Crimson Ascension

Thomen's dream was to be selected in the next Ascension, the dream of every miner in the District. Living in Elysium meant eating good food—everyone knew that—but what he looked forward to the most was escaping the Gloom Caves.

His brother Jonan, who had become of age the previous year, told him about how draining it was to work there. Thomen hadn't believed him then, for Jonan was prone to bragging and enlivening stories. Oh, but how wrong he was. If anything, his brother downplayed the effects the Gloom had on you. Thomen had only worked eight hours, but he felt ready to keel over and die.

It was as if every time he entered those dark tunnels, a part of himself remained there.

The Ascension can't come soon enough. He whistled in the narrow tunnels, following the light of candles to the exit. Damned dark place! His wife would be waiting for him at home, one of the few things he had learned to appreciate in life. A memory he had tried to forget, one that every citizen of the District dared not utter out loud, surfaced unbidden in his mind.

The Graystones. Aiden. The last Ascension.

It had been a bloodbath—a public whipping and execution of two elderly miners. Maker send that never happens again. Aiden had started as a friend, but that relationship soon became a rivalry as Thomen got to know him better. It pissed him off how Aiden always seemed to know something important, but wasn't willing to share it, like he saw something but wouldn't tell anyone else.

Thomen sighed. Aiden might have been annoying, but he certainly didn't deserve what he got. Struck down by the Maker himself? Not even his ashes remained to tell the story. Abyss take him, but even the Overseers had looked downright surprised by the intervention.

He hurried the pace to his home, belly protesting with every step his drained body was forced to take. The Torch burned orange in the ceiling, its light almost fading to herald another night. Thomen navigated the District's streets and alleys, cutting through shortcuts to arrive at a plain, small house built of stone—his home.

The cloth that acted in place of a door was pulled aside. Light conversation echoed inside it, the voices hushed as if discussing something of crucial importance. Wife gossip. Thomen shook his head. His wife Nalia, and Tani, his sister-in-law, most likely.

"I'm back, love." Thomen walked inside, ignoring their shocked faces, and promptly sat across the cookfire. "What do we have for dinner—"

The fire was unlit. The pot was empty. Nothing but an empty belly made him pay attention to his surroundings. Thomen looked at his wife and, for the first time, he saw the fear and hesitation on her face. Tani's face was pale.

"What's going on?" Thomen said, keeping the worry from his tone. He was the man of the house; he had to show a strong front when a crisis arose.

"You haven't heard? The Overseer Tower is flooding with Sovrans, Thomen," his wife said, calling him by the name. Thomen? The matter must be serious indeed. "Big Red said there are hundreds of them. Hundreds! They even stopped distributing us food, said the next meal would be tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" Thomen stood up, anger clawing from the depths of his stomach. He had worked all day! Thrown into those draining depths of the Gloom, forced to mine or get beaten, meet the quota, or accept a lashing. "That's ratshit. No, that can't be right. They can do this to us. I've done more than the quota this week!"

"It's not just you, Thomen," Tani said, face somber. "They did it to everyone."

"Everyone?" Thomen missed a step. What could that mean? "Hundreds of Sovrans you say? In the Torch Sector? Fuck this, I'll go speak with Red myself."

"No! You can't!" His wife held him by the arm, her grip sweaty. "Did you forget what happened last time? Last time there were more Sovrans than the two Overseers…"

"Of course I haven't." Thomen embraced his wife, whispering reassurances in her ear. No one forgot the last Ascension, even if they didn't dare speak of it. "I'll be careful, keep my head down, and all that. Red will see me, love. He owes us that much."

Thomen headed out with a belly full of fire, flames that couldn't be unleashed lest his family be the one to suffer for it. No one voiced their disagreements to the Overseers, not anymore. The two new ones that replaced Travor and Corvanis were not as kind as their predecessors. Not by a long shot.

***

The streets were silent. Empty. The entire District must have heard about the arrival of the Sovrans, but no Miner was fool enough to go inquire the Overseers about it. Instead, they waited deep in the houses of bricks and broken stone. In wary silence, they waited, ready to bolt at any time.

Thomen was not about to take the matter of his family being refused their food allocations lying down. He had worked for it—bled for it—so the least he deserved was an explanation from Red. Even the anger didn't turn him into a complete fool.

The house ahead was unique; brick had been cobbled together to unite four regular residences into a larger whole. Red's mansion was one of the few that had a wooden door, though it looked rotten and too old to stand. It was a symbol of power and high standing.

Thomen knocked on the door—three slow taps followed by one strong one, with two quick thuds at the end. The door opened, and Estan, a gruff-looking miner, face covered in soot and grime, gave him a narrow-eyed glance before shooing Thomen away.

"Come back later, boy. The boss is busy," Estan said, beginning to close the door.

Thomen shoved his foot to block the door from closing. "Red will see me. I'm calling in the favor he owes."

"If it's about the Sovrans, let me save you the trouble—"

"Let him in, Estan." Red's voice called from inside the residence. "A favor is a favor. Let no one say Big Red doesn't honor his word."

Thomen pushed the door open and entered to see Big Red sitting on a stone chair, rags for cushions, his eyes facing the distant wall. His blusterous smile was nowhere to be seen, replaced by a somber frown that didn't seem to fit him. He looked at the bricks, as if trying to get an answer, yet the stone remained silent.

Thomen had never seen the man so distant before. "They refused us food today, Red. I'm almost doubling my quota for the week."

"It ain't about quotas, kid," Big Red grunted.

"My wife says there are hundreds of Sovrans in the Overseer Tower, but that can't be right. That place isn't that big." Thomen stood on restless feet. Red's somber mood was deeply off-putting. "Why would they come to our Districts in such numbers? The next Ascension is years away."

Corvanis had been a stickler for rules and the Blooded Decree, never allowing a single miner inside the tower, but his successor was not the same. The Sovran, Maker, sent him to the Abyss, was a lazy tyrant who refused to lift his finger to get things done. Big Red had been one of the first to see and capitalize on the man's corruption. Now, his people served the two new Overseers, feeding Red information he had never before been able to get.

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"If anything, Nalia downplayed their numbers. Abyss, kid, I've never seen that many Sovrans in one place." Red shook his head, still looking at the wall. "Why would they come, you ask? Because they have no choice."

"Sovrans always have a choice, Red."

"Not this time, kid. In a way, they are no better than us now." Red suddenly burst into laughter. "Death comes for all of us, but I never thought we'd starve to death."

"You're not making any sense, man. Why would we starve to death? Elysium has plenty of food—"

"Elysium is gone, kid." Big Red finally turned away from the plain brick wall and met Thomen's eyes. "It was destroyed."

Thomen gave a few chuckles—it was a funny joke, after all—but Red didn't laugh. His eyes were dead, his face was serious as if he had been sentenced to Excision. It was then that Thomen realized the truth. It was no joke.

It was the truth.

"But… how?" Thomen fell to his knees, the implications of the news crashing onto him like a brick. Elysium supplied all the food the District's people ate, all of it. The mines were no place for agriculture; nothing grew in the Districts. Nothing. "But… that means…"

"We will starve to death." Big Red nodded. "The Sovrans will take what we have until nothing is left. Abyss, maybe they'll even put us into spike and eat us alive. Calling the favor was stupid, kid. I was about to gather all the miners an' tell you all—orders from the Overseers an' all that."

"Redin Solivar!" An imperious voice thundered outside the house. "Make yourself present at once."

"Speaking of his… lordship." Red stood up, walking with the calm of a man who walked to meet an executioner's blade.

Overseer Eradorn, the second in command of the District, stood outside, hands clasped behind his back, nose pointing high as if the ground wasn't worthy of his gaze. "You will accompany my men around the Catalyst District. You are to assist in minimizing the Ratling resistance, if any are brainless enough to disobey."

"Of course, Lord Eradorn. It will be my pleasure," Big Red said, voice cheerful. He was a survivor, someone who could go from pondering his impending death to licking an Overseer's shoes in the blink of an eye. "May I ask why any of us Ratlings would resist your lordships' decrees?"

"Orders are to apprehend any food hidden by your filthy lot. You are to ensure no one dies needlessly." Eradorn made as if to leave.

"We'll die if you do that!" Thomen blurted out, the anger he had been keeping in, exploding in a moment of outrage. "Some of us won't last the week—"

Eradorn's eyes widened at the intrusion, as if he expected a miner to accept death and be glad. His hands snapped to the saber at his hip. "Know your place, Ratling! Need I remind you who you're talking to?"

"Silence, boy!" Red admonished him with a hushed tone. "Forgive him, Lord Eradorn. The boy has always been broken-headed."

Nalia would starve. His brother would starve. Their parents would starve. Thomen would starve. In the mines, an empty belly meant death. The Gloom was difficult to keep at bay with a full stomach for sustenance, but on an empty stomach? If starvation didn't take every miner in the district, the Gloom would.

"Or what? You're gonna starve us anyway, and that's no different than killing us." Thomen felt a fool, but he wouldn't back down. He wondered, in the fleeting second as the Overseer's sword unsheathed, if that was how Aiden had felt that day.

It took a fool to understand a fool. It was no wonder they had been rivals.

The Overseer's sword descended in a flash. Thomen raised his arm to protect himself on instinct, fear, and regret screaming inside his head for ever having opened his mouth. Pain seared through his arm. Blood splashed on his face. Something fell on the ground with a soft thud. Thomen looked down, only to see his severed arm still twitching.

It was over. He was going to die. Worst of all, he had even accepted it. The pain made him wince a little, but it wasn't overwhelming. His mind was still processing what had happened; the pain would come later, even if he'd be dead before then.

Overseer Eradorn raised the sword again, intent on ending Thomen's life when the ceiling shook. Dust fell from the ceiling, the ground rumbling as if something threatened to upend the untouched stone and carve it into mountains. Eradorn almost dropped the sword, the dread in his face unbecoming of a Sovran.

It was worth it, Thomen thought. The sight of the high and mighty Sovran terrified was a good send-off.

"We are doomed…" Eradorn muttered, eyes wide. "The Maker truly has abandoned us." He turned around, a beastial snarl directed at Thomen, who clutched his severed arm and knelt on the floor. "Die, you filthy creature!" He brought the sword down in a cleave.

A flash of red broke through the ceiling. Eradorn yelped, dropping the sword as his arms snapped behind his back. Thomen watched in confusion as his blood, which leaked from the stump that was his arm, flowed into the air like droplets of an unnatural rain.

Thomen followed the trail of the blood, but what he found made him question his sanity. High in the air, underneath the Torch, a man hovered like a figure woven from myth. His hair was red, flowing like the fires of the remnant that illuminated his arrival. Crimson armor wrapped around his limbs, forged with an intricate mastery that evoked admiration even by the common folk.

"You dare hurt my people, Overseer?" His voice was a divine decree.

"Who… my lord… who are you?" Overseer Eradorn could barely speak. Fear reeked out of him like a stench. "Forgiveness… if I insulted you, but I was only administering punishment on this Ratling—"

"By whose authority do you feel entitled to harm my people?" The more he talked, the angrier he seemed. Thomen couldn't help but feel he knew this Sovran, somehow. Even though that was impossible.

His people? Us? Thomen didn't understand why the man would speak like that. Perhaps he had misunderstood; no Sovran would treat a Miner that way.

"I'm Overseer Eradorn, my lord," Eradorn said, hands still held behind his back, though the bulge of his muscled arms implied it was not his intention. "It is my right, given by the Maker, outlined in the Blooded Decree. The right of might and dominance."

"The right of might and dominance." The red-haired man nodded. "Then you will have no complaints for what is to come."

Overseer Eradorn heaved a sigh of relief.

"Overseer Eradorn, for striking an innocent who cannot defend himself, I, Draven von Astrais, Archon of Blood, Warden of the Sixfold Corridor, and Protector of the Haven, hereby sentence you to die."

"What—" Eradorn fell to the floor, eyes sightlessly looking up. Dead.

Thomen's mind was in chaos. An Overseer had died? Just like that? If that was not surprising enough, the cause of his death had been a punishment for the assault against him—a miner. Since when did a Sovran who killed a miner was sentenced to death?

"What's going on…" Big Red looked at the dead Overseer, then at the man who floated in the air, eyes wide. "Hey, kid, am I finally getting crazy? Or I'm dead and this… What in the Abyss is going on?"

The red-haired man's voice thundered in the air, reaching every corner of the District. "I know you heard me—all of you. Hurt my people, lift a finger against a Miner, and I will come for you. Elysium is no more, but I will not tolerate disregard for the lives of the people who now welcome you in their homes."

Crimson orbs descended from an inconspicuous hole in the ceiling, falling to the ground like rain. There was movement inside the spheres—people. Thomen blinked several times before accepting the sight before him. People inside spheres made of ruby.

"You're right, Red." Thomen winced, clenching the stump on his arm. "What in the Abyss is going on…"

"Thomen." A voice echoed from behind him—the red-haired man's voice. "I'd say you look well, but you're missing one arm too many." The man smiled. "It's been a while."

"Did we… meet—" Thomen yelped as something burst through his grip. Abyss take me. His arm had grown from thin air. Sovran Magic! The severed limb was still on the ground, the only indication that today's events had ever happened.

That and Overseer Eradorn's dead body.

"What's gotten into you? I never would have thought you'd have the guts to insult an Overseer." The red-haired man talked as if he knew Thomen.

"Well, my lord, this fool of a friend I once had used to say you couldn't get rich without taking risks." Thomen frowned, clenching and unclenching his new arm.

"That's not right." The red-haired man corrected. "It is 'can only change things if you take risks.'"

Thomen's mouth dropped open, eyes wide. Shivers ran through his spine as he met the red-haired man's eyes and the smile on his lips. It wasn't a cruel grin, more like a genuine appreciation after having encountered an old friend. The face of a boy flashed in Thomen's mind, the one who had voiced his anger at the Overseers—a feeling which all miners had shared.

When he looked at this Sovran, Thomen saw the boy chained to the dais. The boy who smiled amidst the painful lashes. His eyes were different. His body was many times taller. His hair was a different color. But his voice was similar. The care in his gaze felt familiar. His heart was the same.

"Aiden?" Thomen blurted out.

The man smiled and vanished.