Epigraph
"Before you rise, we'll take everything that makes you human and set it on fire." -Training Oath, Section 12.
They didn't wake to alarms that morning.
No siren, no boots, no yelling. Just the kind of silence that makes your stomach twist because you know it means something bad is coming.
Aiden opened his eyes to gray light leaking through the ceiling vents. His bunk felt harder than usual. Or maybe it was just him - every muscle sore, every thought heavy.
Across the aisle, Kieran sat up slowly, rubbing his shaved head. "You think they let us sleep in as a reward? You know for all the work they've put as through."
"I'm betting on that this was just a distraction for the eventual implantation." Aiden said.
Nobody answered.
The barracks was full of half-awake recruits, quiet for once. No one dared joke. Even the zealot girl, the one who never stopped whispering prayers, sat staring at the floor, lips pressed tight.
Then the door hissed open.
Instructor Kael stood there, hands behind her back. No armor today. Just the uniform - black, immaculate, silent.
"Candidates," she said. "Today, you take the step that decides if you remain among the living."
That was all. No speech, no comfort. Just that single sentence.
They followed her out.
The halls were colder than usual. The lights were dim, flickering sometimes, like the place itself didn't want to see what was coming.
Kieran walked beside Aiden, whispering under his breath. "If this is about the rations I stole last week I'd like to apologize in advance."
Aiden didn't respond. His hands were clenched, knuckles white.
They passed two soldiers hauling a stretcher covered by a sheet. Something underneath it twitched.
Nobody looked long enough to find out what it was.
When they reached the end of the corridor, a circular door waited - huge, sealed with a faintly glowing mark: a vertical line cut through by two rings. The symbol of Ascendance.
The door opened with a hiss and a rush of cold air.
Inside was the Implantation Chamber.
The room looked like a cathedral built by machines.
Pods lined the walls - metal shells with windows that pulsed faint blue. Tubes hung from the ceiling like veins. The smell of disinfectant fought to hide the scent of something organic, like blood and burnt ozone.
People in gray coats moved quietly between consoles. None of them made eye contact.
Kael turned to face them. "The body is weak," she said. "It breaks. It fears. It dies. We take that weakness away."
Her eyes swept across the group. "If you survive this, you'll rise as something more. If you don't..." She shrugged. "Then you weren't meant to."
Kieran muttered under his breath. "Inspirational as ever."
A guard heard and shoved him forward. "You first."
Kieran froze. "Wait. No, i.."
"Move."
Kieran stepped into the pod.
The lid sealed.
Fluid flooded in - thick, luminous, the color of frost under moonlight. The sound of machinery filled the chamber.
Aiden watched through the glass as the needles slid in - spine, wrists, temples. Kieran jerked once, twice, mouth open in a scream that made no sound.
The blue glow brightened.
Then it all went still.
For a moment, nobody breathed.
The pod opened with a hiss. Kieran spilled out onto the platform, coughing up liquid. His veins glowed faintly beneath his skin. The whites of his eyes shimmered gold.
"Stabilized," a doctor said like it was nothing.
Kieran laid on the ground, panting, coughing weekly. "That was not...fun."
They dragged him aside. He looked at Aiden and gave a shaky thumbs-up before collapsing again.
Then it was Aiden's turn.
The pod was cold inside. The surface slick against his back. It smelled faintly of copper.
When the lid closed, the air disappeared.
The fluid rose. His breath caught. It filled his lungs, thick and alien. He tried not to panic, but every instinct screamed to get out.
Then came the pain.
A spike of heat tore through his spine. His fingers went numb. He could feel the liquid crawling under his skin, threading through his veins, rewriting something he didn't understand.
His heartbeat faltered.
And then...
The hum.
The same low vibration that had haunted his dreams. Except now it wasn't outside him - it was in him. A voice without words, layered and vast.
We see you.
We remember you.
The clay returns to the fire
His vision flooded with light - white, gold, burning.
He saw things that weren't his:
Cities made of glass, floating in a storm.
Towers that bled light into the sky.
Creatures tall as mountains, walking through oceans of dust.
And then he saw Earth - not as it was, but as it would be: broken continents, portals like wounds, Ascendants standing over ruins like gods.
The Choir whispered again. Do not forget what the took.
Aiden tried to scream, but the liquid swallowed the sound.
And then it all stopped.
When he woke, the ceiling above him was spinning. His body felt wrong - too heavy, too strong. Every sound stabbed through his skull.
He could hear heartbeats. Other people's heartbeats. Machines breathing.
He sat up slowly. The sheet under his hands tore like paper.
A doctor at the console looked up. "His awake. Good."
Karl stood behind him, watching. "Vitals?"
"Elevated. Neural resonance unusually high."
Kael's eyes narrowed. "How high?"
"Dangerously."
Aiden didn't understand what they meant. He just knew that his chest hurt, his vision was too sharp, and everything around him pulsed in time with his heartbeat.
On the next cot over Kieran looked over at Aiden. "You look like hell."
"You aren't one to talk."
Kieran grinned faintly. "Yeah, but I glow now, so I'm owning it now."
Aiden tried to smile. It came out as a grimace. "Did you hear anything? When it happened?"
Kieran frowned. "You mean like....screaming?"
"No. More like words and voices."
Kieran's smile faded. "No man, I was too busy fighting for my life in there."
Aiden stared down at his hands. The skin shimmered faintly under the light veins glowing pale blue, like lines of frost.
Karl turned toward him. "Get up."
He stood, legs unsteady. The floor felt too solid under him, every vibration amplified.
"Welcome to Ascendance." Kael said. "You've survived the fire. You are no longer a mere man."
He struggled to listen to her as the after effects of the Ascendancy was still present, his body swayed left and right but he somehow kept himself upright.
"What happens to the ones who don't make it?" He asked.
Kael's expression didn't change. "Reclamation."
"Reclamation?"
"Waste not." She said simply.
Aiden looked away before he asked anything else.
They kept them in isolation that night. Observation, they called it.
He lay awake in the dark, the hum of machines syncing with the pulse in his body. Kieran was in the bed next to his, muttering to himself, half-asleep.
"Still with me?" Aiden whispered.
"Barely." Kieran murmured. "Everything hurts. But hey at least I can see in the dark now. That's fun."
Aiden didn't answer. He was staring at the ceiling. It was vibrating. Softly, but enough that he could feel it.
And beneath the vibration... the whispers.
Faint, distant, but there.
You are not their first. You are not their last. The Choir remembers.
He sat up. The whispers grew louder when he moved, like they were following the rhythm of his heartbeat.
Aiden pressed a hand to the wall. It pulsed back.
He flinched away.
Kieran stirred. "You good?"
"Yeah," Aiden lied. "It's just that I can't sleep."
"Same. It's like my body can't wait to kill some invaders."
Aiden smiled, but his mind was elsewhere. The whispers had gone quiet again. For now.
When morning came, the guards arrived rifles slung across their chests, faces unreadable.
One of them looked at Aiden and paused, just for a second. "Your are one of the lucky ones," he said quietly.
Aiden didn't feel lucky.
Kael entered behind them, her boots echoing on the metal floor. "Ascendants," she said, her voice like steel. "Welcome to your new existence. Eat. Breathe. Adjust. Tomorrow, your control trials begin."
She stopped at Aiden's bed. For a moment, her eyes softened-barely.
"Whatever you heard in there." She said under her breathe, "forget it."
"I can't."
Her jaw tightened. "Then pray it doesn't remember you back."
And just like that, she was gone.
Aiden sat in silence for a long time after. The hum beneath the floor grew steady again.
He closed his eyes, but the light under his skin wouldn't let him forget what he'd seen- the cities, the fire, the Choir.
He wasn't sure if he was still human. But he knew one thing for certain.
Something inside him had woken up. And it wasn't going back to sleep.