Chapter Nine — The Chain March
The door creaked open.
Light stabbed into the cell like a blade, and Lucien shrank from it, eyes narrowing against the sudden burn.
Rough hands grabbed him before he could react, yanking him up by the arms. His legs buckled. The ground felt like water beneath him. He hadn't stood in what felt like forever, and the sudden weight of his own body pulled him down.
They didn't care.
A boot drove into his side, forcing breath from his lungs as he was dragged out across the rough stone floor. His body, still weak from weeks of starvation, moved like it wasn't his.
Outside the cell, the world spun. A long corridor stretched ahead — damp, torch-lit, filled with the stench of rot and sweat.
Other cells opened.
Figures like him were pulled out, men and women with sunken eyes, cracked lips, trembling limbs.
All of them dressed in the same strange fabric: dusty, weather-worn clothes made from a thick hide-like material, somewhere between armor and uniform.
They were chained together one by one.
Lucien's wrists were bound with a metal so cold it burned. The chains rattled as the line formed — twenty… maybe thirty of them. All gaunt. All silent. All broken.
And then they began to move.
The sound of marching boots echoed from behind — a rhythmic stomp that told Lucien everything he needed to know.
Whoever these people were, they were trained. Disciplined. Uniformed.
Military.
He stumbled with every step, feet scraping against the gravel path that led out of the cave complex.
As they exited, the desert greeted them again. Blinding light. Endless sand. Air that seemed to sear the lungs.
Lucien blinked rapidly, trying to adjust.
He hadn't seen sunlight in so long it felt unreal. Too bright. Too cruel.
The men behind him — soldiers, guards, whatever they were — barked orders in the same guttural, unfamiliar language.
Lucien couldn't understand a word.
But the tone was enough.
Commanding. Sharp. Impatient.
The first time he stumbled and fell, the chain tugged tight — dragging the man behind him down as well.
A guard strode up, snarling something incomprehensible, and smashed the butt of his spear across Lucien's back.
Pain exploded down his spine.
He gasped but didn't scream. His voice was too dry to even try.
He got up. He didn't want to be hit again.
The group marched forward.
Lucien's eyes adjusted slowly.
They were leaving the ridge.
From this angle, he saw it for what it was — not just a cave, but a system.
An organized network.
A hidden outpost.
A camp.
Watchtowers disguised among the ridges. Tent structures tucked into shadows. Men and women moved with purpose, armed and armored in that same strange style — a blend of sleek efficiency and raw brutality.
Symbols etched into their weapons. Runes glowing faintly in the light.
None of them were normal.
Lucien could feel it.
The way they moved — too fast, too quiet. The way they carried their weapons like they weighed nothing. The way the heat didn't seem to affect them at all.
They weren't just soldiers.
They were Bound.
It hit him then, cold and sharp — these people had undergone Trials.
They had survived.
What Class? What Rank? He had no way of knowing.
He barely understood what those even meant.
But he knew one thing:
They were monsters compared to him.
Lucien was still human. Fragile. Helpless.
They were not.
He looked at their faces as they rode past on horses built like war-beasts — thick-necked, broad-shouldered creatures covered in armor plates.
The riders looked down at him with cold eyes.
One spat in his direction.
The glob hit Lucien square in the cheek, mixing with the crusted blood still dried there from the first beating.
He didn't flinch.
Didn't react.
He didn't have the strength.
One of the other prisoners beside him tried to speak — cracked a dry joke in a language Lucien almost understood, maybe a dialect of something — but the man behind him struck him with a wooden staff without breaking stride.
The line fell silent again.
They walked. And walked. And walked.
Lucien didn't know where they were going.
Didn't know what these people wanted from them.
But as they moved farther into the desert, as the camp disappeared behind them, Lucien's gaze flicked up to the horizon — and he saw it.
Far ahead. A structure, rising from the sands.
Dark. Angular. Massive.
Some kind of fortress.
Black spires reaching up into the pale sky like teeth.
And smoke — thin trails curling upward from chimneys or furnaces that burned at all hours.
A city of some kind.
Or maybe something worse.
Lucien lowered his head.
He didn't need to know where they were going.
Wherever it was, it wasn't freedom.
It was only the next part of the Trial.