Epigraph
"You don't know what you are until something/somebody tries to kill you." Ascendant Combat Doctrine Introduction.
The arena smelled like old blood and disinfectant.
Aiden stood with the other ten candidates at the edge of a massive circular chamber, fifty meters across, walls rising thirty feet to an observation deck where instructors watched. The floor was scarred concrete, stained dark in places. Overhead lights buzzed, casting harsh shadows.
This wasn't a training room. This was a killing floor.
Instructor Kael stood before them, arms crossed. Behind her, guards wheeled in a rack of weapons-short blades, reinforced batons, a few firearms with limited ammunition.
"You'll face two riftborn types today," Kael said. Her voice echoed off the walls. "Shredders and crawlers. Both are low tier. Both have killed trained soldiers."
She gestured to a sealed door on the far side of the arena. Behind it, something scraped against metal. A wet, chittering sound that made Aiden's skin crawl.
"Shredders are fast pack hunters. They'll try to separate and flank you. Crawlers ambush from above and their blood is corrosive. Touch it and your bare bone will be visible to see." Kael's gaze swept above them. "You have fifteen minutes to kill everything we release. Work together or die alone. Now, choose your weapons."
The candidates rushed the rack. Cade grabbed a heavy kinetic baton, its core glowing blue with compressed force. Reva took two plasma blades, the edges shimmering with barely-contained heat. Jace picked up a reinforced energy shield that flickered to life when he gripped it.
Kieran grabbed a kinetic baton and immediately fumbled it. "Shit. Okay. Second try." He got a better grip, the weapon humming on his hand.
Aiden's hand hovered over the weapons. His instincts were screaming at him but he didn't know what to take. Finally he grabbed a blue looking
machete-simple, direct. His hands were shaking.
"Thirty seconds!" Kael called from the observation deck. She'd already climbed up, out of the kill zone.
The candidates spread out, trying to form some kind of defensive line. Nobody had trained for this. They were just eleven scared kids with weapons they barely knew how to use.
The sealed door began to rise with a mechanical groan.
Darkness yawned behind it.
Then something moved.
The first Shredder came low and fast-a blur of gray flesh and too many legs, quadrupedal but wrong, joints bending at angles that hurt to look at. Its head was eyeless, just a gaping maw lined with serrated bone.
It hit the closest candidate-a girl Aiden barely knew-before anyone could react. She screamed once before claws opened her throat. Blood sprayed across concrete.
Two more Shredders burst through the door.
"Spread out!" Cade yelled, swinging his baton. He caught one Shredder across what might've been a skull. The impact echoed. The creature staggered but didn't go down.
Reva moved like liquid violence. She slid under a leaping Shredder, blades flashing, opening its belly as it passed over. The thing hit the ground thrashing, organs spilling. She was already moving toward the next target.
A Shredder lunged at Kieran. He jerked sideways half a second before it arrived-his precognition kicking in-and brought his baton down on its spine. Crack. It collapsed, legs twitching.
"Behind you!" Jace shouted.
Aiden spun. A Shredder was charging straight at him, claws tearing up concrete.
He swung the machete. Too slow. The blade caught the creature's shoulder but didn't stop its momentum. It crashed into him, weight and fury, driving him to the ground.
Claws raked across his chest. His enhanced durability saved him-skin that should've been shredded just tore, painful but not fatal. He shoved the machete up into the thing's throat and twisted.
Hot blood poured over his hands. The Shredder convulsed, went limp.
Aiden shoved it off and scrambled to his feet, breathing hard. His chest burned. His hands were slick with blood that wasn't his.
Around him, chaos.
Cade was fighting two Shredders at once, roaring, swinging his baton with enough force to shatter bone. One Shredder latched onto his arm. He didn't even flinch-just grabbed it by the spine and hurled it into the wall hard enough to leave a crater.
Jace had three candidates behind him, using his shield-plate to block slashing claws while they stabbed over his shoulders. It was working. Barely.
Then something dropped from the ceiling.
The Crawler was bigger than the Shredders- insectoid, six legs ending in hooked points,
mandibles clicking. Its carapace glistened like oil.
It landed on a boy's back, mandibles clamping down on his shoulder. He screamed. The Crawler's legs wrapped around him, pulling him down.
Reva was there in an instant. Her blade punched through the Crawler's head. It convulsed-and its blood sprayed out, steaming.
"Don't touch it!" She shouted leaping back.
Too late for the boy. The acidic blood ate through his uniform, through skin. He was screaming, clawing at his own chest, trying to get it off.
Two more Crawlers descended from the walls, moving fast, legs finding purchase on vertical concrete like it was nothing.
"Above!" Kieran shouted.
Everyone looked up.
There were four more clinging to the ceiling, waiting.
Aiden's blood went cold. They were coordinating. The Shredders below, the Crawlers above--it was a trap.
And then the Choir started singing.
It hit him like a freight train-not sound, but pressure, voices layering over each other in his skull.
Blood feeds the bridge.
The clay hardens in fire.
Do you see them, little weapon? Do you see what they truly are?
His vision doubled. For a moment he wasn't in the arena-he was somewhere else, somewhere white and vast, and the Riftborn weren't monsters but something else, something sad and desperate and-
A Shredder slammed into him.
He hit the ground hard, machete skittering away. Claws pinned his shoulders. The thing's maw opened, bone teeth gleaming.
Then Jace's shield smashed into its head like a hammer.
The shredder crumpled. Jace hauled Aiden to his feet. "Stay with us!"
Cade grabbed a dead Shredder's corpse and hurled it at a Crawler descending the wall. The impact knocked the creature off its perch. It hit the ground and Reva was there, blades working with surgical precision.
But they were losing people.
The boy with acid burns had stopped screaming. A girl was down, her leg bent at a wrong angle, trying to crawl away from a circling Shredder. Kieran intercepted it, barely, his precognition the only thing keeping him alive.
"We need to kill the ones on the ceiling!" Someone yelled.
"How!?" Cade roared back.
Aiden looked up. The remaining Crawlers were still waiting, patient. Why weren't they attacking?
The Choir whispered: they're learning. Watching. Adapting. Just like...
No. Not the time.
He grabbed a piece of broken concrete, hefted it, and hurled it at the nearest Crawler with enhanced strength.
The throw was wild but it connected. The Crawler lost its grip and fell. Jace caught it with his shield mid-descent, slamming it into the ground, and three candidates stabbed down with blades until it stopped moving.
Two Crawlers left above.
But the Shredders were thinning out. Reva had killed three more. Cade had battered two into pulp. Bodies littered the arena floor-both Riftborn and human.
Then one of the Crawlers did something unexpected.
It dropped directly onto Reva.
She was fast-rolled away before its mandibles could close-but not fast enough. Its leg hooked her ankle and pulled. She went down hard.
The Crawler lunged for her throat.
Cade was too far. Kieran was engaged with a Shredder. Jace couldn't reach her in time.
Aiden moved.
He didn't think. Didn't plan. Just ran, diving, slamming into the Crawler's side with his full weight. They hit the ground together, rolled, tangled.
Up close, the thing was all wrong-its body pulsed, its eyes (did it have eyes?) reflected something golden in their depths.
The Choir surged: kin. Distant kin. Do you feel it?"
Aiden's hand found his machete. He drove it into the Crawler's head and twisted until something crunched.
It went still.
He rolled off it, panting. His veins were glowing brighter than ever, flickering blue and--for just a second-gold.
Reva stared at him. "Thanks."
He nodded, couldn't speak.
The last Crawler and the remaining Shredders were finished off in a brutal minute of coordinated violence. When the final body hit the ground,
silence crashed down.
Eleven candidates had entered.
Seven were still standing.
Four bodies lay scattered across the arena. The girl with the torn throat. The boy with acid burns. Two others caught by Shredders in the chaos.
Aiden's legs gave out. He sat down hard, back against the wall. His hands were shaking so badly he could barely hold the machete.
Around him, others were doing the same. Kieran was vomiting in a corner. Jace sat with his head between his knees. Cade stood over one of the dead candidates, jaw tight, fists clenched.
Reva was the only one still standing steady. Blood spattered her uniform but none of it was hers. She was breathing hard but controlled.
The door to the observation deck opened. Kael descended, boots echoing.
She walked through the carnage without expression, stepping over bodies-Riftborn and human alike.
"Seven survived," she said. "Four dead, two critically injured during extraction." She looked at the survivors. "Acceptable losses."
Acceptable.
The word hung in the air like a curse.
"You performed adequately." Kael continued. "Some of you exceeded expectations." Her gaze lingered on Reva, then Cade. "Others barely survived through luck and intervention."
Her eyes found Aiden. Held there.
He looked away.
"Medical teams will process the wounded. The dead will be reclaimed. You have two hours to rest, then we debrief." She turned to leave then paused. "Welcome to the Ascendancy. This is what you are now."
And she was gone.
Aiden sat in the silence that followed, staring at his blood-covered hands.
The Choir whispered softly: You hesitated. You saw. Good. The bridge must understand both sides.
He closed his eyes and tried to block it out.
But the golden flicker in his veins wouldn't fade.
And across the arena, Reva was still watching him.