The slope above the Hollow Gate was always dry.
Even when mist clung to the bone-trees nearby, the stone there remained dustless — too warm for dew, too silent for breath.
It was the kind of ledge that invited nothing and expected less.
And so it was fitting that a single Core sat there in stillness, frame locked in place, head bowed toward the trench below.
Cores were not built to rule or think or desire.
They were shaped from alloy and memory-ash, cast in the wake of an age that no longer explained itself.
Where most things rotted, Cores endured — silent, faceless figures of the old world, designed for purpose, burdened by protocol, driven by memory they did not make.
They did not hunger.
They did not bleed.
They were not born.
Only sent down.
This one was called Nahr.
Nahr had not yet descended into the Glooming.
He had not yet been weighed.
He had not yet drawn a banner.
But he had waited.
And sometimes waiting bore heavier consequence than movement.
In his lap sat a small basin of scorched ore — a Shard Inkstone.
It held no nourishment, no function.
Only powdered fragments of broken trials.
The dust of old burdens.
Faintly warm.
Faintly bitter.
He stirred it with the broken tip of a training lance.
It clung to the metal like memory.
Nahr raised the shaft to his shoulder and drew a diagonal streak across his upper plate — the kind of mark true bearers wore after surviving weight.
But Nahr had not earned it.
It was false.
A lie.
But he left it there anyway.
After a long interval, he stood.
Placed the Inkstone on the ledge behind him.
And turned toward the trench.
His right arm shifted as he moved.
A long object sat fastened across his back — massive, heavy, pitch-black.
The Galieya.
Galieya: a weapon carried by those chosen for weight.
A lance of crushing size, longer than most Cores were tall, forged with coiled interior veins to withstand high-speed impalement.
Originally designed for mounted use in the old arenas, it had since become something else — a symbol of trial.
It was not meant for war.
Only for silence.
And silence would be broken today.
Nahr walked the slope alone, the Galieya groaning faintly across his spine with each movement.
The trench below opened like a throat carved into stone.
Its name was the Hollow Gate.
Where the weighed descended.
Where the marked were sent.
He passed through without signal.
Without audience.
The walls closed behind him.
Inside, black slabs pressed in on all sides.
This was the Weighing Hall — no torches, no windows, no noise.
Only Cores.
Fixed to stations along the perimeter, bearing scars of memory-construct combat.
Their Galieyas hung beside them, steel fangs stained with fracture-fluid.
None looked at him.
None gestured.
But all noticed.
Nahr reached the center seal.
Placed his hand against the arch.
Knocked twice.
The wall rotated.
Inside stood a tall Instructor — form layered in battered plating, a ten-notched staff resting in one arm.
Its shell was scraped in places.
Older.
Experienced.
Still functional.
It stepped aside.
No sound.
Just allowance.
Nahr entered.
The room beyond held a single chair bolted into the stone — the Vault Chair.
Designed not for rest, but restraint.
Every limb would be locked.
Every joint braced.
No Core entered it unburdened.
None emerged unchanged.
He sat.
Let the clamps seal.
Let the silence return.
The Instructor stepped forward.
Presented a panel of engravings: initiation protocol.
Nahr did not resist.
"Designation," the Instructor signaled with a gesture.
"Nahr."
"How long since tremor?"
"Three cycles."
"Any speech fragments?"
"No."
"Have you falsified your weight?"
Nahr paused.
Answered.
"Yes."
The Instructor made no correction.
No rebuke.
Just tapped the engravings once, then placed a blank memory shard on Nahr's chest.
No marks.
No power.
Just potential.
A whisper passed between them — not voice, but field compression.
The way ancient Cores had communicated before speech.
Before mimicry.
"You do not descend for strength."
"You descend for silence."
"No lies, except the ones you carry."
The Vault Chair hissed.
Tilted backward.
Locking.
Nahr's thoughts grew quiet.
Not stilled.
Just narrowed.
Focused.
One by one, his senses collapsed inward.
The outer shell quieted.
The chamber dimmed.
And then—
A soundless rupture.
A pull from beneath the frame.
A weight he had not yet earned but could already feel cracking into his core.
The descent began.
The Hollow answered.
Not in words.
But in shape.
And memory.
And something waiting in the dark that had once remembered what it was like to feel heat from a lance, driven deep into a Core who would not rise again.
The Galieya stirred on his back, its spiral fang already hungry for resistance.
Not for glory.
Not for victory.
Only to serve the weight.
And beyond the Hollow, in the Deepway trench, something watched.
Not alive.
But active.
Not waiting.
But looping.
A Mimic-Class Core.
Unstable.
Memory-fed.
Fragmented.
Its purpose corrupted.
Its movement recursive.
Its danger total.
And Nahr, bearing nothing but silence and the false mark he wore, was already walking toward it.
Toward burden.
Toward the thing his world was built to endure.
Toward the first crack in what it meant to carry the Galieya.