The day of Kael's first sanctioned kill began like any other.
Grey light filtered through the moss-choked canopy overhead. The roots curled tighter around the Hollow, veins pulsing with buried magic. The air reeked of wet stone, dried blood, and old magic, an almost metallic stench that clung to the skin. Bells rang once, then again. Not musical. Mechanical. Bone and brass.
The overseers appeared in silence.
They dragged Kael from his cot, bound his wrists not in rope but in tendrils of whispering smoke, and led him through a hallway he had never seen. Seret watched from the shadows, expression unreadable. No smirk. No scowl. Just the faint narrowing of her eyes, as if weighing something invisible.
Kael said nothing.
He'd stopped asking questions months ago.
They brought him to a chamber unlike the Pit.
It was a hexagon of stone, walls etched with glyphs that shimmered with a deep red light. Torches hissed with black flame. An altar stood in the center, simple, rough, soaked dark with old blood. Behind it loomed a figure he had only ever glimpsed in fever dreams.
The High Flayer.
That's what the others called him.
His robes were crimson and gold, stitched with symbols no child was allowed to read. His face was hidden behind a mask of bone, elongated, snarling, fanged. His voice, when he spoke, echoed as though coming from beneath the earth.
"You are Kael of the Crownless Flame," he said.
Kael didn't flinch.
"You were taken. You were tested. You have bled, burned, and survived. Now you will prove yourself."
A figure was dragged into the room, hooded, beaten, barely conscious.
The mask was pulled away.
It was Bram.
The boy Kael had nearly killed weeks ago. Burned. Scarred. Still alive.
Barely.
"Justice," said the High Flayer, "is not a mercy. It is a rite. He tried to cut your throat. He showed weakness. You showed strength. Now you will finish it."
A blade floated from the shadows, curved, jagged, etched in runes. It hovered before Kael like a question made of metal.
"No," Kael whispered.
The High Flayer tilted his head. "No?"
Kael's fists clenched. "He's already broken. He won't last. Killing him isn't… it isn't honor."
The silence that followed was absolute.
Then came laughter.
Not from the High Flayer. From the others.
Dozens of masked children appeared from the walls, stepping into the torchlight, initiates, acolytes, ones who had passed their trials. Seret was among them, arms crossed.
"You think this is about honor?" the Flayer asked. "No, Kael. This is about reality. The world beyond these walls is worse than this place. Filthier. Uglier. There is no honor, only will. Kill him, or become him."
Bram lifted his head.
His one good eye met Kael's.
He didn't beg.
He didn't plead.
He smiled.
"I hope you hesitate," he rasped. "I hope they tear you apart for it."
Kael took the blade.
Not because he wanted to.
Because he understood.
Because something inside him whispered that the only way out of this place was through its rules, and its rules were written in blood.
He stepped forward.
Bram didn't move.
The fire came back, not burning, but watching.
The blade plunged into flesh.
Bram's breath hitched.
Kael twisted.
And it was done.
The Flayer did not speak. He simply stepped forward, pressed a mark to Kael's forehead, searing, red-hot, ancient, and said:
"You are reborn."
The other children knelt.
Kael stood, bathed in blood and silence.
From that day on, the Hollow treated him differently.
His cell was replaced with a chamber. His meals improved, hot, not cold. They gave him scrolls to read, incantations to recite, mantras to whisper before sleep. His fire became sharper. Controlled. No longer wild but focused. A blade, not a storm.
Seret trained with him now.
They sparred every dawn.
They bled together.
Neither spoke of Bram.
They didn't need to.
The Hollow did not mourn.
It molded.
Years passed, but you would not know it here.
Time bent.
Kael grew, taller, stronger, colder.
By the time he turned ten, he'd already killed six more. Not out of hatred. Out of necessity. Sometimes it was part of a lesson. Sometimes it was the lesson.
At eleven, he took a name.
Not Kael of Velmora.
Not Kael the Lost.
The cult called him Ashborn.
Because nothing survived in his wake.
But sometimes… at night… the dreams came.
A hand brushing his hair back.
A voice singing a lullaby in a language he could no longer remember.
A face, blurred, weeping, radiant.
And a scent of lavender.
He would wake in a cold sweat, hands burning green, heart pounding like war drums.
And always… always… a whisper followed.
One word, not his own.
"Soon."