The night watchman's wooden clappers cracked through the darkness like breaking bones. Nalla opened dry eyelids that felt like sandpaper.
Two hours of sleep, maybe. Schemes breeding in his skull while the hours crawled past. This untrained body had no cultivation to speak of, just flesh and fatigue.
But centuries had forged something harder than steel in his core.
He shoved away the thin silk blanket and rose. The window opened to reveal spring rain's retreat, leaving the world washed clean.
Earth, trees, wildflowers. Their mingled fragrance hit him. Sweet and alive and real. For a moment, just for a moment, his chest tightened with something dangerous.
Want.
This. This is why.
Below spread a sea of pale bamboo houses, tall structures built on massive wooden stakes. Two floors minimum, with humans nesting on the second.
"Young master Nalla, you're awake." Samara's voice floated up from below. "I'll come upstairs to help you wash."
His personal servant and his aunt's personal spy rolled into one convenient package.
She climbed the stairs carrying warm water, her appearance carefully crafted to catch a young man's eye. Green robes with long sleeves, embroidered shoes, pearl hairpin holding black hair that caught morning light. Youth radiated from her like heat from fever.
Practically glowing with ambition.
She washed his face, held warm water for rinsing, offered willow twigs with snow salt for his teeth. Each gesture designed to showcase her worth beyond mere servitude. During dressing, her plump breasts brushed his elbow. Accidents as carefully choreographed as a dancer's steps.
In his previous life, such contact had set his teenage blood on fire.
Now his face remained stone. His heart, colder still.
This little viper thinks she's playing a subtle game. After the ceremony, when my status crumbled, she couldn't turn away fast enough.
"Closer." He caught her wrist as she moved to step away, pulling her back. Firm. Possessive. "You missed a spot."
Samara's eyes widened. Surprise quickly masked by professional poise. She leaned in, breath warm against his neck, body pressing close enough to promise without quite delivering.
The door creaked.
Allen stood in the doorway, frozen.
His eyes locked on Samara's hand resting against Nalla's chest. On the way her body curved close. On the slight smile playing at her lips.
Something raw flashed across his face before the mask slammed down.
Hunger. Pure. Desperate. Teenage hunger that had nothing to do with politics or manipulation.
OH.
Nalla's mind rearranged months of observations in an instant. Allen's breathing changing when Samara entered rooms. Eyes tracking her movements even while keeping his head bowed. Performance only slipping when she was near.
Not just resentment of status. Not just jealousy of resources.
Want. Raw. Genuine. Probably the only genuine thing about him.
How wonderfully exploitable.
"Brother." Allen's voice came out strangled. "I didn't mean to interrupt."
Samara turned. Her eyes flickered between the brothers, calculation visible for just a moment.
Two predators recognizing a third's weakness.
"You're not interrupting." Nalla caught Samara's wrist. Gentle, intimate, exactly calibrated to twist the knife deeper. "Samara was just finishing."
He held her there. Five seconds. Ten. Watching Allen's throat work, watching his hands clench and unclench, watching the mask strain at the edges.
"Unless you need something else?" Nalla directed the question at Samara, voice dropping to something almost tender.
Allen's sharp intake of breath was almost inaudible.
Almost.
Samara's smile shifted. Now playing to Allen, showing him what he couldn't have. "No, young master. You've been very generous."
The emphasis on 'generous' was deliberate. Transaction implied.
She left with a final glance at Allen. Not cruel, just assessing. Calculating his worth in the changing equations of household politics.
The stairs creaked under her descent. Twelve steps.
Nalla watched his brother's face slowly reconstruct itself into submission. Watched the hunger get buried under fear, the desire get locked behind compliance.
But he'd seen underneath now. Knew where the real vulnerability lived.
Not in ambition. Not in manipulation. Not in whatever game Allen thought he was playing.
In wanting something he couldn't have. Something dangling just out of reach, close enough to taste but forever beyond his grasp.
Uncle and Aunt had done this deliberately. Samara as temptation. A reminder that Allen had nothing, was nothing, would never be anything unless the ceremony changed his fortunes.
Cruel. Effective. The kind of calculated torture that built either broken men or dangerous ones.
And Allen was learning to be dangerous.
But danger required fuel. Something to fight for beyond abstract ambition.
They'd handed Nalla the lever without even knowing it.
"Did you think about what I said yesterday?" Nalla asked, voice gentle, concerned.
Allen's jaw tightened. "Yes."
The word came out perfectly pitched. Eager, grateful, vulnerable.
But Nalla heard the rage underneath.
"Hold your head up." Nalla moved closer, placed a hand on Allen's shoulder. "You're my brother. And before we go... I love you."
Allen's eyes glistened. Whether from emotion or frustration or rage, Nalla couldn't tell. "I love you too."
Nalla squeezed once, then released. "Let's not be late."
The brothers left their wooden nest and joined the stream of youth flowing toward destiny.
The village woke around them in layers of hierarchy made visible.
Near the pavilion, clan elders moved in clothing that caught morning light. Ironback Stalker scales forming family crests on chests, borders trimmed with golden Canopy Screamer fur. Each step announced status. Each gesture calculated to remind others of their place.
One Matriarch passed wearing a coat that must have cost more than most families earned in a year. Thornfang Stalker leather with a high collar inlaid with decorative horns, double row of polished hoof buttons catching sunlight like captured stars. Her gloves were elastic Crystalback Serpent skin. Rare, expensive, changing color with the morning's temperature shift.
She didn't acknowledge the youth. Didn't need to.
Further out, merchants opening shops wore simpler fare. Standard grade materials, functional cuts, the occasional shell plate showing success without threatening those above. A craftsman adjusting his shop sign wore a work shirt with scale patches at stress points. Practical applications extending the garment's life.
They bowed when elders passed. Quick. Efficient.
At the edges, servants moved in utility grade leather, hand-me-down scales, clothing that prioritized function over statement. A servant girl carried water wearing a simple dress with a single scale application at the shoulder. Clan ownership mark, nothing more. Her shoes had molded hoof soles, replacement parts readily available at market.
They didn't bow. Just melted into walls. The way prey learned to disappear.
Nalla had forgotten how visible the chains were here.
At least it was honest.
"Look, the Twin brothers." Voices carried on morning air, whispers spreading like ripples. "The one in front is Nalla. The poet."
Poet. Such a generous term for someone who plagiarized Earth's greatest works and passed them off as original inspiration.
The irony never stopped being funny.
"Look at his face. Expressionless. Just like the rumors say."
"If you had his talent, you'd act the same way!"
"Make way for the genius!"
The voice carried mockery like a blade carries edge. Sharp. Deliberate.
Torin.
The Patriarch's nephew, blessed with mediocre talent and unlimited confidence. In Nalla's previous life, he'd been the first to turn after the C-grade reveal. Had led the mockery campaign with enthusiasm of someone who'd finally found someone below him.
He wore his status like armor. Expensive Thornfang Stalker leather vest, bone buttons, Crystalback Serpent scale details running down the seams. Noble grade materials his family had bought him, because actual achievement was harder than inheritance.
"Morning, Torin." Nalla kept his voice flat, bored. "Still compensating for something with all that noise?"
Laughter rippled through nearby youth. Torin's face flushed.
"We'll see who's laughing after the ceremony." Torin stepped closer, surrounded by his usual pack. "When they announce your grade and everyone sees..."
"That I'm exactly as talented as I've always been?" Nalla finished. "Devastating revelation."
More laughter. Torin's flush deepened.
Nalla watched him calculate responses, discard them, settle on bluster. It was like watching a child play chess. All the right moves memorized, none of the understanding underneath.
"You think you're so clever." Torin's hand moved to rest on a bone-handled knife at his belt. "But talent doesn't mean anything if you can't back it up."
"True." Nalla's smile was thin and sharp. "Which must be why you practice that speech so much."
The laughter had edges. Some of Torin's followers weren't as loyal as they appeared.
Torin opened his mouth, probably to escalate, when a throat cleared nearby.
An elder. Old enough that his beard was pure white, wearing a simple robe with a single Shieldback Grazer shell plate at the shoulder. Minimal materials, maximum authority.
Everyone bowed. Even Torin, though his jaw stayed clenched.
The elder said nothing. Just looked at them all with the expression of someone who'd seen this exact scene play out for decades.
Then he continued toward the pavilion.
The crowd dispersed. Torin shot Nalla one last glare before retreating with his pack.
"You shouldn't provoke him." Allen's voice came soft, worried. "His family has influence."
"So does ours."
Allen said nothing. Just followed, head bowed.
But Nalla had seen the calculation in his eyes. Had watched him assess the situation, weigh the odds, decide whether intervention would help or hurt his position.
Still playing. Still performing. Still hiding everything that mattered behind a mask of fear.
Except for Samara. That had been real.
The clan pavilion squatted ahead like a waiting predator. Five stories of weathered wood and practical angles, sharp tilted roofs cutting the morning sky. No ornaments. No decorations. Just authority made manifest in timber and stone.
The crowd thickened as they approached. Over a hundred fifteen-year-olds gathered in the square, their nervous energy crackling like lightning before a storm. Some wore clothing that marked them as clan nobility. Scales and shells showing family wealth. Others wore simpler fare, standard grade materials that said hopeful.
All of them would be sorted today. Graded. Assigned their worth in the clan's hierarchy based on how many centipedes clung to their bodies after awakening.
The crowd fell silent before the elder appeared.
That was the first thing Nalla noticed. How a hundred nervous teenagers stopped talking, stopped fidgeting, stopped breathing all at once. Like prey animals sensing predator nearby.
The same elder from earlier emerged from the entrance, white beard and hair catching sunlight like spun silver. Despite his age, his eyes burned with the intensity of someone who'd seen too many ceremonies to be surprised.
"Good. All punctual." His voice carried absolute authority. "Today is your Awakening Ceremony. Your life's great turning point."
He studied their faces with the attention of a butcher selecting cuts of meat.
"I won't waste words. Follow me."
They moved through the pavilion's great hall in silence, past ancestral tablets that watched with painted eyes. Generations of clan members preserved in wood and paint, their achievements carved beneath their names.
But instead of climbing toward upper floors, the elder led them down.
Stone steps descended into darkness, carved from living rock and polished smooth by generations of trembling feet. The temperature dropped with each step. Cold seeped through thin ceremonial robes, settled into bones.
Forty-three steps down. Forty-three steps away from sunlight and certainty, toward whatever waited in the earth's belly.
The underground chamber opened before them like the throat of some sleeping god.
Stalactites hung from the ceiling like frozen tears, their surfaces catching torchlight and throwing it back in fragments of colored fire. The air tasted of earth and secrets, heavy with the weight of stone pressing down from above. Water dripped somewhere in the darkness, counting seconds with patient inevitability.
Around the chamber's edges, shadows moved. Clan elders, watching from alcoves carved into living rock. Their presence felt like pressure against his skin. Power held in check but ready to be unleashed.
But it was what waited in the chamber's heart that stole their breath.
The lake stretched before them. Perhaps fifty meters across. Its surface black as spilled ink.
But this darkness moved.
Writhed.
Pulsed with a life that made the stomach clench and the mind recoil.
Someone behind Nalla made a sound like a dying cat.
Thousands upon thousands of centipedes created a living carpet that shifted and flowed like oil given horrible animation. Each creature was the length of a man's forearm, their ebony shells gleaming wetly in torchlight.
Beautiful, really. Like watching your death rehearse before the main performance.
The youths made sounds of revulsion and terror. Someone retched, the wet sound echoing in the stone chamber. Another whimpered.
Nalla found himself oddly calm, studying the writhing mass with detached interest.
He'd seen worse.
Much worse.
"This," the academy elder said, his voice echoing in the stone chamber, "is where you discover what you truly are."
He gestured toward the writhing mass with casual indifference, as if pointing out a particularly interesting rock formation rather than a lake of venomous nightmares.
"The rules are simple. Enter the lake. The centipedes will cover you completely, piercing your skin thousands of times, releasing venom that mimics death itself. Your body will believe it's dying. Your mind will scream for escape."
Someone whimpered. The sound was common enough to be uninteresting.
"This sensation triggers awakening. But awakening demands will that cannot be borrowed, gifted, or taught. Either you possess it, or you don't."
The elder's eyes swept across them with the cold assessment of someone who'd watched children break for decades. Some would emerge from that lake transformed. Others would emerge broken. A rare few wouldn't emerge at all.
"Success makes them retreat. Failure, we pull you out before death claims you."
He paused, let the implication sink in.
"But those who awaken will find some creatures remain attached. The number that cling to your body reveals your talent for channeling the fundamental forces of our world."
Silence pressed down like the weight of stone above their heads.
The elder's smile was thin and sharp. "Who volunteers to go first?"
No one moved. No one breathed. A hundred teenagers suddenly discovered fascinating details in the stone floor, the ceiling, anywhere but the elder's eyes or that writhing mass waiting in the chamber's heart.
Nalla rubbed his chin absently, feeling smooth skin where decades from now a beard would grow.
One test. One lake. One moment to determine the rest of their lives.
The scales don't lie, as they said in the South.
He'd hated it in his first life. The brutality. The stark sorting. The way one ceremony determined everything. Who you'd marry, what you'd own, whether you mattered at all.
Now he appreciated the efficiency.
At least you knew where you stood.
Tomorrow he'd be C-grade again. The disappointment. Status crumbling like dry bone, all those careful social connections turning to ash in a single announcement.
He'd hated it the first time.
But this time he knew something they didn't.
Grades weren't destiny. They were just another chain. Heavier for some, lighter for others, but breakable if you knew where to strike.
And he'd had five centuries to learn exactly where to strike.
"Well?" The elder's voice cut through the silence. "Must I choose for you?"
Someone whimpered. The sound echoed off stone walls, mixing with the wet writhing of centipedes and the patient drip of water counting time.
Nalla looked at the lake. At the death rehearsing in the chamber's heart. At the test that would sort them all into neat categories of worth.
Simple. Brutal. Honest.
At least here, the chains had the decency to be visible.