The moment Alpha crossed the threshold, the world behind him vanished.
He turned once, instinctively, expecting to see the crooked stones of the city wall, the endless alleys of the outskirts, the faces of those who had stared at him with pity or disgust. But the streets were gone. The city was gone. Even the night sky was gone.
In its place stretched a wasteland.
The air was heavy with dust, the ground cracked like dried blood, and ruins rose crookedly around him. Broken pillars jutted from the earth like the ribs of some long-dead beast. Shattered walls leaned precariously, decorated with the faint glow of moss that had no color. Everything smelled of rust and decay.
Alpha felt his chest tighten. He had never seen such a place, yet it felt familiar in a way that curdled his stomach. The scattered chains that littered the ground. The marks of whips carved into crumbling stone. The emptiness that pressed in from every side.
This was his past, painted across the world. Viren had taken the chains of his slave life and molded them into a labyrinth of despair.
The silence stretched on, vast and merciless. Then—
A sound.
Chains dragged across stone, metal scraping against the dead earth. Alpha froze, his body instinctively lowering, as though the overseer's whip still threatened from behind.
From the shadow of a ruined archway emerged something that should not exist.
A man. No—what was left of one. Its skin had rotted away, leaving gray sinew clinging to brittle bones. Its eyes were hollow, pits of shadow. Rusted shackles dangled from its wrists, dragging against the ground as it stumbled forward. With each step, the chains clinked, an echo of Alpha's own past.
An undead slave.
Alpha's throat tightened, his breath catching. The sight struck him like a blade. It was as though Viren had carved his memory into flesh and set it shambling toward him.
The creature hissed, a wet, rattling sound, and lurched forward.
Alpha stumbled back. His legs trembled, but his mind screamed—Move.
He had no weapon. No shield. Only the calloused hands of a boy who had never fought anything except the weight of chains.
The undead raised its shackled hands and swung them down like clubs. Alpha twisted to the side, barely avoiding the blow. The chains smashed into the ground, spraying shards of broken stone into the air.
Panic roared in his chest. He had escaped the yard, the overseers, the hunger—only to step into a place that mirrored all of it in nightmare form.
The creature turned, slower than a man, but relentless. It came at him again. Alpha ducked under its swing, his shoulder slamming into the corpse's chest. The thing staggered but did not fall. Its bones cracked but did not break. Its empty eyes locked onto him, unblinking.
Alpha's breaths came in ragged bursts. He felt his strength draining, his limbs burning. Fear clawed at him, but beneath it, something else stirred. A stubbornness. A whisper that he had carried through every lash, every day of hunger, every night of emptiness.
I will not bow again.
The undead swung once more. Alpha's hand shot out, grabbing the rusted chain dangling from its wrist. The cold metal burned his palm as he yanked it hard, pulling the creature off balance.
With a desperate shout, Alpha drove his knee upward into the thing's chest. Bone cracked. The corpse fell backward, chains clattering against the stone.
Alpha pounced, seizing a jagged shard of rubble from the ground. Without thinking, he plunged it into the creature's skull. Once. Twice. Again. Again.
The body convulsed, then stilled.
Alpha collapsed beside it, gasping for breath. His hands shook, bloodless and pale, gripping the shard until his knuckles burned. His heart thundered, and his throat was raw with swallowed screams.
The corpse lay motionless, its empty eyes staring at nothing. The chains still rattled faintly, as though echoing with the life it no longer had.
Alpha stared at it, chest heaving. His whole body ached, every bruise and cut screaming, but none louder than the thought in his mind:
'If that had been stronger, I'd be dead.'
He had survived. Barely.
A faint light flickered in the corner of his vision.
He blinked, rubbing his eyes, but the light remained. It grew, forming words that hovered in the air like mist.
---
[ Veyres System: Status ]
[Name: Alpha Omega]
[Veyres Name: Feylith — The Fateless Shadow]
[Veyres Rank: Wisc]
[Liberance Rank: Mortyros — Not Yet Awakened]
[Essence: 0 / 0 (Not Yet Awakened)]
[Flaw: None Assigned]
[Dreamstones: 0]
---
The letters pulsed faintly, incomplete, as if the world itself had whispered them into existence but had not yet finished the sentence.
Alpha staggered to his feet, his eyes locked on the strange window. It felt alive—like something was watching him through it, breathing in time with his heartbeat.
Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the window dimmed, dissolving back into the air.
Alpha stood in silence, the ruins pressing down around him. The corpse of the undead lay at his feet, and the chains still whispered across the stone.
He clenched his fists, staring at the darkness beyond the ruins. The labyrinth was alive. It remembered him. It had molded itself to his chains, his despair.
And if he could not fight it, he would die here. Alone. Forgotten.
For the first time, Alpha understood the truth of Viren.
This was no place of trial. It was a mirror. A world that stripped bare the soul of whoever entered.
And his soul was chained.