The sky over Oravus hadn't changed in six months. It was a permanent, bruising purple—the color of a hematoma that refused to heal. The sun was a blurred, sickly white disc that provided light without warmth.
Ren kicked a pebble down the center of Avenue 4. It skittered across the pristine, chemically-cleaned pavement, the sound echoing too loudly in the morning silence.
He was smiling.
It was a small, private smile, utterly out of place in Sector 7. Around him, the adults—the Pale Coats—moved with the jerky, terrified efficiency of clockwork toys wound too tight. They walked in single file, eyes fixed on the ground, clutching their stamped work permits like shields against a physical blow. They smelled of cold sweat and compliance.
They didn't smile. Smiling was inefficient. Smiling suggested you were thinking about something other than the National Output. Smiling got you "Audited."
Ren didn't care. He was seventeen, his hair was a mess of unapproved curls, and in his mind, he was painting the city.
Cobalt blue for the shadows under that woman's eyes, he thought, watching a weary factory worker trudge past. Burnt ochre for the rust bleeding through the paint on the streetlamp. And for the sky... a mix of violent violet and resignation grey.
He hummed a tune—a forbidden folk song his mother used to sing before the Porcelain Men took her away to the Processing Centers.
He passed a checkpoint. Two Hollows stood guard. Their white ceramic masks were spotless, gleaming under the harsh streetlights. Their red eye-slits were dim, conserving power. They didn't move as Ren walked by. To them, he wasn't a threat. He was just a unit of potential labor, a calorie-burning asset.
"Morning, boys!" Ren chirped, throwing a loose salute.
A passing woman in a grey suit flinched so hard she dropped her briefcase. She stared at him with wide, terrified eyes, then hurried away, terrified that his insubordination was contagious—that the Hollows might decide to purge the whole block just to be safe.
Ren just laughed softly. He knew he didn't fit. He had known it since the Dome came down. He wasn't smart like the engineers the King prized. He wasn't strong like the laborers.
He was just a boy who saw colors in a world that had outlawed them.
The classroom at Sector High 9 smelled of bleach and fear.
Thirty students sat in perfect rows, heads down, filling out the Daily Utility Assessment. The sound of pencils scratching on paper was a synchronized, insectoid buzzing. No one looked left or right.
Ren was drawing a dragon on the back of his test. Not a scary dragon—a fat, lazy one that was eating the capital "A" of the word "Assessment." He was shading the scales with the side of his graphite pencil, trying to give it texture.
"Ren Vance."
The voice was quiet, trembling.
Ren looked up. Mr. Halay stood at the front of the room. The teacher looked twenty years older than he had six months ago. His skin was grey, hanging loosely on his skull. His hands, resting on the podium, shook with a constant, palsy-like rhythm.
"Present," Ren said, putting down his pencil.
"Please... step into the corridor," Mr. Halay said. He didn't make eye contact. He was looking at the floor, at a stain that wasn't there.
Ren felt a cold knot tighten in his stomach. He looked at his drawing. He folded the paper carefully and stood up.
The other students didn't look up. They knew what it meant when you were called into the corridor. To look was to acknowledge the hole in the herd. To acknowledge the hole was to risk falling into it.
Ren walked out. Mr. Halay followed, closing the door softly.
The hallway was empty. The fluorescent lights buzzed like trapped flies.
"Am I in trouble for the humming?" Ren asked, trying to keep his voice light. "I can stop. I mean, it's hard, but I can try. The silence is just... loud, you know?"
Mr. Halay leaned against the wall, taking off his glasses. He rubbed his eyes. When he looked at Ren, his expression was a portrait of absolute exhaustion.
"It's not the humming, Ren. It's... everything."
The teacher pulled a tablet from his jacket. The screen glowed with harsh red text.
"Your academic scores are in the bottom tenth percentile. Your mechanical aptitude is negligible. Your obedience rating is... erratic. You failed the logic puzzles three times."
"I'm an artist," Ren said, shrugging. "The King said everyone has a purpose. Maybe my purpose is decoration?"
Mr. Halay flinched. A single tear leaked out of his eye, tracking through the grime on his cheek.
"There is no decoration in the New Dawn, Ren. There is only function."
The teacher took a breath that sounded like a rattle in a dry chest.
"The Evaluation Committee has made a decision. You have been designated as... Raw Material."
Ren froze. The world tilted.
Raw Material.
Everyone knew what that meant. It meant the Factory. It meant they stripped your mind, hollowed out your chest, and poured liquid ceramic into your veins. It meant they took your soul and replaced it with a command loop.
It meant becoming a Hollow.
"They're... they're sending me to the kiln?" Ren whispered, the color draining from his face.
"I tried," Mr. Halay choked out. "I told them you were young. That you might develop late. But the quotas... the King demands more soldiers for the border patrols. They need bodies."
The teacher looked down, unable to face the boy.
"I'm sorry, Ren. I'm so tired. I've done this three times this week. I just... I can't save you."
Ren looked at the teacher. He saw the man's soul withering under the weight of his own complicity. He saw a man who had died inside months ago.
"It's okay, Mr. Halay," Ren said softly. He reached out and patted the man's trembling arm. "You didn't fail. The painting was just... framed wrong."
"The transport is waiting at the south gate," Halay whispered. "Don't run. If you run, they shoot. If you go... maybe it doesn't hurt. Maybe the silence is peaceful."
"Sure," Ren lied. "Peaceful."
Ren walked to the South Gate. He didn't run. Running attracted the eye.
At the edge of the school grounds, near the heavy iron fence, a figure was waiting.
It was Jory. He was Ren's only friend, a boy who was good at math and kept his head down. Jory was crying silently, tears streaming down his face, but he stood rigid, pretending to study a textbook on structural engineering.
Ren stopped.
"You're gonna get flagged for Loitering," Ren said.
Jory looked up. "I heard."
"Yeah. Raw Material. Fancy title, right?"
"Ren, don't go," Jory hissed. "Hide in the sewers. I can bring you food. I know the patrol routes."
"Hollows have thermal vision, Jory. They'd find me in an hour. And then they'd find you for helping me."
Ren reached into his pocket and pulled out the folded drawing of the fat dragon. He shoved it into Jory's textbook.
"Keep this. Put some color in it when nobody's looking."
"I... I can't believe this," Jory sobbed, wiping his nose. "We were supposed to graduate. We were supposed to work in the Archives."
"You will," Ren said. "You're smart. Survive, Jory. Make it to the end of the book."
A heavy mechanical thudding approached.
Click-clack. Click-clack.
Three Hollows marched around the corner. They moved in perfect unison, their porcelain limbs clicking. Behind them was a heavy, armored bus. The windows were painted black.
"Subject 749-Ren," the lead Hollow stated. Its voice was a pre-recorded scratch, devoid of intonation. "Board."
Ren looked at Jory one last time. He memorized the color of his friend's eyes—a terrified, wet hazel.
"See you in the next sketch," Ren whispered.
He turned and walked toward the bus.
The inside of the bus smelled of urine and industrial cleaner.
There were twenty other kids inside. Some were crying. Some were catatonic, staring at the metal floor. They were all cuffed to the seats.
Ren was shoved into a seat near the back. The cuffs clicked around his wrists—cold, heavy steel.
The bus lurched into motion.
Ren leaned his head against the blacked-out window. He could see nothing, but he could feel the road. They were heading out of the city, toward the Industrial Zone where the smoke stacks churned black clouds into the purple sky.
"I don't want to die," a girl across the aisle whispered. She couldn't be more than fourteen.
"We aren't dying," Ren said, though he didn't believe it. "We're just... changing."
"Into monsters," she wept. "My dad is a Hollow. He killed our dog because it barked too loud. He didn't even blink. He just... crushed it."
Ren closed his eyes. He tried to imagine a color that could fix this. He couldn't find one. The palette was all black.
The bus rattled. They were on the winding mountain roads now, the shortcut to the Factory.
Ren peered through a scratch in the black paint on the window.
He saw the ravine drop away to the right—a sheer cliff of grey rock. To the left, the forest was a blur of dead trees.
Then, he saw it.
Something was moving in the forest.
It wasn't a car. It wasn't an animal.
It was a blur of shadows and rags, moving parallel to the bus. It was moving impossibly fast, leaping over fallen logs, bouncing off rocks.
"What is that?" Ren whispered.
The blur accelerated. It veered toward the road.
"Brace!" Ren shouted, though he didn't know why.
The figure burst from the tree line.
It was a man. He wore a tattered cloak that seemed to be made of shadows. He was sprinting directly at the front of the bus, where the Hollow guards sat.
He didn't dodge. He jumped.
He hit the front windshield feet first.
CRASH.
The sound was deafening. Glass exploded. The bus swerved violently to the right.
The driver—a Hollow—lost control. The massive vehicle slammed through the guardrail.
Gravity vanished.
For a terrifying second, they were weightless. The bus tumbled into the void.
Ren screamed. The world became a washing machine of metal and shrieking children.
BOOM.
The bus slammed into the ravine floor. The impact was brutal. Ren felt his ribs crack against the restraint bar. The metal frame groaned and twisted like a soda can.
Silence followed. A ringing, dusty silence.
Ren gasped, tasting blood. He was upside down. The cuffs dug into his wrists.
"Hello?" he croaked.
"Quiet," a voice commanded.
It wasn't a Hollow. It was a human voice. Rough. Dangerous.
The back door of the bus—now the ceiling—was ripped off. Not opened. Ripped.
A figure dropped into the overturned cabin.
It was the man from the forest.
He wore light leather armor covered in grey dust. His face was wrapped in a scarf, revealing only eyes that burned with a frightening intensity. He held a dagger that glowed with a faint, golden light.
He didn't look like a savior. He looked like a storm.
"Master Commander Kai!" a voice crackled from a radio on the man's shoulder. "Report!"
The man pressed a button on his collar.
"Intercept successful," Kai said. His voice was calm, contrasting with the carnage. "The bus went over the edge. Total hull loss."
"Casualties?" the radio asked.
Kai looked at Ren. He looked at the girl across the aisle. He looked at the twenty terrified faces hanging in their restraints.
"Fatalities confirm 100%," Kai lied smoothly. "No survivors. The King's property is destroyed."
"Copy that. Return to base."
Kai clicked the radio off. He holstered the dagger and grabbed the restraint bar of Ren's seat.
With a grunt of exertion, he ripped the steel bar open with bare hands, his muscles straining against the metal.
Ren fell to the ceiling, groaning.
Kai grabbed him by the shirt, hauling him up.
"Can you walk, kid?"
"I... I think my ribs are broken," Ren wheezed.
"Good. That means you can feel pain. Hollows don't feel pain."
Kai turned to the other kids. Four other figures dropped into the bus—rebels, dressed in mismatched gear, moving with practiced speed to cut the children loose.
"Listen up!" Kai shouted. His voice echoed in the crumpled metal tube.
"To the world, you are dead. Your files are closed. Your parents will get a letter saying you died in a transport accident."
He looked at them, his eyes hard but not cruel.
"This is your funeral. And this is your birth."
He pointed to the shattered windshield where the ravine forest waited.
"My name is Kai. I am the Knight of Shattered Lives. You were trash to the King. To me? You are the only weapon he didn't count on."
He extended a hand to Ren.
"Welcome to the Decision Point."
They were marched three miles through the sewers—ancient, dry tunnels that predated the city.
The "Decision Point" wasn't a simple base. It was a cathedral of resistance.
It was an underground cistern, vast and echoing, lit by bioluminescent moss and stolen electrical lamps.
Hundreds of people were there. Men, women, children. People who had been "erased" from the system. They were training.
In one corner, Ren saw people practicing knife fighting, their blades flashing in the dim light. In another, a group sat in a circle, learning to dismantle Hollow armor, identifying the weak points in the ceramic plating.
And in the center, a massive map of the city was painted on the floor. Standing on the map were two figures.
One was an old man with wild white hair, organizing crates of supplies and checking a tablet—Eloi, the Ex-Minister, looking less like a politician and more like a quartermaster.
The other was a woman with dark hair who was floating three inches off the ground, juggling three apples with her mind. Ylaeth.
Kai led the group of rescued teens to the edge of the cistern.
"Here is the deal," Kai said, turning to face them.
"We have a civilian sector deeper down. You can go there. We have food, water, and safety. You can live out the war in peace. No one will ask you to fight."
He paused, letting the offer sink in.
"Or," he continued, his hand resting on the hilt of his golden-glowing dagger.
"You can stay here. You can join the Knighthood. We don't have uniforms. We don't have pensions. We have a 60% casualty rate."
He looked at Ren.
"But we are the only ones who get to paint over the grey."
Ren looked at the civilian tunnel. It was dark, safe, quiet.
Then he looked at Eloi, calculating the logistics of survival.
He looked at Ylaeth, defying gravity just because she could.
He looked at Kai.
Ren touched his broken ribs. He thought of Mr. Halay weeping in the classroom. He thought of the girl whose dad killed her dog. He thought of the color of the sky—that hateful, bruising purple.
He stepped forward.
"I'm not good at fighting," Ren said, his voice trembling but loud.
Kai raised an eyebrow. "What are you good at?"
Ren smiled. It was the first real smile he had felt in six months.
"I see things," Ren said. "I see where the colors are wrong. I see the cracks."
Kai grinned. It was a sharp, dangerous grin.
"Good," Kai said. "Because we're about to break the whole damn picture."
He turned to the officer beside him.
"Get them fed. Get them healed. And get this one..." he pointed to Ren, "...a set of paints. I think the Commander-in-Chief might have a use for a spotter."
Ren looked at the map on the floor. In the center, a dagger was stabbed into the Royal Palace.
The war hadn't ended in the Dome. It had just gone underground.