# Chapter 3: The Echo of the Bloom
The cold steel of the training sword felt less like a tool and more like a tombstone in Soren's hand. He watched Rook Marr's back as the man walked away, leaving him standing alone in the center of the dusty yard, a victor who felt utterly defeated. The two other hopefuls, Jex and Goran, were groaning as they tried to pull themselves to their feet, their eyes fixed on him with a new mixture of fear and resentment. Soren could feel their gazes like physical blows. He looked down at the darkened sigil on his arm, the charcoal serpent a stark brand of his failure to control himself. The bone-deep weariness was settling in, a heavy cloak he couldn't shrug off. He had survived his first day, but Marr's final words echoed in the sudden silence, a prophecy of doom. *Learn to fight like a man, not a catastrophe. Or your first Trial will be your last.* The weight of the sword in his hand was a promise of the brutal labor to come, a punishment for the very power that was his only hope.
He turned and stumbled away from the yard, his legs heavy as if he were wading through the ash plains outside the walls. The barracks were a maze of narrow, stone-walled corridors that smelled of sweat, cheap lye soap, and despair. He found his assigned room, a cell no larger than a horse's stall, with a thin straw pallet on the floor and a small, barred window that looked out onto a grimy alley. The door was a solid slab of wood with a single, iron lock on the outside. He was an asset, not a guest. Soren pushed the door shut behind him, the thud echoing in the suffocating silence. He let the training sword fall to the floor with a clatter that was too loud in the small space. He didn't bother to light the lamp. He just sank onto the pallet, the rough straw scratching through his thin tunic, and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes.
The pain was a familiar companion. It started in his bones, a deep, grinding ache that was the price of his power. The Cinder Cost. It radiated outwards, tightening the muscles in his back and neck, sending sharp needles behind his eyes. He tried to focus on the physical sensations, to ground himself in the present misery, but his mind was a frayed rope, and the strain of the day was too much. The darkness behind his eyelids began to swirl, not with the simple blackness of exhaustion, but with a grey, choking haze.
The scent of the room—stone and dust—faded, replaced by the acrid stench of ozone and burnt flesh. The cold of the floor seeped away, replaced by a blistering, dry heat that baked the air. He could hear the frantic scrabbling of his younger brother, Finn, in the back of the caravan, and his mother's sharp, terrified whisper. But those sounds were distant, muffled. The dominant sound was a low, guttural growl that vibrated through the soles of his feet, a sound that belonged to a world that had died in the Bloom.
Soren's hands clenched into fists, his nails digging into his palms. He didn't want to see this. He fought to pull himself back, to focus on the rough texture of the straw beneath him, but the memory had teeth, and it sank them in deep.
He was there. He was twelve years old again, peering through a crack in the caravan's slatted wood wall. Outside, the world was a nightmare of grey dust and twisted, petrified trees under a bruised, sunless sky. A Bloom-tainted wolf, its fur matted with ash and its eyes glowing with a sick, green light, was circling their wagon. It was larger than any natural wolf, its muscles bunching under skin that looked like cracked leather. His father was outside, a short, rusty axe in his hands, standing between the beast and the family that was his entire world.
"Stay back," his father had said, his voice a low, steady command that was meant to be reassuring but was laced with a terror Soren had never heard before. "Stay inside and don't make a sound."
Soren remembered the feel of the wood grain against his cheek as he pressed his face to the crack, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He remembered the way his father's knuckles were white on the axe handle, the slight tremor in his stance. His father was a caravan guard, a survivor, but this was not a bandit or a desperate debtor. This was a monster from the wastes, a piece of the world's end given form.
The wolf lunged. It was a blur of grey fur and malevolent green light. His father swung the axe, a desperate, powerful arc. The blade connected with a sickening crunch, but the beast barely faltered. It shook its massive head, the axe tearing free with a gout of black ichor, and then it was on him. There was no snarl, no roar of triumph, just the wet, tearing sound of teeth and cloth and flesh.
His father's scream was a thing of pure, unadulterated agony that ripped through the air and into Soren's soul. It was a sound that burned itself into his memory, a sound that would wake him in a cold sweat for the rest of his life.
"Papa!" The word tore from Soren's throat, a raw, helpless cry.
He saw his father fall, saw the green light in the wolf's eyes turn towards the caravan, towards the sound of his voice. He saw the blood, stark and red against the grey dust. A white-hot rage, a terror so profound it eclipsed everything, erupted in his chest. It was a primal, protective fury, the desperate need of a child to save his father, his family, his world.
The world went white.
The memory of the pain was the worst part. It wasn't the pain of a cut or a blow. It was an internal agony, as if every cell in his body was being torn apart and reassembled in the same instant. A pressure built inside his skull, behind his eyes, in the marrow of his bones, a scream without a voice that demanded release. He felt something tear loose from him, something fundamental and raw.
The concussive blast lifted the wolf from its feet and threw it ten feet through the air. It hit the petrified trunk of a tree with a sound like a rockslide, its body limp and broken. The blast didn't stop there. It hit the side of the caravan, splintering the thick wooden planks, shattering the iron-bound wheels, and lifting the entire heavy wagon onto its side. Soren was thrown against the wall, the world spinning into a vortex of grey sky and screaming wind.
When the silence returned, it was worse than the noise. It was a heavy, suffocating blanket. Soren lay amidst the wreckage, his ears ringing, his body screaming in protest. He pushed himself up, his vision blurry. He saw the wolf, its body twisted and still. He saw the ruined caravan. And then he saw his father.
His father was lying on his back, his eyes open and staring at the colourless sky. There was a massive, bloody wound in his chest, but it wasn't just that. A fine layer of grey dust coated him, and the skin around the wound was blackened, as if burned from the inside out. The blast that had saved Soren had also been the final, fatal blow to the man he was trying to protect.
A new sound broke the silence. Soren's own sob. It was a broken, animalistic sound of grief and horror. He crawled through the wreckage, his body a canvas of pain, and reached for his father's hand. It was already cold.
The memory shattered. Soren was back in his cell, his body rigid, his hands clamped so hard against his temples that his skull felt like it was cracking. A raw, ragged gasp tore from his throat, the echo of a twelve-year-old's grief. The emotional backlash was a physical force, a tidal wave of agony that crashed through him. The pain in his bones intensified a hundredfold, a white-hot fire that threatened to consume him. The uncontrolled trauma, the raw, undiluted horror of the memory, acted as a trigger.
His Gift, the power he had just used in the yard, the power that had killed his father, responded.
It wasn't a focused blast like the one he had unleashed on Jex and Goran. It was a messy, violent expulsion of pure, uncontrolled force. A wave of invisible energy erupted from him, slamming into the small room. The stone walls groaned. The pallet beneath him was ripped apart, straw exploding into the air. The clay water pitcher on the small stool by the wall shattered, the fragments clattering against the stone. The air crackled, thick with the scent of ozone and burnt dust, the ghost of the Bloom-wastes.
The backlash was instantaneous and crippling. The wave of force that had erupted from him was met by an equal and opposite reaction that slammed back into his body. It felt like being hit by a physical wall, a sledgehammer of pure energy that drove the air from his lungs and sent a fresh, blinding wave of pain through every nerve. He cried out, a short, sharp sound of pure agony, and collapsed onto the floor, curling into a fetal position amidst the wreckage of his room. His body trembled uncontrollably. The Cinder-Tattoo on his arm, the charcoal serpent, flared with a faint, dying light before darkening another shade, the black creeping closer to the serpent's head, a visible measure of the life he had just spent.
He lay there for a long time, minutes or hours, he couldn't tell. The world was a haze of pain and the lingering scent of his own power. He was shaking, not just from the pain, but from the fear. It was always there, a cold knot in his gut. The fear of himself. The fear of the power that was both his only salvation and the source of his greatest damnation. It was a wild, untamable thing, a beast chained inside him, and every time it broke its chains, it left him weaker, more broken, and more terrified of the next time. His stoicism wasn't a choice; it was a cage he built around his own heart, a desperate attempt to keep the trauma, the rage, the grief from unlocking the beast again. But here, in the dark and the quiet, the cage had broken.
Slowly, painfully, he uncurled his body. He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, his muscles screaming in protest. He could taste blood in his mouth from where he had bitten his tongue. He looked at the shattered remains of the water pitcher, the dark wetness spreading across the stone floor. A simple, harmless object, destroyed by a memory. By a feeling. How could he ever control it? How could he ever hope to wield this power in the Ladder without it destroying him, or worse, without him destroying someone he was trying to save? Marr's words came back to him, colder and more cutting than before. *A catastrophe.* That's what he was. That's all he would ever be.
He was still on his hands and knees, staring at the puddle of water and clay fragments, when a sharp, authoritative knock rattled the iron lock on his door. The sound was like a gunshot in the small room, jarring him from his stupor.
"Vale." Rook Marr's voice was flat and emotionless, cutting through the wooden door like a blade. There was no concern, no question. It was a command. "Get up."
Soren didn't move. He couldn't. He was a wreck of pain and exhaustion, his body and soul laid bare by the memory. He just knelt there, waiting for the inevitable tirade, the punishment for his weakness.
The lock turned with a heavy clunk. The door creaked open, framing Marr's silhouette in the dim light from the corridor. The trainer's eyes swept over the room, taking in the destroyed pallet, the shattered pitcher, and Soren kneeling in the midst of it all. His expression didn't change. There was no surprise, no anger, only a cold, assessing look, as if he were examining a faulty piece of equipment.
"Another nightmare?" Marr asked, his voice devoid of sympathy. It wasn't a question. It was a diagnosis.
Soren just stared at him, his breath coming in ragged pants. He couldn't find the words.
Marr stepped into the room, his boots crunching on the broken straw. He nudged a piece of the shattered pitcher with his toe. "The Ladder Commission doesn't care about your nightmares, Vale. The crowds don't pay to see you cry in your sleep. And your opponents certainly won't wait for you to finish having a fit."
He walked over to Soren and looked down at him. The sheer, unyielding pragmatism in his gaze was more crushing than any blow.
"Your first Trial has been scheduled," Marr said, his voice dropping to a low, final tone. "It's at dawn. You're in the preliminary pits, a free-for-all brawl to weed out the weakest new assets. No rules, no referees, just you and whoever else is desperate enough to be there."
He paused, letting the words sink in. Dawn. It was already late. He had only a few hours. No time to recover. No time to train. No time to do anything but suffer until he was thrown back into the fire.
"There will be no more room for mistakes," Marr concluded, his voice hard as iron. "No more costly tantrums. You either learn to fight like a man in the next few hours, or you die in the sand tomorrow. The choice is yours." He turned and walked out, leaving the door open, a final, dismissive act that stripped away any last vestige of dignity. Soren was left alone in the ruins of his room, the announcement of his impending death hanging in the air, the echo of the Bloom still ringing in his ears.