Silas — Before Dawn
The outpost was quiet.
But quiet in the way broken places often are, where the echoes of violence still linger, suspended in the air like dust waiting to settle. Grim Hollow lay bruised under a weak grey sky, its structures leaning like wounded soldiers.
Silas sat alone on the jagged shell of a toppled barricade, shoulders hunched forward, breathing shallow. His ribs felt cracked, but pain was a familiar companion. A necessary one.
The real tremor inside him came from something deeper.
A heat pulsed beneath his sternum, spreading in slow waves through his veins. Not fire—pressure. A rising, coiling force scraping at the inner walls of his soul-shell, demanding release.
The threshold.
He exhaled through clenched teeth.
It's finally happening.
The line between a fledgling and an Initiate was more than rank—it was transformation. A personal reshaping. A claiming of strength.
And he would claim it. Today.
