The rain had not stopped for three days. It turned the earth into thick mud that clung to Alpha's legs, slowing him with every step. His clothes were torn, stiff with dried blood—his own and that of the creatures that stalked these ruins. Each battle left him with wounds that burned and stiffened, but he forced himself forward. To stop was to die, and death was a luxury he wasn't ready to claim.
The labyrinth had shifted again. Gone were the broken streets and slave barracks that mocked his memories. Now, jagged cliffs rose where walls once stood, and torrents of water crashed down in sheets, carving the stone. He followed the sound until it swallowed everything else.
A waterfall.
It roared like an unbroken beast, silver under the pallid light that bled through the misty ceiling of Viren. Alpha stood at its base, chest heaving, trying to remember if this place was pulled from his memory too. He had seen rivers once, in stories told among slaves when work ended late into the night, but never water this wild.
He staggered closer, clutching his ribs where a skeletal claw had ripped across him earlier. Blood still seeped, though the flow had slowed. Behind the water, shadows flickered, and he almost turned away—until he noticed the crack in the stone.
A cave.
The spray drenched him as he pressed forward, slipping past the curtain of water and into darkness. For the first time in days, the sound of the dead did not follow. His torch sputtered as he lit it, the flame weak against the damp air, but it was enough.
The cave stretched deep, walls carved smooth by ages of water. At its heart was silence, broken only by his breaths and the hiss of his torch. Alpha collapsed against the stone, exhausted. His body demanded rest, but something about this place stirred unease. The air was too still. Too watchful.
Then he saw it.
In the far corner, half-shrouded in shadow, sat a skeleton. Not the shambling mockeries he had fought, not one of Viren's mindless husks. This one was still. Upright. Its bones polished like ivory, a sword laid across its lap as though waiting. The skull tilted slightly, empty sockets catching the flicker of his torchlight.
Alpha froze. His hand went to the shard of iron he carried, but something in his chest told him this was not an enemy. Not yet.
The skeleton did not move.
Alpha's throat was dry as he whispered into the silence.
"…What are you?"
The cave swallowed his voice. For a moment, nothing. Then the air shifted, heavy as if unseen chains were breaking. The torch dimmed, its flame bending toward the figure.
The skeleton's jaw moved.
Not like the mindless chatter of bones he had cut down, but with purpose. With weight. The sound was low, dry as dust and deep as stone grinding against stone. Words formed in a tongue Alpha did not know, yet somehow understood.
"You bear no crown. You bear no chains. Why do you walk the paths of Viren?"
Alpha staggered back. His knees trembled, not from fear, but from the gravity of the voice. It was not a question from a beast. It was judgment.
"I…" He swallowed. "I walk because there is nowhere else."
The silence stretched, pressing down until his chest ached. The skeleton slowly raised its head. The sword across its lap gleamed faintly, though no light touched it.
"No crown. No chains. Yet you carry a name carved in fire. Alpha. Omega."
The sound of his name on those dead lips pierced deeper than any whip ever had.
Alpha clenched his fists. "How do you know that?"
The skeleton's jaw shifted again, slow and deliberate.
"I remember all who fall. And I remember those who should have died… but did not."
The torch hissed and went out. Darkness swallowed everything, save for the faint glimmer of the blade and the hollow gaze fixed upon him. Alpha could not breathe. The walls of the cave seemed to vanish, leaving only him, the sword, and the nameless knight who should not have spoken.
Then, after an eternity, the skeleton lowered its skull.
"Sit."
Alpha hesitated, but his body obeyed before his mind could argue. His legs gave way, lowering him to the cold stone across from the knight. The skeleton's presence was not violent, but immense, like sitting before a mountain.
"You are unshaped," it said. "Unbound. Viren tests you. But you will not survive without form. Without blade."
Alpha's breath quickened. He thought of the dead he had fought—their claws, their hollow strength—and of his own fragile scraps of will. He thought of his emptiness, his nameless hunger for something more than survival.
The knight leaned forward, sword still resting upon its bony palms.
"If you wish to leave these halls of death, you will learn. Not from gods. Not from fate. From me."
Alpha met the hollow sockets, feeling the weight of centuries buried in that stare. His heart pounded, not with fear this time, but with something sharper. Something that had been waiting, silent and chained, in the dark corners of his soul.
Resolve.
"I'll learn." His voice shook, but he did not falter. "Teach me."
The skeleton did not move. But for the first time, Alpha felt it—not sound, not sight, but a shift. As though the cave itself exhaled, releasing a breath it had held for ages.
"Then rise, child of no crown, no chain. Rise, Alpha Omega. Tomorrow, you begin."
Alpha lowered his head. The torch had gone out, yet the darkness no longer felt empty. The cave was alive now, thrumming with a presence older than empire or chain. He closed his eyes and let the silence settle, his wounds aching, his spirit raw.
For the first time since his shackles had been cut, Alpha felt something stir inside him. Not freedom. Not yet. But the faintest shadow of a path.
The path of the sword.
And in that hollow cave, beneath the roaring waterfall, the Fateless Shadow began his first steps toward becoming more than a name.