Day before the trial on the train ride over to the sectors capital.
---
Abisha sat on the narrow cot, the dim hum of the overhead lights pressing in on him. The walls of the trains private room felt too close, the air too thin, as if the very place wanted him gone.
He had tried to sleep. Tried to push the images away—the mark scanners, the way the guards' eyes slid past him like he was a stain. But the world outside was just as worse. To step out marked was to belong; to step out unmarked was to vanish.
The door hissed open. Yair stepped inside, a steady presence in the doorway. He did not rush, did not force his gaze.
"You're awake," Yair said quietly. "Good."
Abisha shifted, unsure if he should stand. "tomorrow is the test?"
"Yes" Yair replied, drawing the chair closer. "But first, you must understand why you want to live here. In this place, survival is not a gift. It is a burden you choose to carry."
Abisha's fingers tightened around the edge of the blanket. "I just don't want to disappear."
Yair studied him for a long moment. "Then you must learn what they fear in you. The mark is their comfort. The unmarked—" he paused, letting the words weigh heavy "—are a reminder that their comfort is a lie."
Silence hung between them. Outside, the corridor echoed with distant boots.
"Eat," Yair said finally, placing a sealed packet of food on the table. "Rest. Tomorrow it all will begin."
Present day trial room:
The room was white. Stark, clinical, empty—at least to anyone else.
But the moment the door sealed behind Abisha, the walls shifted. Shadows crawled where there should have been none. Darkness leaked from cracks that weren't there. To the watching officials, it was still a sterile, featureless chamber.
To him, it was to put it lightly buseling and alive.
They came one by one—pale shapes first, then the twisted forms that haunted his dreams: the soldiers who burned his home, his own face torn into a cruel mockery, beasts with too many horns, and those sad, broken creatures the aristocracy had made for amusement.
They laughed. They surrounded him. Distorted smiles stretched across amalgamated faces. One leaned close, its voice a wet whisper in his ear:
"You can't save him. You're nothing, you blind little toad."
Abisha flinched—but then paused. This one was wrong. Not a demon. Not like the rest. It was human—empty-eyed, yet aware. Astral projection? Yair had warned him about this.
---
A few days earlier.
Yair's study had smelled of old paper and burning incense.
"In a few days," Yair had said, folding his hands, "there will be a test on your sight. But first, there are things you must understand. Do not count everything you see in that room."
Abisha frowned. "Why? Isn't that how I pass the test?"
Yair's lips tugged into a smile, then settled into something harder. "No. You see, Abisha, we must be wise as serpents here. Ask yourself: what do they worship, and what do they fear?"
Abisha shook his head. "Aren't they all the same—demons, fallen angels, whatever they call them?"
Yair leaned back, the lamplight cutting shadows across his face. "To us, yes. But to them? No. They serve the fallen ones, some of the high demons, but the devil despises man. And then there are the human spirits—priests, seekers, those so desperate for power they've pried their spirits loose from their flesh. They call it 'astral projection.' They think they're wise. They think no one can see them except their so-called 'star guides'—just demons in new robes."
Abisha's brow furrowed.
"Do not count them," Yair said sharply. "Not the wandering spirits. Not the angels. And never anything with more than five horns. Misstep there, and they'll kill you before the test even ends. Remember that."
---
Back in the trial room.
Abisha clenched his fists. His pulse thundered.
God… what is this? he prayed silently. What should I do? Please cover me.
He kept his gaze forward, exactly as his mother and Yair had taught: never let them see your eyes move. Never give them the satisfaction of knowing you saw.
The laughter wavered. The creatures recoiled. A stillness gathered around him, thin as a veil, but strong enough to hold.
And then a voice—not a demon's, not his own thoughts but divine —breathed through the room:
"You've seen what others deny. Now walk in what they fear."
---
Behind a pane of one-way glass, Yair watched.
An official beside him sneered. "Are you sure that ugly thing can even see properly?"
Yair said nothing.
Abisha stood in the center of the room, his eyes fixed somewhere past the ceiling off into the distance, like the vacant stare of a blind boy.
A red light pulsed. Silence fell over the observers.
A high priest stepped forward the vail trailing behind, a sharp nailed finger pressed a button, and spoke through the intercom: "How many?"
Abisha turned his head toward the voice. "Seven," he said calmly. "There are seven."
The priest frowned, checked the sheet handed to him by his aide, and muttered, "That is correct."
"You may exit."
---
Abisha stumbled out, his body trembling but his head held high.
The officials signed off on his adoption—reluctantly, bitterly.
"A special exception," one muttered.
Yair signed the final paper with a steady hand. "You're under my house's protection now," he said.
---
Some days later at night.
Yair stood alone by the window, watching the city's dim glow.
On the bed below, Abisha slept, arms wrapped around Yitzhak. Who had been brought to the capital by the butler
"They'll come for you," Yair whispered to the dark. "But not while I breathe."
He remembered being one of fifty unmarked children dragged and paraded through the city when the old world fell. Their parents bought or murdered, their futures bartered for a promise that never came.
"Smile," the man had said to them. "You'll beg us for the mark one day. Until then… we'll play a little."
Yair had smiled—but only because he had already decided to survive.
And one night, a voice had come to him too:
"Live, and others will be saved through you."