The alley was a slit between two crumbling buildings, just wide enough for the wind to crawl through and bite at anything foolish enough to still be breathing.
In that slit, half-buried in snow and dirt, sat a boy who looked like he'd already lost the argument with life.
His skin was unnaturally pale almost translucent, the kind of pallor that made you wonder if there was any blood left inside. In the faint lamplight spilling from the street, it shimmered faintly, like thin glass. In the dark, it looked wrong… shadowy, as if the darkness itself clung to him. His hair was black, though in the right angle of light there was a sheen to it, the only part of him that didn't seem completely dead. His frame was all sharp lines — unhealthy thin, the kind of thin that makes you ache just by looking at it.
And under that skin… veins.
Black, jagged lines snaked up from beneath the collar of his torn coat, curling around his throat, branching down his arms and disappearing into the rags that might once have been trousers. They didn't sit still. If you looked too long, you'd swear they pulsed — a faint, sluggish rhythm, like something trying and failing to remember it was alive.
The boy stared at them with glazed eyes and gave a sound that might have been a laugh. It was dry, brittle, like frost breaking underfoot.
"Hah… still there. Still ugly."
His voice was a rasp, barely carrying over the wind.
"At least they match the rest of me."
He'd had them for days now. The black veins — the sign that the Trial was about to take him.
For most people, it was the beginning of a carefully monitored countdown. Quarantine. Training. The luxury of knowing you'd have a bed to sleep in before you were dragged into a nightmare.
For him? No bed. No training. No food. No luxury of anything except the kind you got from freezing half to death before your big day.
He tilted his head back against the wall, squinting at the thin strip of sky overhead. A few stars hung there, dim and far away.
"Should've put me in quarantine, huh? Can't have me coughing a Gate open on the street," he muttered to no one. "But I guess when you're already trash, no one cares if you explode into monsters."
He grinned at the thought, teeth chattering between words. It wasn't a happy grin.
The truth was, he could barely feel his fingers anymore. Or his toes. Or his legs. He'd gone past the kind of cold that made you shiver — now it was just a deep, gnawing numbness, as if parts of him were quietly slipping away without asking permission.
Food would've helped. Not much, but enough to keep the body from eating itself so fast. But food cost money, and money meant people, and people…
His grin slipped.
"People,"
he muttered, almost spitting the word.
"Better off starving."
He'd tried. He really had. Tried to trust. Tried to help. And each time, the result had been the same: betrayal.
The streets had a way of stripping even the smallest kindness down to a weapon, and he'd learned too slow.
The last time, it had been someone he'd thought was like him — cold, hungry, clinging to scraps of decency. He'd shared what little he'd scavenged, only to wake up with a knife at his throat and his food gone.
Not that it mattered now. The black veins made him untouchable, but not in a good way. Anyone who saw them knew he was marked. They stayed away. No one wanted to risk being near the spot where a Gate might open if he failed.
"Fail,"
he whispered to himself, tasting the word.
"Yeah. That's the bet, isn't it? Me against whatever hellhole they drop me in. Odds are… I'm not making it back."
The thought should've scared him… But it didn't. Or maybe he was too tired to feel it anymore.
The wind shifted, carrying the faint sound of footsteps somewhere down the alley. Slow. Hesitant.
He didn't bother looking. Whoever it was, they'd take one look at him and decide he wasn't worth the trouble.
His head tipped forward, chin nearly touching his chest. His breath came shallow, misting faintly in the air. The edges of his vision were starting to blur, the darkness crawling inward in soft, lazy waves.
He wondered if this was it — if maybe he'd die here, in the cold, before the Trial even got a chance to chew him up. It would be funny, in a pathetic sort of way.
The family would love it. One less embarrassment breathing their air.
"Bet you'd like that, sister," he muttered, words slurring slightly. "Sorry to disappoint. Might just ruin someone else's day first."
A shadow fell across him.
He blinked, slow and unfocused. The outline of a figure stood just beyond his numbed reach, framed against the dim light from the street.
A voice followed — warm, gentle, almost too soft to believe it belonged in this city.
"You're freezing," she said.
The sound of it slipped under his guard in a way nothing had in years. He tilted his head, trying to make out her face, but his eyes wouldn't focus.
"Freezing?" he croaked. "Nah. Just… trying out a new look. Frostbite chic. Should catch on soon."
She didn't laugh. But she didn't leave either. The figure knelt, and he felt the faintest brush of fingers against his sleeve — careful, as if she was touching something fragile.
"You've got infected," she said quietly. "When did you notice?"
He huffed a weak laugh.
"Couple days ago, maybe. Time's fuzzy." His head lolled back against the wall. "Been waiting for the curtain to drop."
She hesitated, then:
"What's your name?"
The question caught him off guard. It had been a long time since anyone had asked that and meant it. His lips twitched into something between a smile and a grimace.
"Nyx," he muttered after a pause.
"Nix… you know, like nothing. Fitting huh?"
His lips twisted into a dry broken smile.
She didn't answer right away. His hearing was going strange now, fading in and out like someone was turning a dial.
Then:
"Hold on, Nyx. Just hold on—"
The rest blurred into nothing. Her voice dissolved into the hum in his ears, the cold vanished, and the weight of the world fell away.
Darkness closed over him, not the kind you slept in but the kind that didn't have an end.
Somewhere inside it, a whisper that wasn't hers slipped past his thoughts.
[Trial of origin Initiated]