Bloodgate Trial – Year One: Shatter Your Self
Age 7–8 | Phase One: Etiquette and Elimination
From the moment they turned seven, every child of Crimsonveil blood — noble-born or bastard, legitimate or forgotten — was sent into the forge.
To be broken. Refined. Recast.
Those who failed?
Erased.
No grave.
No name.
No memory.
As the old duchy laws decreed:
"A weak blade deserves not a sheath, only silence."
Even burial was considered a waste. The living didn't mourn the unworthy.
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Chapter I: The Day It Began
It rained that morning.
The sky sagged under thick gray clouds, weeping softly over the stone training courtyard.
The children—dozens of them—stood in rows beneath the open sky, their thin uniforms already soaked through. No one moved.
At the front, a man stood unmoved by the rain.
Instructor Varian.
Older than most instructors, skin like old bark, voice like gravel dragged over iron. He had trained hundreds. Most didn't survive.
> "They don't raise children here," someone once whispered.
"They raise blades."
Varian's voice cut the rain.
> "From this moment on, you are not sons. Not nephews. Not orphans.
You are blades in progress.
You will be refined—
or erased."
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Chapter II: Etched Etiquette — The Art of Control
The mornings began at four a.m. sharp.
They were lined up outside, barefoot on wet stone, backs straight, eyes lowered. Every movement—how they stood, how they breathed, how they blinked—was monitored.
Posture. Bowing angles. Finger placement on porcelain cups. Steps in a greeting ritual.
Perfection or pain.
A boy named Kael from a side-branch dropped his teacup on the second day.
It shattered.
No word came from the instructor.
He simply stepped forward and smashed another teacup across Kael's skull.
Porcelain. Blood. Silence.
Kael didn't return the next day.
Elarion had watched. Unblinking. Silent. Memorizing.
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Chapter III: The Silence Begins
By the end of the first week, the air felt different.
No one cried anymore.
Not because it didn't hurt—but because the ones who cried were taken. And never seen again.
At dinner, the only sound was the quiet clink of wooden chopsticks. Half rations. Hollow cheeks. Sunken eyes.
Strength here wasn't loud. It was still. Controlled. Suppressed.
> "Crimsonveil doesn't prize muscle," someone once muttered.
"They prize control. The body bends to the will."
One night during recitations, a boy's voice cracked on Law Number Thirty-Nine. His fingers trembled.
The instructor didn't speak.
He simply dragged the boy to the front and made him kneel on salt-covered glass until blood soaked through his robes.
By morning, his mat was gone. His name was gone.
As if he had never existed.
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Chapter IV: Nights Without Faces
The dormitories had no windows.
Only stone walls. Only bone-filled silence.
Each room fit ten children. Some still slept beside skeletons of those who came before. The bones weren't removed. They were a warning.
No one dared to speak of them.
One night, Elarion lay awake, counting breaths.
A soft, cracked voice whispered from across the room.
> "…Help… it hurts…"
No one moved.
Not even Elarion.
Because they all understood—pain wasn't something to be answered here. It was something to be endured or extinguished.
The weak were not healed. They were erased.
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Chapter V: Instructor Varian Observes
From behind a high stone window, Instructor Varian watched the children like one might watch storm clouds form.
> 'At least they get walls here,' he thought. 'In the Desert Valley, they don't even have that. Just dust and death.'
His eyes paused on one boy.
Elarion.
Still.
Focused.
Detached.
He didn't flinch when others were beaten.
Didn't cry. Didn't shake.
Didn't fake emotions like some of the clever ones.
A calm, growing stillness hung around him.
> A blade, Varian thought, not yet drawn, but already deadly.
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Chapter VI: The First Elimination
Day Thirty.
The children were led one by one into white rooms.
Walls stained with old blood. No chairs. No windows.
The test?
Recite all Seventy-Two Crimsonveil Laws.
Not a single stutter. Not a flicker of doubt. Not a slouch in posture.
One mistake.
Fail.
A boy beside Elarion limped, his ankle broken two days ago from crawl drills. He made it to Law Eleven before his voice cracked.
The instructors didn't speak.
They dragged him out by his collar. His body wouldn't be buried. Not even a marker stone.
The next morning, his sleeping mat was gone.
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Chapter VII: Lullaby of Laws
That night, Elarion lay on the stone floor in the dark.
Eyes open.
Silent.
Unmoving.
He wasn't afraid.
He wasn't sad.
He simply whispered the Laws under his breath, one by one, like a lullaby.
> "The blade does not weep.
The blade does not sleep.
The blade endures."
Outside, the wind howled.
Inside, no child cried.
Even tears, it seemed, were too afraid to fall.
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Chapter VIII: Masks of Survival
There were only two faces left to wear:
A hollow one.
Or a false one.
Most chose hollow.
Emotionless.
Empty.
Why fake what was already lost?
Elarion chose the same.
Not because he didn't understand emotion—
But because faking it was exhausting. Pointless.
Stillness was easier.
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