Darkness.
It clung to him like a second skin, thick and suffocating.
Cassian's body lay motionless, half-buried beneath a mountain of the dead. The stench of rot filled his lungs, thick and heavy with the weight of death. His fingers twitched, a faint spark of movement in an otherwise lifeless grave.
Pain struck next—deep, merciless, consuming.
A fire raged in his chest, licking at his ribs, clawing through his veins. Every breath was a battle, every movement a war. The air reeked of blood, rusted iron, and something fouler—the decay of forgotten men.
For a long moment, he did not understand.
Then the memories came.
The arena. The duel.
The blade cutting through flesh.
His father's voice, a whisper lost in the roar of the crowd. His mother's screams, silenced too soon.
The faces of his brothers and sisters—eyes wide with terror before their heads were struck from their shoulders.
His own execution.
Cassian's breathing turned ragged. His heart pounded like a war drum, its rhythm uneven, desperate. He should be dead.
Why wasn't he dead?
He forced his eyelids open, though even that was agony. The world above him was distant, blurred—a haze of flickering torchlight barely reaching into the abyss where he had been discarded. Shadows twisted and danced across jagged stone walls, lining the execution pit like the maw of some great beast.
He was supposed to rot here. Forgotten. Erased.
But the gods had denied him that mercy.
A sharp, wet squelch echoed through the pit.
Cassian froze.
The sound came again—a sickening rip of flesh torn from bone. Something was moving in the darkness.
Slowly, he turned his head, his vision swimming. Shapes shifted between the bodies, low growls reverberating through the pit.
Scavenger beasts.
The cursed creatures of the Wastes. Born in filth, raised in shadows, they thrived where only death remained. Some swore they were demons left behind from an age long forgotten. Others said they were simply nature's cruel joke.
Cassian only knew one thing: he wasn't dead yet, but he would be soon.
His fingers twitched, searching. He had no weapon. No strength. Nothing but the tattered remains of his execution robes and the fire of vengeance burning in his veins.
The first beast emerged into the faint light.
Its form was hunched, sinewy, its spine jutting out like the ridges of a broken blade. Patches of fur clung to its diseased skin, blackened claws clicking against the stone.
It sniffed the air.
Cassian stayed still.
Another beast slithered between the bodies, a second pair of gleaming yellow eyes cutting through the dark. Then a third.
A single wounded man. Three predators.
Not a battle. A slaughter.
The first creature stepped closer, drool spilling from its jagged maw. It smelled the blood on Cassian. Smelled the weakness.
Cassian's body was failing, but his mind sharpened.
If they saw him as weak, he was dead.
He forced himself upright—pain shot through his ribs, his muscles screamed, his vision darkened at the edges. But he clenched his jaw and did not fall.
The first beast hesitated.
Cassian let out a slow breath.
They were hunters, yes. But hunters knew when prey fought back. And Cassian was not prey.
He would never be prey again.
One of the creatures let out a guttural growl, stepping forward, testing him.
Cassian's hand closed around something cold. His fingers tightened. A broken femur, jagged at the end, slick with old blood. A crude weapon, but a weapon nonetheless.
The beast lunged.
Cassian twisted, agony ripping through him, but he did not falter. The sharpened bone plunged into the creature's throat.
A sickening gurgle.
Blood—thick, dark, hot—splattered across his chest.
The beast spasmed, claws raking his shoulder as it collapsed. Cassian staggered, barely staying upright.
The other two snarled, but they did not attack immediately. They circled, cautious now.
Cassian did not lower his stance.
The beasts smelled weakness. But now, they also smelled something else.
Blood.
And not just his.
The creatures hesitated.
Cassian did not.
With a raw, animalistic growl of his own, he lunged.
The pain no longer mattered.
The second beast barely had time to react before he drove the broken bone through its skull.
Its body twitched. Then, stillness.
The last one did not wait. It turned, retreating into the shadows.
Cassian remained standing, breath ragged. Blood dripped from his fingers, staining his hands red.
For the first time since he had awoken, the silence of the pit was absolute.
He had won.
But he had nothing left.
His knees buckled. The fire inside him flickered. The darkness came for him once more.
And this time, Cassian did not fight it.
A dull throb echoed in Cassian's skull, dragging him back from the void.
Pain was the first thing he recognized.
It wrapped around his body, gnawing at his ribs, his back, his legs—reminders of the battle he barely survived. His fingers twitched, still stained with blood. The corpses of the scavenger beasts lay beside him, their flesh already stiff with death.
He had won.
But victory in the pit meant nothing. He was still trapped.
Cassian exhaled, steadying himself. The air was thick with decay, but beneath the rot, another scent drifted in.
Smoke.
Faint, distant—but growing stronger.
Voices followed. Low murmurs, rough laughter, the shuffle of boots against stone.
Cassian did not move.
His body was failing him, but his mind sharpened.
Bandits.
The kind who scoured the execution pits, stripping the dead of whatever scraps of value remained. Rings. Boots. Occasionally, teeth.
They thought themselves kings of the Wastes.
They were scavengers.
A shadow flickered against the jagged rock walls above. Cassian remained still, half-buried in the bodies, his breathing slow, controlled.
The first bandit dropped into the pit.
His boots crunched against bone. A wiry figure, clad in patchwork leather, a rusted sword strapped to his hip. His face was obscured by a scarf, but his eyes glinted in the torchlight, scanning the dead.
A second followed. Then a third.
One of them kicked over a corpse.
"Nothin' but rotted meat," he muttered.
The first bandit crouched beside a fallen soldier, fingers prying at a silver ring on a severed hand. "Keep looking. The empire throws all kinds of men in here. Sometimes we get lucky."
Cassian fought the fire rising in his chest.
They did not see him. Not yet.
His fingers curled around the broken bone beside him. A crude weapon, but enough.
Another bandit chuckled. "Ain't much left of this one."
A sharp tug.
The weight on his chest shifted.
A bandit was pulling at his execution robe.
Cassian's eyes snapped open.
For a single moment, the world was still.
Then he struck.
The sharpened bone drove into the bandit's throat.
A wet gurgle. A spray of crimson.
The man collapsed, choking on his own blood.
The others reacted too late.
Cassian was already moving.
The second bandit fumbled for his sword, but Cassian lunged, seizing his wrist. With a savage twist, he wrenched the blade free.
Steel met flesh.
The bandit crumpled, his scream cut short.
The last one stumbled back, eyes wide with terror. "You're—"
Cassian did not let him finish.
One swift movement. The sword carved through his ribs.
The body slumped to the ground, unmoving.
Silence returned to the pit.
Cassian stood amidst the carnage, blood dripping from his fingers. His breath came
ragged, his muscles burning with exhaustion.
But he was alive.
And the bandits were not.
The fire in his lungs did not subside.
He had fought. Killed. Survived.
Not by luck.
Not by mercy.
By will.
He staggered, knees nearly giving way, but he did not fall. Instead, his gaze drifted to the bodies around him.
The empire had thrown him here to rot.
The beasts had tried to devour him.
The bandits had sought to strip him bare, just another nameless corpse in a pit of forgotten men.
But he remained.
His fingers tightened around the hilt of the stolen sword. It was unremarkable—chipped, unbalanced, the blade dull from years of neglect.
But it was his.
His first weapon since his supposed death.
His first step toward vengeance.
Cassian exhaled, slow and measured. The pain still raged within him, but beneath it, something else stirred.
The man who had fallen in the arena was gone.
What remained was something different.
Something reborn.
He turned, gaze shifting toward the rock walls that trapped him. The execution pit was not a prison.
It was a grave.
And Cassian did not belong in graves.
He turned toward the ledge where the bandits had come from. The climb would be brutal. His body was broken, his wounds still fresh.
But he had no choice.
His war was not over.
Not yet.
With slow, measured steps, Cassian began to climb.
And the empire that had condemned h
im would soon learn the folly of leaving him alive.
Pain was a language now. One that Cassian understood with cruel fluency.
He staggered forward, each step an open war against his own ruined body. The night stretched endlessly above him, stars like distant gods who had long abandoned him. His breath came in ragged gasps, his wounds screaming, but he did not stop. He could not.
The stench of rot still clung to his skin. The Execution Pit was behind him, but its horrors had not yet released their hold. The taste of death lingered on his tongue, the echoes of the scavenger beasts' snarls carved into his mind.
His hands trembled, slick with blood—his own, the bandits, it no longer mattered. He had killed them all, stripped them of what he needed, and now their lifeless bodies lay forgotten in the filth. He felt nothing for them. No remorse, no hesitation. Only a distant acknowledgment that this was the first of many.
His fingers curled around the hilt of the dagger he had taken from the last bandit—the one who had begged, had sobbed, had died choking on his own breath.
A black dagger. Its edge was chipped, its surface worn, but beneath the grime, there was something unnatural about it. The metal seemed to drink the moonlight rather than reflect it, a weapon forged not for battle, but for something far darker. It felt right in his hand, as if it had been waiting for him.
Cassian did not question it.
He had been reborn in the pit. What he once was had died there. What had risen from the corpses was something else entirely.
A sharp wind tore through the Wastes, carrying the scent of blood and fire from distant battles. The lands beyond Vordania's capital were no kinder than the empire itself. This was where the forgotten came to survive. Or die.
He kept moving.
Every instinct screamed at him to rest. To find shelter. His wounds were still open, his body dangerously close to collapse. But rest was weakness. Rest was death.
He had survived the pit. He would survive this, too.
The terrain shifted beneath his feet, the ground uneven and cracked. The Wastes were a place of lawless violence, a domain of exiles, cutthroats, and mercenaries with nothing left to lose. Just like him.
In the distance, the faint glow of firelight flickered.
Cassian narrowed his eyes. A camp.
It could be dangerous. It would be dangerous. But he needed to reach it. He needed supplies, food, information. And if he had to spill more blood to take them, so be it.
He tightened his grip on the dagger and pressed forward.
The closer he got, the more details emerged from the darkness. A cluster of makeshift tents, crude banners of stitched-together animal hide swaying in the cold wind. Shadows moved near the fire—five, maybe six men. Their laughter was coarse, edged with the kind of cruelty only found in those who had long since lost their humanity.
Bandits.
Cassian had no plan. No strength. No guarantees.
But plans were for men with time. Strength was for men without wounds. Guarantees were for fools who thought the world was fair.
Cassian was none of these.
He was something else.
He stepped into the firelight.
Conversation died the moment they saw him.
For a brief moment, there was only silence. Then, laughter. A low, amused sound, as if they had just been handed a joke they had yet to understand.
"The fuck is this?" one of them muttered, pushing himself up from a log. He was broad-shouldered, his face scarred from past battles, a wicked-looking axe resting at his side.
"A lost little rat," another sneered. "Crawled out of a ditch, did you?"
Cassian didn't answer. He stood still, his body swaying slightly from exhaustion, the dagger loose in his grip. He was barely standing. But his eyes—his eyes did not belong to a dying man.
The scarred man took a step forward. "You look like shit," he mused, tilting his head. "Maybe we put you out of your misery, eh?"
Cassian moved.
The dagger found flesh before the man could react. A quick, brutal thrust straight into the throat. The bandit choked on his own breath, eyes wide with disbelief as Cassian twisted the blade deeper.
The others exploded into action.
Cassian let the body fall and turned just as the next attacker lunged. He sidestepped, driving his dagger into the man's ribs, feeling the sharp give of bone and flesh. The bandit gasped, staggering back, hands slick with his own blood.
A third man swung a rusted sword. Cassian ducked, barely avoiding the blade as pain lanced through his side. His wounds were slowing him down. He was weaker than them, outnumbered, but he was not outmatched.
He wasn't fighting with strength. He was fighting with rage.
The dagger lashed out again, carving across exposed flesh. A scream. Another fell. Blood pooled beneath them, steam rising in the cold night air.
The last bandit hesitated.
Cassian turned to him slowly, his face a mask of shadow and firelight, his silver-blue eyes hollow pits of something monstrous.
The bandit ran.
Coward.
Cassian let him go. He would carry the story of this night with him, whisper it in fearful tones to others. And that was enough.
Cassian staggered back, his breath ragged. The fire crackled beside him, its warmth almost foreign against his frozen skin.
His hand clenched around the dagger's hilt. Blood dripped from its edge, staining the earth beneath his feet.
He had won.
But he was still dying.
His body was failing.
The world blurred at the edges, dark spots creeping into his vision. He fell to one knee, barely holding himself upright. Too much blood lost. Too much pain.
His mind screamed at him to stay awake, to move, but his body had reached its limit.
As the darkness closed in, Cassian did the only thing he could.
He pulled himself to the nearest tent, collapsed inside, and let the void swallow him whole.
Night pressed heavy over the Wastes. The fire at the bandits' camp burned low, its embers whispering secrets to the wind.
And in the distance, unseen eyes watched.
A figure, cloaked in the darkness of the dunes, stepped forward, silent as the grave. Their gaze lingered on the bodies, on the blood-soaked ground, on the collapsed form of Cassian Voss.
Then, without a word, they turned and disappeared into the shadows.
Cassian was not as alone as he thought.