mean the same sword I used in saving your life?"

"From what? The surrendered party?"

"The surrendered party had swords."

"They’d dropped their swords."

"And I made sure they stayed dropped."

Spartacus let out a low chuckle—a rare sound, rough from disuse but real. "You’re both idiots."

They all paused for a brief moment before bursting into laughter.

Alex handed Spartacus the bowl of sand. "Your turn."

Spartacus took it, and Alex turned his back. The rough grit against his own shoulders felt grounding, solid. The three of them stayed like that, scrubbing, bickering, laughing softly, until the water grew cold and the steam began to thin.

Outside, the city was waiting.