They didn't ask.
It happened the night after Dogveil Lane. Ivar was walking the cracked canal path, following the edge of a gutted shrine, when the Wardens came.
No warning. No ceremony.
They moved like ash through the wind. Black-clad. Silent. Efficient.
He saw the first shadow too late.
A cord looped around his throat. Another around his chest. A knee slammed into his spine, forcing him forward onto stone. A boot crushed his shoulder. He didn't cry out.
The world tilted sideways as they dragged him into a tunnel-mouth lined with rotvine and soot.
One Warden hissed near his ear, "Quiet boys are always the worst."
He didn't struggle.
They bound his wrists in iron-laced cord. Wrenched his head back. Checked his eyes. His teeth. His breath.
"Dormant irregular," one muttered. "Might be nothing. Might be worse."
They punched him once—hard, low, not to injure but remind.
Then came the blindfold.
They brought him to the arena just before dawn.
Cradlecliff was no grand coliseum—just a hollow carved into the city's old under-foundation. A quarry turned pit. Its limestone walls hunched like broken teeth around a crater floor, the stone slick with blood that never fully dried. Mold curled in feathered green around the edges, where rats didn't dare nest. Even silence echoed wrong here—as if the ground itself remembered.
No banners. No names. No ceremony. Just watchers.
The stairs down were damp, each step a descent into breath that tasted of copper, mildew, and ash. Fog hovered thick above the rim. City smoke, marrow, and bonewax made the air bite. Ivar didn't flinch.
He moved without resistance, flanked by Wardens who said nothing. One bore a rust-slicked brand hammer. The other walked with a limp like something inside had cracked but never healed.
They didn't look at Ivar. Didn't speak. Just delivered him.
The holding pens were nothing more than hollowed dens—stone cubicles barred by chain-thick lattice, sealed in spit-welded steel. The walls sweated salt.
Two others waited inside.
A girl crouched in the far corner, humming. Her hair was a nest of moss and wire. One eye was missing—scratched out or bitten, it wasn't clear. A burn mark down one arm had bubbled and never closed.
Beside her, a man rocked on bare heels. His nails were torn, bloodied from clawing the walls. He blinked at Ivar like he wasn't sure if he was real. Then he wept.
The girl didn't stop humming.
The Warden grunted. "You're third. Don't talk. Don't cry. If you shift, keep it clean. If you kill, make it count."
Ivar didn't answer.
The Warden looked at him longer than necessary. "Too cold," he muttered. "They're always too cold."
Then left.
Behind him, the gate clanged shut. The sound echoed long.
The girl stopped humming. She smiled. "One of us won't come back. Might be you. Might be me. Doesn't matter. Something always stays."
The man beside her whispered prayers to gods who didn't listen. Scratched something in Lowglyph into the grime: Let it be quick.
Then they came for him.
Not Ivar. The man.
He didn't resist. Just shuffled out, trembling. No screams—just the wet crunch of bones minutes later. And silence.
The girl laughed next. As they dragged her out, she kissed the bars. Said, "You'll see. It's always worse when they watch."
They did watch.
And they howled. Screams filled the pit like water in a drowning well.
Then they called for Ivar.
He stepped into Cradlecliff without a word.
The arena bowl opened wide, its limestone ridges carved in tiers. Ledges jutted out where spectators clung like hungry ghosts. No seating—just piles of rags, collapsed shrines, and rusted hooks. Fires burned in oil drums. Smoke curled upward, mixing with incense and sewer steam.
On the upper rim, children dangled charms from string. Gutterpriests daubed ash on their tongues. Bonecarvers clutched tokens of teeth and string.
Eyes. So many eyes.
A voice from above rang out—female, dispassionate, sharp as broken glass.
"Third Trial. Suspect designation: Dormant Irregular. Subject: Ivar. Zero recorded initiations. Breach at Junkrow. No public scream. No physical mutation. Trial invoked under Muckblood Clause, section fourteen."
The watchers whispered.
"Muckblood?"
"Didn't even shift?"
"What did he do?"
The answer was silence. Ivar stood still, barefoot in the filth, as the opposite gate screeched open.
From the dark, something emerged.
It had been a man once.
Now it twitched as it moved. Its limbs were too long, bent at wrong angles. Bone-juts protruded through skin like growths, twitching. Its back was arched, ribs visible through wet, blistered flesh. Eyes black as pitch. No pupils. Just voids.
It sniffed the air.
Growled low. A sound like gravel dragged across rusted metal.
The smell reached Ivar before the thing did—piss, blood, old milk, raw iron.
The beast roared and charged.
Ivar didn't move.
A child gasped. An old woman spat a prayer.
Then, just before impact, Ivar stepped aside.
Measured. Controlled. Effortless.
The beast stumbled past.
It turned, faster than expected, snarling.
Ivar met it. Low. Not aggressive—anatomical.
His hand caught the beast's forearm.
A twist. A snap.
The sound was wet.
The beast screamed. Recoiled. Swung wild.
Ivar ducked under. Struck once—just enough.
Bone cracked. The beast fell.
The crowd shifted. Something uneasy bloomed.
He didn't pant. Didn't roar. Didn't tremble.
He fought like a man who had already faced worse.
And won.
The beast rose, frothing now. Blood down its chest. It lunged again, faster. Desperate.
Ivar turned with the motion. Redirected.
Used its weight.
The creature slammed into the pit wall. Left a dent. Slumped.
Still breathing.
Barely.
Ivar stood above it.
Didn't strike to kill.
Didn't shift.
Didn't scream.
Didn't pant.
The girl before him had laughed.
The man before her had begged.
Ivar had done neither.
The watchers began to murmur.
"He's not beastborn."
"No—he's worse."
The Warden voice returned. Now brittle. Slower.
"Judgment suspended. Subject remains… observed."
No one clapped.
No one cheered.
A chalkboy crossed himself.
A lowborn priest whispered, "Stillness is a mask. And masks crack."
Ivar turned and left the pit.
No backward glance. No acknowledgment.
The crowd parted like smoke.
Because beastborns feared what didn't twitch before it bit.
And Ivar hadn't twitched at all.
They didn't shackle him.
Didn't guide him.
They let him walk Cradlecliff's stairs alone.
The fog had lifted some, but Eelgrave felt no lighter. He walked through alleys where no birds sang. A man leaned against a wall and turned his face when he passed. A woman clutched her daughter closer without seeming to.
They watched him now like an omen.
Not a boy.
A thing returned.
He passed a wall. The names of the dead scratched deep. Beneath them, fresh chalk:
THEY BLEED. HE WAITS.
A trail of broken bone charms led behind the smokehouses—through salt-thick gutters and beneath collapsed prayer bridges.
There, on a rusted pipe, something waited.
A Warden pigeon. Dead. Wings pinned wide with bone. Eyes pecked out.
Below it, soot marks. A snout. Toothless. Open.
EMPTYFANG.
But this one was inverted. Drawn backward.
And beside it, scratched in cracked Lowglyph:
FIND WHAT DOESN'T ROT.
The soot was still wet.
Not old. Not casual.
A message.
Ivar looked up.
The rooftops bent toward the ashfields—toward the crumbling edge of Eelgrave, where the city forgot to breathe.
He climbed.
Up stairs covered in moss and mildew, where prayer strips hung in tatters and rust water bled from the walls.
Every step felt heavier. Not from fatigue.
From memory.
At the ridge, just before the ashfield line, the air changed. Thinner. Cold with something not quite wind.
And there—
the cave.
A wound in the rock.
She was waiting.
Lysa stood in the mouth of the cave, barefoot. One eye blackened with soot. The other glinting. Alive. Too alive.
He paused.
A flicker of memory stirred—the rooftops, her mirror, the way she watched but never blinked.
She didn't smile.
Didn't greet him.
She simply said:
"You don't smell like grief or anger."
Ivar didn't speak.
"You smell like a locked door."
A long silence passed between them.
Not peaceful. Not hostile. Just held.
Then she stepped into the dark.
"Come," she said.
"See what the city buried."
Ivar followed.
And behind him, the last of the soot blew away.