The iron door groaned shut.
The sound echoed through the cramped stone chamber, lingering like a final verdict. Dust fell from the ceiling in thin threads, disturbed by the fading footsteps of Fatty Grunt.
No one spoke.
Alex sat motionless against the wall, legs crossed, eyes half-lidded. The cold floor had long since numbed his skin, but he welcomed it. It dulled the ache in his body. The ache in his mind.
Somewhere beside him, a boy whimpered softly, quickly stifled by the clank of a nearby chain.
The silence pressed down like a lid.
Then, it came.
A horn.
Low. Distant. Ancient.
It rolled through the underground like a beast's growl. It wasn't sharp—it was slow, heavy, and mournful. The kind of sound you'd hear only once in your life, and hope never to hear again.
Some children jolted upright. Others froze. A few began to cry—quietly, desperately, as if trying to drown their fear with the sound of their own breath.
Alex didn't move. But something inside him did.
The Chainbind Mark on his neck pulsed.
Just once.
A flicker. A heartbeat. A warning.
Then it fell still again, as if feigning sleep.
He inhaled, tasted dust and rust, and turned his gaze to the hallway.
Footsteps now. Synchronized. Too many to count.
Not a march—but a ritual.
The handlers had come.
The door slammed open. The light behind them wasn't sunlight. It was pale, greenish, and flickering like a torch underwater.
One by one, the children were dragged to their feet.
There were no names. Only numbers.
Groups of twenty-five. A thousand in total.
Alex rose without resistance. His limbs obeyed, but his thoughts floated elsewhere. He didn't speak to the others. Not yet.
They were herded into the corridor—ancient stone walls stretching into blackness.
The ceiling arched high above them, etched with markings Alex didn't recognize. They glowed faintly as he passed beneath.
Whispers ran along the stone.
Or maybe it was just the wind.
No guards shouted. No orders were barked. The handlers walked among them like shadows in uniform, their faces hidden behind pale masks carved with spiral runes.
Alex walked near the center of the pack. Not leading. Not trailing.
Just… observing.
The flames on the walls weren't orange or red.
They burned blue.
Blue, but cold.
He saw reflections in them—not his own, but twisted shapes watching from the other side of the flame. Eyes that blinked backward. Smiles with no mouths.
And always… the horn.
It groaned again.
Louder now. Closer.
Like it was beneath them. Or above them. Or inside them.
Someone whispered behind him.
"Are we going to die?"
Alex didn't answer.
He just kept walking.
Toward the elevator. Toward the surface. Toward the place where names were carved with blood.
The Bleeding Quarries awaited.
The line moved slowly.
Metal scraped against stone as the children were pushed forward—shackles clinking with every step. Some limped. Others shuffled forward like ghosts, heads bowed under the weight of chains and dread.
The corridor spiraled downward first. Then upward.
Always curving. Always narrow.
The walls were carved from ancient stone, worn smooth in some places and jagged in others. Strange symbols were etched into the surface—some glowing faintly, others dark and half-erased, as if scorched by time itself.
Alex kept his head up.
He counted each marking, each crack. Anything to stay grounded. Anything to keep his mind sharp.
His group—Batch 47—walked in near silence. Only the muffled sobs of a small girl two rows behind him broke the rhythm. None of the handlers reacted.
The torches lining the walls flickered as they passed.
Not orange. Not warm.
A sickly bluish-gray flame danced inside glass cages filled with what looked like bone dust. The light cast no warmth. Only longer shadows.
Some shadows moved even when no one did.
Alex noticed.
No one else seemed to.
They passed massive archways sealed with chained iron slabs. Behind them came faint whispers—or maybe the groaning of old gears. Every few steps, a handler would stop, press a rune on the wall, and the stones would breathe—shifting ever so slightly underfoot.
The deeper they went, the harder it was to tell what direction they moved in.
Down? Up? Sideways?
Time stretched.
The hallway twisted again, leading into a vast tunnel that smelled of wet ash and rusted dreams.
Overhead, rusted pipes dripped a black liquid that sizzled when it hit the floor.
A boy stumbled.
A handler caught him—not gently, not cruelly—and pushed him back into line without a word.
Alex watched their faces—or what little could be seen beneath the bone-white masks.
None of them spoke.
Not a single one had, since the procession began.
That silence was louder than any scream.
The stone beneath Alex's feet changed texture. It was smoother now, almost polished. Symbols lined the floor in long rows, like a path etched with memory and regret.
A faint humming echoed from the walls. Rhythmic. Mechanical. Magical.
The tunnel widened at last.
The flickering torches gave way to a great circular opening—lit by runes inlaid with red-gold essence.
At the far end stood something vast.
Something wrong.
A structure like a gate—but also like a mouth.
Carved from marble veined with black and crimson streaks, the arch pulsed faintly as if alive.
Beyond it, the air shimmered.
They were close now.
Alex felt the Mark on his neck tremble again. Not violently—just enough to let him know it remembered.
They stepped through the gate, one group at a time.
Alex's foot crossed the threshold.
A single thought surfaced, unbidden.
This is no longer the prison.
This is something worse.
The tunnel ended without warning.
One moment, stone walls surrounded them. The next, the space opened into a vast cylindrical chamber—dimly lit, unnaturally quiet.
A platform rested at the center.
Wide as a plaza. Pale as bone. Its surface was made of white stone laced with black veins that pulsed faintly, like something alive pretending to be dead.
Massive chains—thick as trees and marked with symbols drawn in dried blood—descended from the ceiling, connecting to the platform's rim.
They didn't sag.
They rotated.
Endless, silent motion. Spiraling inward and outward like a ritual too old to be remembered.
The handlers pushed the children forward.
One group at a time, they stepped onto the platform.
Alex's boots touched the surface.
Cold.
Not the kind that stung. Not weather cold. The kind that came from being watched by something that had forgotten warmth long ago.
He glanced up.
The ceiling was a dome of black stone and glowing runes.
Then—
A pulse.
The runes flashed crimson. The chains groaned, and the platform shuddered beneath them.
It began to rise.
No gears. No grinding. Just motion.
The lift ascended slowly, steadily. With it came silence even heavier than before.
The air thinned. Not from altitude.
From pressure.
Alex exhaled and watched the breath hang, unmoving, in the still air.
As they rose, the walls around them began to shift—sections peeling back like flower petals made of ancient stone.
Glimpses of forgotten murals flashed past. Symbols of the Shadowell. Scenes of chains coiled around the sky. Masks with too many eyes.
No one spoke.
Not even the crying girl.
A boy reached out to touch one of the rotating chains.
A handler's hand shot out—gripping his wrist without looking. No words. Just a quiet shake of the head.
The boy pulled back.
Alex didn't look away from the chains.
They weren't manmade.
Not forged. Not built.
Summoned.
He felt it in the marrow of his bones.
And then—
Light.
The ceiling cracked open.
Not broken—parted.
Revealing a sky that wasn't sky, but a dome of red-gold stormlight streaked with shadows.
The lift breached the surface.
For the first time in years, the children stood in open air.
No one cheered.
No one dared to.
Because above them, circling slowly like vultures carved from starlight—
Were the Watchtowers.
And far below them, waiting—
The Quarries bled.
The platform halted with a whisper.
Not a jolt.
Not a clank.
Just a breathless, unnatural stillness—as if the world itself was holding its tongue.
Alex stepped forward.
And saw it.
The Bleeding Quarries.
A colossal crater carved into the land like a scar left by something divine and vengeful. Jagged black cliffs stretched in every direction, laced with veins of glowing red-gold that pulsed like a heartbeat far beneath the surface.
The sky overhead churned with stormlight. Heavy clouds dragged across the horizon, each one tinged with rust-colored lightning that never struck.
Obelisks floated along the crater's edge—each made of black stone etched with glyphs that throbbed with power. They spun slowly, orbiting the pit like silent judges.
A shiver crawled up Alex's spine.
This wasn't just a prison.
It was a stage.
Tiered balconies wrapped around the crater's rim, carved directly into the stone. Empty for now. But waiting. Hungry.
Rows upon rows of seats fashioned from obsidian, bone, and metal—some shaped like thrones, others like executioner's stools.
They weren't built for comfort.
They were built to watch.
Alex's eyes drifted upward.
Towering iron watchtowers loomed at the crater's four corners. Each one bristled with weapons, scopes, and glowing sigils. Runes pulsed along their frames like blood vessels made of fire.
Guards stood at their peaks.
But they weren't just guards.
They were sentinels—trained to look not just at the children, but through them.
And then—
Words.
Carved in a perfect circle along the inner rim of the crater's edge. Glowing. Ancient.
"Let Those Who Bleed Remember Their Names."
No one read them aloud.
They didn't have to.
The words pressed themselves into the mind, branding themselves into memory like a scar.
The children were herded forward, their shackles scraping against the stone paths that spiraled into the pit.
Alex followed.
But his eyes never left the arena.
He could feel it now.
Beneath the ground.
A rhythm.
Not of machines.
Not of nature.
Something older.
Something hungry.
The Bleeding Quarries weren't just waiting for them.
They were waking up.
The chain beneath Alex's feet vibrated—once, faintly.
No one else seemed to notice.
But he did.
The Hollow's Mark on his chest pulsed in response. A single beat. Not of rebellion.
But warning.
He stiffened. His eyes scanned the surroundings—not just seeing, but reading. The language of danger was everywhere, if one knew where to look.
The cliffs… weren't just cliffs.
They were shaped—subtly carved—into the outlines of forgotten glyphs. Some were familiar. Others older than any language he knew.
Blood had been spilled here.
Not by accident.
By design.
The platform led them along a spiraling path into the pit. The stone beneath his bare feet was warm—not from sunlight, but from something flowing beneath it.
Something alive.
They passed bone pylons, rising like crooked fingers from the ground. Each one embedded with chains that shimmered with a faint blue haze—suppression glyphs, etched by a practiced hand.
One of the children, a boy with sunken eyes, brushed too close.
His Mark spasmed.
He screamed.
Then collapsed.
No one stopped. The guards didn't flinch. The other children marched around the boy's convulsing body like he was debris.
Alex slowed slightly as he passed.
The boy was still breathing.
But his eyes… weren't looking anywhere anymore.
He was gone.
Alex's jaw tightened.
He moved on.
The path narrowed and descended sharply into a new space—lower, darker. The ceiling arched high above, shaped like a ribcage of black metal and stone.
Iron caverns.
Open-roofed cages dug into the pit wall, with suppression runes scorched into every surface. No doors. Just slits in the metal to pass food through. A reminder.
You could walk in.
But not out.
A handler shoved Alex inside the nearest one. No words. Just the clink of chains and a cold stare through a rusted mask.
Alex staggered, caught his balance.
Around him, six others shared the same cavern. No one spoke. No one looked up.
They weren't strangers anymore.
They were witnesses.
The Mark on his chest flickered again.
He turned—slowly—and saw it.
Across the chasm, half-hidden beneath the spiraling path, a shape had been carved into the stone. A sigil, cracked and weathered… but unmistakable.
A coiling eye, wrapped in branches of thorns.
Shadowell.
Alex stared.
It wasn't just a symbol.
It was a claim.
This place… this entire arena… was built around it.
The Bleeding Quarries weren't just a prison.
They were a ritual.
And someone—something—was watching.
His heartbeat quickened.
The Hollow's Mark pulsed again.
But this time… not in warning.
In recognition.
High above the vast crater of the Bleeding Quarries, atop a jagged spire carved from black stone veined with crimson light, a solitary figure stood.
The air around him seemed to bend—distorted by power.
His face was hidden beneath a hood woven from shifting shadows and fragmented silver glass that caught the dying light like broken mirrors.
Behind him, the Retriever knelt silently, expression unreadable beneath his iron mask.
No words were exchanged.
Slowly, the Retriever extended a hand, holding something delicate—Alex's fractured escape chain, the very one torn apart during his recent failed attempt.
The figure's gloved hand rose gracefully to receive it.
Around him, dozens of Marks—trapped in floating crystal shards—flickered briefly like imprisoned stars.
They whispered of secrets, pain, and promises unkept.
Behind the figure loomed a throne carved from stone and eyes, watching endlessly.
His breath was slow, controlled. His gaze unyielding.
The weight of unseen power settled heavily over the pit below.
Far beneath, Alex's voice was barely audible over the howling wind.
"So this is where it begins."
His breath formed pale ghosts in the cold air.
The wind swept through the jagged cliffs, carrying a bitter promise.
Suddenly, a bell tolled.
Once.
Then twice.
Then thrice.
Each clang echoed like a heartbeat—resonating through bone and stone.
The Bleeding Quarries stirred.
Chains rattled.
Suppression runes glowed brighter.
The crowd above, unseen by the children below, shifted in anticipation.
The cruel game had begun.
And somewhere, deep within the shadows, the Shadowell sigil pulsed faintly—alive and hungry.
The endless night of trials and bloodshed was about to unfold.
And Alex, marked and shackled, stood at the center of it all.