The chains sang every time Kael moved.
Not with music. Not with melody.
With memory.
Every link in the iron bindings around his wrists held a piece of his past: a scream from his mother's throat, the fire that consumed his village, the broken face of his brother before the soldiers took him. They sang only to him, and only when they sensed his rage.
The pit of Urath-Ka boiled with sound—drums made from giant skulls, cheers from savage nobles in obsidian balconies, and the howls of beasts caged in the shadows. A dozen other fighters knelt around Kael on the bloodstained sand, heads bowed, trembling beneath the carved glyphs that glowed on the arena floor.
The glyphs meant one thing: a blood offering had been demanded.
Kael did not tremble.
He had killed too many to fear the arena. He had bled too much to care about pain. What he feared was the singing.
He feared what came after.
The gate across from him creaked open, dragged by black-chained beasts with too many eyes. The creature that emerged was worse than anything he had seen in years of deathmatches: a Stitched Godling, seven feet tall, built from the corpses of priests and martyrs, its face a patchwork of stitched lips and scorched halos.
The crowd roared.
The Godling spoke, its voice wet and full of rot.
> "Kael Varn. You were marked at birth. You wear the Hollow Sigil. The pit wants your death—but I will grant you unmaking."
Kael stood.
His chains clattered.
The glyphs beneath his feet turned red.
> "Fight or die," the arena master bellowed from his obsidian throne.
Kael reached behind his back and gripped the bone-hilt of his sword. It wasn't a beautiful weapon. It was old, chipped, ugly. But it had tasted more divine blood than any relic in the Empire.
It whispered to him in the voice of his first kill.
> "Let go."
No. Not yet.
He unsheathed it slowly.
The Godling charged.
Kael stepped aside just enough to avoid the first blow and slashed upward. Sparks danced. Flesh split. The Godling's arm hit the ground, writhing like a dying snake.
The crowd screamed their approval. Blood rained onto the glyphs.
That was when he felt it.
The Sigil burned on his chest.
The Hollow Sigil—the forbidden mark carved into his skin when he was a child—lit with hellfire. His veins throbbed. His muscles surged. His eyes went black.
The chains on his wrists screamed.
> "UNLEASH ME."
He didn't.
Not yet.
He fought on pure rage. Bone cracked. The Godling shrieked and summoned divine flame from its ruptured chest, but Kael rolled beneath it, drove his sword through its throat, and twisted.
The corpse collapsed.
And for a moment—only a moment—Kael was not a slave.
He was power.
---
[To be continued...]
---