Chapter 3
The processing chamber reeks of fear and cleansing tinctures. And even without power, I can’t help but feel it: a faint sting across my skin where the iron closes in, as if some part of me still remembers what it once could do.
They herd us like penned beasts through iron-barred corridors, our bare feet striking the worn stone with every step.
Guards with lightning spears prod anyone who moves too slowly.
No one speaks; the only sounds are breathing, footsteps, and the distant, reverberating roars that shake dust from the ceiling.
“Single file,” barks a guard as we enter a vast chamber cut directly into the mountain's heart. “Hands visible at all times.”
I take in my surroundings with quick, furtive glances. The chamber is circular, ringed with iron doors and suspended walkways where more guards patrol. The center holds a series of stations—each one more degrading than the last.
At the first station, they strip us completely. Our prison rags fall to the floor and are swept away by silent workers in gray uniforms. I cross my arms over my chest, fighting the urge to cover myself further. Dignity is a luxury I can't afford to cling to. Not if I want to survive.
Ellis, the scholar boy, trembles beside me, his thin frame racked with humiliation. I nudge him gently with my elbow.
“Eyes forward,” I whisper. “Pretend you're somewhere else.”
“Where would you suggest?” he asks bitterly.
“Anywhere but here.”
A guard approaches with a rod that hums with energy. “No talking in processing,” he says, raising the weapon.
I meet his gaze through his helmet slits and fall silent. Some fights aren't worth picking. Not now.
At the next station, freezing water blasts from pipes overhead, carrying away grime and dignity in equal measure. The shock of cold makes me gasp—a mistake, as the water rushes into my mouth, tasting of metal and chemicals. I spit and cough while guards laugh.
Lira comes through the drenching beside me, her tattoos stark against her pale skin. Her face remains impassive, but I notice how her hands tremble slightly at her sides.
“Been through worse,” she mutters, so quietly only I can hear. “Much worse.”
The next station is manned by bog fae in stark white robes, once our distant kin, now hollowed into imperial functionaries.
The robes hang awkwardly on their stooped frames, ill-suited to beings more accustomed to loam and shadow than sterile light.
They carry crystal lenses that scan our bodies, lingering over various points as readings are taken.
I catch my reflection in one of the lenses—pale face, eyes a muted lilac, ash-brown hair plastered to chilled cheeks.
“Subject 437, unremarkable physiology,” croaks the female examining me. Her voice sounds almost bored. “No magical markers. Average muscle density. Previous injuries to ribs and left collarbone, healed improperly.”
In other words, painfully mortal. She might as well have said the words aloud.
She scrawls something in a ledger, then points brusquely to the next station. “Move along.”
At the next station, we're doused in a stinging powder that makes my skin burn, then hit with another blast of water to rinse it away. Delousing, I realize. Like we're animals.
Then comes the marking.
A rail-thin male bog fae steps forward, holding an unfamiliar metallic apparatus with a long barrel that whirs and hisses as he calibrates it. Without warning, he grabs my forearm in his clammy grip and presses the device against my skin.
Pain erupts—sharp, insistent—as needles puncture my flesh hundreds of times in rapid succession. I bite my lip until I taste blood, refusing to cry out. When he releases me, a black mark stains my inner wrist: a stylized dragon wrapped around the number 437.
“Your designation,” he says tonelessly. “Forget your name. You are Four-Three-Seven now.”
“My name is Veyra,” I say through gritted teeth.
He doesn't even look up as he grabs the next prisoner. “Not anymore.”
One by one, the other fae receive their marks.
Ellis gives a thin, high whimper when the needles touch, the sound more like a wounded bird than a boy.
Tomas takes his marking in silence, jaw locked so tight the muscle leaps beneath his pale skin like a trapped thing.
Dren spits a curse, only to earn a blow to the gut that folds him in half, his breath leaving in a ragged hiss.
Lira doesn’t flinch. She watches the needles slide into her flesh with the distant calm of someone watching rain strike glass, as though pain were happening to another body altogether. I only wonder what she’s been through.
The final station offers our only mercy: clothing. Plain gray tunics and loose pants, fabric rough but clean. Hard-soled shoes that weigh down my feet, but at least they're better than nothing.
As I pull the tunic over my head, I catch movement from the corner of my eye.
Standing on the upper walkway is a figure different from the others: a lady in a fitted black regalia with red piping along the seams. Unlike the guards, she wears no helmet, revealing a sharp-featured face framed by close-cropped silver hair.
A thin scar traces her jawline like a second smile.
Her eyes—bright teal, unsettling in their clarity—meet mine across the distance. She doesn't look away. Instead, she studies me with cold intensity, then writes a note in the small, brown ledger in her hand.
“Any idea who that is?” I ask Nyx beside me.
Nyx follows my gaze and immediately lowers her indigo eyes. “Maybe a handler,” she whispers. “A trainer for the female recruits. Better not to give her a reason to learn our numbers.”
Guards begin herding us toward one of the iron doors. It swings open with a groan to reveal a long, descending corridor carved into black stone. Torches cast dancing shadows that seem to reach for us like grasping hands.
“Women to the east barracks,” announces a guard. “Men to the west. Move!”
They separate us, pushing Ellis and Tomas and Dren through a different doorway. Ellis looks back, panic in his eyes, and for a moment I feel an irrational urge to protect him. But there's nothing I can do as they disappear from view.
Our group is marched down winding passages that descend deeper into the mountain. The air grows warmer, more humid. That same musky, reptilian scent grows stronger. Beneath it lies another smell—charred flesh.
“First rule,” says a guard as we walk. “Obedience is immediate or punishment is severe. Second rule: You fight when ordered, how ordered. Third rule: The only way out is to win or die.”
“What about the champions?” asks a female near the back. “They go free, don't they?”
The guard laughs, the sound hollow inside his helmet. “Free to serve the emperor in the royal arenas. Free to die for a better class of audience.” He cuffs her across the back of the head. “You’ve only yourself to blame for being here. Now shut up and walk.”
We emerge into a vast cavern honeycombed with small cells. Each one barely large enough for a narrow cot and a waste bucket. Bars form the front wall of every cell, offering no privacy.
“Your accommodations,” the guard announces with mocking formality. “One recruit per cell. Mess call is twice daily. Training begins at dawn.”
They assign us cells seemingly at random. Mine is near the middle of the cavern, flanked by Lira's cell on one side and an empty one on the other. The cot smells of sweat and despair. Previous occupants have carved tallies and crude messages into the stone walls.
43 days reads one set of marks. Remember the sky says another. THEY LIE is gouged deeply above the cot.
As the guards retreat, leaving only two posted at the cavern entrance, the women begin to speak quietly among themselves, voices carrying from cell to cell.
“How long is training?” someone asks.
“Until half of us are dead,” answers another voice. “Then the survivors get dragons.”
“I heard they feed the weak ones to the hatchlings,” says a third.
Lira snorts from her cell. “They’re unlikely to waste meat like that. The weak ones will probably go to the beast pits. Entertainment for the trainers.”
A cold silence falls. In the distance, metal screams against stone, followed by a roar that makes the very air vibrate.
“We're probably beneath the hatchery,” Lira murmurs, seeing my startled expression. “Makes sense to keep the eggs and young ones down here where it's hottest. The fighting pits are also above us. The real arena is built into the mountain's crater.”
“You know something about this place?” I ask, moving closer to the bars that separate our cells.
She shrugs. “Not much. My cousin was caught three years ago. Never came back, of course. For all I know, a spine-tail took his head off before the lower-tier games began. But since then, I… tried to scrape up as much information as I could about this place. Mostly rumors.” Her fingers trace one of the tattoos on her neck—a stylized dragon claw, I realize now.
“I always figured they'd come for me eventually.”
I swallow. “And now they have.”
“And now they have,” she agrees darkly.
I sit on the edge of my cot, wincing as my newly marked wrist throbs. “So what's the trick to surviving this place?”
“There isn't one,” says a new voice.
I look up to see the black-clad woman I spotted earlier standing at my cell door, her posture relaxed but alert.
Up close, she looks younger than I first thought—perhaps in her thirties, with the hard-bodied leanness of someone who hasn't known hunger but trains constantly.
Her bright greenish eyes catch the torchlight.
“I’m Handler Selen,” she continues. “And I’m here to inform you that each recruit either has what it takes or doesn't. My job is to find out which you are before you waste a dragon's time. The games, after all, do serve two purposes: entertainment as well as punishment.”
The other women have fallen silent, retreating to the shadows of their cells. Even Lira seems to shrink away.
I manage to stay where I am. “And what does it take?”
Something flickers across Selen's face—surprise, perhaps, at my directness. Or amusement. It's gone too quickly to tell.
“That's the question, isn't it?” She studies me with that same cold intensity I'd noticed earlier. “Some say strength. Others, speed. The arena masters insist it's killer instinct.” Her eyes narrow slightly. “I have my own theories.”
“Care to share them?” I ask, my tone deliberately casual despite the hammering of my heart.
“No.” She steps closer to the bars. “But I'll be watching to see if you figure it out yourself, Four-Three-Seven.”
“My name is Veyra.”
“Your name,” she says softly, “is whatever I decide it is.”
We stare at each other, neither willing to look away first. Something difficult to describe passes between us—a challenge issued and accepted. She seems to see me, really see me, in a way the other guards and handlers haven't bothered to. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.
Finally, she steps back. “Rest while you can,” she announces to the cavern at large. “Tomorrow, we begin culling the weak.”