The air in the weapons hall was colder than death.
Stone walls stretched high above, veined with black steel ribs, and each step echoed with a dull, metallic hollowness—as if the building itself mourned the lives it had swallowed. Rows of weapon racks stood like grave markers, casting sharp shadows across the dim training floor. Orange emergency lights flickered overhead, the only source of warmth in an otherwise colorless room.
It wasn't a place built for hope.
It was a forge for killers.
And I had just walked in.
---
They hadn't let me sleep. Not that I could anyway.
I was guided here after my examination, through a labyrinth of silent halls and elevator shafts, by a man who didn't say a word the entire walk. Just a nod toward the double doors before vanishing into the sterile void.
Inside the hall, my breath fogged in the chilled air. A smell lingered—oil, blood, steel. The scent of practice. Of death rehearsed.
A man was waiting.
He stood in front of the weapon wall like a ghost: tall, wiry, dressed in a black combat suit that clung to him like shadow. His silver hair looked like shattered moonlight, and his arms were folded behind his back with the stillness of a man used to war. His eyes, though—his eyes were voids. Deep gray. Lifeless. Not even hatred in them. Just... absence.
"Sun," he said. His voice was sharp. Precise. "Come closer."
I obeyed.
"I am Gord. I'll be your trainer, whether you live or die. Either way, you will be broken here. And in your breaking, you might become something useful."
He stepped aside, revealing a rack of weapons mounted on dark iron hooks.
A sword. A spear. A longbow and quiver. A pair of clawed gloves.
Each weapon shimmered faintly with a dull red gleam.
"These," Gord said, gesturing toward the rack, "are made of Eatir."
His gloved hand reached toward the spear. He pulled it free and held it like it was weightless.
"Eatir metal is born from the blood of Neighers. Their essence—what's left after they die—is extracted and fused with forged iron under ritual fire. Dangerous process. Costs lives. Warps the mind. But the result…" He thrust the spear tip into the training dummy behind him.
A hiss.
Smoke. Then rot.
The spear hadn't pierced the dummy. It had corroded through it.
I swallowed hard.
"It's the only thing that kills them," he said flatly. "No aura strike. No blessed bullet. Only Eatir can sever a Neigher from its cursed rage."
He handed me the spear. It was cold. Heavier than it looked, and it pulsed faintly—as though remembering the screams of the beast it was forged from.
"Sword. Spear. Arrow. Glove. That's your starter tier. You'll pick one. Master it. Bond with it."
I looked at the weapons. Each called to me in a different way.
The sword was sleek, one-edged, simple.
The bow was elegant, but the arrows looked wicked. Serrated. Crafted for pain.
The gloves… they weren't gloves. They were gauntlets—clawed, bristling with retractable blades, meant for dismemberment.
I turned back to Gord.
"Which one do you use?" I asked.
He didn't answer at first. Just smiled. A faint twitch of his lip. Not amusement. Just… motion.
He pulled a pair of gauntlets from a separate case—black steel with red veins pulsing under the surface—and slid them over his hands.
"I use these," he said. "Close range. Fast kill. Less talking."
He flexed his fingers. The metal shimmered.
"They call me fast. Not because I move quick—but because I don't hesitate."
He slammed both fists into the nearest training dummy. One strike. The head exploded. The torso folded. The dummy collapsed like wet paper.
Then he looked at me again.
"I lost sadness," he said suddenly.
I blinked. "What?"
"When I awakened," Gord said, stripping the gloves back off, "I sacrificed the emotion of sadness. It was the price I paid to kill. Now I feel nothing when my squad dies. When my comrades turn. When I bury another child who never had a chance."
His tone didn't change.
"I'm not a good man. I'm an efficient one."
He walked past me, toward a secondary rack where dulled training versions of the weapons rested.
"You, on the other hand," he said without turning, "lost joy. Which means you've got a hole in your soul. Just like me. You'll learn to live with it—or you won't."
He tossed a dull spear to the floor at my feet.
"Pick it up. Let's see if you have hands worthy of Eatir."
---
I trained until my arms bled.
Gord didn't praise. Didn't punish. He corrected.
"You grip it like it's a stick. Grip it like it's your spine."
"Don't lunge. Vanish."
"Every breath is a step toward killing, or dying. Choose."
The room became a blur of motion and pain. My hands blistered. My shoulders screamed. My body ached with every failed repetition. And through it all, Gord moved like smoke—effortless, silent, brutal.
By the third hour, my lungs were on fire.
By the fourth, my blood was blackening beneath my fingernails.
By the fifth, I collapsed.
Gord didn't approach. Just stood over me, arms crossed.
"Pain teaches," he said.
I groaned, half-conscious. "I thought… you couldn't feel sadness."
"I can't," he said. "But that doesn't mean I don't remember what it felt like."
His boot nudged the training spear closer to me.
"Get up, Sun. Rage isn't enough. Loss isn't enough. You need to choose to become something crueler than what hunts us."
I rolled onto my side. The lights spun above me. My body trembled.
But my hand found the spear.
I pulled myself upright, every inch of me shaking.
And I chose to keep going.
---
That night, I didn't sleep again.
But for the first time since Lira died, I didn't dream of her face.
I dreamed of the weapons instead.
Of steel forged from blood.
Of hands too broken to feel joy.
And of the fire inside me—slow, silent, but steady—that refused to die.
Tomorrow, I would choose my weapon.
Tomorrow, I'd bleed with purpose.
But tonight, I sat with my pain, and listened to the silence it left behind.
And in that silence, something inside me whispered:
"You are being carved."