."
The heavy iron lock clicked, a sound as final as a guillotine blade dropping.
The screech of rusted hinges followed, tearing through the silence of the desolate borderlands. Before Eren Vale could adjust his eyes to the gloom, a heavy boot slammed into the center of his back.
"Out with you, trash."
The impact stole the air from his lungs. Eren didn't step out of the cage; he tumbled. He hit the ground shoulder-first, his momentum driving his face into the muck. The taste hit him instantly—not the earthy tang of soil, but the metallic, acidic curdle of spiritual rot. It coated his tongue like oil.
"Look at him," Sergeant Kael's voice drifted down from the carriage, dripping with amusement. "The Young Master, kneeling in the shit. Finally found a throne that suits your station."
Eren pushed himself up on shaking arms. His muscles, bruised from the three-day journey in shackles, screamed in protest. He spat the black sludge from his mouth and looked up. The iron bars of the cage slammed shut again, separating him from the world of the living.
Kael leaned against the bars, his face a mask of sneering contempt illuminated by the glow of the carriage's spirit-lanterns. "Don't bother looking back, Vale. If you step one foot toward the border, the formations will burn you to ash. Be grateful. The Patriarch let you keep your life."
"My life," Eren rasped, his voice a jagged whisper. He coughed, his throat burning from the toxic air. "He took… everything."
"He took out the garbage," Kael corrected. He banged his gauntlet against the cage. "Driver! Move out. The air here reeks of failure."
The carriage lurched. The wheels, reinforced with minor levitation glyphs to traverse the rough terrain, spun in the mud before gripping. Slowly, agonizingly, the only link to his past rolled away. Eren watched the golden light of the lanterns recede into the mist, shrinking until it was nothing more than a dying spark, leaving him in the suffocating embrace of the Grey.
He was alone.
Eren forced himself to his knees. The sensory assault of the Grey Wastes was immediate and total.
Above, the sky was a bruised purple, choked by a perpetual cloud layer that blocked the sun. This was the spiritual smog—the waste product of the Great Sects and the Imperial City. Every time a genius cultivator broke through a realm, every time an alchemist refined a pill, the impurities were flushed out of the city's arrays and dumped here, into the lowlands.
The air was thick, heavy, and humid. Breathing it felt like inhaling through a wet wool blanket. It carried the scent of ozone mixed with rotting meat.
Eren looked down at his hands. They were caked in grey slime. He wiped them on his tattered silk trousers, but it only smeared the filth deeper into the fabric.
*Alive,* he thought, a bitter fire igniting in his gut. *I am still alive.*
He reached a hand into the folds of his ruined inner tunic, his fingers brushing against hard, smooth wood. A wave of relief washed over him, so potent it nearly made his knees buckle again. The doll was still there. Crude, carved from common oak, with uneven eyes and a lopsided smile—the last thing his mother had made before the Patriarch sacrificed her to the ancestral spirit. They had stripped him of his robes, his jade tokens, and his dignity, but in their arrogance, they hadn't bothered to search the 'trash' for a wooden toy.
"I won't die here," Eren whispered to the darkness. "I will crawl back. I will claw my way up the mountain, and I will eat you all alive."
He tried to stand. His legs were leaden, starved of strength. As he rose, his boots squelched in the mire.
*Squish. Suck.*
He froze.
The sound of his movement had been too loud in the oppressive quiet. But now that he was standing, the silence wasn't empty. It was watchful.
The fog ahead of him swirled, not from the wind, but from movement.
Shapes detached themselves from the gloom. Shadows that possessed mass and intent.
Eren stiffened, his hand instinctively going to his waist for a sword that was no longer there. He stood near the base of a massive heap of refuse—a mountain of broken spirit-shards, rusted armor, and shattered masonry that stretched up into the smog. From behind the debris, three figures emerged.
They were human, or what passed for it in the Wastes. Their skin was grey, stained by the smog, and covered in weeping sores where the chaotic spiritual energy had mutated their flesh. They wore rags bound together with wire and dried gut.
But their eyes were bright. Predatory.
The leader, a man with a jaw that seemed to hinge too wide and sparse patches of hair clinging to a scalded scalp, stepped forward. He held a jagged length of rusted metal, sharpened to a crude point.
"New meat," the leader croaked. His voice sounded like gravel grinding in a churn. He didn't look at Eren's face. His eyes were glued to the ground. "Look, boys. Look at the feet."
Eren shifted his weight.
"Leather," the second scavenger hissed, a lanky creature who moved with a twitchy, insectoid rhythm. "Real beast leather. Not rat hide."
Eren took a step back, his heel hitting a protruding rock. "Back off," he commanded. He tried to inject the authority of a Vale scion into his voice, the tone he had used on servants for seventeen years. "I am Eren Vale. Touch me, and the clan will—"
The leader let out a barking laugh that turned into a wet cough. "The clan? Boy, the clan threw you here. You think the garbage comes looking for the garbage?"
The reality of his position crashed down on Eren. His name meant nothing here. Less than nothing. Here, he was just a sack of meat wrapping a pair of leather boots.
"The boots," the leader said, pointing with his rusted shiv. "Take them off. Maybe we leave you with your skin."
"Maybe," the lanky one giggled, pulling a length of strangling wire from his belt.
Eren's heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. He was Mortal. He had no Qi, no cultivation base. He was exhausted, dehydrated, and bruised. But the rage that had been simmering since the Awakening Ceremony flared hot and white.
*I will not be stripped naked in the mud.*
"Come and take them," Eren snarled, dropping into a basic stance—the Iron Pine form. It was a foundational martial art, meant for children before they awakened their roots. It was all he had.
The leader didn't hesitate. He didn't duel; he rushed.
He closed the distance with surprising speed, thrusting the rusted metal spike toward Eren's stomach.
Eren twisted his hips, barely sidestepping the thrust. The metal tore through the side of his tunic, grazing his ribs. Pain flared, sharp and hot.Eren grabbed the man's wrist, intending to use the attacker's momentum to throw him.Eren pulled, but the man didn't budge.
The scavenger was stronger. Much stronger. Even without cultivation, living in the harsh gravity of the spiritual runoff had made these men dense and wiry. Eren, a soft young master who had never worked a day in his life, was like a child wrestling a bear.
The leader grinned, revealing blackened gums. "Soft."
He slammed his forehead into Eren's nose.
*CRACK.*
White light exploded behind Eren's eyes. Blood, warm and copious, gushed down his face. His vision swam, the grey world tilting on its axis. He stumbled back, his stance broken.
Before he could recover, the lanky scavenger was on him. The wire looped around Eren's neck.
"No!" Eren gasped, clawing at the throat. The wire bit in, cutting off his air, digging into the soft flesh.
The squat scavenger tackled him from the side, driving a shoulder into Eren's gut. Eren folded, the wind driven from him, and hit the mud hard.
Splash.
The cold slime enveloped him instantly. He tried to kick, but hands were everywhere—rough, calloused hands grabbing his legs, tearing at the laces of his boots.
"Hold him still! He's a squirmer!"
"Got the left one!"
Eren thrashed, blinded by blood and panic. He managed to free one arm and swung a fist blindly. He connected with something soft—a face—but it lacked power. A heavy fist hammered into his kidney in retaliation.
The pain paralyzed him for a second, stealing his breath.
"Get the tunic! Check the lining for spirit stones!"
"Get off me!" Eren screamed, the sound bubbling through the blood in his mouth.
He felt the leather boot being ripped from his left foot. The cool, toxic air hit his skin. It felt like a violation deeper than any beating. They were stripping him of his humanity, layer by layer.
The leader was on top of him now, a knee pressing into Eren's chest, pinning him to the earth. The weight was crushing. The man's face hovered inches from Eren's, his breath smelling of decay.
"You fought," the leader whispered, bringing the rusted shiv up to Eren's eye level. "I said we'd leave your skin if you didn't fight."
The tip of the metal hovered over Eren's right eye.
"Check his waist," the leader barked to the others. "Strip him clean. If he's hiding anything, cut him open."
The lanky scavenger's hands roamed over Eren's sash, tearing at the fabric. Eren felt fingers brush against the hidden pocket in the inner tunic.
"No," Eren wheezed, his hands scrabbling in the mud, fingers closing around a fistful of sludge and sharp stones. "Not that."
"Found something!" the lanky one crowed. He yanked the fabric hard.
Eren roared, a primal sound that tore his throat raw. He bucked his hips, dislodging the leader just an inch—not enough to escape, but enough to move his arm. He swung his hand up, smashing the handful of toxic sludge and rocks directly into the leader's open eyes.
The man screamed, reeling back, clawing at his face as the acidic runoff burned his vision.
"My eyes! You little bastard!"
Eren scrambled backward, crab-walking through the filth, one boot on, one foot bare and bleeding. He gasped for air, clutching his chest.
The other two scavengers paused, looking at their screaming leader, then back at Eren. The hesitation lasted only a heartbeat. Their expressions shifted from greed to murder. They didn't just want the boots anymore.
"Kill him," the leader shrieked, rolling in the mud. "Gut him!"
The lanky one pulled the wire taut between his hands, the metal singing a low, deadly note. The squat one drew a heavy, serrated cleaver from his belt.
Eren backed up until his spine hit the cold, hard surface of the iron cage that had delivered him. There was nowhere left to go. The Gates of Despair had opened, and he was already dead on the threshold.
He clutched the doll through the fabric of his tunic, his heart thundering a frantic, dying rhythm against his ribs.
*Is this it?* he thought, watching the cleaver rise. *Is this the end of the Vale bloodline? Butchered by rats in the mud?*
The squat scavenger stepped forward, raising the blade high for a killing stroke.
"Die, pig."
The blade began to descend.