Darkness had a sound. It whispered, it pulsed, it breathed.
Kai Ren's eyes flickered open. His eyes, which had turned back to their normal brown color, only met an ocean of darkness and shadows. Though still lying on the floor facing upward, he felt very weightless and blind. He couldn't even see the sky.
His breath came slow and unsteady, and the air, if it could be called air at all, tasted of dust.It was warm, raw, and suffocating.
He blinked once, and it felt as though the darkness blinked back. Drawing another breath, he realized each inhale burned like he was running out of air entirely.
He tried to move his hands, but they couldn't move. They just lay beside his body, restrained by what seemed like a solid wall that was very tight around him. The only way he could move his arms was upward, and when he tried, his elbow only rose halfway before it met another barrier above him.
Panic ignited at once. The horrifying realization hit, he was trapped in a confined space, inside what seemed like a coffin but was tighter and dirtier. And Instead of wood, it was sand and stone.
As his panic rose higher, thousands of haunting and taunting voices flooded his mind, overlapping like waves of broken thoughts carrying flashes of images.
"Do you deserve it, Kai?"
"Why do you try so hard?"
"You failed before you even began."
The voices were not around him but inside him, haunting deeper into the fabric of his mind as he thrashed inside the confined space he was in, breathing harder and more frantically.
"Pathetic."
"Feeble."
The voices kept ringing, scraping against his skull. Kai Ren kept thrashing, hitting his hands above whatever was concealing him. He was running out of breath, his brain aching, his mind wallowing in an uncurable pain.
What covered him only vibrated but didn't break—neither did it open.
"No one wants you. They only pretend they do. Including your mother."
"ARGHHHHHHHH!"
Kai Ren couldn't bear it anymore. He hit harder, his fist driving through the top of where he lay, Grit and dust rained down. With another powerful strike, his other fist broke through.
That did it, and now he knew that whatever concealed him was shallow. Anchoring himself with his trembling hands, he pulled his upper body up.
"Nghhhhhhhhhhh!"
He drew a very deep, hungry breath. The cold air outside filled his lungs and stung his chest, jolting him back to life.
Like a predator looking for its prey, he scanned his environment as his chest thumped wildly. He was buried inside the ground, in fact, half of his body from the legs down was still under the soil.
Everywhere was dim. Thick fog rolled across the land, curling around gravestones like ghostly fingers. The air was frigid, wet, and smelled of decay, like the breath of something ancient. The mist didn't just hover; it moved, coiling with a life of its own.
"Wh–where am I?" His voice came out hoarse and brittle. His chest burning with exhaustion.
Leaning forward, he pulled himself completely out from the grave he was buried in, his mind spinning as his heart raced faster. He was coated in moist soil from head to toe. It clung to him like a second skin, cold and sticky.
"Wh–what the hell is this?" he murmured as icy vapor flowed with his words.
Right in front of him was a tombstone, old and already collapsed to one side, with dried vines creeping around it. On the tomb read:
STAR CRESTFOLD (1914–1932).
And below it, in tiny italic letters, *Child of the Untamed.*
"Oh my God."
His heart skipped a large beat. He could feel it beating hard against his ribs.
"What the fuck…" he muttered as he glanced around.
Dozens more tombstones surrounded him in perfect, silent rows. Their inscriptions blurred through the fog.
The sky was very dark, with streaks of purple stars clumped together and glowing in a neat, haunting constellation. Strangely, the three crimson moons were in the sky, dimmed by the light clouds streaming over them.
He tried to look beyond, but the fog hovering around made it hard to see what was ten feet away from him.
Just then, a faint glow shimmered on his hand, and right there on his wrist was something he hadn't noticed until now, the Spirit Spell Mark carved there. It flared alive, glowing with a bright purple energy, and then, like a heartbeat, it began to pulse.
The glow spread through his veins, marking him with eerie, luminous trails that glowed beneath his skin.
As it spread, Kai Ren felt a surge of energy moving through him, and within seconds, his body was traced with purple energy throughout. With that came a voice inside the back of his head:
[Bloomer, welcome to the Woeplane. Prepare for your trials.]
[Trials begin in: now.]
"What the actual fu..."
Pain exploded through his back.
Something sharp impaled him from behind, ripping through flesh. A violent force yanked it out again, tearing skin and muscle. The sudden agony robbed him of breath. His knees buckled. The warmth of blood seeped down his back, his strength draining with it.
"Mmmmmmmm…" He groaned, too weak to shout. Strange, all the energy that was burning inside him just dissipated, leaving him weak, hollow and trembling.
His back ached in deep, harsh pain as he felt blood gushing down. His legs and bleeding feet could barely carry him properly.
"Walk, boy," came the voice of a man, guttural and merciless, as a kick followed suit, causing him to stumble forward. He nearly fell, but the cart in front of him broke his fall.
"Wh–what is… is… going on?" he muttered weakly, through gritted teeth.
He raised his head in utter amazement and anguish. Magically, everywhere had morphed and changed, and he didn't even notice. He was no longer in the graveyard anymore.
He now stood in a forest, one that was overwhelmingly dark.
The trees were dead, long, gnarled things with black bark and no leaves, twisting upward like skeleton arms reaching for a light that didn't exist. The sky remained the same sickly purple, but the air had thickened into a suffocating haze.
The ground squelched beneath his feet, as though soaked in blood. Distant cries, not human, drifted through the fog, blending with the echo of clanging chains.
The forest seemed alive, whispering. Watching.
A chill slithered down Kai Ren's spine.
He was more bewildered than panicked. He looked down and noticed why he had almost fallen: his both legs were shackled. Chains ran from his ankles to his wrists, connected by an iron loop that rattled with every step. Each movement sent sharp pain lancing through his limbs. And the pain bit harder when he was kicked.
"What kind of situation is this?"
Rows upon rows of carts lined the path ahead, stretching into infinity. Horses with hollow eyes pulled them, snorting plumes of white breath into the cold air.
The cart in front of him was unlike any he had ever seen before. It was long and big, and inside sat gloom-faced people to the right and left, facing each other.
Around the carts rode armored men; silent, faceless behind their helmets. Every sound in this place carried weight, heavy, echoing, wrong.
Kai Ren's mind reeled, his heart clawing for reason.
The carts and horses behind seemed different, and even the armor worn by the men was different.
He was still taking in the changes when he was pulled by the hair, forcefully. His scalp burning.
"You little brat! Don't make things harder for me than it already is!"
Kai Ren could only groan in pain. His body felt weak and wasted, so when he was pulled, all of him reacted to the force, offering no resistance at all.
"You weak slut," the man growled, raising his hand and ....
"What do you think you're doing, Commander?" came a voice.
A voice that was a savior
A voice that surprised Kai Ren.
It was a lady's voice... a woman warrior. When he turned weakly toward the voice, he saw a big lady with a slim waist and strong build.
For Kai Ren, her body wasn't cut out for battles... it was cut out to be laid. She was typical bed material. Yet she too was in armor, and Kai Ren wondered how her body even fit in it.
She carried her helmet under her arm as her horse trotted toward the man pulling Kai Ren by the hair.
The man wasn't wearing his helmet either, so Kai Ren could see his jagged, large-ugly face with a thick white mustache that moved wildly whenever he talked, as though it had a will of its own.
"You don't treat the outcasts that way, Commander. We still need them alive."
"Treat… outcasts… alive… What in the hell is going on?" Kai Ren mumbled subconsciously. Just then, he noticed the whip the commander was carrying, and it made sense. He was the one who had whipped him. Hatred formed in his soul at once.
"My lady," the man said with his coarse voice and ragged breath that made it seem as though he could only breathe through one nostril.
Did he just address her as "my lady"? And he was the commander? That meant "Body," as Kai Ren had chosen to call her, wasn't just a mere warrior but probably a royal one.
"This one is weak. Maybe we should cut him off."
"Cut off?" Kai Ren muttered. "You mean kill me?" His heart skipped and started to beat very loudly. "To hell with you, mustache."
Body urged her horse forward toward Mustache's and took the whip from him.
"Deal with them however you wish, but not with this," she said, pointing at the whip. "And this," she added, pointing at the sheathed sword on Mustache's waist.
"My lady," Mustache said with a slight bow.
"Strike the bargain and let's get out of here. We have missions ahead of us," Body said flatly as she urged her horse forward to the front line.
"And put him in his place, Commander," she called as she galloped forward and out of view.
"Strike the bargain," Kai Ren retorted. Something in him felt awful at once. They were being bought like slaves, or rather, like Mustache had said, *outcasts*. That explained the presence of the different armored men there. They were sellers from another troop, their real owners. Which meant they were being sold out.
Just as he thought, Mustache went over to them. There was a series of talks he couldn't make out. Then he snapped his fingers, and a huge brown, shiny box was brought to him by some of his men. He opened it, savored what was inside, smirked, closed it, and then handed it over to them.
The man nodded as his soldiers collected the box. He shook hands with Mustache, and all of them turned together with their carts and carriages and went in the opposite direction.
"What's he still doing outside?" the commander yelled, throwing a bloody finger at Kai Ren when he returned.
Kai Ren swallowed as the two men standing beside him walked up to him. The first unlocked the chain around his arms and legs, and the second put a heavy metal cuff around his neck and locked it before they heaved him into the cart.
Kai Ren slumped weakly into the seat by the left side. All eyes were on him, both from those sitting opposite and beside him. All of them wore the same heavy metallic cuffs around their necks.
Bending his neck, he shook his head, gathering everything together. His greatest fear was confined space, like the one he had been in earlier, while going from prince to slave was his host body's greatest fear.
"So this is it," Kai Ren mumbled, and then, with a sarcastic finalization,
"Not bad… not bad at."