But ofcourse the pit was only the beginning.
From that day on, the Hollowborn...or not lived in blood.
They were dragged out at dawn and thrown into the trials. Beasts were loosed against them in cages, one after another, until their arms trembled and their bodies bled. They slept on stone floors with the stink of death in their noses. They ate flesh that might once have been beast, or might once have been something worse.
And each day, their numbers dwindled.
Ten watched. Eleven and Twelve corrected. But they did not soothe. They did not comfort. When a recruit cried, they were struck. When one hesitated, they were beaten until they learned not to.
The Hollowborn were being unmade.
And then, slowly, they were being reforged.
---
Sané had never killed before. Not in Dravenloch, not even to survive. He had stolen, begged, run, hidden—but he had never drawn blood. That ended on the third trial.
The beast had lunged, pinning another boy to the dirt. The boy screamed, flailing as teeth sank into his shoulder. And then Sané moved without thought...his chains of shadow coiled, wrapping around the beast's throat, jerking it back with such force that the beast bone snapped. Its head lolled,it laid lifeless.
The boy lived. For a moment, Sané thought he might thank him. But Ten's voice boomed from above: "Weakness has no place here."
The boy was dragged away. His mask shattered, stripped from his face. He was no longer a number. He was nothing....he was back to being a hollowborn.
Everyone watched....it was clear to them now.... the power they were given could easily be taken from them.
Sané watched him disappear. Something inside him cracked.
By the seventh trial, Sané stopped shaking when he killed. By the tenth, he stopped hesitating. By the fifteenth, he stopped counting.
Blood caked his mask, stained his hair, filled the cracks in his fingernails. His crimson eyes glowed brighter with each kill, the shadows in him twisting more easily to his will.
He was not alone.
111, a wiry boy with eyes that burned gold, learned to command flames that bled from his veins. At first they sputtered, licking like candlefire....yeah more like a dying flame. But now.... they roared, searing flesh to ash in seconds. He laughed when beasts screamed.
123, a pale girl with hair black as coal, awakened wings of bone from her back. They sprouted jagged, dripping marrow, but sharp enough to slice beasts apart. At first she had wept at their grotesque weight. Now she wielded them like blades, her tears long gone.
The three of them began to stand apart. Where others still stumbled, they advanced. Where others cowered, they struck first. This ofcourse caught the instructors attentions.
Twelve, especially.
She watched from the ledges with eyes sharp behind her mask. She did not praise them, but her silence when others were punished was praise enough.
---
The breaking point came with the Blood Trial.
It was not beasts this time. It was each other.
Ten cast them into the pit in pairs. Masks faced masks. Numbers faced numbers. The order was clear:
"Fight until one cannot rise. If you refuse, both of you will die."
Some hesitated, sobbing, begging. They were killed at once by Eleven's chains. Others fought but held back, striking shallow. They were dragged away to the sound of snapping masks.
Sané was paired against Number 118. A girl, younger than him, with trembling hands. She looked at him with eyes wide and wet, her mask cracking at the edges.
"Please," she whispered. "Don't."
For some minutes Sané froze. For a heartbeat, he remembered the alleys of Dravenloch, the faces of other Hollowborn who had starved beside him. The children who had never grown.
But while he was still in oblivion....118 lunged suddenly, desperation twisting her. A blade of ice burst from her hand, slashing across his chest.
Sané's hesitation shattered. His shadows surged, wrapping her throat, crushing until her mask cracked apart. Her eyes bulged, tears running down her cheeks as she choked.
When she fell limp, he staggered back, his breath ragged, chest burning with more than pain. He stared at his hands.
There was no innocence left in them.
By the end of the Blood Trial, half were dead. The survivors stood soaked in red, their eyes harder, their souls colder. They no longer looked like children. They looked like weapons.
And in the silence that followed, Ten spoke:
"Now you begin."
---
The next day, Sané, 111, and 123 were summoned separately. Brought into a chamber deeper in the cavern.
Twelve stood there waiting. Her mask gleamed in the torchlight...as she says..
"You three," she said, her voice calm, even. "You are different. While the others crawl, you run. While the others bleed, you bite. So you will face something greater."
She gestured, and a rift shimmered open. A wormhole. Its edges pulsed with the sickly light of decay, as shadows writhing within.
"Inside, the Maker's Curse roams untamed. Beasts that we have not broken, not leashed. You will enter. You will fight. You will kill. Everything. Leave no beast standing."
Her voice turned sharp, cutting like steel.
"If you fail, you will be devoured. If you succeed, you will rise."
Sané's gut twisted. Another wormhole. Another maw. Memories of being dragged screaming into one, of falling into endless shadow, surged back. But his crimson eyes flared. He clenched his fists. He would not be the same helpless boy this time.
111 grinned, fire licking along his arms.
123 unfurled her bone-wings with a snap, marrow dripping onto the stone.
Without another word, they stepped through.
---
The wormhole swallowed them.
Inside....was chaos. The sky was black, split with rivers of green fire. The ground was jagged, slick with ichor. Shadows writhed like smoke given life.
And the beasts were everywhere.
Dozens, crawling, shrieking, jaws open wide. They smelled blood the moment the three entered, and they came in a wave.
Sané's shadows surged from his arms, striking first. They lashed out like spears, skewering two beasts mid-leap, snapping them in half before their claws could even touch the ground. He pulled the chains back, spinning them like whips, slicing through another's chest in a spray of black blood.
111 laughed, flames roaring from his hands. He thrust them outward, and a wall of fire erupted, swallowing three beasts at once. Their bodies thrashed, their flesh bubbling before collapsing into ash.
123 shrieked, her wings slashing in wide arcs. Her bone blades cut through limbs and heads alike, spraying ichor across the ground. She moved like a storm, relentless, merciless.
The beasts screamed, but none slowed. For each that fell, more surged from the shadows. Claws raked across Sané's arm, tearing flesh, but his shadows surged in answer, wrapping the beast and ripping it apart from within.
He felt his Vestige more clearly now, like a limb he had always had but never used. The shadows obeyed his will, slithering across the ground, coiling up walls, striking from angles he didn't even need to see. He no longer forced them. He guided them, like water flowing from a spring...like a moth to a flame.
One beast lunged for his throat. Without thought, a shadow rose from the ground and pierced its skull before it touched him.
Sané smiled behind his mask.
They fought for hours. Dozens of beasts fell, bodies piling high. The ground turned black with their ichor. Sané lost count of how many his chains tore apart. His arms ached, his chest burned, but the shadows did not weaken. They grew stronger with every kill, feeding off the void around them.
111 burned until the air itself shimmered with heat. 123's wings left trails of bone shards buried in the beasts' corpses.
And still they fought. Until at last, silence fell. The last beast collapsed, its skull crushed beneath Sané's chains, its blood splattering across his mask.
He stood panting, his chest heaving, as his crimson eyes glowed like embers in the dark. His shadows writhed around him like living serpents, coiling and uncoiling, hungry still.
111 wiped blood from his chin, laughing hoarsely.
123's wings folded, dripping with gore, her breaths ragged but steady.
The wormhole was a graveyard now. Nothing moved. Nothing lived....for all the creatures have been slain by them.
---
Twelve stepped through the rift, silent as shadow. She surveyed the carnage. Beasts lay torn, burned, shredded, their bodies unrecognizable.
Her masked gaze lingered on Sané the longest. His chains still writhed, twisting in unnatural patterns, sharp and elegant. He had not only survived—he had commanded. He had grown.
She said nothing, but in her mind, the thought was clear.
"Ninety-Nine is not hollow. He is a storm waiting to break"