There was no tunnel of light.
No divine voice.
No flicker of memory painting his past life as a tapestry worth remembering.
There was only pain.
Kael woke not in glory or grace, but in filth—naked, bloodied, and shivering on a pile of broken bones and rotted cloth, deep in the pit they called The Hollow. He didn't remember his name at first. Only the weight of his lungs burning for air, and the taste of iron in his throat.
Somewhere above, shadows moved. Voices whispered.
"Another failure?"
"No. He's still breathing."
"A waste of spirit stones. Toss him with the rest."
Then the light was gone. The hatch slammed shut. Silence returned, heavy and absolute.
That was Kael's first day in Ashenreach.
---
He had been someone before. He remembered flashes—screens, a sterile room, the sharp scent of antiseptic, and machines that hissed and beeped in slow rhythm. He'd died young. Weak. Surrounded by people who had already moved on in their hearts.
But this world?
This world didn't wait to bury you. It threw you in the dirt and watched to see if you crawled out.
Three days passed before he stopped hallucinating. Seven more before he stood on his own. He wasn't the only one down here. There were others—bodies long past death. Fools who weren't chosen, or who failed whatever ritual had brought them into the world.
"Spiritual misfire," someone might've said.
"Soul reject," maybe.
"Trash," definitely.
But Kael didn't die.
He sharpened bone fragments into a crude blade. Learned to filter water through moss and ash. Fought off something that slithered in the dark with too many eyes and not enough skin. He survived.
And on the thirteenth day, the Hollow opened again.
Not to save him.
To throw someone else in.
That was when Kael realized—he wasn't the first, and he wouldn't be the last.
But he would be the only one to crawl out.
This is your test.
Not from fate. Not from some system.
From the path you chose the moment you survived when you weren't supposed to.