The Gate of Initiation was an arch more than a door.. Carved from black stone and etched with old runes that tasted like memory. Torches guttered along its frame, throwing the Crescent Hall into a wash of gold and shadow, the rafters above were packed with a living audience. OMEN members from Initiates in their fresh uniforms to Watchers and Warden-toned veterans, all craning to watch the next face appear.
An angelic voice rose, holding the space between the rafters and the floor like a drawn bow. It was the Gate's voice. the old invocation that marked the boundary between what had been and what the order demanded.
"The Gate will close in… five minutes."
The first silhouette stepped through.
Osinar Magikan moved like someone who had already measured all the angles of the world. He was 5'11, white hair pulled back clean, eyes the milky white of glacier ice and no visible pupils, only the cloudy aperture of something else.
When the Warden signaled, the sentinel at his side pointed to the Eye of Unity's symbol on the floor: a silver sword crossed against a shield with an eye in the center, an auspicious motif that threw its own low hum into the hall.
Osinar stepped onto it and the symbol flared, silver light streaking up his limbs as the Gate acknowledged him. "First initiate confirmed," the voice intoned, the chains that kept the Gate's doors open beginning to creak like old bones. "The Gate will close in… five minutes."
"Ha," Orion Sepeti said from the Council table, tapping the crescent-shaped wood with a knowing knuckle. His beard was long enough to whisper against his chest and his face was a map of old storms. "Told you he'd be first." He grinned, triumph masked by a calm you earned with decades of seeing illusions fold.
"Quit your blabberin'!" someone shot back, a light protest that earned that classic, cavernous grin from Orion.
Another figure slipped through the gate. The rafters erupted.
"Meria! Meria!" Women in the audience squealed, veteran Watchers briefly becoming a crowd.
She walked with a confidence the crowd could smell. Long hair like polished copper fell down her back; her eyes were red, royal, and hot, not the sort easily forgotten.
Someone called out, "That's the Fire Lord's daughter!" and the Hall's temperature rose with the attention.
Osinar glanced at her, cool in the light. "Cool hair," he said, hooking a hand through his own white hair.
Meria answered with a smirk and a small glow at her palm. "This red's not just for show, ghosty. I'm Imperian royalty." She made sure the rafters noticed. Triumph and pedigree were currency here in the Crimson Exam Hall.
"They're making a circus," Mercer muttered, appearing with Kinn-Kinn and Synn-Synn as his entourage, like a shadow and echo. He was the kind of Man that grinned to show off a scar, his chin held high as he announced proud with a jokey edge. "I just kicked my own ass," Smiling with that infuriating confidence that made Kinn-Kinn facepalm theatrically.
The voice from the Gate counted down. "One minute thirty seconds."
Quincy Anen lifted a hand from the Council table as if measuring light. His eyes pulsed bright yellow, an odd glow that made some at the table shift with a faint, wrong-edged awe.
"That's 5 of 9," he announced evenly. "They seem to be capable of Chikara flow alone... No external implements."
"Your ability still gives me the creeps," Yulan said under her breath, and she did not look at Quincy while she said it.
"Nonesense Yulan," Tenki Buza replied, voice a scalpel. "That ability is precisely why he sits at the table."
When Tenki spoke, the hall listened. Her appraisal carried weight the way thunder carries an echo. The Angelic voice kept time, the Gate breathed like an old animal.
"Who's next?" someone whispered. The Hall held itself in that moment between curiosity and ritual.
An athletic, light-footed form drifted out. Ilija, indigo-eyed and narrow-faced, moved like wind through the rafters, eyes sweeping the audience with a tight focus.
Mercer's grin curdled into something else. Old grudges smelled like fresh blood when two rivals shared the room. Never mind the same Organization.
"Mercer," Ilija said coolly, eyebrow arching with a bored flick. "After your Ice Prison stunt, I didn't expect you to make it."
"You don't get to talk," Mercer shot back. Kinn-Kinn scowled in warning. "Don't."
The Hall hummed with the friction of young tensions, whether friendly or deadly, the difference rarely revealed in time.
Then Nay stepped through. She moved with a dangerous ease, pumpkin colored hair, a confident gait that told anyone watching she was too busy living to be bothered by ceremony.
She walked straight up to Ilija without deference, scanning the crowd with the sort of grin that said she had already judged the lot of them.
"Where's Grim'Lok?" she asked, not bothering to look up.
Ilija shrugged. "No clue."
Grim'Lok's name carried like a chord through the Hall. For him, a different scene waited down the Path. For the audience, the Gate still had places to release.
A pale, purple-haired boy drifted into sight next. His pale skin, the black rim of eye shadow, a look that suggested he kept hidden secrets. He stepped onto the Eye and the rafters held their breath.
"Who are you?" Meria leaned forward, curiosity unsheathed.
"Kodeki," he announced, voice small but sure.
At the Council table Tenki's lips lifted. "Pull him up," she said.
Kaiso, whose long fingers kept careful scrolls under the table, reached without fuss and unrolled a page. Blank space stared back where a profile should be. His mouth flattened.
"It's empty," Kaiso said finally. "His dossier… it's almost as if he never existed."
A ripple of interest threaded the Council. Mysterious entrants drew more attention than overt nobles. The Gate continued its slow, inexorable count.
"Thirty seconds."
In the misty walkway where the Path of Shadows thinned, shoes shuffled. Saido continued walking them towards the Gate of Initiation. He carried a weight on his shoulders that only a few in the rafters could guess at.
He put Grim'Lok down when the count hit twenty-two and let his palm rest on the boy's chest. The touch sparked green like new leaf growth, and the air around Grim'Lok crackled with a life-song that answered call and pulled the sleeping boy back from the realm between woke and sleep.
"Twenty seconds," Saido said, eyes never leaving Grim'Lok's face.
A pulse of green energy threaded through the Wolfshire, bone and breath returned with a sharp inhale. Grim'Lok coughed, eyelids like curtains flung back, the Path collapsing at the edges.
"There he is," Saido murmured. Warmth and duty lined his voice. He helped Grim'Lok up, steadied him, and laid a hand across the young man's shoulders with care of a mentor.
"You have no time to catch your breath," Saido said, a low humor tucked in. "And definitely no time to be knocked out on the battlefield. Ten seconds. Are you ready to become part of OMEN?"
Grim'Lok looked at Saido, the patience in the man's eyes, the steadying force it made him bow his chin. For a fragment of a moment the world narrowed to the metal taste of the concrete and the hum of the Eye of Unity. He nodded.
"Of course I do."
FLICKER!!!
The world bent. Saido's afterimage collapsed like a folded map and the two of them were suddenly among the chosen, standing on the silver emblem in the center of the Hall.
Saido flickered once more appearing knelt before Tenki with the ease practiced from countless operations.
"I have completed my mission, Milady," he said simply.
A bow of acknowledgement, the chains that held the Gate slackened in sudden anger, and the final snap released like a distant thunderclap.
The Gate closed. no more entrants, no more chances. The Hall felt the shockwave through its bones, some in the rafters shielded their faces against the sudden gust.
Grim'Lok found himself standing in the hush that followed. He then found Nay at his side before he realized he'd moved, elbow brushing shoulder followed by a grin he half-deserved.
The Eye of Unity in the floor thrummed and began to glow a bright white light. Silvery lines crept over each initiate's chest, moving like living script. Then, the lights died.
For a breath the Hall was bathed in darkness and only the initiates were visible. Little islands of presence in a sea of absent sight.
When the lights returned the room had a single, overwhelming focus, Erik Stormbreaker.
He did not just walk into the hall, he was the very foundation it stood on. Armor struck the torchlight with a sound like ceremonial hammers, a grin like an old battlefield line pressed under his jaw. His silhouette was a presence, his voice, when he spoke, filled not only air but expectation.
"It seems this year's class is small, strong, and resilient," he intoned, voice like iron warmed. He paced forward and the light followed him like a halo, revealing the mites and marks of years in his face.
"Today," he said, looking down at the cluster of new faces, "is not only your initiation. It is where you begin to learn what OMEN truly is."
He stopped. The Hall leaned in.
"OMEN stands for The Order of Manifested Eternal Night. We were formed to safeguard Azunne, to maintain balance, and most importantly, to prevent war. We are a blade that keeps chaos at bay. We strike from the dark so the light may continue."
His words had an old, bright cruelty wrapped in them. The rafters stirred as if rows of shadows exhaled.
Grim'Lok's chest hitched. Under Erik's voice old images flashed, a village, flames, his mother running, the ghost of the Path of Shadows. He kept his fingers curled tight.
Erik let the silence stand for a beat, then roared the motto as if it were a living thing.
"FROM THE SHADOWS!" OMEN's leader, Erik Stormbreaker bellowed.
"WE SAFEGUARD THE LIGHT!" the hall answered in a chorus that sounded both ritual and vow. The Eye of Unity bled white light up into the rafters in a beam that ran like a column between earth and sky. For a dizzy second it felt like the world itself had been a page and someone was turning it.
When the light fell away, something else had happened.
Initiates looked down at themselves as if they'd been refit in armor while they blinked. The OMEN uniform had appeared on each of them: a lightweight, form-fitting jet-black undershirt and combat pants, a sleeveless grey reinforced vest, bracers, gloves and a utility belt waiting for equipment. Silent boots that swallowed footsteps. The practicality of a thousand missions folded the garments like an oath.
The hall burst into noise. Kids testing fabrics, pockets finding new weight. Meria tugged at her sleeve, testing flex. Osinar fished at the seam of her sleeve with an amused smile and gave it a playful snap.
"You bastard!" she shouted at him, and the laugh that followed helped bridge the moment between ritual and life.
Grim'Lok looked at his own chest. for a slow second he could not remember the last time the world had felt as if something had been given to him. "I really did it," he said, a goofy grin pulling at his face. Nay ruffled his hair like she had that right. But ritual snapped back into place fast. Erik's voice severed the small sounds like a blade.
"Attention!" he commanded, and youth quieted like a tide pulling away.
"Understand OMEN lives by a strict code," he said, walking slowly to the center of the circle. "We do not serve kings. We serve balance. Anything that shifts that balance will be eliminated."
The words sat heavy on the chest of each initiate. Erik's next lines were blunt, necessary. "OMEN are not only warriors. We prevent war. We are assassins when balance demands it. The shadows are our veil, but our cause is... the light."
He fixed his gaze on the younger faces, and when he paused for the moment that would shape each of them, Grim'Lok felt his whole body tighten like a man bracing for a cold river.
The initiates practiced the words like newly-sprung armor: "From the shadows—we safeguard the light."
"Now," Erik said. "By the authority of the Council, by the vow of OMEN, all of you are now D-Rank Initiates."
There was a small murmur that it would have been different for some. Tenki had argued some deserved higher rank for what they'd shown but Erik's shrug cleared it.
"D-rank today," he said. "Tomorrow you prove why else you should be more."
The first half-hour after ceremony loosened like the slack in a drawn bow. Initiates mingled and traded impressions, some noisy, some quiet. Grim'Lok listened more than he spoke, eyes following new faces, hearing names and the cadence of them.
Conversations tangled into small pieces of the larger map.
"You look like the Ice King's son," someone yelled from the rafters, and Mercer threw his shoulder out with that smug grin that said he loved trouble. "You got that right!"
Kaiso leaned forward at the Council table and muttered. "Kodeki's file… absent. Unusual."
Tenki watched him with a half-smile. "Sometimes absence speaks," she said. "Some men would rather let their work do the talking."
Outside, the city of Archfield hummed with the aftermath of an exam: one day's fear turning into tomorrow's plans.
Grim'Lok walked the stone lanes with Juzu and Mizaka falling in beside him, solid, quiet presences he'd soon trust. The ritual's adrenaline drained, leaving the sober fizz of someone who has been handed both a place and a job.
"Erik wants you to go retrieve Risaki's crow," Juzu said between two steps. "After that, you'll have time to rest."
Grim'Lok's stomach tightened at the thought of sitting with the Head of OMEN. His mind hopped like a nervous animal from memory to question to what-ifs. He swallowed it down and straightened his back.
They reached the Pinnacle Lookout as the sun sketched long shadows on Archfield's walls. The circle of charred trees in the far distance, where the Sacred Forest brooded, hung like a bruise on the horizon. Grim'Lok noticed it now with a different sensitivity, like a man noticing a scar on himself.
Rengetsu, Risaki's crow, threaded the sky and landed with a plaintive caw on Grim'Lok's shoulder. The crow inspected his new vest and gave a small toss-of-the-head, like a proud relative.
"Let's go, kid," Rengetsu croaked, as if the bird understood duty and impatiently wanted to see it fulfilled.
Grim'Lok smiled. The world felt enormous and small all at once—big enough for long wars, small enough that a single kindness mattered.
Later that night Grim'Lok found his barracks assigned to him. A plain room, bed, a shelf, and the quiet that comes when a heavy day folds into sleep. He rummaged through his bag which Risaki had left for him before he'd left, the corners of his mind folding over the day's faces and the cadence of Erik's words.
The uniform's fabric brushed from the way of motion; he felt steadier under its weight.
Rengetsu preened on the bed, peering out the window. Grim'Lok sat on the edge and thought about the promises he'd heard. The motto looped at the edge of his sleep: From the shadows, We safeguard the light. He felt the vow settle like flint against tinder.
Outside, in the deeper night, Ilija moved along Archfield's outskirts. He took the route his training had taught him and paused at a dark corner, hand resting on a stone with the stillness of a man with an unspoken plan. He did not look up at the Watchers' towers; his eyes were turned toward the horizon.
There are always watchers who are not in the rafters, and there are things that listen in the dark. Ilija had his own appetite for being stronger.. the glint in his eye suggested secrecy. Then he vanished.
Above the Hall, the Council closed its session for the night. Tenki and her peers lingered in a hush, looking not at the new faces but at the map. "We are smaller this year," Yulan observed quietly. "Yet more dangerous."
"Size is not the point," Tenki answered. "Purpose is. Keep him near. Let his flame be useful to the order, not a conflagration that eats us all."
Their words were quiet but sharp, an order wrapped in foresight.
Grim'Lok slept with a crow at his shoulder and the knowledge that the morrow would come with new obligations. He dreamed of the Eye of Unity and the silver sword; he dreamed of flames tempered into a tool.
In the shadow between sleep and waking, a single thought rang clear: he had been chosen. The rest, what he would become and what would be asked of him, lay ahead in the long, brittle road of being an OMEN.
When dawn called, the city would again answer. The Path of Shadows had closed for now. The Initiation had opened another door. Grim'Lok's hand closed on a fistful of determination and unvoiced questions. The first step had been given.