The world they were thrown into was not real. Not in the way cold water was real, or the bite of hunger, or the warmth of a hand held too tightly.
Ashen stood barefoot on cracked white ground that shimmered like glass but crumbled like ash underfoot. The sky was wrong—grey, shifting, full of constellations that blinked in and out as if the stars were breathing. Mountains floated above him, impossibly upside-down, like they were reflections of thoughts rather than rock. All around him, others stood too—recruits. Some younger, some older. Boys with sunken eyes and girls with bloodied bandages around arms that had no wounds. Every one of them alone in their own pocket of this place. Ashen could see them, but they were far, like memories he hadn't lived.
"Where... is this?" he muttered, voice dry.
"You're standing in the Hollow Memory," said a voice behind him.
He turned, already knowing who it would be.
The man who had fed him days ago. The man who had known his name without asking. The one with the shadowed face and a tired smile.
"I never caught your name," Ashen said.
"You didn't," the man replied, crouching beside him, running a hand through the powdered ash. "They call me Lieutenant Grey. Used to be 'Rat' on the street. I was worse off than you. Slept in gutters. Ate mold. Fought dogs for bread. And then I came here. Just like you."
Ashen's eyes narrowed. "What is this place?"
Grey stood, brushing ash from his uniform. "The final trial. This is where we bleed without dying. Where we remember things we shouldn't and forget what we need most. It's not a dream, but it isn't the world either. It's a battlefield built from the echo of a dead god's mind. Your god, I think."
Ashen flinched. "I don't have a god."
Grey smiled faintly. "Don't you?"
Suddenly the air rippled. A low hum filled the air—not sound, but memory, like someone was weeping far away. The sky above flickered and a rift opened. From it descended the enemy.
It was not a monster with claws. Not a beast with teeth. It had no shape at first, just a veil of shadow, slithering across the ground like a living wound. But then the veil peeled, and from within stepped a creature made of nothing but skinless faces and whispering mouths.
Each face was stretched tight, screaming, silent. Some had eyes, wide and frightened. Others wept black tears. And in its center, one mouth moved.
"Do you remember me?" it asked Ashen, though it had never spoken to him before.
Grey's voice was firm. "That's the Dream-Eater. It feeds on memory. On regret. On things left unsaid and wounds never healed. It's what we fight."
Ashen didn't speak. The creature's presence tugged at something deep inside him—something he didn't yet understand. A pressure behind his ribs. A trembling in his hands.
Grey placed a hand on Ashen's shoulder. "This place pulls pieces of you out. Shows you what you don't want to see. Don't trust your eyes here."
Then he stepped forward.
The lieutenant didn't draw a sword. He didn't need to. His weapon was will. In the Hollow Memory, steel meant nothing if your mind was weak. Grey's body glowed with threads of light, weaving like veins across his skin—echoes of his training, the discipline of years resisting despair.
The Dream-Eater lunged. Grey caught it mid-motion, his hand blazing with a force Ashen couldn't name. The creature screeched, faces peeling away, memories bleeding from them like smoke.
Ashen saw them—Grey's past. A small boy in rags, hiding from guards. Stealing from corpses. Cradling a dying sister in an alley. Crying out for help and getting only silence.
And then, the light. A soldier's hand. A promise. A way out.
Ashen stumbled back, breath catching. The creature turned toward him now. Its many mouths curled into a smile.
"Show me," it whispered.
Suddenly, Ashen was not on the battlefield anymore.
He stood in a home he barely remembered. His mother's arms around him. His brother laughing. A dog barking, wagging its tail, licking his hand. Warmth. The smell of stew. Light through wooden shutters.
And then it changed.
The smell became rot. The laughter turned to coughing. Blood soaked the floors. His brother's hand in his, cold. His mother's face, sunken and pale. His grandfather unmoving in the corner. His father screaming at the sky, blaming the boy who never cried as a child.
Ashen fell to his knees. "Stop—"
"This is what I eat," the Dream-Eater said, stepping through the vision. "Your pain. Your loss. You carry so much of it. Let it go."
Ashen looked up, tears burning his eyes. "You think I want it? You think I carry it because I choose to?"
"No," it whispered, "but it's all you have."
The voice changed—became his brother's. "It should've been you."
Then his mother's. "You weren't worth saving."
Ashen screamed. But something sparked inside him. Not fire. Not rage. Memory.
The thread inside his chest pulled taut. The warmth returned—not from the vision, but from within him. The god's will. Not a voice, not a command. A presence. A question.
What will you do with the pain?
Ashen stood.
The world fractured.
He saw the battlefield again. Grey stood on one knee, the Dream-Eater bearing down on him, all its mouths open, ready to consume.
Ashen walked forward.
He didn't carry a sword either. He carried his past. His grief. And his answer.
He stepped into the creature, and it screamed.
Now ashen trial start where he will be alone....