Pain woke me before the light did.
It wasn't sharp. It was deep. A dull, throbbing weight in my shoulder and across my spine. The kind of pain that doesn't scream. It just breathes with you. Slow. Constant. Heavy.
I opened my eyes to darkness.
The floor was packed dirt. No bed. No cot. Just earth and dried blood under my cheek. My cloak was gone. My boots too. The air smelled like wet iron and old piss. Chains rattled nearby. Someone coughed hard, and the sound echoed off stone.
I wasn't alone.
Around me, bodies shifted in the dim. Ten, maybe twelve others. Some asleep, others staring. A few looked feral. Filthy hair over their eyes. Faces hollowed by hunger. One man had his arms wrapped in bandages, teeth bared at nothing.
No one spoke.
The den was deep beneath the recruitment center. Lower than the holding pits. This was where the real rejects were thrown. The ones too broken for a clan, too violent for a village, too desperate to be useful.
And now I was one of them.
I tried to sit up. My muscles groaned, but they listened. My ribs ached from the fight. The taste of blood still clung to the back of my throat. I swallowed and felt something sharp shift in my jaw.
Still breathing. That's what matters.
Footsteps approached.
Leather on stone. Slow. Deliberate. Not guards. Not recruits. He didn't walk like a man who could be questioned.
A thick man stepped into the den, torchlight spilling around him. His armor was chainmail over leather, marked with ugly black stains. One eye was milky and dead. His nose had been broken more than once. A wide scar cut across his lip like someone had tried to silence him long ago but failed.
He didn't carry a sword.
He didn't need to.
"On your feet," he said, voice like gravel soaked in wine. "Now."
Most stood. Some took longer. One man didn't move. The one with the bandaged arms. He just kept staring.
The instructor stepped forward and kicked him in the throat.
The man spasmed, gagged, and collapsed against the wall. His head hit the stone with a crack.
No one helped him.
"Listen close," the instructor said. "You're not soldiers. You're not recruits. You're not people."
He let that hang in the air for a moment.
"You're bodies. That's it. Clay to be shaped or shattered."
He paced slowly in front of us, torchlight flickering across his ruined face.
"Every night, a few of you will go missing. That's how this works. Some will fail. Some will bleed too slow. Some will be dragged away screaming. If you think someone's coming to save you…"
He looked right at me.
"…you're already dead."
He stopped at the end of the line and pointed toward the far wall. A rusted iron door creaked open. Two guards stood inside, faces covered in cloth. Behind them, a circle of dirt and old blood waited. A pit.
"First two. Step forward."
Nobody moved.
Then his eyes landed on me.
"You. The biter. And the twitcher."
My gaze flicked sideways.
The man beside me was gaunt and jittery. His lips twitched like he was whispering to someone who wasn't there. His fingernails were yellow and cracked, and a twitch rolled through his face like lightning under skin.
We stepped forward.
The guards shoved us through the door. The pit was only ten feet across. Walls made of stone, ceiling low and wet. A single torch burned in an iron sconce above.
The instructor closed the door behind us and locked it.
"No weapons," he said through the bars. "No mercy."
The twitcher was already circling. His eyes rolled in his skull like he was hearing voices no one else could. Fingers twitched, knees bounced. His body jittered in short, unnatural bursts, like something inside was moving faster than the skin could keep up with.
He laughed under his breath.
No rhythm. No pattern. Good.
I didn't move. I waited.
He screamed and lunged.
But he didn't punch—he clawed. His hands were like hooks, nails jagged and black. I leaned back just enough to feel the swipe pass over my nose. The next came low, swiping for my thigh. I stepped sideways and kicked out at his knee.
He absorbed the blow and giggled.
He darted again, lower this time. His shoulder slammed into my chest, driving me back against the wall. My spine cracked hard. The breath left my lungs.
He went for my throat with both hands.
I didn't resist.
I let him grip me, then brought my forehead down on his nose.
The crunch was loud. He reeled back, howling.
I grabbed a fistful of dirt from the floor and flung it in his face.
He screamed again, wiping frantically at his eyes. I grabbed his wrist and twisted until something popped, then drove my knee into his temple.
He dropped. Not out cold—but dazed.
I didn't hesitate.
I straddled him and slammed his hand against the stone. Once, then again. Bones cracked beneath the force. When he tried to kick, I trapped his legs beneath mine and elbowed him in the throat. He choked and wheezed.
Still fighting.
Still twitching.
I reached for his own fingers and bent one back until it broke.
Then another.
Then another.
He screamed with a voice that echoed off the pit walls and into the bones of everyone watching.
The instructor didn't stop me.
I kept going.
He tried to crawl, so I grabbed his head and dragged it backward, slamming it into the dirt.
Not to kill him. Just enough to stop the movement.
Just enough to make him remember me in every dream he ever had after this.
He lay there, half-conscious, chest heaving, face streaked with snot and dirt and blood.
I stood over him, panting, fists raw, arms trembling.
The torchlight flickered.
I didn't win by being faster. Or stronger. I won because I wanted to break him.
The instructor unlocked the gate.
No cheers. No nods. Just silence and blood.
As I stepped out of the pit, someone muttered behind me.
"Cravik…"
I stopped.
The name hadn't been said in days. Not since I spoke it in the pit below the center.
I turned slowly.
A young man in the back of the group was watching me. Cleaner than most. His eyes were alert. Not afraid. Not yet.
"You said Cravik," he said softly. "That's a noble line. Eastern provinces. Thought they were all killed off after the border purge."
I didn't answer.
The instructor walked over.
"You know what happens to names here?" he asked.
The boy frowned. "What?"
The instructor grabbed him by the collar and drove his head into the wall.
The boy dropped.
"Keep your history to yourself," he growled.
Then he looked at me.
"And you. If you want to survive here, Cravik, you better bleed quieter."
He walked off, boots crunching through the blood trail.
I didn't move.
Not because I was scared.
Because I was starting to like this place.