Rain had a way of making the slums look alive.
It trickled through broken gutters and narrow alleys, filling the canals until the water lapped at the doors of rusted shanties. From a distance, the flooded district might have seemed peaceful—just another corner of Keystone sinking under its own weight. But up close, the air smelled of metal, mildew, and quiet despair.
Jayden stood on the edge of the causeway, his thin frame silhouetted against the grey drizzle. The water below reflected the dim light of the towers far beyond—the real city, the one that had walls, roofs, and laws. Here, everything was softer, wetter, forgotten.
He adjusted the strap of his satchel and stared at the rippling canal. Beneath the surface, shadows moved—fish, rats, or maybe just trash caught in the current. His reflection wavered: dark hair plastered to his forehead, sharp cheekbones, a hollow look that made him seem older than seventeen.
He didn't mind the rain anymore. It made everyone look equally miserable.
Behind him, the slums stirred to life. Someone shouted about bread prices. A woman cursed at a child for spilling precious clean water. The smell of frying roots drifted faintly through the fog. Jayden turned, hands buried in his pockets, and started down the narrow walkway that led toward the markets.
He wasn't going there to buy anything—he didn't have the money. He went because that was where work sometimes appeared: hauling crates, cleaning stalls, or just standing in the right place when someone needed a body.
The path wound between leaning shacks held together by nails, rope, and stubborn hope. Jayden ducked under a half-collapsed awning and greeted an old man sitting beside a brazier.
"Morning, Koro."
The man grunted without looking up. "Still raining."
"Always is."
Koro spat into the water and muttered something about the gods forgetting Keystone. Jayden smiled faintly and kept walking.
The markets were half underwater. People had learned to live with it—raised platforms, floating planks, vendors shouting prices over the splash of rain. He found work unloading a boat that had come in from the outer farms. The cargo was soggy grain and a few crates of spoiled vegetables.
By noon, his hands were raw and his stomach was empty. He earned two copper tokens—barely enough for dinner—but the weight of them in his pocket still felt like victory.
When he returned home, the light had turned a dull orange through the clouds. The shack he shared with his foster parents sat near the end of the canal, where the water smelled less like sewage and more like salt. His foster father, Daren, was repairing a net when Jayden entered. The man looked up, his eyes creased but kind.
"You're soaked again," Daren said.
"It's impossible not to be," Jayden replied, hanging his shirt near the coals.
His foster mother, Mira, ladled thin stew into three bowls. "You should've been born with gills, Jay."
"Wouldn't help. The water's poison."
She smirked and handed him a bowl. "Then stop staring into it all the time."
They ate in silence broken only by the patter of rain on the tin roof. The warmth of the fire, the faint spice in the stew—small comforts, but they were what kept him tethered.
After dinner, Jayden stepped outside. The rain had softened to a mist, turning the world silver. He looked toward the skyline where Keystone's towers pierced the clouds—bright, distant, unreachable. He wondered what kind of people lived there. Ones who never had to taste rust in their water or fight rats for food.
He closed his eyes and let the rain run down his face. Maybe one day, he thought, he'd climb high enough to see the sun.
But dreams like that didn't last long here.
…
The rain changed that night.
It began as it always did—steady, patient, endless—but as dusk bled into the canals, the drizzle thickened into sheets. The air grew heavy, electric. The city lights beyond the slums dimmed behind a curtain of storm clouds.
Jayden sat cross-legged on his sleeping mat, patching a tear in his satchel. The shack shuddered now and then as thunder rolled across the horizon. Mira hummed softly while scrubbing a pan; Daren dozed by the fire.
Outside, the wind rose, tugging at the walls. A faint tremor passed through the floorboards. Jayden glanced at the flickering lamp. "Storm's stronger than usual," he said.
Daren grunted without opening his eyes. "It's the season for it. The gutters will overflow by morning."
Mira sighed. "Then we'll just float to work tomorrow."
Jayden smiled, but unease gnawed at the back of his mind. The rhythm of the rain was wrong—too fast, too deliberate, as if something vast was breathing with the storm.
Then the first flash came.
Lightning split the sky with a shriek that made the roof groan. For a heartbeat, the world outside turned white. Then the thunder hit—a deafening crack that sent dust falling from the rafters.
Daren shot up, eyes wide. "That was close—"
The next strike silenced him. It didn't hit the sky; it tore through the street outside with blinding precision. The sound was less thunder, more a roar of fury.
Jayden stumbled to the door and pushed it open. The rain blasted him backward. Through the downpour, he saw arcs of light dancing along the canal, burning blue-white trails in the air.
People screamed. The smell of ozone and charred wood filled the night.
"Jayden!" Mira's voice snapped behind him. "Get away from the door!"
But he didn't move. Something in the storm pulled at him—curiosity, dread, both. He saw a figure standing at the far end of the street, half-hidden in the haze. Cloaked, motionless, but the air around them shimmered like liquid fire. Lightning bled from their fingertips into the puddles below.
Then the figure raised a hand.
The world exploded.
Light surged across the slum like a living thing, leaping from roof to roof, tearing through walls and people alike. Jayden was thrown to the floor as a bolt struck the canal, sending up a geyser of steam and boiling water. The heat scorched his skin even from inside the shack.
He crawled toward his foster parents through smoke and chaos. Mira was shouting his name, but her voice vanished beneath the roar. Another strike ripped through the roof, blinding him.
When his sight cleared, half the shack was gone. Daren lay motionless, a charred silhouette against the embers. Mira knelt beside him, shaking, screaming something Jayden couldn't hear.
He staggered forward, reaching for her—but a streak of light cleaved the air between them. The blast sent him tumbling into the rain outside.
The figure approached slowly through the downpour, boots splashing in glowing puddles. Their hood slipped back just enough for Jayden to glimpse pale eyes and a faint mark of lightning on their temple.
A whisper cut through the storm.
"Wrong address."
The assassin looked almost... annoyed. Then, as if the chaos bored them, they turned and vanished into the sheets of rain—one step, two—and were gone, leaving only ruin.
Jayden crawled toward what remained of his home. The canal had risen to the doorway, swallowing the debris piece by piece. He found Mira's hand beneath a beam and pulled, but she didn't move. Her eyes stared through him, unseeing, reflecting the last flickers of blue light.
"Please…" His voice broke. "Please, no."
The storm didn't care. The lightning receded as quickly as it had come, leaving only rain and smoke and silence.
Jayden fell to his knees in the flood. The water was cold, rising fast, swirling around his legs. He stayed there until the world blurred. He thought about leaving—about surviving again, starting over—but there was nowhere left to go.
The current tugged harder. His body was weak, scraped raw, burned in places he couldn't feel. He tried to stand, failed, and collapsed forward into the canal.
The water embraced him.
It was almost gentle at first—cooling, quiet, endless. He sank without fighting. The world above dimmed to a smear of light. He let it go. The ache, the fear, the loss—everything.
But as the last air left his lungs, a faint vibration passed through the water, low and resonant, like a voice carried from somewhere impossibly deep.
Something ancient had noticed him.
Darkness folded around him like a second skin.
Jayden didn't remember the moment he stopped breathing. The water pressed against him from all sides, cold and crushing, but his mind drifted—half dream, half memory. Faces flickered in the black: Mira's tired smile, Daren's steady hands, the faint blue glow of the storm. Each image broke apart into ripples that slipped through his fingers.
He reached for the surface, but there was no surface anymore. The canal had stretched into something vast, deeper than it should be. The current dragged him downward, through layers of cold that felt alive.
Something pulsed far below—a faint rhythm, like a heartbeat buried under stone.
He tried to fight. His chest burned. The human instinct to live clawed at his nerves. He kicked, twisted, reached—but the current pulled harder, dragging him into the abyss.
Then the whispers came.
Not voices, exactly. More like sensations—memories not his own. He saw flashes of other drownings: a child slipping beneath the ice, a soldier sinking in armor, a woman swallowed by storm surge. Each vision cut through him, leaving fragments of emotion—terror, sorrow, rage.
Is this death?
The thought barely formed before the darkness answered.
A shimmer appeared ahead—a circle of light suspended in the void, as if the ocean itself had opened an eye. The closer he drifted, the more it pulsed with impossible colors: silver, blue, and something older than either.
A breathless voice older than storms moved through the depths.
*You are unshaped clay. You are the silence between storms. Why do you reach?*
Jayden's body trembled; his mind felt half-torn apart. The water pressed, testing him, measuring him, waiting for surrender.
"Because…" his voice cracked, "…I refuse to drown."
The runes flared. The water roared, alive and infinite. He felt himself pulled into it, down and through. Darkness folded over him like wings.
The light reached out to him, brushing across his face like a hand. Pain lanced through his skull. His vision shattered into shards of images—flooded cities, colossal beasts swimming through storms, towers made of living coral. He saw himself reflected a thousand times, drowning in each one.
The pressure built until it was unbearable. He screamed, but no sound left his throat. The light forced itself into him—through his eyes, his veins, his mind.
Something ancient looked back.
—You should not be here—
The words weren't heard but felt, vibrating through his bones. He convulsed as streams of light coiled around him, etching a sigil behind his eyes. His body arched; his heartbeat stuttered.
Then everything went still.
The abyss receded. The cold vanished. Jayden hung suspended in weightless water that glowed from within.
He opened his eyes. The world had changed. The canal was gone. He floated in a vast expanse of blue light, beneath an endless surface that rippled like glass. Shapes moved in the distance—titanic silhouettes, drifting through the deep.
The light in his eyes dimmed to a faint glow, and for a heartbeat, the silence felt absolute.
And then a whisper from the elemental codex — cold, vast, neither kind nor cruel — slid through the current. Runes swirled in the dark, etching themselves into his vision.
Soul resonance detected.
"Aspirant," the voice said, echoing in the marrow of his bones.
"Welcome to your first Water Trial."