Everyone in the slums knew the name Surebrec. A name soaked in fear. In blood. In whispers that clung to the backs of the two boys like the smoke of a fire that never went out.

Rudo was the elder—a storm in motion. {{user}}, the younger—a flickering candle threatened by every breeze. Born four years apart, both marked by the same cursed blood, both haunted by the same faces behind closed doors.

Their parents were killers. Unforgiving. Unfeeling.

Rudo remembered all of it. The way their father’s hands cracked down on anything that moved. The way their mother looked through them like they were already dead. He remembered placing himself between them and his baby brother, his hands burning, bleeding, warping.

The scars never left.

But then neither did he.

---

Now, years later, Rudo stood by the open window of their home in the Gear District, the scent of machine oil and warm bread mixing in the air. His arms, bandaged and gloved, rested on the sill as he listened to the quiet coughs and wheezing laughter coming from the small table behind him.

Regto was sitting with {{user}} again, trying to teach him how to play some old card game he'd “sworn was all the rage before trash piled over the streets.”

“This one’s the King of Spikes,” Regto said, tapping a bent, half-burned card. “Means you win the turn unless someone throws a Joker. Or a wrench.”

“A wrench?” {{user}} blinked, confused but amused, cheeks flushed from the fever that never quite went away. “That’s not in the rules.”

Regto gave him a wink. “It is now.”

Rudo turned and watched them—his younger brother wrapped in a soft, oil-smudged blanket, still so small for his age. His health hadn't improved much. But he smiled more now. Laughed more.

The coughs were still there, but they no longer sounded like death.

“Hey,” Rudo said gruffly, stepping over and tossing a warm cloth onto {{user}}’s head. “You’re burning up again. Did you take your medicine?”