The world didn't end with a bang or a scream. It ended with a smear of charcoal grey.
Elian felt the bite of iron shackles around his wrists, but the sensation was distant, muffled by the rhythmic thud of his heart echoing in his ears. He wasn't walking; he was being dragged. The guards' boots crunched on the frozen silt of the Western Frontier, a harsh, grating sound that felt like it was peeling away layers of his sanity.
Every few steps, his knees buckled. A guard's heavy gauntlet would slam into his shoulder, hauling him upright with a grunt of disgust. To anyone watching, he was just another broken "Crow," a slave-soldier whose light had been snuffed out before he even reached the front.
But inside, Kaito was drowning.
It's not moving, he thought, his breath coming in ragged, shallow hitches. The fog. It's supposed to lift.
He squeezed his eyes shut until his sockets ached, then snapped them open again. The result was always the same. The massive, jagged silhouette of the West Gate loomed ahead, but it lacked edges. It was a looming shadow, a ghost of a fortress. When he looked down at his feet, he couldn't see the individual stones—only a dark, shifting river of ground.
A cold, hollow depression settled into his chest, heavier than the "Hollow" label the Valerius family had branded him with. He had finally found a spark of power, a way to climb out of the dirt, and the price had been the very thing he needed to navigate the world. Fifty percent of his vision, gone. Burned away as fuel for a single, desperate strike.
I'm blind, the realization finally took hold, cold and uncompromising. I'm a liability. A mistake.
Beside him, the other Crows marched in a grim, silent formation. He could feel the shift in their energy. Talin's hand occasionally brushed his arm—not to guide him, but to steady him, a gesture that felt more like an anchor than a help.
The weight of the barracks loomed. The Western Frontier wasn't a place for the weak, and as the darkness of the slave quarters swallowed them, Kaito felt the last of his hope flicker. He was back in a hole, and this time, he couldn't even see the walls closing in.
Later that night, the barracks were a chorus of wheezing breath and the metallic clink of chains. Kaito lay on a pile of damp straw, staring at the grey void above him, trying to bargain with a god he didn't believe in for just one clear ray of morning light.
In the corner, the whispers began.
"Look at the lad," Talin's voice was a low, sandpaper rasp. "He hasn't moved for hours. He's staring at nothing."
"Elian looks broken," Baraq grunted. There was no malice in the wolf-kin's voice, only a raw, animalistic pity. "We're heading into the Lawless Zone tomorrow. If he can't see the threat, he's a corpse."
Talin went quiet. Kaito could hear the man shifting, the sound of leather creaking. "I know. I feel like a bastard for thinking it, but... he's a liability now. We can't carry him and survive the Vanguard."
How can Talin think like that but in the end the saying does go true Every Man for Himself , Baraq thought
"You both speak as if he's already dead," Kaelen's voice sliced through the gloom, cold and sharp as a razor. "You saw what he did in the breach. That wasn't luck. That was a price paid. My people have the innate ability to walk in the shadows; we know that sight isn't just about eyes. He has something innate like me—something that scares the hell out of me too. We don't discard him. We watch him. A weapon doesn't need to be pretty to kill."
The morning light didn't bring a miracle.
When the horns blew for the dawn assembly, Kaito opened his eyes to the same suffocating, grainy haze. The "miracle" he had prayed for was a lie. He was still half-blind.
For a moment, the grief returned, sharper than before. He felt the urge to just stay down, to let the guards beat him until he truly was meat for the scavengers.
But then, a memory flickered—a jagged peak in another life, a storm that had turned the world white and frozen his goggles shut. He had been hanging by a single piton, blind and freezing, with a thousand-foot drop beneath his boots.
In that moment, he hadn't felt despair. He had felt the rush.
The adrenaline began to seep back into his veins, a familiar poison. His pragmatic mind, the soul of the Climber, finally woke up and looked at his "Hollow" depression with utter disgust.
What am I doing? Kaito thought, his jaw tightening. I spent my whole life looking for a challenge that could actually kill me. I craved the disadvantage. I wanted the climb where the odds were zero.
He stood up. It was slow, agonizing, but deliberate. He didn't need to see the lines on his hands to know they were meant for a grip. He still had the Black Flower. He still had the White Tree in his soul. And somewhere there was the Primordial Being was waiting.
"Stop it," Kaito said aloud, his voice cutting through the barracks' morning chaos.
Talin looked over, startled. "Stop what, lad?"
"Stop looking at me like I'm a funeral," Kaito replied. His voice filled with that of a new found determination.
He turned toward the door, toward the West Gate, his blurred vision fixed on the shadow of the future.
"The climb just got steeper," he whispered to himself, a dark smile touching his lips. "Good."