88 - The Will of the Weak
CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT
The Will of the Weak
"Rogara, hurry! Sharn will speak!" My brother tugged my wrist and plunged into the throng knotting around the river terrace. Whenever Sharn, Voice of Sjakthar, raised her tusks to the sky, half of Vadis raced to stand beneath the echo of a God. The hope was always the same: Be seen, be judged worthy—receive a Khoris.
Agnash craved that spark more fiercely than food. I loved him for it, though I knew, better than he dared admit, that not even Utra had won Sjakthar's Khoris, and Utra was a stone-wall of a Vadruk. Agnash, strong as he was, would likely return from Kharvad with scars instead of glory.
Still, I ran after him. Or tried to. Each stride tightened the dull ache behind my ribs until it raked fire through my chest.
Agnash and I shared no blood, yet he had claimed me as kin the first time he shared his hunt-portion instead of eating all by himself. He could have outraced me easily—his stride was long, his lungs untroubled, but each time he gained ground he halted, head angled back, waiting.
"It's your blood-source again," he said, already knowing the answer. I nodded once, not trusting air for speech. The Vadruks blamed a flaw in the organ that pumped the river of life—thin-walled, they said, too weak to drive power through my veins. When it complained, vision blurred and darkness nipped the edges of sight.
It had leaked strength from me since birth, and with it leaked my kin's patience. Leftovers and field scraps kept me breathing; nothing more, as my kin didn't see me as worthy of more. Still, Agnash slowed and matched my limping jog. His patience stung worse than the pain itself. "Go," I told him. "Sharn won't wait."
He looked torn for a heartbeat, then shook his head.
We reached the place at last, chests heaving. Sharn was nowhere in sight; only hums of conversation drifted where her rune-glow had surely stood moments earlier.
"What happened?" Agnash asked, catching a breathless warrior by the wrist.
The warrior, still bright-eyed from whatever Sharn had declared, answered with reverence rather than haste, as if tasting each word. "Sharn says an ancient Baruk has come inside Vadis."
I felt my chest tighten, though not from the flaw in my blood-source this time. A Baruk here? Those iron-clad giants were spoken of as judges of the Deep Abyss, never wanderers of caverns. They tested themselves in the endless dark, proving worth before Sjakthar. Our city of stone and crystal seemed far too small to hold such a being.
Agnash leaned forward. "Truly inside? Not watching from the chasms?"
"Inside," the warrior repeated, lowering his voice. "Hidden for now, but Sharn saw him, and Sharn does not lie."
A slow ripple of awe travelled through the listeners crowding close. If Sharn's had confirmed the sight, doubt was useless. Still, questions erupted: Why would a titan leave the great abyss? Why here? Why now?
The warrior lifted a hand, palm upward, to quiet them. "He seeks an Ultharis. One of us. A Saruk."
A stunned silence followed. Even the courtyard torches seemed to pause in their crackling. An Ultharis, a god's voice, chosen from the lowest warrior rank rather than from the proven Vadruk? Tradition bent beneath that idea like metal over flame.
"And he may grant Khoris," the warrior added, barely above a whisper. "A Khoris stamped by a Baruk himself."
Agnash's throat bobbed. For a moment the dream in his eyes burned brighter than fire: a direct path from Saruk to glory, leaping past Kharvad's brutal gate. But as quickly as it blazed, the light faltered. The rumour that the choice might already have been made drifted around us like damp smoke. Agnash glanced at me, unspoken blame flickering—then softening into regret. He had waited for his stumbling kin, and that single kindness might have cost him everything.
Guilt poured like cold water down my spine. I cursed my fragile heart, cursed the breaths I'd stolen from his chance, yet I could not return them.
"We'll know soon enough," someone muttered, and the knot dispersed to trade mana crystals deeper in the market. Agnash and I remained where we stood.
Luckily, we learned the choice had not yet been made. The Baruk would hold a trial—its shape still a mystery. Agnash's shoulders squared at the news. "I need to prepare," he said, then corrected himself with a nod toward me. "We need to prepare."
I envied his steady rhythm. "I will do what I can," I said, meaning it, and knowing what that meant. Extra laps before dawn until my vision blurred; silent forms with an axe so light children used it for drills; breath-work to lengthen the narrow moments before pain clamped down.
But I knew well that it would matter little, even beyond this trial. Kharvad still loomed at cycle's end. I had already accepted the likely line of my fate: step into the lower caves, die, but carve my name into the memorial stone so that, even in death, I would linger in history, That way, perhaps I might never truly die, so long as there were people in Vadis to see my name.
***
Once the day of the trial arrived, the open fields south of the river filled long before the crystals overhead dimmed. Sharn waited alone at the centre, but no sign of the Baruk appeared—no thunder-footed giant, no crimson glare. Some Saruk muttered that he must be a master of shadows, slipping through air too thin for ordinary eyes. Others whispered of abyssal beasts that wore darkness like a cloak.
The doubts lasted only until he spoke.
"Let us begin."
The words pressed outward, soft yet immovable, like a weight set upon the marrow of every listener. My pulse stuttered; even the warriors who bragged of never bowing felt their knees shift. Whatever hid behind that voice needed no shape to command belief.
More than nine hundred Saruk ringed the field: helms polished, bone axes ready, hide straps tightened for the kill they expected. Agnash stood beside me, fingers flexing around the haft of his heavy blade.
Stolen novel; please report.
"What do you think we're going to fight?" he asked, scanning the horizon for cages or chained beasts.
I glanced down at my own practice-axe, light enough that a half-grown child used its twin in drills. "I only pray we aren't told to fight each other," I said. The rumour that Sharn's ascent had been a blood-match lingered in Vadis like woodsmoke. I pictured Agnash raising his weapon and forced the thought away.
He answered with the grin he saved for worries: "If it comes to that, I'll keep you behind me.". While I felt the warmth of his words, I simply refused to lean on him—refused to be remembered as a burden.
I had found peace long ago, once I realized I had no chance of surviving Kharvard. Since then, my goal had been simple: don't die, and reach Kharvard. So, knowing I had no chance of being selected for this trial made everything feel simpler.
Truthfully, I was here for Agnash. He had always stood by my side, despite the open disgust my kin showed me. Knowing he would participate made me want to come too—even if it truly became a death match. If that was the case, then at least I would be there to repay him for everything he had done.
But no matter our training or the theories we had about what this trial would entail, we were surprised all the same as a hush rippled across the ranks. From the ground rose three jagged walls of ice, one enclosure, then dozens, then hundreds, each no wider than a single body. The growth was silent, almost careful, yet when it ended the field had become a crystalline maze. A lit torch was then placed inside every empty enclosure.
The Baruk's unseen voice followed, resonant with that same impossible calm.
"Strength and might do not concern me. Only will. Guard your fire, and show me its worth."
Will? The word felt strange on my tongue. Around me weapons dipped uncertainly; no beast had appeared, nor any rival to strike.
Then the mist crawled in: a breath of winter so bitter the torches hissed. It slithered around greaves, climbed spines, stole colour from skin. I shivered hard enough that my weak heart fluttered, but I kept my feet.
"Enter."
The command vibrated through bone. Almost without thinking I stepped over the ice lip into the nearest enclosure. The cold reached up as if to seize my ankles; frost raced across the floor behind me like water pulled by a tide.
Outside, confusion spread in choked whispers. "Guard the flame? Against what?" "Is something hiding in the mist?" Blades shifted from hand to hand, useless. They had been trained for direct combat, but no enemy was named.
I braced the torch upright, its wavering light painting orange over the ice. Through a narrow vent I saw Agnash still outside, eyes darting between enclosures, axe gripped but idle.
The voice came again, unhurried, identical.
"Enter."
The sound filled my enclosure and, somehow, the world beyond it. I pressed a palm to the vent slits. "Agnash," I screamed. He met my gaze but did not move. Doubt pinched his features, doubt I had never seen on him before.
A fourth wall grew, sealing the enclosure and turning it into a cage. Ice thudded into place around every cage, and Agnash vanished behind it. I understood at once: hesitation itself had been measured, and most had already failed.
Mist thickened until the torch's glow shrank to a trembling halo. I drew the axe close, not for use, but because its familiar weight steadied my racing blood. Somewhere beyond the ice I imagined Agnash's frustration, But I tried to focus on the trial itself, realizing I could not escape the cage.
The voice, no longer distant but as near as my own heartbeat—echoed a final time, as if sealing judgement. "Strength and might do not concern me. Only will. Guard your fire."
I gripped the torch; the mist nipped at its edges like hungry teeth. Protect the flames, I reminded myself, answering the Baruk's first command.
Then his second decree rang out—calm, absolute:
"Utter a single word, and the flame dies."
Silence dropped over the cages as if sound itself had frozen. Everything the Baruk spoke seemed carved from some deeper stone than language; even thinking against it felt dangerous.
I tried to steady my breath. The cold will reach me first, I thought. The cold, or whatever drifts inside that mist. But a shard of wild hope wedged in my mind: if a voice alone carried such weight, what manner of purpose must ride behind it? To serve such a being would mean existing for a reason larger than the hunt, larger than Kharvad itself.
The thought felt foolish, one heartbeat of vanity, yet it warmed me as the mist thickened.
***
They came softly: shapes like pale cloth, fluttering through the vent slits. Fingers of cold brushed my cheeks, testing. "Surrender," they breathed without breath. "Tip the torch. Rest."
I clamped my hands around the haft until bone ached.
Somewhere close another flame guttered, then a scream, high and short. The sound knifed through the gloom; worse was the instant hush that followed, as if the caged voice had never been. A second scream rose farther off, then a third, each one snuffed faster than the last. The resulting pockets of silence felt heavier than the screams.
Not yet; I will not fall before Kharvad. I wrapped that thought around me like a hide cloak. Every time a ghost tugged at the torch, I jerked it away, knuckles splitting against the wood.
Hours crawled. The torch's heat dwindled, fighting both mist and phantom hands. My legs dulled to numb stumps; the flawed blood-source behind my ribs laboured like a cracked bellows. Still, I guarded the flame.
From neighbouring cages faint lights blinked out one by one. The ghosts returned each time fiercer, as if emboldened by every victory. At last my feet no longer existed to me; only throbbing wrists and the trembling flame remained. The mist's chill bit deeper, crumbling the flame to a thin blue tongue. "Starve it," the ghosts whispered. "Eventually, all fires die."
I could not speak, but I could answer. Teeth clenched, I pressed my palm beneath the torch. Flesh hissed; pain blazed white, but the tiny blaze flared higher, devouring the fat and blood. I forced the other hand forward, offering more fuel. The agony coursed through arms, chest, skull.
The ghosts recoiled, surprised, but regrouped. Cold seeped into the burned skin, threatening to snuff both fire and mind. The world contracted until there was only the torch—my hands, and at last, everything else vanished.
Once I opened my eyes again the mist had thinned—whether minutes or hours later I could not tell and figures resolved beyond the ice cage. Sharn strode first, runes pulsing. Behind her walked a being scarcely my height, cloaked in darkness that sucked colour from the air. Small—almost fragile—yet every step crackled with the same weight that had pinned Vadis entirely. The Baruk.
Recognition struck like a hammer though I had never laid eyes on him: the voice, the command, the impossible stillness around his frame. Power needed no bulk.
The ice split and fell away. I hunched over the torch, half-blind from cold and pain, but he regarded me as though seeing every thread inside me.
His words unfurled, soft yet vast:
"Yield not your flame, but join it to mine.
Let your ember and my frost burn as one,
and rise as the Warlock of Omen."
No demand, only an invitation, shimmering in the air like a thread of light. The power behind it was palpable, denser than mana, waiting for an answer.
Could I be the one? The notion felt impossible, but the thread hovered regardless, drumming against my thoughts like a pulse. Accept or refuse, it seemed to say. Choice is the final test.
I could not speak; the torch still lived in my hands. Instead I gathered what remained of myself and pushed that pulse toward the waiting thread. Pain vanished; heat and cold fused into something whole.