The bread wasn't even fresh.
Lucian held the stale roll in his hand, feeling its weight, calculating whether the three coppers he'd spent were worth the meager calories. Probably not. But in the slums of Ashfall City, you took what you could get, and you didn't complain about it.
He sat on the edge of a rusted fire escape, six stories up, watching the street below. At sixteen, he'd learned that height meant perspective, and perspective meant survival. Down there, people moved like insects through the narrow alleys—workers heading to the factories, merchants hawking spoiled goods, children his age already dead in their eyes even if their hearts still beat.
The sky above was the color of old bruises. It had been that way for thirty years, ever since the Collapse. Since the gods died and took reality with them.
Lucian bit into the bread and chewed slowly, his white hair catching what little light filtered through the perpetual haze. People said his hair was a bad omen. The color of corpses, of angels' wings before they fell. His eyes didn't help either—too blue, too clear, like they could see right through you.
He'd learned to use it. Fear was leverage, and leverage was everything.
"Lucian!"
He didn't turn at the voice, just kept chewing. He knew who it was—Mara, one of the other orphans from the shelter. She'd try to borrow money again. She always did.
"Lucian, please, I just need—"
"No."
She appeared at the fire escape below him, breathing hard from the climb. Fourteen, red hair tangled, face too thin. They all had thin faces here.
"You don't even know what I was going to ask."
"You were going to ask for money. The answer's no." He took another bite of bread, still not looking at her.
"My brother's sick. Really sick this time. The clinic wants two silver for medicine, and I only have—"
"Not my problem."
Silence. He could feel her staring at him. Could feel the moment her desperation turned to anger.
"You're a bastard, you know that?"
"Yeah." Lucian finally glanced down at her. His blue eyes were flat, empty. "But I'm a bastard who'll survive another winter. Will you?"
She opened her mouth, closed it. Then turned and climbed back down. He watched her go, tracking her through the crowd until she disappeared into a side alley.
Three breaths later, he pulled out two silver coins and tossed them down to where she'd vanished. They landed in the dirt with barely a sound.
He wasn't kind. Kindness was weakness. But Mara's brother had tried to stop some older kids from beating Lucian senseless two months ago. Debts were debts, even if neither party knew about them. The boy would get his medicine.
And Mara would never know where it came from.
Lucian finished his bread and stood, brushing crumbs from his threadbare jacket. The sun—or what passed for it—was setting, turning the bruised sky darker. He needed to get back to the shelter before—
Pain.
It hit him like lightning, like someone had shoved a burning brand directly into his chest. Lucian gasped, stumbled, his hand flying to his sternum. Through his shirt, he felt heat. Impossible heat.
No.
No, not me.
Not now.
The world tilted. He grabbed the railing, but his fingers passed through it like it was made of smoke. The fire escape was dissolving. The building was dissolving. Everything was—
[THE MARK AWAKENS]
The words appeared in his vision, glowing red against the dissolving world. Lucian tried to speak, to scream, but his voice was gone. His body was gone. There was only the pain and the words and the falling sensation as reality peeled away like dead skin.
[INITIATING FIRST ORDEAL]
[OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE]
[DURATION: UNTIL COMPLETION OR DEATH]
[MORTALITY RATE: 62.7%]
[GOOD LUCK, ASPIRANT]
The Wastes opened beneath him like a mouth full of teeth.
Lucian fell.
He hit the ground hard enough to crack ribs. Should have cracked ribs. But when he gasped and rolled to his knees, sucking in air that tasted like ashes and rotting flowers, nothing felt broken. His body was whole.
Just not in the right place anymore.
Lucian forced himself to stand, to look around, to think even though his heart was trying to hammer through his chest.
He wasn't in Ashfall City anymore.
The landscape stretched out in impossible directions—a wasteland of black sand and crystalline formations that jutted from the ground like frozen screams. The sky was wrong here. Too many colors bleeding into each other, purple and green and something that might have been gold if gold could scream. Structures dotted the distance, ruins of something that had never been built by human hands.
And floating in the corner of his vision, translucent and pulsing softly, was a window. Text scrolled across it.
[STATUS WINDOW]
Name: Lucian [Surname: None]
Rank: Unmarked → Aspirant (Pending)
Corruption: 0%
Verdicts: None
Remnants: None
FIRST ORDEAL: THE GARDEN OF SAINT VYRIA
Objective: Slay the Echo of Saint Vyria
Sub-Objective: Discover the truth of the Garden
Reward: First Verdict, Rank Advancement
Penalty for Failure: Death
Lucian read it twice. Three times. His mind was racing, cataloging every detail, every word. The First Ordeal. He'd heard about these. Everyone in Ashfall had heard about these. Random people, chosen by the Mark, dragged into nightmare realms to fight the remnants of dead divinities.
Most didn't come back.
Those who did came back changed.
His hand went to his chest. Through his shirt, he felt the Mark—a burning brand in the shape of something between a cross and a sword, hot enough that it should have hurt. It didn't. It just felt... there. Part of him now.
"Okay," he said out loud, his voice steady despite everything. "Okay. Think."
He'd watched the Marked Ones in Ashfall. Studied them when they came back from their Ordeals. The smart ones, the ones who survived, they all had one thing in common: they didn't panic. They observed. They adapted. They used every advantage, no matter how small.
Lucian started walking toward the nearest structure. It looked like it might have been a church once, before whatever happened here twisted it into something else. The walls were made of bone—he could see the joints, the vertebrae stacked impossibly high. Flowers grew from the cracks, beautiful things with petals like fresh blood.
He didn't touch them.
Movement. To his left, between two crystalline formations.
Lucian dropped into a crouch immediately, scanning the area. There—a figure, humanoid but wrong. Its skin was pale gray, covered in flowering vines. It jerked as it walked, like a puppet with cut strings being forced to move anyway.
[ECHO IDENTIFIED: GARDEN THRALL]
[THREAT LEVEL: LOW]
The creature hadn't seen him yet. It was shambling away, toward the bone church.
Lucian's eyes tracked it, calculating. Low threat level meant it was killable. Probably. But with what? He had no weapons, no Verdicts, nothing but his mind and his body.
The creature disappeared into the church.
He needed information. Needed to understand what he was facing before he faced it. The sub-objective—"Discover the truth of the Garden"—that wasn't random. The System was telling him something.
Lucian moved forward, staying low, using the crystalline formations for cover. Every sound felt too loud. Every breath felt like a shout. But he kept moving, kept thinking.
The bone church loomed ahead.
Somewhere inside it, he knew, waited Saint Vyria's Echo. The thing he'd have to kill to survive this.
Lucian's blue eyes were cold in the strange light. His white hair lifted in a wind that smelled like funeral flowers.
He'd wanted to survive another winter.
Looked like he'd have to kill a saint first.
Fair enough.