The days in Viren bled together. There was no sun, no moon, only the roar of the waterfall outside and the echo of steel against stone.
Alpha's hands had already blistered, the skin raw where the sword rubbed against his palms. Each swing tore them further open, and the blood slicking the hilt made the weapon harder to hold. But the Skeleton Knight gave no sympathy, only silence.
When Alpha fell, gasping, the knight spoke a single word:
"Again."
And he did. Again, and again, until his arms shook so violently he could no longer lift the blade. Only then did the knight signal for rest, and even that felt like defeat.
Alpha sat against the damp cave wall, chest heaving, watching the knight's empty sockets. "You don't teach. You just… watch."
The skull tilted slightly, bone creaking. "The dead do not teach. They remind."
"Remind of what?"
"What you must already know."
Alpha looked at the sword in his lap. Its edge was dull, pitted with age, yet every swing had demanded everything from him. His body remembered chains and labor, not combat. The knight was wrong—he didn't "know" anything.
But as he stared at his hands, trembling from exhaustion, he realized something: he had endured worse. Chains, whips, starvation—he had survived those without choice. This was different. This pain was something he chose.
That choice gave it weight.
He gripped the blade tighter, ignoring the sting of his split skin. "Then remind me until I know."
The knight was silent. Then, slowly, it rose. The cave filled with the scrape of bone against stone. For the first time, it lifted its own weapon into a stance.
Alpha felt his breath catch.
"Stand."
He obeyed, dragging himself to his feet. His body screamed, but his resolve drowned it out.
The knight moved with impossible precision, every gesture deliberate, honed by centuries. It stepped forward with a slow, sweeping strike—not fast, not killing, but heavy with intent. Alpha raised his blade in panic, bracing clumsily. Steel rang against steel, the shock driving him back.
The knight did not relent. Another strike, heavier. Another. Each one pushed him until his back nearly touched the cave wall. His arms burned, his shoulders throbbed, his knees buckled.
"Stop!" he gasped.
The knight's voice echoed through the cave. "The world will not."
The next strike came, and Alpha screamed as he blocked. The impact rattled his bones, his raw palms tearing further, but he did not drop the sword.
"Again."
He blocked. Weakly, poorly, but he blocked.
"Again."
Another strike. Another cry. Another trembling block.
The knight's blows were merciless, but not final. They battered him without killing, forged him without breaking. Each one forced him past the edge of despair into something rawer. Something closer to will.
At last, when Alpha's body could no longer rise, the knight stepped back, lowering its blade.
Alpha collapsed to his knees, the sword clattering beside him. He shook with exhaustion, tears hot in his eyes—not from weakness, but from something he couldn't name.
The knight's hollow sockets burned with unseen fire.
"Good. You live."
Alpha laughed bitterly through his gasps. "Barely."
"Barely is enough. The living walk the edge. The dead fall from it."
The boy sat in silence, those words sinking deeper than the bruises on his arms. He looked at the knight again, this creature of bone and silence, and realized it was more alive than many he had known in chains.
"Why me?" he asked. The question had festered since the moment he'd stepped into the cave. Why had this thing chosen him, out of all who might stumble into Viren?
The knight did not answer immediately. It lifted its blade, pressing the tip into the stone floor until a sharp crack echoed. Then it spoke, voice heavy with something like remembrance.
"Because you are nothing. And nothing may yet become everything."
Alpha froze. The words struck him deeper than any blade.
Nothing. That was what he had always been. A name carved into flesh by strangers, a slave turned loose into emptiness. And yet—here, in the ruin of Viren, that nothingness was possibility.
His breath steadied. His hands, though raw and bleeding, closed again around the hilt of the sword.
He rose.
The knight lowered its blade in acknowledgment. No praise, no promise. Only recognition.
And for the first time since chains had fallen from his wrists, Alpha felt the faintest flicker of something within him. Not hope. Not yet. But direction.
The lesson of the dead was not mercy. It was truth.
And truth was all he had left.