Ironhaven Megacity, Undercity Sublevel 7 — Cage Arena.
Black Circuit Tournament Finals. Ten thousand creds on the line. Apex Guild scouts are rumored lurking unseen.
The crowd pressed in, packed shoulder to shoulder on rusted bleachers, voices resounding amid the harsh white lights. The air held the flavor of blood, cheap synth-alcohol, and that strange, metallic cold that never quite left the Undercity.
Ebon Thorne — eighteen, lean and hard from seven months of fighting and starving, circled warily inside the metal grid octagon. Blood trickled from his nose, his lip, and a deep cut across his ribs. His left eye was half-swollen shut, vision flickering in and out.
Across from him, Dobby Klane rolled his shoulders, a smirk etched on his lips. Twenty-one, skin so pale it looked blue in the lights, eyes cold and flat. B-rank, registered Forged—ice type. He came down here for easy wins and a little extra cash.
Frost crept out from under Klane's boots, spreading in sharp, uneven lines across the mat. His breath hung in the air, pale and cold.
"Still standing, street rat?"
Klane's voice projected that lazy, upper-level drawl — the type that originated from knowing he is better.
"Thought you'd be on the floor by now, begging."
Ebon kept quiet. No point wasting breath. He drew in a thin, unsteady breath, searching for the faint hum of Fracture Energy in the walls, pulling what scraps he could into his limbs. Just enough to keep his legs under him, to keep his hands quick. Nothing close to what Klane could do.
Klane laughed... "Silent type. Cute. Let's see how quiet you are when I freeze your lungs solid."
He darted in, fists trailing frozen spikes.
Ebon slipped the first punch, caught the second on his forearms. Ice cut in, cold shooting up to his elbows. He answered with an elbow to the side of Klane's head, a hook to the ribs, and a low kick to the thigh.
Solid hits. Klane grunted, staggered half a step...
The crowd thundered. The unregistered kid was actually landing on a real Forged.
Klane wiped a trickle of blood from his lip, smirk growing.
"Not bad... For a rat."
Then the temperature dropped hard. Frost snapped across the steel grid.
"Playtime's over, Kiddo."
Klane exhaled sharply. A wave of jagged-edged ice shards burst forward like buckshot.
Ebon twisted, most of the shards catching his shoulder and ribs. Pain flared—first hot, then cold. He dropped to one knee, watching his blood steam against the ice.
His vision narrowed, fading in and out.
Klane strolled forward, boots crunching... "Should've stayed in whatever gutter you crawled out of, Ebon. Down here, we eat little talentless punks like you for breakfast."
He raised a fist. Ice crystallized around it, forming a serrated gauntlet thick as a sledgehammer.
"Look at me when you break, kid."
The gauntlet came down... Smashed him
Ebon's thoughts flickered, each blow dulling the world a little more.
He saw Mira's face. Jax's voice "Guard high, kid."
He tried to lift his arms, but they felt slow and heavy.
The ice hammer descended again, but this time
Something inside him gave way.
A pressure detonated in his core — burning cold, searing hot, ancient and furious. It surged through his veins like flowing mercury glass forced into diamonds.
Klane's gauntlet met Ebon's upraised forearm.
CRACK!!!
The ice burst apart, falling as harmless snow.
Klane recoiled, eyes staring in shock for the first time. "What the—"
Ebon looked down at his arm, mind suddenly clear despite the blood still running down his side.
His skin had split along his forearm, showing black obsidian spattered with diamond. Spikes, three inches long, jutted from his knuckles and elbow, glimmering in the illumination.
The spikes had punched straight through Klane's ice gauntlet and deep into his forearm.
Klane yanked away, clutching the wound. Blood froze instantly around the black shards embedded in his flesh. His arrogant sneer was gone.
"You… you're supposed to be nothing. Unregistered trash!"
Ebon rose slowly. Black veins coursed beneath his pale skin, extending along his chest and neck like cracks in marble. Pain screamed, yet underneath it roared an overwhelming presence.
Unbreakable.
The crowd had gone dead silent.
Ebon looked down at his blood-slick fists, now partially armored in obsidian and diamond.
His voice was low and rough, almost surprised.
"What… did you just call me?"
Klane took another step back, frost flickering weakly around his hands. "Stay back. You hear me? I'm registered. B-rank. Apex knows my name. You touch me again and—"
Ebon advanced, slow and steady.
Klane's bravado cracked. "I said, stay back!"
He hurled a desperate spike of ice.
Ebon didn't move. The spike hit his chest and broke apart on the growing obsidian.
The crowd finally found its voice — a collective gasp that thundered through the tunnels.
Klane's expression lost its hue of color. "This… this isn't possible."
Ebon looked at him for a long moment.
Then, quietly, "You talk too much."
He stepped in close, elbow coming up.
Klane threw up a frantic ice shield.
It fractured like cheap glass.
The diamond-spiked elbow drove into Klane's jaw.
The B-rank Forged hit the mat and didn't get up.
The referee paused abruptly, mechanical eye whirring.
Ebon swayed, blood still dripping, obsidian plates receding into his skin. The black veins remained, dim yet permanent.
He glanced at the silent crowd, then at his hands.
"What… am I?"
Seven months earlier…
The mag-lev doors whooshed open, spilling seventeen-year-old Ebon into Ironhaven Undercity for the first time. No family. No credits. Just hunger, along with the promise of a cage where winners ate.
He found the worn-out sign outside Cage Arena Sublevel 7 that same night
"BLACK CIRCUIT TOURNAMENT. NEW BLOOD WELCOME. WIN BIG OR BLEED OUT."
He signed his name without hesitation.
He never imagined that seven months later, bleeding out against an arrogant B-rank Forged, he would break completely — and something no one on Rentarra had ever seen would awaken in his blood.
Yet at that instant, standing over an unconscious Dobby Klane with jet-black shards, blood cooling on diamond spikes, the Undercity learned a new name.
They called him Thorne.