The fourth night in the Meat Pit did not come with a moon. It came with a cold, greasy drizzle that slithered down the trench walls and mixed with the filth, turning the floor into a sucking, bottomless quagmire. The air, already thick enough to chew, grew heavier with the promise of a storm. It was the kind of night that didn't just chill the bone; it seemed to seep into the marrow and rot it from the inside out.
I lay on my side, as I always did, a position born of necessity. My back, a canvas of scabs and weeping sores, could not bear the pressure of the mud. My branded cheek, a throbbing map of agony, pressed against the cold, wet clay. The words carved above my head, my new creed, were barely visible in the gloom.
They had lost their power. They were just words now. Carvings in a wall. The first night, they had been a threat. The second, a promise. Now, on the fourth, they were simply a fact, as immutable as the rain and the stench.
Hope was a country I had forgotten the name of. Despair was the only nation I knew, and I was its only citizen.
My body was a ruin I no longer recognized. The stump of my left arm was a hive of maggots, their ceaseless writhing a dull, constant itch beneath the waves of searing pain. My back was a landscape of torn flesh, each breath a fresh torment as the horse blanket, now fused with my skin, pulled and tore. The violation from two nights prior was a dull, burning ache deep inside, a ghost of a pain that was worse than the real thing, because it was a ghost that would never leave. I was less than a man. I was a thing that used to be a man, a discarded puppet with its strings cut, lying in its own offal.
A boot slammed into my ribs, not with the anger of the first few nights, but with the casual indifference of a man kicking a stone from his path. I didn't grunt. I didn't flinch. I just opened my one good eye and stared into the mud.
"Up, Lord Corpse-Handler," Voss's voice rasped, rough as gravel.
"Work waits."
He wasn't smiling tonight.
The usual sadistic glee was gone, replaced by a weary impatience. Even he was tired of this game. He hauled me upright by the hair, the roots screaming in protest. My legs, sticks of brittle bone wrapped in parchment skin, folded beneath me. I fell face-first into the sludge. He let me lie there for a moment, the filth filling my mouth and nose, before hauling me up again.
This time, I managed to stay on my feet, swaying like a reed in a storm.
The trench was a symphony of misery. The wet cough of the dying, the feverish babbling of the mad, the quiet sobbing of the broken. And beneath it all, the constant, scuttling rhythm of the rats, the true masters of this domain.
Voss didn't bother with a spade or a pole tonight. He simply pointed a grimy finger down the length of the trench, toward a darker shadow huddled near a collapsed section of the fire-step.
"New meat," he grunted.
"One of the Dominion's boys. Caught a crossbow bolt in the gut yesterday. He's been moaning for two days. Commander's tired of the noise. Finish him."
He tossed a rusty, blood-caked dagger onto the mud at my feet. It was a cruel, ugly thing, with a splintered bone handle and a nicked, pitted blade. It was the kind of weapon you used to put down a rabid dog, not a man.
"Make it clean," Voss added, his voice devoid of all emotion.
"Don't want him screaming and waking the whole Pit. He's almost gone anyway. Just a mercy."
A mercy.
The word echoed in the hollow cavern of my skull.
Mercy.
I was to be the instrument of mercy.
I, who had been shown none.
I, who was less than the man I was being sent to kill.
The irony was a physical blow, a punch to the gut that was funnier than any joke I had ever heard.
I started to laugh, a dry, hacking sound that tore at my raw throat and sent fresh agony lancing through my back.
Voss's face tightened. He thought I was defying him. He raised his hand to strike me, but I held up my remaining hand, a gesture of surrender. The laughter died, replaced by a series of wet, wheezing coughs. I wiped a mixture of mud, blood, and spit from my lips with the back of my hand.
"I'll do it," I whispered, my voice a stranger's.
He stared at me for a long moment, his burned face a mask of suspicion in the gloom. Then he shrugged and turned away, disappearing back into the darkness from whence he came. He had his entertainment. He didn't care what happened next.
I was alone with the dagger and the dying man.
I picked up the knife. The bone handle was greasy and cold, fitting into my palm like it was made for me. It felt wrong. It felt right. I stood there for a long time, just breathing, just feeling the weight of it. This was it. This was the final step. The first night, they had taken my hand. The second, my honor. The third, my body. Tonight, they would take my soul.
*I am Kaelen of House Veal,*
a voice whispered in the back of my mind, a ghost from a life that felt a thousand years away.
*Second son. I once carved a boat for my sister. I once kissed a girl and thought the world was made of summer. I once held a sword not to kill, but to protect.*
*No,*
another voice answered, a colder, harder voice that was born in this trench.
*You are Kael, the Lord Cripple. The Lord Whore. You are nothing. You are a tool. A mercy killer.*
I started walking toward the shadow, my feet sinking deep into the mud with each step. The trench floor was a graveyard of forgotten things, and my feet kicked up fragments of bone, splintered wood, and scraps of rotting cloth. The air grew thicker the closer I got, thick with the coppery scent of blood and the sweet, cloying stench of a gut wound gone septic.
He was just a shape in the dark, a bundle of rags huddled against the trench wall. He was small, I realized. Not a man, but a boy. He couldn't have been more than seventeen, a year younger than Maika. His dark hair was matted with mud and blood, and his face was a pale, waxy moon in the gloom. His eyes were closed, his lips parted slightly as he took shallow, ragged breaths. A crossbow bolt, black and fletched with raven feathers, protruded from his stomach just above his hip. The wound was swollen and purple, weeping a foul-smelling fluid.
He was, as Voss had said, almost gone. Each breath was a struggle, a small victory in a war he had already lost. He was a candle flickering its last in a hurricane.
I knelt beside him, the dagger held loosely in my hand. The mud soaked through the thin rags they had given me to wear, its cold a familiar embrace. I looked at the boy's face, so young, so peaceful in his near-death. He could have been a farm boy from the Western Reach, conscripted and sent to die in a land he'd never heard of. He could have had a sweetheart. He could have had a family. He could have been me.
*Don't,*
the ghost of Kaelen begged.
*Please. You can't. This is not who you are.*
*Who are you?*
the trench-voice sneered.
*You are the man who will do what he must to survive. You are the man who will trade this boy's life for a cup of slop. You are the man who will put him out of his misery because you are too much of a coward to put yourself out of your own.*
I raised the dagger, my hand trembling so badly the blade looked like a flickering flame in the dark. The boy's eyelids fluttered. He was dreaming. Perhaps he was dreaming of home. Of a warm bed. Of a mother's smile. And I was about to send him into a dream from which he would never wake.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, the words catching in my throat.
"I am so sorry."
I leaned over him, the dagger held high. I aimed for his heart, a quick, clean kill.
A mercy.
As my shadow fell across his face, his eyes snapped open.
They were not the eyes of a dying boy.
They were wide, wild, and filled with a terror so pure and absolute it was its own kind of fury. He wasn't dying. He was waiting.
In a blur of motion, his hand shot out and grabbed my wrist. His grip was like iron, a strength born of pure desperation. I cried out, more in surprise than in pain. His other hand came up from beneath the rags, clutching a small, wicked-looking knife, its blade honed to a razor's edge.
He drove it into my thigh.
The pain was a white-hot star exploding in my leg. It was a clean, sharp, searing agony that eclipsed everything else—the throbbing of my back, the itching of my stump, the burning of my brand. It was a new pain, a fresh pain, and it was all I could feel.
I screamed, a raw, guttural sound that was swallowed by the trench's endless gloom. I fell back, my leg giving out from under me. The boy's knife was still buried in my flesh, a hunk of metal that was now a part of me. He wrenched it free, and a fresh wave of agony washed over me, so intense it almost made me pass out.
He scrambled out from his hiding spot, no longer a dying boy but a cornered animal. His face was a mask of hatred and fear. He was from the Obsidian Dominion, the enemy. He had been pretending, waiting for a chance. And I had walked right into his trap.
He lunged at me, the knife raised for a second strike. I was on my back, helpless, one-armed, and bleeding out onto the mud. There was nowhere to go. This was it. This was how I died. Not as Kaelen of House Veal, but as a nameless corpse in a forgotten trench, killed by a boy I was sent to murder.
But something inside me refused to die.
It wasn't courage. It wasn't strength. It was a cold, hard rage, a spark of defiance in the face of utter annihilation. It was the memory of my father's voice, my mother's tears, Lior's triumph, Elyra's betrayal. It was the memory of Maika's smile as he poured the wine. It was the memory of Voss's laughter as he held me down.
With a roar that was half pain and half fury, I kicked out with my good leg, catching him in the knee. He cried out and stumbled, his balance thrown. He fell forward, his knife hand flailing.
I saw my chance.
I grabbed his wrist with my remaining hand, my fingers slick with my own blood. He was stronger than me, but I was heavier. I used my weight to pull him down, rolling on top of him. We were a tangle of thrashing limbs in the mud, two desperate animals fighting over a scrap of meat.
He tried to stab me again, but I twisted his arm, the knife clattering uselessly onto the mud. He clawed at my face, his nails raking my branded cheek. I head-butted him, the impact sending a shower of stars across my vision. He groaned, his head lolling to the side.
I was on top of him now, my one good hand pinning his shoulders to the ground. He was weak, the blood loss from his gut wound finally taking its toll. He looked up at me, his eyes wide with a terror that was no longer fierce, but pleading. He was just a boy again. A dying boy.
I saw my reflection in his eyes. A one-eyed, one-handed monster, covered in mud and blood, his face a mask of hatred. I saw the thing I had become.
And I hated him.
I hated the boy for making me do this. I hated myself for wanting to do it. I hated the world for creating this moment, this mud, this filth, this endless cycle of pain and death.
My hand found the dagger. The one Voss had given me. The one I was supposed to use to grant him a mercy. My fingers closed around the bone handle. It felt cold. It felt right.
I raised the knife high above my head.
"Please," the boy whispered, his voice a thin, reedy thing.
"Please..."
I looked into his eyes, and I saw the fear. The same fear I had seen in the eyes of the poacher, the deserter, the madman. The same fear I saw in my own eyes every time I looked in a shard of broken mirror. It was the fear of the end. The fear of nothingness.
And I knew I couldn't do it. I couldn't be the one to extinguish that last, flickering spark of life. I couldn't be the monster they wanted me to be.
But the rage... the rage was stronger than the pity. The rage was a fire that burned away all other emotion. The rage was the only thing I had left.
With a scream that tore my soul in two, I brought the dagger down.
I didn't aim for his heart. I didn't grant him a mercy.
I drove the point of the dagger into his right eye.
There was a soft, wet sound, like a boot sinking into deep mud. The boy's body went rigid, his back arching in a final, convulsive spasm. A single, choked gasp escaped his lips. Then, he was still.
I knelt there, panting, my body trembling with exhaustion and adrenaline. The dagger was still buried in his eye socket, its bone handle sticking out of his face like a grotesque horn. Blood and a clear, viscous fluid trickled down his cheek, mingling with the mud.
I looked at his face, at the single, staring eye that was now fixed on the rain-slicked trench wall. And I saw the fear. It was still there, frozen in his features, a silent testament to his final moments. He had died afraid. He had died in pain. He had died at my hand.
And I had screamed.
Not a scream of rage or pain, but a scream of pure, unadulterated horror. A scream of a man who has looked into the abyss and seen his own reflection staring back. A scream of a soul that has been irrevocably shattered.
I screamed until my throat was raw, until my lungs burned, until there was no air left in my body. I screamed for the boy. I screamed for myself. I screamed for the world that had made us.
The scream echoed through the trench, a piercing, unnatural sound that cut through the symphony of misery. It was a sound that demanded attention.
And it got it.
Torches flared to life, their light painting the scene in a hellish, flickering glow. Men emerged from their rat-holes, their faces drawn and pale in the firelight. They stared at me, at the dead boy, at the dagger in his eye.
And then Moloch was there, a mountain of black iron and scarred flesh. He looked at the dead Dominion soldier, then at me, at the gaping wound in my leg. He saw the blood, the mud, the pure, undiluted terror on my face.
And he smiled.
It was not a pleasant smile. It was the smile of a predator that has just witnessed its cub make its first kill.
It was the smile of a craftsman who has just seen his masterpiece completed.
"Well now, Lord Cripple," he rumbled, his voice a low growl of approval. "It seems you've found your calling."
He turned to one of his sergeants.
"Get him his slop. And find a piece of meat for him. He's earned it tonight."
They left me there, kneeling in the mud beside the body, a "reward" promised for the piece of my soul I had just forfeited. The rain began to fall harder, washing the blood from the boy's face, but it couldn't wash away the look of terror in his single, staring eye.
I looked at my hands, at the blood that covered them. His blood. My blood. It was all the same. I was no longer Kaelen of House Veal. I was no longer the Lord Cripple or the Lord Whore.
I was a killer.
And I had never felt more alone.