Darkness.

It clung to him like a second skin—thick, suffocating.

Seth crouched beneath the floorboards, his hands clamped over his mouth, his body trembling. The wooden planks above him groaned as heavy footsteps prowled through the house. The air reeked of blood and smoke.

“Stay here, Seth,” his mother had whispered, pushing him into the crawl space beneath their home. Her golden eyes—just like his—shimmered with a desperate kind of love. “No matter what happens, don’t make a sound. Understand?”

He had nodded, too frightened to argue. Then she was gone.

Now, all he could do was wait.

Through the narrow slats between the floorboards, shadows flickered across the walls as armored figures moved through the house. Riftwalkers. Their twisted metallic suits pulsed with an eerie blue light, faceless helmets scanning the dim room.

A scream shattered the silence.

His mother’s scream.

Seth’s heart slammed against his ribs as he bit down on his knuckles to stifle a sob. He heard the struggle—the crash of furniture, the sickening crunch of something breaking.

Then, silence.

A moment later, a voice—distorted, inhuman—cut through the quiet.
“The woman’s dead. The man’s outside.”

Seth’s breathing hitched.

His father.

Heavy boots thundered toward the door.

“Secure the perimeter. Kill anyone who resists.”

The door creaked open.

Then—another scream. His father’s. Distant, but sharp enough to pierce the night like a dagger to Seth’s chest. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing the sound away, but it only burned itself deeper into his mind.

His fingers curled into the dirt beneath him. He wanted to run. To fight.

But he couldn’t.

Not yet.

Time passed—minutes, maybe hours. He didn’t know. The silence stretched on, heavy and unnatural. The Riftwalkers no longer spoke. Only slow, deliberate footsteps echoed as they searched the house.

Then—a click.

The hatch.

Seth’s body went rigid.

The wooden trapdoor above him shifted. Light from a Riftwalker’s suit seeped through the cracks.

They found me.

His pulse roared in his ears as the panel lifted, revealing the soulless glow of a Riftwalker’s visor. A low mechanical whir filled the space as the soldier scanned the darkness.

Seth didn’t move. He barely breathed.

The Riftwalker hesitated.

Then—a shout from outside.

The Riftwalker snapped its head toward the sound and dropped the hatch, plunging Seth back into darkness. A second later, boots thundered across the floorboards, and the front door slammed shut.

They were leaving.

Seth waited—until he was certain they were gone.

Only then did he push open the hatch and crawl out.

The house was unrecognizable.

His home.

Shadows drenched the room, broken only by the flickering glow of flames outside. His mother lay sprawled across the floor, her golden eyes staring into nothing. Blood pooled beneath her.

Seth’s legs nearly gave out.

He didn’t cry. He didn’t move. He simply stood there, shaking.

Then, as if drawn by an unseen force, he turned toward the door.

Outside, the world was burning. Smoke choked the sky, ash scraping his throat with every breath. He saw them—the Riftwalkers—moving through the village like wraiths, their metallic forms glowing in the firelight.

And beyond them—

His father.

Lying motionless in the dirt.

The Riftwalkers stepped over his body as though it were nothing.

Seth clenched his fists. Something inside him cracked—raw and furious. But he was only a child. Small. Powerless. Alone.

So he ran.

Ran until his legs gave out, until his lungs burned, until the village became a distant nightmare.

Until all that remained was the memory.

The screams.
The fire.
The blood.

And the rage.

***

Chains rattled.

Erik’s wrists burned as cold steel bit into his skin, iron cuffs chafing against wounds that had never fully healed. His tail twitched involuntarily, ears flicking at every faint sound. The dark cell reeked of rust, damp stone, and something fouler—something rotten.

How long had it been?

Days?
Weeks?
Months?

Time had lost all meaning in the suffocating dark.

He pressed his back against the cold wall, legs drawn tight to his chest. The chains around his ankles clinked as he shifted, the sound scraping against his nerves. He hated it—the noise, the stench, the weight of captivity pressing in from all sides.

Ten years old.

That was how old he had been when the Riftwalkers took him.

They descended on Chandrapura like a storm—metal-clad phantoms moving through the night. No warning. No mercy. They took what they wanted: people. Strong bodies for labor. Sharp minds for experiments.

Erik had been neither. Just a child.

They took him anyway.

Ripped from his home. Torn from the elders who tried to shield him. He remembered the cold metallic grip closing around his small frame, dragging him through burning streets. He fought. Clawed. Screamed.

The Riftwalkers never hesitated.

They did not see a child.

Only another body.

Thrown into a prison of stone and metal—a cage meant to break him.

He tried to escape.

The first time, they dragged him back to his cell, glowing visors empty of emotion.

The second time, they beat him until he could barely move.

The third time—

He did not want to remember.

But he never stopped trying.

Not when his body screamed in pain.
Not when hunger blurred his vision.
Not when his hands shook from wounds that never healed.

Because if he stopped trying, he was already dead.

Erik flexed his fingers, feeling the rough scars along his wrists—marks left by shackles once too large for his hands, now fitting perfectly.

He had grown into his chains.

But he would not die in them.

He listened.

Always.

The guards’ footsteps.
The dull hum of Riftwalker machinery.
The moments of carelessness—the gaps in their rotations.

One day, he would break free.

One day, he would make them pay.

And he did.

***

The Tower rumbled.

Erik gasped as the vision shattered, his heart pounding, breath ragged. The chains were gone—but he could still feel them, phantom weight coiled around his wrists, his ankles, his throat.

Beside him, Seth stood silent, jaw clenched, fists trembling. He had seen his own past, just as Erik had. Their shared suffering hung in the air, heavy and suffocating.

But they were not those helpless children anymore.

Seth exhaled sharply, golden eyes burning. Erik flexed his hands, the ghostly pain dissolving beneath the heat of his fury.

Never again.

A deep, guttural sound echoed through the Tower. The air itself trembled as dust fell from the stone walls. The chamber pulsed, alive with something ancient.

The final trial had begun.