The air in the King's larder didn't smell like freedom; it smelled like roasted rosemary and death.
Lifeless didn't have a name—not a real one, anyway. In the slave pits of the Iron Kingdom, a name was a luxury, and he was a deficit. His stomach was a hollow cavern, a screaming void that had finally overridden the primal instinct of fear.
With trembling fingers, he snatched a grease-slicked chicken from a silver platter and shoved a bottle of lukewarm water into the waistband of his rags.
He didn't even get to take a bite.
The heavy oak doors creaked open, and the silence was shattered by the rhythmic clack-clack-clack of iron-shod boots. Ten guards. Then twelve. They didn't draw their swords immediately. Instead, they stood in a semi-circle, their torchlight dancing off their polished breastplates.
They were laughing. It was a hollow, cruel sound the sound of predators watching a mouse trip over its own tail.
Lifeless' eyes widened, reflecting the flickering orange flames.
He clutched the chicken to his chest like a holy relic. He was cornered, a rat in a golden cage, and everyone in that room knew his doom was already written in the ledgers of the damned.
The lead soldier, a man whose face was a roadmap of jagged scars and arrogance, stepped forward. He didn't use a blade. That would be too quick, too merciful for a thief. He coiled his fist, the leather of his glove creaking, and unleashed a blow that felt like a falling mountain.
The world tilted. The taste of copper filled Lifeless' mouth as his skull bounced off the stone floor. He tried to breathe, but his lungs felt like they had collapsed into wet parchment.
There was no "current" of magic to keep him conscious, just the raw, cold gravity of the cellar pulling him into the black.
When he finally groaned back to life, the world was different. It was colder. Darker.
He tried to wipe the blood from his eyes, but his wrists jerked back with a violent clink. Heavy iron shackles bit into his skin, suspended from a damp ceiling in a room that smelled of old rust and stale sweat. He was in the "Hollows," the torture chambers where slaves went to be unmade.
"You finally woke up," a voice rasped from the shadows.
The lead soldier emerged, peeling off his outer armor to reveal a tunic stained with the soot of previous interrogations. Lifeless couldn't speak; the agony in his jaw was a white-hot spike. This place felt untethered from reality, a creepy, liminal space where time was measured in heartbeats and screams.
The soldier didn't ask questions. He didn't want information; he wanted a spectacle.
Crack. A left hook sent Lifeless' head spinning.
Crack. A right cross split his cheekbone.
The soldier then drove a fist upward into his chin, snapping his head back against the stone wall with a sickening thud. Before Lifeless could even slump, a heavy boot plunged into his stomach with a force that defied physics. A Red Current—the jagged, magical energy used by the King's elite—streaked across the soldier's boot, magnifying the impact.
Lifeless screamed. It wasn't a human sound; it was a guttural, uncontrollable wail of pure agony. He retched, coughing up a spray of crimson that patterned the soldier's boots.
The soldier roared with laughter, grabbing a handful of Lifeless' matted hair and yanking his head up. He slammed his knee into the boy's face, a brutal collision of bone on bone. When he finally pulled back, Lifeless was a ruin of heaving breaths and a shattered nose.
"YOU FUCKING WEAKLING PIECE OF SHIT!" the soldier bellowed, his spit hitting Lifeless' bloody face.
"Trying to steal from the King?
You are a slave! You are a mistake that doesn't deserve the air you breathe! I won't just kill you. I'll peel the soul from your bones!"
Then, the world went silent.
The screaming in Lifeless' ears stopped. The pain in his ribs turned into a dull, distant hum. A sound like grinding glaciers echoed through the chamber. Snap. Snap.
The iron shackles didn't just unlock; they shattered into dust. Lifeless dropped to his feet, landing with a silent, feline grace that should have been impossible for a broken boy.
"HE—HEY! WHAT THE FUCK IS THA—"
The soldier's threat died in his throat. Lifeless moved like a blur of shadow. In a single motion, his hand—now glowing with an ethereal, terrifying luminescence—clamped around the soldier's neck. He lifted the grown man, armor and all, into the air with one arm.
Lifeless' eyes were no longer brown. They were twin stars of blinding white light, void of any human emotion.
"Do not disrespect the leader of the Divinity," a voice spoke. It wasn't Lifeless. It was a deep, ancient resonance that vibrated the very stones of the floor. A wise, terrifying power had taken root in the vessel.
The "Divinity" tightened its grip.
The soldier's eyes bulged, his hands clawing uselessly at the boy's wrist. With a casual flick of power, the pressure intensified until the soldier's neck simply gave way. An explosion of gore and light followed as the man was decapitated by the sheer force of the grip.
The light faded. The heavy presence vanished.
Lifeless gasped, his knees buckling as his consciousness slammed back into his body. He looked down. His hands were drenched in hot, thick blood. The last thing he remembered was the Red Current hitting his stomach. Now, there was only a headless corpse at his feet.
Terrified, he scrambled out of the chamber. In the hallways, other guards stopped in their tracks, faces pale with horror. One "unserious" soldier, a man known for his cruelty and jokes, stepped forward and grabbed Lifeless by the collar.
"How the fuck did you do that, man? Where's the Captain?"
Lifeless shook his head, his voice a ghost. "I don't know... I didn't do it..."
"Don't play those games with me, bitch!" the soldier snarled, raising a fist.
In an instant, the white light flickered back into Lifeless' eyes. He didn't think; he reacted. He drove a fist into the guard's chest, a strike so powerful it sent the man crashing into the floor with enough force to crack the masonry. Before the other guards could react, Lifeless was running, a streak of desperation disappearing into the night.
The Mark in the Mirror
When he reached the slave camp, he collapsed by the stagnant pond. He scrubbed at his face and hands until his skin was raw and bleeding, desperate to wash away the feeling of the Captain's skin under his fingernails.
The water was black and still. For a split second, his reflection shifted. He didn't see a boy. He saw a Hollow Vessel—a void where a person should be, with a towering, ancient shadow flickering behind him. He blinked, and it was gone.
He retreated to the hovels, clutching the stolen, dirt-covered chicken. The other slaves didn't cheer for his return. They shrank away into the mud, their eyes wide with a new kind of fear. To them, he was a Jinx. He had survived the Hollows, and that meant the King's wrath would fall on all of them.
Sitting in the corner of his stone cell, Lifeless stared at his shaking hands. The meat of the chicken tasted like ash and iron.
"What happened to me?" he whispered. Silence was his only answer.
He pulled back his rags to check the wound from the Red Current. There was no bruise. Instead, a faint, pulsing vein of silver light was trapped under his skin—a Sunder-Mark. It was the brand of a god, glowing mockingly on the skin of a slave.