The chamber for the Midday Trial hung itself with chains once more. And once more, he was blinded by the gas lamps as he ascended from the basement. He forced his eyes to squint, and mind sharpen.

  His opponent was already waiting.

  She stood barefoot on the grating with a stillness. Sol observed her posture; she did not move, but the silence around her spoke of preparation. Her clothing carried that district's signature of Solthar: reinforced canvas tunic strapped with segmented leather plates, and sleeves tight at the wrists. He recognized it as clear as midday, that it was without doubt stained by years and years in the workshops. She adorned a belt of interlocking metal clasps marked her as one of those who built, repaired, and mastered the very weapons used by ones who never acknowledged their names. It was not decoration, but she spoke of untold history, because someone had to.

  The platforms hung on tensile chains were crafted by artisans whose names were whispered only in soot-darkened workshops; the hex plates were forged within the same shadowed district because the surface was ever so blinding with it's prestige.

  "You're the gunslinger," she finally said. "The one who took down Ector. What a fool he was, to lose to someone so... timid."

  Sol said nothing. He could sense the same careful calculation he had learned to cultivate in himself, the quiet assurance that this battle would not be a test of brute force alone. And then, Sol understood what she wanted from the trials.

  The woman loosened her arm, and the weapon uncoiled from behind her like a living thing. A whip, but not the leather kind the upper districts used for ceremonies. This one was made of linked blades. She snapped it once across the floor to let sparks scatter across. Each reflected in his eyes.

  The bell was struck, and the woman took the chance to move first. The whip dragged behind her with grace, then snapped forward again to let its blade-segments sliced the steam, and reached for the boy like an elongated bullet.

  Sol threw his body, and rolled aside, skidding on the grate.

  The second strike came immediately to not give him a chance to breathe, think or even aim. It vibrated through the chamber with a predator's hum, the whip danced like a living thing.

  He fired twice at it, but the bullets pinged uselessly off spinning steel.

  Sol clicked his tongue, and dodged once more.

  A third strike skimmed his shoulder, cloth and bandages tearing through. He didn't flinch. He could not give her a chance. But the pain was there.

  Again!?

  A slice to the left, and a dodge to the right, Sol slowed for just a moment to observe the movements of grace. He needed the rhythm. Every time she lifted her elbow, the chain drew in. Every time her hip shifted, the whip's spine aligned for a specific angle.

  She struck again with a crazy laugh.

  This time Sol rushed forward, a move so reckless it made the silent spectators stir in their sits. She reacted exactly as he expected: whip rising in a defensive snap meant to catch him mid-charge, ready for the finishing blow, with burning eyes of victory. With a grin, the boy fired. The bullet split the steam, and went straight for the metallic weapon. In the next second, it lodged itself into the links.

  The whip's momentum faltered immediately, slowing its dance now. The panicked woman tried to snap it free, but the irregular weight threw off her timing. And the boy abused the chance he had made for himself, firing another shot.

  This time the bullet struck a joint near the tip. The chain jerked, spasmed. That was all he needed.

  Sol closed the distance in three big steps, sliding under the trailing chain before she could reset her footing and balance. His shoulder drove into her center of gravity with a clean precision to knock her off her balance. The two crashed onto the metal grate, with the whip clattering beside them in a useless arc.

  She reached for the handle, until Sol's boot pinned it. He exhaled, finally! Sol leveled the gun at her. The arena fell eerily silent. They watched the unknown unravel, hooded boy take down another opponent with precision.

  He didn't lift the gun to kill. He lifted it to end the fight. But he couldn't end it without a kill.

  He had always believed sunlight meant safety. That morning glow at Marguerite's window, filtered through curtains like diluted hope, had taught him gentleness before the city stripped it away. Underground orphanages, dim corridors, the hollowed-out years where the sun never touched them; that had forged something else entirely in him. A refusal to let darkness decide his fate.

  But killing in cold blood? That was a different kind of darkness.

  The woman froze, realizing she had lost. She pressed her lips together until the color drained from them. Then she lifted her chin in defiance, mockery even.

  "Fire away, boy. End this."

  But his finger refused to move even at her taunt. The trigger felt heavier with every second he hesitated. This was a woman in workshop leathers, bruised, and exhausted, the kind who'd grown up earning every meal with hands torn open by metal filings and blade teeth. She was no different from him.

  His morality couldn't kill her. He couldn't kill another person. (He could see himself in them.)

  The silence stretched longer, the crowd began to murmur, clearly growing impatient.

  Realizing Sol's hesitation, she twisted her torso with a vicious burst, sweeping at his legs. Sol's head hit the grate hard making the air jolt from his lungs, mind spin. He tasted rust. Oil. Blood, maybe his own. So this was the answer the Trials preferred.

  She seized the whip's handle, it easily snapped into her grip, but the weapon betrayed her, fought her even. The chain fractured from earlier blows, screeched against the metal. A tool forged to obey resisted her now, dragging and snarling like a wounded, feral animal.

  "Just a lucky brat with no experience," she spat, "It's a dog-eat-dog world down here! You kill me, or you die!"

  The chain clattered as she forced it into a half-swing. This was her language: force applied until resistance broke. The underground taught that lesson early. It had taught him the same. Sol rolled away to his knees with instinct, and attempted to escape the arcs. Her rage was real. Her desperation was real. The logic of the Trial hung between them, as unblemished as midday.

  Steam vents roared, bathing them in a heat that blurred the edges of their vision.

  The gun lay by him. His fingers twitched toward it, then stopped.

  She noticed. Of course, she did. The woman stared at him with a mix of fury, disbelief, and—buried somewhere beneath—reluctant recognition.

  “There it is,” she spat. “That pause. That damned pause!”

  She abandoned the whip, chain clattering uselessly as she lunged barehanded. Sol forced himself to stand as she closed the distance. His head still rang, but his vision steadied just enough. He saw the tremor in her hands. The arena felt closer suddenly, chains creaking above, hex plates humming beneath their feet, ready to give up their weight.

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  She swung. He caught her wrist on instinct, pain flaring up his arm like wildfire. The impact jolted them both. Gah!

  "You think this makes you noble?" she snarled. "You think sparing me wins you favor? The Cathedral doesn't care. The Sun doesn't care. Kindness gets you eaten alive. Kill me before I kill you!"

  Sol's throat tightened. He had nothing to fire back with, no clever retort, no hardened philosophy—he had no firm beliefs. He just knew he couldn't pull the trigger on someone who had already lost. However pathetic that was.

  "I'm not here to prove cruelty," he said. "I... I was only here to prove my worth... I just... I just know I didn't come here to kill..." His was so uncertain of his own words.

  She scoffed, though the sound carried less of hatred now, but even mockery. "Worth won't save you. Worth is just another lie they feed us so we keep crawling back for scraps." She gestured vaguely upward, but not just to the stands, it was beyond that, past the alloys, the crowd and gas lamps, toward the Cathedral itself. "They tell you you’re earning something. A name. A future. A reward. A place in the light." Her mouth twisted. “All you’re really earning is permission to be used again." The woman continued, "There is no such thing as freedom."

  He paused, bracing himself for another punch that never arrived.

  "What do you want?" He asked, only to hear a scoff.

  "What do I want? What could I possibly want out of this, boy?" She answered. "People like us, we have no past, no future. What could we want?"

  She looked at him then. "What do I want?" She repeated, yet so quietly. "I want this to end."

  Her voice cracked on the last word, and Sol felt it. He dragged in a slow breath. The metallic tang of dust and oil scraped down his throat meanly. His jaw locked as he forced his trembling hand to steady. The gun now in his hands, that trigger felt heavier than it ever had.

  I can't do this. I shouldn't do this. No, I must do this...

  The woman studied him with an expression that shifted almost imperceptibly—anger?—giving way to something colder, older, carved from years of being cornered. A maker and and orphan, molded from the same underground city. Her shoulders sagged with the resignation of someone who had long ago stopped believing in rescue.

  She straightened slightly, fingers flexing at her side. "How pathetic," she muttered, though her voice no longer held bite. "If you won't do it, the Trials will. They always do. Someone dies. Someone has to die, to make way for the other."

  Then, her fingers, red and raw from the fight (or years of labour), closed tightly around the jagged shard of the whip's broken blade still clutched in her palm. Blood welled immediately, dripping dark and slick, running between her knuckles and down to the dull grey metal. She stepped back. Her eyes flicked, briefly, to the gun. Then back to his face.

  "There's no such thing as mercy," she said. "It's all survival. And someone like you—someone who still hesitates—won't make it past midday!"

  Sol's breath hitched. "Stop," he said. No, pleaded.

  She lifted the shard.

  Her eyes of the color, ashen gray, the color of the Solthar's skies, met his. A flicker of regret ghosted behind them for a heartbeat.

  "Don't try to carry this," she whispered. "It'll crush you."

  Then she drove the blade inward through her neck. Sol lurched forward, catching her as she staggered. Warmth spread across his forearm where her blood seeped through. It felt hot enough to scorch, burning his skin.

  He knelt there, holding her despite the emptiness slipping into her limbs. His teeth ground together so hard that his jaw ached. He stared at the ground because looking at her face felt like swallowing glass, confusion clouding his eyes beneath the hood.

  He did not know if the crowd cheered or cried, or if those clothed in white shouted order, for his ears bled with sheer ringing. He forced himself to lay her down with care she would never know in life. His hands shook when he finally released her with hesitation, before wiping the blood from his fingers, but it clung anyway, sinking into the lines of his skin like a mark.

  A consequence. And the Trials had only pulled the blade halfway out, letting the wound bleed, just enough to disorient him.

  Sol drifted down the infirmary corridor without really walking. His feet moved, but the rest of this body was confined into some weightless limbo. He had died in the trial alongside her. The healers had spoken words of fatigue, stabilized vitals, and psychological strain—they never landed—slid off him.

  His vision blurred at the edges, turning the lamps into pale smears of gold. Every sound felt distant, unreachable even. He was far from the ground he walked on. Someone called his name once. Or maybe twice. He couldn't tell, and he didn't turn. Was it Ava? A priest? It didn't matter.

  The idea of entering the cafeteria, and threading through the rows of competitors who would see him and immediately know, turned his insides to ash. He had lost his appetite, when he imagined that. They would look at him the way people look at a knife left on the wrong table.

  A murderer.

  He braced a hand on the wall.

  His mind seized the memory again, dragging him backward without warning. And, for an instant, it was him on the ground. The blood pooling around him was warm— so real— sticking to his clothes, pulling him down with its weight until he couldn't move; until he couldn't breathe, anymore. His own eyes stared back at him through the dark of the corners.

  Pain shot through his skull, as if someone was driving a nail behind his eye. And Sol winced, fingers clawing at his temple. Nails digging into his scalp.

  He stumbled to the bed and collapsed onto the thin mattress. The sheets were coarse against his skin, telling him that comfort never existed here. He shut his eyes tightly to ease anything, and the only thing he hears is the tick of the clock. It is broken, forever sitting at a 3:40 with it's stunned needles. There was no light through the windows making him feel confined, suffocated, breathless in the cramped room.

  He turned the lamp off on the side, letting the faint murmur from elsewhere help him drift off to sleep. It took a him while to try sleeping, and his eyebrows scrunched up as the noise became unbearable. A barely audible murmur stirred beneath the earth. It was a subtle, rhythmic tapping, like distant knuckles rapping on hollow wood.

  Sol sighed, his limbs were throbbing after the day. He rolled over, throwing a pillow over his head, but the sound did not get blocked. A guttural hum resounded that seemed to pulse with an uncertain energy.

  He remained there, still and unmoving for as long as he could remember. Yet, that hum left him drifting in and out of sleep, never letting him escape into a slumber.

  Sol got up, hair standing at all sides after the shuffling. His eyes widened, as sleep escaped him in the sudden fear.

  What is that? He was not sure if it was the headache playing tricks on him.

  Sliding off the bed, he exited into the halls. The light making him grimace once at the sudden assault. Each step toward the hall felt heavier than the last, as though the weight of her death was pressing down on him from above.

  He kept making his way to the bigger space, and eventually he found his way to the familiar looking stairs that lead even lower. He had been here before, feeling uneasy just like the last time. He felt a vibration in the air. It was if something unseen was stirring just out of sight, calling out from the shadows below.

  But what could it be? Sol stepped forward before a hand on his shoulder abruptly halted him. He whipped around just to see a man in white hood.

  "Oh..." A sigh of relief left him, not like his soul almost left him.

  "What are you doing out here past these hours?" The stranger questioned in a leveled tone but carrying weight to scare the boy.

  "Uhm—" Sol's mind screamed him to lie. His mouth betrayed him. "What hours?"

  Perfect. He didn't need to see the man's face to feel the stare boring into him. Sol pursed his lips in a thin line, scratching the back of his neck in nervousness.

  "I was... thirsty," he continued. He really had been parched after going to bed without eating or drinking anything after the... Trial of midday.

  "There is water and food provided to you in your rooms," the man replied, not a single breath wasted on skepticism.

  "W—Well... I think I forgot that... My bad." He rubbed the back of his head, preparing to go back. When Sol stepped forward, facing away from the man, a sudden sharp prick jabbed into his back. His breath hitched, muscles tensing as a wave of panic rose. Slowly, he turned his head over his shoulder to glance at the weapon.

  His pulse rattled in his ears. The thin metal of the blade pressed against his spine, but it was the memory of her blood that weighed him down more than any weapon.

  You are next to lie in a pool of red.

  The blade was thin, almost delicate in the way it pressed, but the threat was unmistakable. The white-hooded figure's face remained unreadable beneath the shadow.

  "Easy," the man murmured, voice low and steady. "I'm not here to hurt you if you are honest."

  A heartbeat passed, and Sol hesitated. Could he trust anyone? Should he? He wasn't sure he could even trust himself anymore.

  "There's... something on the... the lower floor," he whispered in a trembling voice, and each syllable was a compromise between honesty and the choice of survival, "I heard humming, and it didn't sound... right, exactly."

  "Foolish," the man hissed and his grip tightened, the blade digging deeper. Sol winced, biting back a groan.

  In a sudden surge, adrenaline exploding through his veins, Sol twisted sharply and kicked backward with all his might. His boot connected solidly with the man's abdomen, sending him stumbling sideways.

  The blade flew free as the man fell, clutching his stomach. Sol himself nearly lost balance, scraping his knuckles across the wall as he dove past. His breath ragged, and heart pounded as he reached the familiar cramped room. Breathing a sigh of relief, he slid down the door.

  For a moment, the rapping ceased, letting him drift off to a dreamless slumber.