We were herded into the evaluation chambers in groups of two hundred. Each of us was to be tested for signs of Awakening. Those who failed would become laborers or infantry fodder. Those who showed Core potential would be ranked and placed accordingly - Initiates, Adepts, Knights… all the way up to Saints. Above them stood Archons, Demi-Deities, and the Sovereigns themselves, names whispered like gods.
The line moved slow. One by one, prisoners stepped into the glowing circle on the floor, a shimmering blue sigil that pulsed like a heartbeat. Dominion officers hovered with clipboards and crystal scanners, eyes cold, expressions bored.
This final step was simple: prove you had a Core, and you mattered. Fail, and you were cargo.
My turn came sooner than I expected.
"Step into the circle," the officer ordered. He wore silver gloves and a crystal visor that flickered with data. "Place your hand on the sphere and do not move."
The sphere hummed when I set my palm against it. The air tasted like iron and sweat.
"Name." the officer said.
"Zeke Draco," I replied.
He tapped his tablet. "Begin."
Light flared at my feet brilliant blue, then dull. It flickered once, twice... and died.
Nothing. No mana at all. Nobody cared about Vigor. From the two hundred of us, only four had awakened so far.
I heard whispers and a few ugly chuckles from the Officers.
The officer didn't even blink. "No mana flow detected."
He checked his readout and pointed. "Non-awakened. Group D. Labour division."
"Wait...maybe the circle didn't read me right," I said, playing the part. Truth was, I didn't want to fight under the Dominion's flag anyway. No way I'd risk becoming one of their obedient pawns.
"Next," the officer said.
A soldier gripped my arm and shoved me toward the right side of the chamber. There I joined the dull-eyed, the broken, the hollowed ones who'd failed before me. Men and women stacked like kindling.
I glanced back at the line of light, people stepping into the circles and burning bright: white, red, emerald. The Awakened. The ones who mattered.
"Labour unit!" an officer barked. "Form up and move out!"
The doors swung open to a corridor full of marching boots and shouted orders. We fell into line, heads down. I looked at my hands, ordinary, trembling, useless to the Dominion's scanners, and felt a cold certainty settle in: I would be a cog. But cogs can break things.
After the evaluations, only fifteen from our group had awakened and been recruited into the military. The rest, most of us, were to be laborers. Still, not every non-awakened soldier would remain a laborer. The Dominion drafted men when they needed cannon fodder, and desperation warped policy faster than doctrine.
As they marched us out, a ripple moved through the crowd, someone calling a name. I pushed, trying to see. Ciri stood under the light of a separate platform, her face pale but eyes fierce. A technician's hand scanned her wrist, then another device. She stepped into a circle. The sigil flared, green, then gold, and the officers leaned in.
"Core flow detected. Core Adept," the technician announced.
A silence cut through me sharper than any blade. Ciri's eyes met mine across the hall for a heartbeat. She gave the slightest nod, like the world had split between us.
They led her away with the volunteers. Caps and badges shined as she passed. I watched her go, one of the few who mattered to them now, and the hall swallowed her into the Dominion's roster of useful things.
They herded the rest of us toward the loading docks. Some non-awakened were being tagged for forced enlistment, cheap lives for cheap campaigns. Others were stamped labor and marched toward the yards where the Dominion's machines chewed men into fuel.
I clenched my fists until my nails bit skin. The system's glow was a ghost at the back of my mind. Vigor: 4%. Limitless. That number had a taste now, not of salvation, but of a promise.
They could brand my hands, chain my feet, and call me trash. But they could not write the end of me yet.
The awakened prisoners and the volunteers, plus those who had been deemed "fit for service", were issued blue uniforms. Each of them was assigned the rank of Private, the lowest tier in the Dominion military. Still, they were soldiers now.
But the Dominion made sure no one forgot where they came from. Every one of them was required to wear a black armband on their right arm, a mark of shame, a reminder that they were products of Base 8 and Base 9. Even among soldiers, they were still beneath everyone else.
We, the labourers, weren't spared the humiliation either. We were given khaki uniforms and the same black armbands. The officers made it very clear, the armband was to stay on at all times. Losing it or taking it off would be seen as defiance, and defiance had… consequences.
Execution, most likely.
We were to depart in two weeks' time for the Red Islands. Two weeks until the Dominion's grand "expedition" began or, more truthfully, its mass human offering to the unknown.
Two weeks of drills, work, and constant barking orders.
Two weeks of bruised hands and broken sleep.
Two weeks of fear fermenting in our guts.
By the end of it, there'd be a lot of pants shitting.