Outpost Grimhollow had no walls—just jagged barricades of scavenged iron, broken wagon frames, and sharpened bone stakes hammered into the mud. The air smelled of ash, fever, and whatever the surgeons scraped off the dead before they burned them.
It wasn't a place to live.
It was a place you stayed until you died or proved you were worth sending somewhere less doomed.
Most of the soldiers called it the Gutter.
Only the officers used its proper name.
The outpost sat on the edge of a hunting zone monsters roamed freely, surrounded by trenches filled with oil and pitch that could be set alight if a horde attacked. There were no banners, no pride, no illusions—just camps of those too weak, too poor, or too undeveloped to be anywhere else.
Bright had only been here a few weeks, but already he understood: Grimhollow wasn't the bottom. It was the sieve where bodies fell through until only the useful remained.
The army wasn't united anymore. There was no central command issuing orders across the map. Each fortified camp had its own structure, its own chain of command, its own politics. Messages arrived late—if at all. Reinforcements were myths. Promotions were carved from corpses.
Here, strength determined authority. Soul talent and monster cores meant more than training or loyalty. The military ranks still echoed the old world, but their meaning had rotted.
Power tiers decided everything:
Fledglings and Initiates were cannon fodder. They filled patrol units, supply runs, defense shifts. Most died before their first month.
Adepts led squads or guarded resource stockpiles. They had enough power to tame the weak, but not enough to matter to the strong.
Experts either commanded multiple squads or controlled specialized roles—scouts, core harvest units, supply overseers.
Elites took charge of sectors or companies. They had backgrounds, reputations, or body counts to match.
Champions and higher were untouchable myths to most soldiers—commanders of major fortresses, lords of core vaults, or monsters in their own right.
Titles weren't given—they were claimed. A soldier who downed an elite monster and absorbed its core might rise overnight. Someone without talent could rot in the mud forever.
Roegan, for all his brutality and survival instinct, was only an Initiate. Stronger than most humans by instinct and ability, but poor, core-starved, and stationed in the Gutter like the rest of them. His command over the patrol units came from attrition—he'd outlived every other squad lead for eight months. Longevity counted more than formality.
Grimhollow's layout reflected desperation, not strategy. The camp was divided into ragged clusters:
The Bone Pits — where corpses were stripped, burned, or harvested for remaining cores.
The Tents — patched canvas shelters, each holding six to twenty soldiers, sorted loosely by survival rate rather than rank.
The Weldyard — where blacksmiths repaired damaged weapons with whatever metal they could scavenge.
The Serum Hall — where medics dispensed healing liquid to those still expected to fight.
The Crest Lodge — a fortified bunker for officers and quartermasters. Only those with titles entered.
Every patrol loss was tallied and posted. Every serum ration was logged and argued over. Every crystal core brought back was claimed by someone higher—unless a soldier could hide it, inject it, or fuse it before inspection.
Fledglings and Initiates were numbers, not names. If one died, another arrived from the refugee chains or prison camps. Nobody asked why they were here. Nobody cared.
When Bright and the remains of Roegan's patrol limped through the gate, a scribe and two watchers marked them down on rotting parchment. The dead were listed, the living inspected.
Anyone with obvious wounds was sent to the Serum Hall. Those untouched were either ignored or questioned for signs of mutation. Cores weren't visible once absorbed—they became ethereal in the bloodstream—but a soldier's performance betrayed their enhancements.
Bright was left alone. His bandages were blood-marked but not life-threatening. His eyes were too clear to be questioned. Killers were easier to manage than victims.
The others were sorted in different ways.
Bessia
She refused a stretcher and walked with a stiff posture. The gash along her side was sealed by her own soul talent—flesh hardened and knitted back together over time. The medics checked the wound, frowned at the scar pattern, and waved her through. Self-healing meant one less ration bottle wasted on her.
Bright overheard a passing officer murmur, "Keep her alive. Self-menders grow into squad medics later."
Duncan
He cleaned his weapon before he sat. A quartermaster glanced at him and nodded once—respect without words. No talent. No core. But technique and survival under pressure counted more here than flashy power with a corpse to match.
He was assigned a new weapon strap and given leave to rest. In Grimhollow, that was as good as a commendation.
Link
None of the medics asked how he survived without injury. His movements were sharp, reflexive, too efficient to be natural. A speed core lived in his body—that much anyone experienced could sense—but without a glow or imprint, no one could seize it from him.
He was directed to the runner barracks, where scouts, messengers, and fast-response soldiers waited for orders they might not live to complete.
Adam
He had no blood on him. That alone made the scribes suspicious. But one of Roegan's lieutenants vouched that Adam had called out flanking patterns and pointed out soil displacement before ambushes.
That earned him a pass to the Crest Lodge's auxiliary support—map runners, tactical aides, and logistics trackers. He didn't belong in the mud, so they put him where his brain might get someone stronger killed slower.
Bright wasn't spoken to—just stamped.
Initiate. Survivor. Still viable.
No commendation. No elevation.
The scribe muttered, "You'll be reassigned to Roegan's replacement unit once it forms. Fresh blood coming in by dusk. You'll lead the middle line. Or die trying."
A squad lead without the title. A survivor given bodies to outlive.
Bright didn't argue. Titles meant targets.
He found an empty cot near the edge of the tent rows and sat. The screams from the Bone Pits echoed through the night like distant thunder. The fires burned the fallen, and with each crackle of fat and splintering bone, fewer faces remained in his mind.
He didn't look for Bessia, Duncan, Link, or Adam. Whether they lived or died wasn't his concern. But he remembered how they moved, how they didn't crumble.
That was enough—for now.
Rumor said there were six other camps within a week's travel, each governed by someone above Elite rank. Some claimed a Champion had once passed through Grimhollow and left a crater full of bodies behind for insulting him. Others said Mythics didn't bother with outposts at all—they stayed in sky-fortresses, studying cores, growing stronger while the world rotted below.
None of it mattered if you were Initiate or lower.
To rise, you needed one of three things:
A powerful soul talent awakened through trauma or mutation.
A compatible monster core taken from something your blade helped kill.
Or enough kills and scars for someone stronger to take notice.
Bright had none of that yet.
He only had his body, his mind, and a soul talent simmering beneath the surface.
A fuse waiting for the right spark.
When night settled over Outpost Grimhollow, there were no songs, no toasts, no rituals. Only the knowledge that tomorrow would sort the weak from the future corpses once again.
And if the monsters didn't finish the job—command would.
Bright lay back on his cot, staring at the rotting ceiling cloth.
He didn't plan to die here.
He planned to outlive everyone else.