Kael woke to screaming.
Not his own.
That was the problem.
The sound tore through the Crucible Vault in long, dragging arcs—pain stretched thin and made public. It slid through stone and metal alike, bypassing barriers with intimate precision, as if it knew exactly where his nerves were weakest and took its time learning them.
He tried to move.
The chains disagreed.
They had multiplied.
What had once been restraint had become devotion. Iron wrapped his arms, cinched his torso, kissed his throat—tight enough to remind him he had a body, loose enough to ensure he never forgot it. Smaller links branched into the stone floor, pulsing faintly with the same dim, circulatory light that threaded through the walls.
The prison inhaled.
Kael felt it.
Not air—pressure. A subtle tightening. As if the Vault were drawing him closer without ever laying a hand on him.
"Okay," he rasped, throat raw. "Either I'm still dreaming… or this place desperately needs a hobby."
The screaming stopped.
Too fast.
The silence that followed was worse—thick, weighted, like the moment after a verdict but before the sentence is spoken aloud.
Then the chains loosened.
Not together.
One by one.
Testing him.
Kael tensed as circulation returned in violent waves. His fingers twitched first. Then his right arm. His legs followed—heavy, uncooperative, but undeniably his.
The final chain unlocked with a sound like a breath finally released.
He collapsed.
Stone met shoulder, ribs, cheek. Pain flared—sharp, honest—and he welcomed it like proof of existence.
"Still alive," he muttered. "Solid start."
The light above him shifted.
A section of the wall unfolded.
Not opened—unfolded. Stone plates slid back along hidden seams, revealing a narrow corridor sloping steeply into shadow, lit by a glow that seemed allergic to certainty.
A man stood at the threshold.
Not the warden.
This one was younger. Lean. His eyes were wrong—not glowing, not hollow—just tired. The kind of tired that comes from watching horror long enough that it stops being surprising.
"Up," the man said.
Kael stayed down.
"And if I don't?" he asked.
The man tilted his head, considering. "Someone else screams again."
Kael exhaled slowly.
"Right," he said. "Peer pressure. Classic."
He pushed himself upright.
The floor reacted instantly.
Symbols beneath his boots ignited, lines threading outward like veins finding a pulse. The moment he stood fully upright, the screaming returned—closer now, sharper. Individual.
A woman.
A child.
More.
Kael's jaw locked.
"Where are you taking me?" he asked.
The man stepped aside, gesturing toward the corridor. "To your door."
Kael frowned. "I don't get more than one?"
The man almost smiled.
The descent lasted longer than it should have.
Each step carried weight—not of gravity, but of memory. Kael's thoughts slowed, dragged through impressions that weren't his: faces, choices, outcomes stitched together with regret and blood.
This place remembered everyone who walked it.
At the bottom waited a chamber.
Circular. Vast. Bare.
Except for what stood at its center.
A door.
Black iron. Seamless. No handle. No hinges. Symbols crawled across its surface, rearranging themselves slowly—like letters struggling to remember how language worked.
Above it, carved into the stone in a script older than mercy:
ONLY ONE WALKS OUT.
Kael swallowed.
"Let me guess," he said. "This is where things get symbolic."
The man stepped in behind him. "This is where things get honest."
The door knocked.
From the other side.
Kael froze.
Then a voice—familiar, fractured.
"Please," it said. "I don't want to die."
Kael's breath caught.
That voice—
It wasn't Evan's.
It was his.
The one from before the collapses. Before the rumors. Before doors locked when he passed.
"That's not funny," Kael whispered.
The man's tone hardened. "It isn't meant to be."
The door pulsed.
Images detonated behind Kael's eyes.
Blood on stone.
Him standing still.
Him hesitating.
The earlier screams synchronized with his heartbeat.
"This is your trial," the man said. "The Crucible always begins the same way."
Kael clenched his fists. "You want me to open it."
"Yes."
"And if I don't?"
The man met his gaze. "Then the people screaming now will never stop."
Kael stepped forward.
The symbols accelerated, glowing brighter, reacting to him. The air thickened again—that familiar pressure, that unseen attention.
He raised his hand.
Hesitated.
The screaming spiked.
A child cried out.
That ended it.
Kael slammed his palm against the door.
The world didn't shatter.
It peeled.
The iron dissolved beneath his touch, revealing not a room but a descent—stone stairs spiraling into a red-lit abyss. Heat rolled upward, metallic and suffocating.
The door had never been an exit.
It was an entrance.
Kael staggered back. "What the hell is down there?"
No answer.
The man was gone.
The chamber began to close.
Stone groaned. Walls crept inward. The stairs crumbled, collapsing one step at a time.
Instinct took over.
Kael ran.
Down.
The moment his foot hit the first step, the screaming stopped.
Replaced by something worse.
Laughter.
Low. Distant. Amused.
The stairs collapsed behind him, the prison sealing itself with absolute finality. Heat pressed against his skin, sweat blooming along his spine.
At the bottom—
A platform.
Chains hung from the ceiling like ceremonial ornaments.
And across from him, bound upright against a stone pillar—
A prisoner.
Bloodied. Bruised.
Alive.
They lifted their head.
Their face was wrong.
Too close.
Too familiar.
The prisoner smiled through split lips.
"Took you long enough," they said—in Kael's voice.
Something behind Kael's ribs snapped into place.
The Crucible hadn't lied.
Only one would walk out.
And the prison had finally revealed its favorite question.
Which version of you deserves to live?
The chains above rattled.
The game had begun.