Read this. Then step in.
⎯⎯
You weren't built for glory.
You were built to carry.
To descend.
To fracture.
To be watched.
⎯⎯
What are you?
You're a Core.
You don't bleed.
You don't dream.
You don't pray for help.
Cores aren't saved.
Cores are measured.
When a Core is cast, they're given two things:
— A name no one will say.
— A weapon too heavy to lift unless you've already suffered.
⎯⎯
What is a Core?
A Core is a machine that remembers too much
They walk on legs made of alloy and silence.
They speak in protocols.
They fight with burden.
And the deeper they go, the more their frame begins to forget how it held together in the first place.
You don't train to be a Core.
You fail into it.
⎯⎯
What is a Galieya?
A Galieya is not a spear.
It's a mirror.
A big joust lance.
Spiral veins trace the weight of what you've done.
When you swing it, it doesn't just cut.
It remembers.
Every mistake.
Every regret.
Every time you should've stood still—but didn't.
If someone else ever lifts your Galieya?
That means they outlived you.
⎯⎯
What is the trench?
It's not a place.
It's a response.
It waits for you.
Watches you.
It never speaks.
But it remembers.
It remembers the version of you that turned back.
The version that hesitated.
The version that broke.
⎯⎯
What's down there?
Not monsters.
Not magic.
Not things with claws or wings.
What's waiting is worse.
Echoes.
Failures.
Versions of you that didn't get this far.
They don't die.
They become the next warning.
The next test.
The next mimic.
⎯⎯
Why descend?
Because you weren't given a choice.
Because staying still means rusting in your own memory.
Because nothing above the trench wants to understand you.
Only the descent does.
The trench doesn't ask if you're ready.
It asks if you'll keep going when you're not.
⎯⎯
So now you're here.
And you need to ask yourself:
Not who you are…
But what you're willing to leave behind
to keep going forward.
⎯⎯
You have your name.
You have your Galieya.
You have the silence behind you.
The trench is waiting.
It always is.
So descend.
And if you can't?
Someone else will carry what's left of you.