The prison beneath Arkwright Keep was never meant to hold nobles.
Its walls were rough-hewn stone, damp with centuries of cold seepage. Iron rings jutted from the rock like broken teeth, each one scarred by rust and old blood. The air smelled of mold, metal, and despair the kind that sank into bone.
Morwen Arkwright hung against the wall.
Chains wrapped around her wrists and ankles, thick enough to restrain a berserker, let alone a woman once praised for elegance and restraint. Her dark gown was torn and stained, hair fallen loose around her shoulders. Yet her posture remained straight. Her chin was lifted.
Unbroken.
Captain Edrik Frosthelm stood before her, axe resting against his shoulder. Torchlight flickered across his scarred face as he regarded her in silence for a moment.
"You're quieter than I expected," he said at last.
Morwen did not look at him.
Edrik continued anyway.
"Your son is dead," he said bluntly. "Killed in the arena by Valen's blade."
No reaction.
"Your household guards," he went on, "your financiers, the priests who took your coin every last one of them has been seized. Some begged. Some cursed your name."
Still nothing.
Edrik frowned slightly. "The Count anticipated everything. The assassins. The bribes. Even the routes you used to move messages out of the keep."
Morwen's lips curved just barely.
A smile.
That unsettled him more than screams ever could.
"You should hate him," Edrik said. "You lost everything."
At last, Morwen turned her head.
Her eyes were sharp.
"You think this is the end?" she asked softly. "You think my son was the point?"
Edrik felt a chill crawl up his spine.
Before he could respond, footsteps echoed above.
A signal.
Edrik stepped back as guards moved in.
"The Count will decide your fate," he said. "Until then pray."
Morwen laughed quietly as the torchlight dimmed.
XXXX
Far beneath Arkwright Keep below the prisons, below forgotten tunnels, below even the bones of the first fortress Valen Arkwright stood alone.
The descent had been long.
Stone steps spiralled endlessly downward, each one carved by hands long turned to dust. The air grew colder with every step, heavy with an unnatural stillness. No torches burned here. None would stay lit. The darkness seemed to swallow flame as if offended by it.
The chamber waited for him.
It revealed itself slowly as Valen crossed the threshold a vast circular hall carved directly from the mountain's heart. The stone was ancient beyond measure, smooth in places where countless hands had brushed against it, jagged in others where something had clawed its way free.
The cold here was alive.
It breathed.
Frost crawled along the floor in slow, deliberate patterns, retreating and advancing as if sensing his presence. The walls were etched with sigils hundreds of them layered over one another in obsessive detail.
Symbols of submission.
Of broken wills.
Of dominance earned and dominance stolen.
Some were clean and precise.
Others were scratched deep enough to crack stone.
Chains lay coiled at the center of the chamber; thick links of blackened metal etched with the same sigils as the walls. They were not fixed in place. They rested there as if waiting loose, patient, aware.
At the heart of it all stood a pedestal.
Not carved.
Grown.
Dark stone twisted upward into a crude throne-like shape, and embedded within it was the sigil itself a disk of obsidian-black metal, dull and lightless, yet somehow drawing the eye no matter where one stood.
The Dominion Sigil.
It did not glow.
It did not hum.
It watched.
Valen stepped forward.
Each footstep echoed too loudly, as if the chamber amplified his presence, measuring him. Judging. The sigils along the walls stirred faintly, lines of power tightening like muscles beneath skin.
This place had not been meant for him.
Not yet.
In the original timeline, no one would stand here for years. Morwen would find it by chance, guided by whispers she never fully understood. She would never face the trial herself she would use Kael to activate it instead.
Valen stopped before the pedestal.
He removed his glove.
His bare hand hovered inches above the stone, and he felt it immediately the pressure.
Not physical, but mental.
A weight pressing down on his thoughts, probing, testing.
Do you command?
Or do you desire to be obeyed?
Valen exhaled slowly and placed his palm against the pedestal.
The cold bit into his skin.
Deep.
Ancient.
Unforgiving.
By decree of the Count of Arkwright, I claim the right of trial.
The words were not spoken.
They were taken.
The sigils flared not with light, but with presence. The chains rattled softly, links tightening, drawing closer together. The air compressed, thick enough to make breathing laborious.
Then,
The chamber vanished.
Sound tore away.
Stone collapsed into nothing.
And Valen Arkwright was pulled forward as the world shattered around him.
Not into darkness,
But into judgment.
XXXX
Pain came first.
Not physical.
Internal.
Valen felt himself pulled apart mind, will, instinct each stretched in a different direction. Darkness swallowed him, then light, then nothing.
He stood in a void.
Before him appeared figures.
Men. Women. Soldiers. Nobles.
All kneeling.
All broken.
Their heads were bowed. Their eyes empty.
A voice echoed neither male nor female.
Domination is not control of the body.
It is conquest of the will.
The figures screamed.
Invisible pressure crushed them to the ground. Pain wracked their forms not wounds, but agony born from resistance. The harder they resisted, the worse it became.
Valen felt it too.
The trial turned inward.
Submit, the force demanded.
Kneel.
His knees buckled.
Memories surged fear, weakness, death in another world, being stabbed in his sleep, being dismissed as average, replaceable.
Break, the voice urged.
Accept control or be controlled.
Valen clenched his teeth.
"No."
Pain exploded.
His mind was invaded images of Morwen kneeling, of Kael begging, of thousands bowing to him without resistance.
Temptation.
Absolute obedience.
One command.
One word.
They would be his.
But Valen saw the flaw.
Domination without resistance was hollow.
Control taken without struggle was fragile.
He straightened.
"You don't break them by crushing them," he said, voice echoing through the void. "You force them to choose submission."
The pressure intensified.
Agony screamed through his nerves as the trial tried to bend him.
Valen endured.
He did not kneel.
He did not dominate.
He waited.
And when the figures finally collapsed not from pain, but exhaustion
He spoke.
"Kneel."
They did.
Not because they were forced.
But because they could not resist any longer.
The void shattered.
XXXX
Valen collapsed to one knee in the chamber, breath tearing from his lungs in ragged pulls.
The world steadied slowly.
The sigils along the walls dimmed, their pressure retreating like a tide pulling back into the abyss. For a moment, there was only silence thick, oppressive, watchful.
Then the chains moved.
They unraveled from the pedestal with a sound like metal scraping bone, slithering across the stone floor of their own accord. Link by link, they crept toward Valen, circling him, stopping inches from his outstretched hand.
The blackened sigil pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
Not light recognition.
Accepted.
Understanding flooded him all at once, sharp and merciless.
Domination was not given.
It was taken earned through resistance, carved into the will of another until submission was no longer forced, but chosen. A process slow, agonizing, absolute.
And there was another path.
A darker one.
Resistance could be erased entirely.
Thought overwritten. Will silenced.
Complete hypnosis.
Perfect obedience.
Valen reached forward.
The instant his fingers brushed the sigil, it dissolved.
Cold fire surged up his arm as the artifact melted into him, flowing beneath his skin like living ink. He gasped, muscles locking as the sensation burned its way through flesh and nerve.
The chains snapped back, recoiling violently.
The sigil reformed along his forearm.
A tattoo.
Black and silver lines spiraled outward from his wrist, twisting into symbols of chains, crowns, and broken eyes. They sank deep, etching themselves into muscle and bone, pulsing faintly with every heartbeat.
The pain faded.
The presence did not.
Valen stared at his arm.
He could feel it now not as an object, but as an extension of himself.
A dormant weight in his blood. A promise. A threat.
Power that would never be passive.
Power that would demand payment.
It would grow stronger with use.
And it would mark him forever.
Valen pushed himself to his feet.
Above him, the North waited unaware, unprepared.
And beneath it
Something ancient, patient, and utterly merciless had awakened inside him.