[Aspirant.]
[Welcome to the Nightmare Spell.]
[Prepare for your First Trial.]
Gray woke into a place that did not forgive.
Stone pressed above him, and stone waited below, cold enough to feel deliberate. The air was old, not simply stale, but aged, as if it had been breathed by too many throats and never allowed to leave. Somewhere nearby, water counted time drop by drop, steady as a metronome in the dark.
He did not move. He let the world confess itself first.
A chain shifted in the distance. A human breath stuttered, then forced itself into rhythm. A rat scratched once and decided silence was safer. Beneath it all was a faint, patient vibration, as if the prison rested on something larger that never truly slept.
Only after listening did he open his eyes.
The darkness was not complete. It was stained. Torchlight leaked in thin layers from a corridor beyond the bars, enough to outline shapes without granting comfort.
This body was wrong.
Not wrong in proportion. Wrong in history.
It carried work in its joints and punishment in its tendons. The wrists burned with the memory of iron. The shoulders held the dull ache of a life spent lifting, dragging, kneeling. The hands were thick, scarred, split at the knuckles, fingers that had bled so often they no longer asked permission to hurt.
A prisoner's body.
A role imposed without explanation.
He drew one quiet breath, took control of the unfamiliar heartbeat, and sat up slowly. Straw crackled under him, crushed into a filthy mat. A bucket sulked in a corner. The bars were pitted with rust and old stains that time had refused to erase.
Across the cell, the wall was scratched with marks. Some were tallies. Some were names. Some were only gouges where nails had tried to carve meaning into stone and failed.
Gray looked at the others.
Six prisoners shared the cell with him.
A boy with a cracked lip and fear shining in his eyes like wet glass. A broad man with a broken nose that had healed wrong, jaw clenched as if he could bite through fate. A woman whose gaze never rose higher than anyone's boots, posture trained to disappear. A lanky youth whose hands shook even when he forced them still. An old man with thin hair and a tremor that lived in his fingers like a second pulse. And one more, heavy and silent, sitting with his back to the wall, breathing like someone who had already accepted the end and was simply waiting for the formality.
No one stared for long.
In cramped places, staring became language. Language became conflict. Conflict became permission.
The old man finally spoke, voice dry and cautious. "Who are you?"
Gray did not answer.
A name was a hook. Hooks were how systems pulled.
He lowered his gaze as if he had not heard, then began to search with his hands, slow and deliberate. The difference mattered. Desperation was loud, and loudness invited the club.
His fingers combed through straw, found a snapped button, a sliver of bone, a broken nail head. Useless.
Then metal.
A rough strip of iron half buried near the wall, torn from something larger. Rust had eaten most of it, but one edge remained jagged and sharp. Not a weapon, not in any honest sense.
Still an option.
He palmed it without looking down, shifted his shoulder to block sightlines, and slid the shard into the inner seam of his shirt. It scraped skin and settled against his ribs.
Good.
A hidden tool was not power, but it was leverage. Leverage was how men survived when strength belonged to others.
At the edge of his sight, the pale pane remained present and silent. It did not explain. It did not comfort. It waited like a clerk, confident that the world would eventually force him to reveal himself.
Footsteps approached.
A key scraped in a lock. Metal complained. The door opened with a slow groan that sounded like old wood remembering every scream it had swallowed.
Two guards stepped in, clubs in hand. Leather jerkins, iron caps, faces blank with routine. Behind them stood a robed official with a cloth mask, a man who did not carry a weapon because weapons were carried for him.
"Up," one guard said.
The boy rose too fast. The club struck his thigh, not to break, only to teach. The broad man stood without protest. The woman moved as if trying to leave no footprint in the air.
Gray rose last.
He did it at a pace that looked obedient but never hurried. Hurry suggested fear. Fear invited correction. He kept his shoulders neutral, his breathing steady, his eyes level. The safest mask was competence.
The guards looped a chain through their bindings, linking all seven of them together. Iron kissed iron. The prison remembered itself.
They were marched out.
The corridor beyond the cell was narrow and wet. Water ran down seams between blocks as if the walls were sweating from holding too many lives. Torches burned low in iron cups, flames steady in a way that felt trained. Smoke clung to the ceiling in thin layers, forming a dirty sky inside the prison's throat.
They climbed stairs.
The air grew colder, not cleaner, only less stale. Gray marked each turn without moving his head, measured distance by the rhythm of footsteps and the scrape of chain against stone. He tested the slack at his wrists with a tiny shift of fingers, just enough to learn, not enough to be seen.
The robed official walked behind them in silence.
Silence was authority.
They emerged into an open yard.
High walls boxed the world in, dark and tall, crowned with spikes. Lanterns hung from posts, their light trembling in the wind. Above, the sky was real. Clouds moved slowly across it, hiding most stars and revealing a few, cold and indifferent. The kind of night that watched without caring.
A cart waited at the gate.
Wood reinforced with iron rims. A cage bolted on top, bars thick enough to resist panic. Other prisoners were already packed inside, wrists bound, shoulders pressed together, eyes reflecting lantern light like trapped animals.
The old man whispered again, more desperate now. "They said we're being taken to the Court."
The broken-nosed man spat. "Not a court. A stage. They read the charges so the city can feel clean."
The boy's voice cracked. "For what?"
The woman answered without lifting her gaze. "For being noticed."
The robed official turned his head slightly, as if registering that sound had occurred, but he did not correct them. He did not need to. The guards did the work.
They shoved the old man into the cage first. Then the boy. Then the broad man. Then the others, one by one, the chain feeding them into the cart like inventory.
Gray was thrown in last and hit the boards hard enough to jar his ribs. Pain flared, then dulled into something workable. He shifted to a corner that gave him air and angles, a place to observe, a place to act if the world offered an opening.
The gate opened.
The cart lurched forward.
Wheels creaked. Chains clinked. The prison fell behind them like a closing mouth.
They rolled into darkness.
Trees crowded close. Stone markers flashed past. The road narrowed, then worsened, turning from packed dirt to rutted misery. Lanterns swayed. Shadows leaped across faces and bars. The cage turned human shapes into a single mass of breath and restrained panic.
Some prisoners prayed. Not because they believed. Because the mind demanded ritual when it had nothing else.
Gray stayed silent.
He listened instead.
There were patterns to everything. Even suffering had schedules.
Outside the cage, guards traded low voices between steps.
"Six from the south block."
"Seven now. They added one."
"The last one came in with no record."
"Doesn't matter. The Spell sorts them. We deliver."
Gray held onto that without showing it.
No record.
Delivered anyway.
He pressed his bound hands against his lap and felt the iron shard hidden under cloth, a small weight, a small promise. He memorized where it sat, how it shifted, how it might be used without cutting too deep.
Minutes passed. Or hours. In a place like this, time was measured in fatigue and the number of times a man swallowed fear.
The boy began to shake. The lanky youth leaned close and whispered to him, too quiet for the guards to hear, loud enough for Gray to catch fragments. Heresy. A book. Words that were not supposed to be spoken.
Gray did not ask questions.
Questions made you part of other people's mistakes.
He watched instead. He watched how panic spread, who resisted it, who fed it. He watched the broad man's wrists, the way he tested his bonds with tiny movements, and the way he stopped the instant it hurt, saving strength for a moment that mattered.
Useful.
The cart kept moving.
Far ahead, beyond the line of hills, a low sound rose and fell like a slow breath.
Not wind.
Not an animal.
A distant rumble that made the prisoners stiffen without knowing why. It did not sound like thunder. It sounded like something large shifting its weight in the dark, patient enough to let the world come closer.
The pale pane refreshed at the edge of Gray's sight, calm and merciless.
[First Trial: Initiated.]
[Scenario: Unknown.]
[Role: Assigned.]
[Survive.]
Gray did not blink.
So this was the beginning.
No explanation. No mercy. No clean enemy you could stab and be done with it. Only a cage on wheels, six strangers chained to him, and a road leading toward a place where verdicts were public and bodies were cheap.
He lowered his gaze as if he were only another condemned man and let the cart carry him deeper.
Inside, his thoughts stayed cold.
If the trial wanted fear, he would give it silence.
If it wanted obedience, he would give it correctness.
And when the first rule finally revealed itself, he would learn it, measure it, and turn it into a blade.
Ahead, the road dipped.
In the far distance, a faint glow touched the underside of the clouds. Not sunrise. Not firelight from a camp.
A city.
Or something pretending to be one.
The cage rattled once, like an omen.
Gray lowered his gaze and let the cart keep rolling, as if he were harmless. The best lies were the ones you lived.