The hulking guard gave Rickon a final, dismissive shove, sending him stumbling forward into the heart of the facility.
The heavy steel door slammed shut behind him, the sound of bolts sliding home resonating not like the closing of a tomb, but the start of a new, more terrible life.
He had stepped out of one hell and into another.
The dim hallway led to a huge, hollow chamber that smelled of rust, sweat, and old blood.
The place was a repurposed factory, its high ceilings lined with steel beams and walkways.
Weak, caged bulbs cast long, dancing shadows, making the hundreds of people wandering about look like specters in a nightmare.
This was Vanguard Academy.
Rickon clutched the empty space on his belt where his life savings had been just moments ago.
He was now officially a student, part of the tenth set to be subjected into this unforgiving system.
He had heard the stories from Silas, that the academy, led by a mysterious outsider named Stannis Vorthal, was humanity's only real, though desperate, chance to fight back.
Vorthal had trained the first set of students himself.
Some, seeing the horrors that awaited in the portals, chose to stay behind, spreading out across the globe to create their own independent academies.
They were all united by one goal: to train and send powerless humans through the portal to gain immense power, giving them a chance to survive the world's new order.
Primarily, to possibly stand against the invading aliens and reclaim Earth from those merciless and cruel bastards!
An unconventional education began immediately. There were no welcome speeches, no friendly orientations.
The first six weeks were a brutal crash course in survival.
Days were filled with lectures in makeshift classrooms where instructors, scarred veterans from earlier sets, taught them about the different classifications of monsters, from the huge, horned Grunts that had destroyed his home to the skittering, insectoid Reavers that hunted in the ruins.
They learned about herbs, spells that could create momentary shields of light, and the terrifying physics of the portals themselves.
The training was designed to break them.
Physical conditioning was a daily torture, pushing their bodies past exhaustion until they collapsed, only to be forced back up.
Rickon, amidst the thousands of other enrollees, was an island of singular focus. He saw the other students, their eyes burning with different ambitions.
Some, muscle-bound thugs who had thrived in the chaos of the new world, sought power to become the new tyrants, to be the ones with the whip instead of under it.
Others, with greed glittering in their eyes, spoke in hushed tones of the riches and artifacts that could be plundered from the other side.
Rickon cared for none of it. His ambition was a simple, pure, and all-consuming fire: find the monster with the crown-like horns who took Yara, and free his mother from whatever chains held her.
He had no other reason to live. This cold detachment made him unusual. He was quiet, observant, and utterly ruthless in his training.
The first true test came three weeks in.
The thousands of students were herded into the main training arena, a vast, circular pit with a dirt floor stained dark from previous trials.
High above, on a metal walkway, a woman appeared.
This was Chief Instructor Elara Rostova, a survivor of the very first set.
Her voice, amplified by some unseen device, was as sharp and cold as flaked steel.
"Look around you," she commanded, her voice cutting through the nervous murmuring.
"See the faces of your competition. Before the invasion, you were told that all life is precious.
You were taught to be kind, to be compassionate. That world is dead. Its rules are ash."
She paced the walkway, her boots clanging with each step.
"In this world, there is only one rule: the strong live, and the weak die. Compassion is a disease. Hesitation is a death sentence. Today, we begin to cure you of both."
Her eyes swept over the sea of faces. "You have ten minutes. Find three other people you trust with your life. Form a group of four. Anyone left without a group when the time is up will be eliminated."
She paused, letting the last word hang in the air. "Your ten minutes start now."
Panic erupted. The crowd became a frantic mass of shoving bodies and desperate shouts.
Rickon's heart hammered against his ribs, not with fear, but with cold calculation.
He didn't run towards the biggest men or the loudest boasters. Strength wasn't just muscle.
He knew the strongest weapon a man could wield wasn't a sharp blade, but the motivation that drove him.
He scanned the chaos, his eyes searching for that specific fire.
He first noticed it in a small, wiry woman with quick, darting eyes, methodically taking down anyone who reached for her with swift, precise blows to their joints.
He moved toward her, keeping a low profile. "I need a group," he said, his voice low and direct.
She assessed him for a second, saw the grim resolve in his face, and gave a curt nod. Her name was Sophie.
Next, his gaze fell on a tall, powerfully built man, his body shaped with hard muscle and defined abs, the kind who could have led any gang, yet his fists remained clenched at his sides, and his face was etched with deep, unmistakable desperation.
He wasn't looking for a fight, he was looking for a chance.
Rickon and Sophie approached him together.
"Join us," Rickon said. The man, Ragnar, looked at them, then at the chaos around them, and joined without a word.
With a minute to spare, they were still one short.
Rickon spotted him. A boy of perhaps sixteen, cowering near a wall, his body trembling.
Yet, his hands were balled into white-knuckled fists, and his eyes, wide with terror, held a glimmer of defiance.
"Him," Rickon said. Ragnar grunted. "The kid? He looks weak, he might probably get us killed."
"No," Rickon countered, his gaze unwavering.
"He's terrified. But he's still here. That's not weakness. That's a reason." They pulled the boy, Bran, into their circle just as a deafening horn blasted through the arena.
Massive steel doors slammed down on all exits, sealing them in. The sound carried a heavy, absolute finality.
Instructor Rostova's voice returned, colder than before. "The game is simple. For the next forty-five minutes, you will fight. The last ones standing will proceed. The rule is kill or be killed."
A wave of murmurs rippled through the survivors.
"Oh, and one final detail," she added, a hint of cruel amusement in her tone.
"Your groups are now linked. If any single member of your group dies, the entire group is eliminated. Have fun."
For a moment, there was a stunned silence. Then, the slaughter began.
A group of four muscle-bound men near them charged, their eyes wild with bloodlust.
"The kid dies first!" one of them roared, swinging a crude metal pipe at Bran.
"Scatter!" Rickon yelled. His team broke apart like a flock of startled birds.
Ragnar faced the main charge head-on, his massive body a wall of raw strength.
He roared, catching the pipe on his forearm with a sickening crunch of flesh and bone, then drove his other fist deep into the man's gut.
The man folded with a wet gasp.
Sophie was a blur of motion, her small body weaving between two other attackers.
She used their momentum against them, a quick leg sweep sending one sprawling into the dirt.
As his partner turned in surprise, she drove the heel of her boot into his knee with a sharp crack.
Rickon faced the fourth man, who swung a long knife in a wide, sloppy arc.
Rickon dropped, the blade whistling over his head. He rolled backward onto his shoulder, coming up on one knee.
He had no weapon, only his hands and the burning image of his family in his mind.
As the man lunged again, Rickon exploded upward. It wasn't a trained martial arts move, it was a desperate, furious stunt.
He kicked off the arena wall, twisting his body in mid-air.
BOOM!
His heel connected with the side of the man's head in a brutal aerial kick. The man crumpled to the ground, unconscious.
Bran, seeing the first attacker now focused on Gregor's back, let out a high-pitched scream of rage and charged, tackling the man at the knees.
It was a clumsy, desperate move, but it bought Ragnar the second he needed. The big man turned, grabbed the attacker by the head, and slammed him into the dirt floor with a final, sickening thud.
Their first fight was over in seconds. All around them, the arena was a whirlwind of death.
Cries of pain and rage mixed with the wet crunch of breaking bones and the sound of metal on metal.
Groups that lacked cohesion were torn apart.
Lone wolves who thought themselves invincible were swarmed and butchered.
Rickon's team, a motley collection of desperation, fought with a savage synergy. Ragnar was the shield, Sophie the blade, Bran the unexpected distraction, and Rickon was the cold, calculating mind that held them together.
They were cornered by a larger group, their backs against the wall.
"I have a plan!" Rickon gasped, his ribs aching. "When I move, you break left!"
He burst forward, drawing the attention of their leader. As the man swung a heavy axe, Rickon launched himself into a low, spinning sweep kick.
The man stumbled, his attack going wide. In that instant, Sophie rushed in, driving a sharpened piece of scrap metal she'd picked up into the man's thigh.
He howled in pain.
Ragnar charged, a human battering ram, and shattered their formation.
The forty-five minutes felt like an eternity.
Finally, just as Rickon's group finished fending off another attack, the horn blared again, signaling the end.
The fighting stopped raggedly. Silence fell, broken only by the groans of the wounded and the ragged, desperate panting of the survivors.
Rickon stood, his body a canvas of bruises and cuts, and looked around.
The arena floor was littered with bodies.
Of the more than ten thousand students who had started the day, only a fraction remained.
A quick count showed the number had been cut down to two thousand five hundred.
Rickon's team had made it. They stood together, battered and bleeding, but alive.
He looked at Sophie, Ragnar, and Bran, and for the first time in five years, he felt something other than rage or grief.
It was a flicker of friendship, a bond forged in blood and survival.
The remaining months of training were just as hellish, filled with more trials and more death. But the bloodbath had culled the weak and the foolish.
Those who remained were killers, survivors.
When the day of graduation finally arrived, Rickon stood among the two thousand survivors, his face hard, his eyes cold.
He was nothing like the lazy boy who once slept on his mother's couch, a shadow of a life he could now barely remember.
He was a weapon, forged in pain and tempered by a singular, burning purpose.
He was ready for the Astral Verge. He was ready to get his family back.