The cage doors opened to a world of steel and shadow.
Kael stumbled out into a cavernous chamber carved deep beneath the earth. The air stank of rust and ozone. Pale red lights pulsed in the ceiling like dying stars. Symbols glowed on the floor—runes or warnings, he couldn't tell.
Two guards flanked the exit, rifles gripped tight. Not that they needed them. Everyone who made it this far had already been broken.
Five of them. Five Marked.
Kael studied the others. A girl with silver eyes and a hollow stare. A muscled man with bandages covering both arms. A boy younger than Kael, shivering violently. And—
A tall figure leaning against the far wall, watching them all with the calm of a predator. Black curls. A scarred face. A Mark like a lightning bolt splitting her throat.
Then she walked in.
"Welcome to the Riftline."
Commander Dain didn't wear a mask. Her armor—black and laced with obsidian veins—drank the light. The Mark on her neck shimmered like oil on water. Alive.
"You are the chosen few. Not because you're special. Because the Rift thinks you're useful."
She paced before them, her boots clicking against the steel.
"You've been Marked. That means you belong to us now. To this place. You will train. You will bleed. And if you survive? You will fight in the Hollowfront."
Kael didn't flinch. He couldn't afford to.
"If you run, we'll kill you. If you turn Hollow, we'll burn you. If you lose control—" Her gaze flicked to the trembling boy. "—we'll watch."
She stopped in front of Kael. Her eyes locked onto his Mark—the black eclipse.
"Veil Echo. Rare. Unstable."
Kael met her stare. "I'm not unstable."
"No. You're scared. That's worse."
They stripped them of their old clothes, their names, their histories. In their place—black training gear, tight and synthetic, designed to monitor every heartbeat.
That night, they took them to the Pit.
It wasn't a test.
It was a culling.
They dropped them into a collapsed tunnel with two Hollow drones—weaker than the real things, but still lethal. No weapons. No instructions.
The boy who'd been shivering died first.
The drone took him in three moves. A slash to the gut. A hand around the throat. A crack against the wall that left his skull leaking onto the concrete.
Kael couldn't breathe. The Mark burned on his arm like a brand.
Fade.
The word wasn't his own.
But he obeyed.
His body flickered—like smoke caught in wind. His edges blurred. The shadows bent toward him.
The drone passed within inches, blind to his presence.
He moved.
Quiet.
Precise.
When it turned its back to the silver-eyed girl, Kael tackled it. She screamed—and drove a shard of broken pipe straight through its skull.
Silence.
Only three remained.
Kael. The girl. The scarred one—who hadn't lifted a finger.
They were pulled back up by drones.
Commander Dain watched from above, nodding once.
"Survival rate: sixty percent. Acceptable."
That night, Kael sat in the dark, staring at his trembling hands.
He'd survived.
He'd used the Mark.
And something inside him had answered.