"This is the memory of when I wounded my hand," the woman explained directly. "Its weight is roughly one gram."

  A sudden, searing pain shot through Anger's fingers. He had done nothing, yet the sensation was undeniably real.

  "Hallucination?"

  "Not hallucination. Resonance," the old man interjected again. "The Agony Scales establish a temporary link, allowing both parties to experience the pain the other has wagered. It's merely to make the game appear... equitable. Some believe the scales' measurement imprecise. This way, one can personally verify the other's suffering."

  Equitable. What a load of absolute rot. For a firsttimer, this socalled fairness was utterly meaningless. Faced with the unnatural in an unknown setting, anyone could overlook crucial details or forget their original purpose.

  These people were veterans. Anger understood that. Yet he wasn't willing to back down just yet, for he truly did wish to know more.

  The woman withdrew her hand; the red glow on the tray gradually faded. "The rules are simple. We each place a medium that carries suffering into the scales. It can be a memory or a physical object imbued with pain. The scales themselves will measure the purity and weight of the agony. The heavier, purer pain wins."

  "What does the winner get?"

  "The painmedium wagered by the opponent... and an answer to one question." The woman's gaze returned to the ring. "If you win, I can tell you this ring's true origin. If you lose, the ring is mine. I will, however, have you escorted off the ship."

  "And for me, what do I lose?" Anger pressed, seeking as much information as possible. They weren't deliberately withholding, and the rules didn't forbid asking.

  "You will permanently lose the pain you wagered," the bald, burly man spoke up. "The memory is excised. Sometimes it even affects the nerves. You will no longer feel the pain that memory evokes. A wound won't hurt, betrayal won't sting, not even the death of a loved one will cause pain."

  "That sounds almost like a blessing, doesn't it?"

  "A blessing?" The old man, who seemed to have weathered many storms himself, chimed in. "He who loses pain also loses vigilance. A warrior who feels no pain will bleed out on the battlefield. A lover who feels no pain will watch their partner die unmoved. Pain is the measure of being alive. Strip it away, and you become... something else."

  The woman added, "Might as well tell you. Usually, we wager not our own pain, but collected specimens of suffering—curiosities of agony. But for the first game, the scales demand a wager of personal experience. A rite of initiation, if you will. So, interested?"

  Anger's eyes settled on the scales. He was thinking. A gambler is a gambler because they focus on what they might win, rarely prioritizing what they might lose. These three, by displaying their desire for the object, were subtly trying to impose that same mindset.

  Anger recognized the ploy. Underhanded, yet effective.

  "I understand the rules," he said. "Now tell me, besides losing the pain, what else?"

  The woman and the old man exchanged a glance.

  "During the scales' judgement, the painlink is fully open," she said. "If the pain you wager is too intense, and your will insufficient to bear it... the sensation may become permanently lodged. I saw a gambler wager the memory of having his leg blown off on a battlefield. He has suffered phantom limb pain ever since, even though the leg is long gone."

  "Cases of mental collapse are more common," the bald man supplemented. "One wagered the agony of his daughter's kidnapping. Three days later, he strangled himself in the madhouse. Said he was trying to strangle the memory."

  Anger drew a slow breath, his gaze intensifying as he focused on the scales. He saw them—the strands coiling around the scale beam. A twoheaded silver serpent. Countless wriggling maggots clustered at the base of the scales, crawling incessantly over them.

  "What are those lines?" he asked directly, though he did not mention the maggots.

  The expressions of all three froze simultaneously.

  The woman sat up straighter. "You can see the Traces?"

  "I can see a great deal more. Otherwise, why do you think this ring found its way to my hand? Now answer the question. What are those lines?"

  The old man stopped turning the gold coin and pressed it flat against the table.

  "The cost of using the scales. The BoneBird requires... certain special things to maintain the game. With each Judgement of Agony, the scales extract a portion as its due. That is what the BoneBird takes. What, precisely, we do not know. We are merely the users."

  Anger nodded. The explanation fit. A game like this couldn't possibly operate entirely free of charge. Taking a commission fit the modus operandi of most such organizations.

  "One more question. Can I withdraw midgame?"

  "You may. But you must leave an equivalent forfeit. If you unilaterally sever the link, it will randomly extract a memory from your nervous system. It could be your most cherished... or your most desperately forgotten. No one can guarantee which."

  Now, only the choice remained.

  Anger walked to the table, pulled out the empty fourth chair, and sat down.

  "I accept the wager. I need to confirm your promised information must include three points: the maker of the ring, its original purpose, and why you want it."

  The woman nodded. "Agreed. Then, please choose the pain you wish to wager."

  ******

  The Wager Begins: Anger's First Gambit

  Anger recalled the words of the man at Hobbes's Veterinary Hospital: "Leave behind something you brought with you."

  His first choice was to test the waters.

  From his inner coat pocket, he retrieved a pocket watch—a relic gifted by his superior upon his promotion to detective. He placed the watch on the right tray.

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  Nothing happened. The scales remained utterly still.

  "Not enough," the woman shook her head. "That is not a thing that causes you pain. Consider this a trial run. There won't be a next time."

  Anger reclaimed the watch. So, this Agony Scales does have some bite to it.

  He then drew out a flat, tin cigarette case. This was the reason he didn't smoke, yet always carried it. Inside were only three cigarettes and a single, yellowed photograph. Without removing them, he placed the entire case onto the tray.

  The photograph showed two boys, perhaps eight or nine, standing beneath a tree. Their faces were young, but one laughed with a wild abandon. On the left was a younger Anger, his eyes holding a slight shadow. On the right was the one laughing freely—Ben.

  On the back, in a scrawling yet earnest hand, was written: Anger and Ben. Best mates, forever.

  Ben. His only friend.

  November, 1883. The abandoned slaughterhouse in the West End. Ben went missing.

  Three days later, the police found him in the mud of a desolate drainage ditch. Cause of death: asphyxiation. The coroner's report: mouth and nostrils packed with damp, heavy clay. Buried alive. Smothered by the earth itself.

  If I hadn't told him to go home first that day...

  If I had walked with him...

  If...

  ******

  All eyes were fixed on the scales as they began to tilt. Yet for Anger, the sensation came not from the spectacle above, but from an irresistible, sucking pull beneath his feet.

  The solid ground vanished without warning, dissolving into quicksand, then into a bottomless mire.

  A choked gasp died in his throat before it could become a cry. His vision was swallowed by absolute darkness as a torrent of wet, heavy clay violently forced its way into his mouth and nostrils, clogging every air passage. He tried to breathe, to cough—but the pressure on his chest intensified, a merciless weight stealing his very ability to draw breath.

  And he was still sinking. Dragged by a vast, indifferent force, plummeting toward the planet’s heart.

  The metallic, earthy stench of the soil flooded his senses. Pressure mounted from all sides, crushing. His clothes twisted, his body scraped against unseen debris within the mud. His arms were trapped, useless, stretched upward in a futile plea. He longed, with a desperation that was pure physical agony, for a hand to punch through the earth and haul him out.

  But in such a place, the only thought that could take root was despair. A vast, suffocating, endless despair. Soon, it stretched long enough for the flashbacks of his life to begin flickering at the edges of his awareness.

  His sense of time shattered completely. The suffocation stretched a single second into an eternity, then compressed an eternity back into a fleeting instant. He could hear the gritty whisper of soil against his skin. He could taste the bitter, coppery tang of dirt on his tongue. Despair and terror assaulted him in equal measure. He could almost see the layer of earth above him slowly knitting shut.

  This suffocation made him understand, with terrible clarity, that it was not merely about the cessation of breath. It was the negation of his entire being by the immense, indifferent weight of the world itself.

  Loneliness. Regret. And the sharp, searing guilt of his own survival.

  Hhhk…

  Just as his consciousness was about to be extinguished, to sink forever into that silent, dark eternity, the suction vanished.

  Thud.

  Anger crashed back into reality, his knees hitting the floorboards hard. His hands flew to his throat, clutching it as if still fighting off the earth. He drew in ragged, greedy breaths of the ship’s stale air. His face was chalkwhite, pupils dilated, his entire body trembling with violent, uncontrollable shudders.

  The cigarette case still lay quietly on the scale’s tray. It had never moved. But the right tray now hung decidedly lower than the left. The pain had been made manifest, weighed, and quantified—right here, right now.

  She smiled. “Welcome to the real world. Here, agony is the only hard currency.”

  ******

  Anger's fingers tightened around the tin case.

  If he wagered this, he might win. But he might also lose every memory of Ben—that smiling face, that entire summer. Yet if he didn't wager, he would gain no information about the ring, and his investigation would stall.

  But he could not lose a friend—the friend who carried those very memories.

  "I wager this."

  He did not take out the whole photograph. Instead, he retrieved from the case only a corner of it—a fragment containing just Ben's face in closeup.

  Years ago, in a moment of anguish, he had torn it off, only to glue it back later. A faint trace of adhesive still marked its edge.

  He placed the scrap of paper on the righthand tray and closed his eyes again. The memories surged forth.

  Beside the drainage ditch. Countless footprints stamped into the mud. The yellow police cordon.

  The sound of the coroner's boots. The dull thud of a body being dragged onto the bank.

  Ben's swollen face. Skin tinged blue and purple. Countless small holes in his lips.

  And in his right hand, clenched so tightly it left just a sliver of red visible—the soldier's badge Anger had given him for his birthday three days prior.

  "He was holding onto this till the very end," the coroner had said, helplessly.

  The right boneplate tray began to sink slowly.

  The silver serpent supporting the scale beam let out a soft, sibilant hiss.

  The scales began to tilt.

  ******

  The woman placed her bet as well.

  She used no object. Instead, she wrote a line of text directly onto a piece of parchment, then placed the paper on the lefthand tray. It read:

  Three years ago, I seared my husband's shoulder with a whitehot brand for his betrayal. I loved hearing him scream. I loved the smell of scorching skin.

  The moment the paper touched the boneplate tray, the left side also began to sink.

  The scales were now weighted on both ends.

  On the right: the guilt and incompleteness of Ben's death.

  On the left: the pleasure of infliction and the rage of betrayal.

  The central beam began to tremble.

  The eyes of the twinheaded silver serpent blazed with a crimson light. Its singular, bifurcated form suddenly split into two distinct serpents, each slithering towards opposite ends of the scales.

  A searing pain erupted between Anger's shoulder blades.

  This was the painlink. The scales were making him experience the agony she had wagered.

  Visions flooded his mind:

  A man's hand, bearing a wedding ring, gripping a glowing brand. Trembling, it pressed into a woman's shoulder. The instant skin met incandescent metal—the sizzle, the acrid, nosestinging smell of char. A scream that, by its end, twisted into something like malformed satisfaction.

  "Physical pain is usually more direct," the old man explained from the sidelines. "But psychic pain, if pure enough, can tip the balance the other way."

  ******

  The searing pain between Anger’s shoulder blades intensified. He forced himself to delve deeper into the memory of Ben’s death.

  Three days before Ben vanished, their last meeting.

  “My father hit my mother again,” Ben had said. “I might have to move in with my aunt.”

  “Will we still be able to play together after?”

  Ben managed a weak smile. “Of course. We’re best mates forever, remember?”

  He patted Anger’s shoulder, then turned and ran into the gathering dusk.

  Guilt. And a profound, sinking helplessness.

  As a child, he couldn’t stop Ben’s violent father. He couldn’t stop Ben from moving away. In the end, he couldn’t stop Ben from dying. He had been powerless to do anything.

  The righthand tray shifted again.

  The scales began to tilt to the right.

  One degree. Two. Five.

  The left side seemed to waver, struggling to hold its ground.

  The smile vanished from the woman’s face. Was she, too, experiencing Anger’s pain? Was she subjected to that same psychic inquisition?

  The scales continued their descent.

  Ten degrees. Fifteen. Twenty.

  Finally, the right tray nearly touched the table, the left one jutting high into the air.

  The silver serpents let out a piercing shriek, sharp enough to make eardrums ache.

  The sconces on the private room’s walls flickered wildly; the gas flames danced and shuddered.

  The burning pain in Anger’s shoulder vanished instantly.

  “High purity,” the woman murmured, her voice low. “I can feel it. The agony of despair and guilt. A proper, marrowdeep guilt. That permanent, spiritual sort of pain. It seems you had a rather miserable childhood.”

  The central beam stilled.

  First round: Anger’s victory.

  The wall sconces steadied. The serpents fell silent. The boneplate trays slowly returned to level.

  Anger felt utterly drained.

  He picked up the scrap of paper from the right tray. Ben’s face in the corner returned to normal as the glow faded from it.

  Yet, something was… off. Indefinable, but a certain conviction had undeniably altered.

  When Anger looked at that face now, the thought that surfaced was: He was a good playmate. Later, he moved away. Went to live with his aunt. Pity we never met again after that.

  What a genuine shame.