The child stood before the pile of rusted weapons, his palms sweating.
Before him lay a massive two-handed axe, brutal and chipped but still deadly. Next to it, a halberd, its sharpened point glinting dully in the camp's sickly light.
'I could wield this,' he thought, imagining sweeping enemies aside with a single blow. 'I could...'
"Don't take that."
Ingward stood behind him, arms crossed, his gaze as hard as stone.
"But..."
"You know how to use a halberd? No. Then you'll get gutted before you even raise it." He jerked his chin toward a short dagger and a dented buckler. "Take these. You run. You flee. You survive."
The child clenched his jaw. 'I don't want to flee. I want to strike.' But something in Ingward's tone left no room for argument.
He grabbed the dagger. The blade was dull, but the point still looked sharp enough to pierce flesh.
'What was he, before?' The child watched Ingward from the corner of his eye. 'The build of a knight, the calloused hands of a man who'd once wielded far nobler steel than these scraps. Why is he here?'
But he didn't ask.
Before the Gate.
"Brothers! Martyrs! Warriors!"
The general's voice was a whip-crack across the gathered slaves, his crimson cloak billowing like a fresh wound against the Tower's black hide. He spread his arms, as if to embrace them all.
"You stand at the threshold of the Forty-Ninth, the last crucible before salvation! Beyond it lies the Fiftieth, where the worthy are remade!"
The knights around him cheered, pounding their shields. The slaves stayed silent.
The child felt bile rise in his throat. 'This speech... isn't for us.' They were just disposable tools.
"What bullshit," he muttered.
Ingward smirked. "Welcome to the real world, kid."
The Gate opened.
A monstrous grinding sound, like the earth itself tearing apart. Slowly, with nightmare grandeur, the black doors parted...
Revealing nothing.
A wall of pure darkness, so thick that light seemed to die at its threshold.
The slaves were shoved forward.
"No no no..."
An older man with graying hair tried to back away. "I can't, I..."
A guard's blade sliced through his neck like a scythe through dry grass.
The head rolled.
The body collapsed.
The child felt his heart stop.
'That just happened. That really just...'
His grip on the dagger tightened until pain lanced through his palm.
"Breathe."
Ingward was beside him now, voice low and urgent. "Stay close. If you panic, you die. Understood?"
The child nodded, teeth gritted. Not dying. Not like this.
Before them, the darkness waited.
And one by one, the slaves disappeared inside.