Tempest knelt before his own shadow.

  The sword, disproportionate to his immature body, looked like a boulder planted in the dry ground.

  The wind blew dust and ash against him, as if mocking his existence.

  Kael stood still a few steps away, a sentinel of disdain, his eyes cold and a rusted blade resting on his shoulders, like a hunter carrying the carcass of a prey already won.

  “Move.” he ordered.

  No training. No words of comfort. Just a cruel invitation to slaughter.

  Tempest gritted his teeth, searching in his chest for courage he didn’t feel was his own.

  He lunged forward, wielding the sword as if the mere act could redeem him.

  A broken scream escaped his throat — more fear than challenge.

  Kael didn’t even flinch.

  With an imperceptible sidestep, he dodged the attack.

  The recoil of the missed strike caused Tempest to lose his balance, stumbling like a drunkard.

  Then came the first strike.

  Sharp. Precise. Brutal.

  Kael delivered a flat slash to his side, a blow so powerful it expelled the breath from his lungs.

  Tempest bent in two, gasping, his eyes clouded with pain.

  “Again.”

  The command was an invisible lash.

  Tempest stood up awkwardly, his breath reduced to gasps.

  He attempted a thrust.

  Kael, quick as a serpent, dodged and struck behind his knee, sending him to the ground.

  A dull thud against the hard earth, dust mixing with the blood beginning to drip from his mouth.

  “Again.”

  Tempest saw the earth blur before him.

  But he got up. Trembling. Huddled in on himself.

  He tried a desperate horizontal slash.

  Kael stopped it with two fingers. Literally. He blocked the sword between his thumb and index finger, as if it were a twig.

  Tempest stood frozen for a second, incredulous, before a kick to his chest sent him flying backward.

  A dry impact, an explosion of pain that made him see nonexistent stars.

  He rolled through the dry mud for several meters.

  He lay there, mouth open, gasping like a fish out of water.

  Kael advanced slowly, his steps like the drums of death.

  He bent over him and, with the rusted blade, carved a small cut on his cheek — a thin, symbolic slash.

  Not to kill him.

  But to remind him.

  “In this place, death is a favor. You haven’t earned it. Not yet.”

  Tempest tried to rise a fourth time. His bloody hands dug into the dirt, his knees bending like reeds in the wind.

  Every fiber of his body screamed to surrender.

  But he stood up.

  Piece by piece.

  Blood, sweat, and desperation.

  Kael finally lowered his sword.

  “That’s enough.”

  There was no approval in his voice.

  Only observation, as one watches an insect survive a fire.

  Tempest remained there, swaying, his face streaked with blood and dirt.

  Above him, the crimson sky of the Void seemed to whisper that this was just the beginning.

  That the worst, the real hell, was yet to come.

  The silence after the massacre was louder than the blows themselves.

  Tempest staggered, dragging one foot behind the other, his breath reduced to a broken wheeze.

  Every step was a challenge to gravity, every heartbeat a curse against death.

  Around him, the other young recruits — those few miserable survivors that the Void still tolerated — watched him in silence.

  No one helped him.

  In this place, compassion was considered a betrayal.

  Kael sat on a cracked rock, the sword casually resting on his knees, as if he had just finished disemboweling a hare.

  “You’re still alive,” he commented, more out of boredom than interest.

  “Let’s see if you can stay conscious.”

  He made a gesture.

  From the darkness, another opponent emerged.

  He wasn’t a master like Kael.

  He was worse: a big, bulky guy with a vacant look and hands as large as shovels.

  A man who hit not for technique, but for pure, instinctive hatred.

  Tempest didn’t have time to prepare.

  The first punch shattered his jaw, ripping a silent scream from his throat.

  He fell backward, spitting blood and tooth fragments.

  The other man lunged at him like a predator, striking him with a flurry of wild punches.

  Each blow was a sentence, an accusation, a scream from the earth itself: “You don’t belong to this world.”

  The skin cracked.

  The ribs groaned.

  His vision blurred with red.

  Tempest stopped counting the blows.

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  He stopped distinguishing pain from broken bones.

  Inside him, a voice began to speak.

  A voice that wasn’t his, a poisonous serpent whispered in his ear:

  “Why resist?

  You’re worth nothing.

  You’ve never been worth anything.”

  It was sharper than the punches, more devastating than the wounds.

  It was surrender crawling inside him, the unhealthy pleasure of oblivion.

  Yet —

  An image flashed through his mind.

  A memory.

  A promise.

  An oath made under a starry sky, in a life that now seemed to belong to someone else: “I will become strong. For myself. For those who couldn’t.”

  The beast that was beating him prepared for a final, decisive punch.

  Tempest, in an instinctive move, raised his injured arm to protect himself.

  The blow shattered his forearm but softened the force enough to prevent his skull from being crushed.

  An inhuman scream escaped his mouth.

  A scream that was neither human nor animal.

  It was the voice of despair refusing to die.

  The giant hesitated. Just for a moment.

  That was enough.

  Tempest pushed forward, his body now only a carcass driven by sheer will, and landed a desperate blow to the giant’s stomach.

  The big guy staggered backward, more from surprise than pain.

  Kael laughed.

  A short, sharp laugh, like broken glass.

  “Interesting.”

  He made another gesture.

  Two recruits dragged the stumbling giant away.

  Tempest was left alone, panting, in the center of the arena.

  His legs gave out.

  He dropped to his knees.

  But he didn’t surrender.

  No, not yet.

  Kael stood, his expression a mix of disdain and a distant, icy respect.

  “Fractured, but not broken,” he said.

  “For now.”

  Tempest didn’t even hear his words.

  He only saw the ground before him.

  Dirt stained with blood.

  And in that brutal instant, he understood a simple, definitive truth:

  In the Void, there are only two kinds of creatures: those who break.

  And those who break others.

  Kael approached slowly, hands behind his back, like a general inspecting the field after a victory.

  He bent down next to Tempest, not hiding the disgust that twisted his face.

  “Do you want to know what the fate of the weak is here?”

  His voice was a low whisper, almost confidential, but every word was a sharp blade.

  “There’s no glory, no mercy.

  There’s not even a quick death.”

  He stood up, looking at the bloodstained arena with pitiless eyes.

  “The weak don’t die, no.

  The weak rot.

  They become tools, flesh to be used until it's no longer needed, and then thrown away like dirty rags.

  He smiled.

  Not a mocking smile.

  A vacant smile, devoid of emotion, like that of a creature who had long since forgotten what it meant to have a heart.

  “And if you think the worst punishment is death...

  Then, boy, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

  He turned and walked away, leaving him there, bleeding and trembling under a sky as empty as the pity of that world.

  Tempest was left alone.

  Alone with the pain.

  Alone with his hatred.

  And beneath that battered surface, something began to stir.

  Something black, ancient, and hungry.

  Something that would never again allow itself to be crushed.

  The night had devoured the village, leaving only the distant crackle of a fire and the dull murmur of the wind.

  Tempest dragged himself out of the mud-and-rotten-wood hut. Every step was an insult to his muscles, every breath a knife shoved into his lungs.

  The sky, the color of congealed blood, seemed to watch him, silent and indifferent.

  With trembling hands, Tempest took his stance.

  A punch.

  Another.

  Then a kick, clumsy, weak. He dropped to his knees, spitting dirt and bile.

  He got up.

  He struck again.

  And again.

  His knuckles shredded against the hard ground, leaving red streaks on the earth.

  His knees buckled, but he gritted his teeth until they broke from the strain.

  Thoughts became confused, shattered, reduced to a single, simple truth: he could not stop.

  In that broken dance of pain and stubbornness, Tempest was not searching for strength.

  He was searching for himself.

  Under that cruel sky, no one saw him. No one cheered him on. No one believed in him.

  Yet with every punch, every fall, every ragged breath, it was a silent scream that challenged the world:

  “You won’t break me. I won’t die like any other.”

  When the first glimmer of dawn crawled over the horizon, Tempest was still there.

  Standing.

  Dirty, bleeding, exhausted.

  But standing.

  And that’s when, without words, without witnesses, in the absolute silence, he swore.

  A vow that no god, no demon, no executioner could erase.

  The village returned to its slow, brutal march.

  Life, there, never paused to mourn the fallen or to celebrate the survivors.

  Tempest, with his hands wrapped poorly, walked among the people like a forgotten shadow.

  Their gazes slid over him without stopping. No one asked, no one cared.

  Inside, though, something had broken... and something new had been born.

  It wasn’t strength. Not yet.

  It was anger. It was hunger. It was a thirst for life.

  Every step was an insult hurled at the destiny that had been sewn onto him.

  Every breath was a silent curse against the fate of the weak.

  At the end of the square, leaning against a cracked wall, Kael watched him.

  He didn’t speak.

  He didn’t smile.

  He only tilted his head slightly, as one does in front of something unexpected, perhaps even interesting.

  Tempest met his gaze.

  He didn’t lower his eyes.

  Not this time.

  And in that brief, fierce instant, without words, an unspoken promise was born:

  If the world wanted to break him, it would have to try again.

  And again.

  And again.

  That night, under a sky torn apart by dawn, the village ignored the birth of something it couldn’t understand.

  Not a hero.

  Not a savior.

  Just a boy determined to tear his own destiny apart with his teeth.

  The earth continued to tremble.

  The blood continued to flow.

  And in the shadows, without fanfare, a new storm took a breath.

  “In a cruel world, it is innocence that dies first.”

  — Cormac McCarthy