Uziel had learned two rules from surviving the streets of Blackwater City:
Don't attract attention.
Don't die.
Both rules were broken the moment the sky dimmed.
He was slipping a stolen loaf of bread under his shirt when the light faded—not like a cloud passing overhead, but like someone slowly extinguishing the sun. The world sank into a cold twilight. Conversations died mid-sentence. Vendors froze. Even the constant brawls among the street gangs stopped.
A strange silence fell over the city.
Uziel looked up.
A thin black line cut across the sky. It stretched wider, trembling like a wound being forced open. From within it, a thick darkness seeped out, spreading across the heavens like ink in water.
The temperature plummeted. Frost crawled over rooftops and market stalls.
Then the screaming began.
People ran blindly through the streets as the shadow expanded overhead. Guards shouted in confusion, weapons shaking in their hands. Children cried. A merchant fell to his knees, praying for gods that no longer answered this city.
Uziel stood still, heart pounding, but his mind eerily calm.
Chaos didn't scare him; life in Blackwater had trained him well.
That calm shattered when the ground beneath him cracked.
A narrow tendril of darkness slipped out from the fissure and wrapped around his ankle. It was cold—colder than winter nights spent sleeping under broken bridges—and it pulsed like something alive.
Before Uziel could pull away, a whisper echoed inside his mind:
"Chosen."
His breath caught.
"Chosen… for what?"
The shadow tightened.
The world fell away.
Uziel was dragged downward into the fissure as if gravity had forgotten its job. Darkness swallowed him whole. For a moment, he felt weightless, suspended between two worlds.
Then he hit stone.
Hard.
He groaned and pushed himself upright. The air was thick, metallic, and unnaturally still. Above him stretched a cavernous sky of swirling black mist, illuminated by lanterns that floated like dying stars.
A massive stone platform spread out beneath him. On its surface, glowing letters carved in cold white light formed a message:
WELCOME TO THE UNSEEN TRIAL.
SURVIVE.
OR FADE.
Uziel's hands trembled.
He wasn't dreaming. This wasn't an illusion.
He had been taken.
A scraping noise echoed behind him.
Slowly, Uziel turned.
A creature crawled out of the shadows—its body shifting like liquid darkness. Four pale eyes opened one after another. Six limbs unfolded with sickening smoothness. Its smile was made of jagged lines of void.
It stared at him with a hungry, unnatural intelligence.
Uziel took a single step back.
He had survived hunger, gangs, cold nights, and merciless streets.
But this…
This was something else entirely.
The creature lunged.
And the Trial began.