Chapter 1: Death of weakness
The air in the Chasm tasted of rust, stale sweat, and the cold indifference of deep stone. Each swing of the pickaxe sent a jolt up Kaelen's arms, jarring muscles still aching from yesterday's quota, and the day before that, and the day before that stretching back into an indistinguishable grey smear of servitude. Around him, the rhythmic thunk… thunk… thunk of iron biting into rock formed the dominant prayer in the Dominion of Vol Raxis, a brutalist hymn to its master: Kratos Tyrannis, the Iron Fist, God of Ruthless Strength and Unyielding Conquest.
Vol Raxis wasn't built so much as it was forged. Jagged peaks clawed at a sky perpetually bruised by the smoke of countless foundries. Rivers ran sluggish and metallic-orange with runoff. Even the infrequent, tough vegetation seemed edged with sharpness. Tyrannis demanded strength, prized only power, and his Dominion reflected his nature – unforgiving, utilitarian, stripped of softness. Here, weakness wasn't just scorned; it was fuel.
Kaelen chipped away at a stubborn vein of dark ore, his movements economical, practiced. He kept his eyes down, focused on the rock face, but his awareness stretched outwards like fine wires. He catalogued the wheezing cough of the old man two paces down, the tremor in the hands of the younger boy struggling with a load shovel, the heavy, deliberate footsteps of the approaching Overseer.
This was the pulse of life – or its facsimile – under the Iron Fist: toil, exhaustion, fear. For many slaves, snatched from conquered or failing Dominions, that fear curdled into either brittle rage or hollow despair. Kaelen felt neither. What simmered beneath his carefully maintained mask of numb compliance was a cold, clear certainty, sharp as obsidian shard: This was temporary.
The Overseer stopped behind him, the shadow cast by his spiked helm momentarily eclipsing the weak glow of the lumen-crystals dotting the mine walls. The Overseer, Borlag, was typical Raxian stock – broad, thick-limbed, bearing the jagged brand of Tyrannis high on his cheekbone. He breathed heavily through his nose, a sound like bellows.
"Still breathing, Athenian scum?" Borlag's voice was rough gravel. The word 'Athenian' was spat like a curse.
Kaelen didn't flinch, didn't turn. He simply continued his rhythm, thunk… thunk… The movement acknowledged the Overseer without offering defiance or supplication.
"Look at me when I address you, weakling!" Borlag kicked the back of Kaelen's knee, hard enough to buckle it. Kaelen caught himself against the rock face, the rough stone scraping his cheek. He slowly straightened, turning his head just enough to meet the Overseer's gaze. His eyes, dark and unreadable, held no spark of hatred, only a dull assessment.
Borlag smirked, revealing teeth filed to points – another popular affectation among Tyrannis's devout. "That's better. Filthy breeding stock from the Mire. Your 'god' teaches you surrender well, doesn't it? Umbral, the Whisper of Weakness." He laughed, a harsh, barking sound that echoed flatly in the confined space.
Athens. The name tasted like ash and stagnant water in Kaelen's memory. It wasn't a mire, not truly, but a land of soft earth, clinging fogs, and whispering reeds, presided over by Umbral. The Fading God. A deity whose very essence was passivity, entropy, the slow leaching of will and strength. Umbral didn't demand worship; its influence simply was, a pervasive dampness that softened ambition, dulled passions, made muscles tire quicker and minds drift towards resignation. A sanctuary for the weary, perhaps, but fatally vulnerable in a world carved by divine predators.
Gods walked Atheria. Not as ephemeral spirits, but as tangible forces shaping reality within their Dominions. Dragon Gods reigned over scorching volcanic wastes where the earth bled lava and their scaled progeny soared on thermal vents. Angelic Sovereigns held court in cloud-piercing citadels, their Dominions islands of serene, terrifying order amidst glowing geometries of light, demanding absolute purity or swift, beautiful annihilation. Elsewhere, whispered legends spoke of the Clockwork Pantheon, Gods of Machinery whose followers sought perfection through metallic augmentation in cities that ticked and whirred with intricate, soulless life. And then there were the violent ones, like Tyrannis, Gods of War, Gods of Pain, Gods of the Hunt, whose realms echoed with screams and the clash of steel.
Travel between these Dominions was a nightmare few willingly undertook. Divine borders were often zones of chaotic energy, where the fundamental laws bent or broke under the conflicting wills of neighboring gods. Sometimes they manifested as physical barriers – unscalable cliffs, impassable chasms, seas of perpetual storms. Other times, the danger was more insidious: zones where thoughts twisted, reality warped, or divine entities actively struck down trespassers. To journey across Atheria was to court madness and death, usually succeeding only at the latter.
Umbral's inherent weakness made Athens… permeable. Unlike a Dragon God who would incinerate invaders or an Angelic Sovereign who might unmake them with a word, Umbral offered no defence. Its influence subtly weakened attackers, yes, made them sluggish, prone to doubt – but against the focused brutality of Kratos Tyrannis's followers, buoyed by their god's unwavering belief in strength, it was like mist against a battering ram.
Raids on Athens became frequent, then constant. They weren't conquests; Vol Raxis didn't want the territory, poisoned as it was by Umbral's draining aura. They came for resources, but mostly, they came for people.
Kaelen remembered the last raid vividly. Not the chaos, not the burning huts, but the tableau. His parents, forced to their knees in the muddy centre of the village square. A visiting Emissary of Tyrannis – not the god himself, but a lesser manifestation, shimmering with borrowed power – watching with detached amusement as Raxian soldiers… performed. An execution as theatre. Entertainment for a minor deity bored on a diplomatic visit. He remembered the crunch of bone, the spray of red against the grey sky, the Emissary's faint, approving nod before it turned away, already losing interest.
That memory didn't fuel a burning desire for vengeance in Kaelen. Revenge was a luxury, an emotional indulgence. It required investment in the past, in the system that created the hurt. Kaelen invested in nothing but the future, a future completely divorced from gods and Dominions.
Borlag grunted, apparently satisfied by Kaelen's brief submission. "Keep working. Fail the quota again, and you'll be rock dust by sunrise." He moved on, his heavy tread diminishing down the tunnel.
Kaelen turned back to the rock face. His hands were steady. The scrape on his cheek stung faintly. He thought of his siblings – a younger brother hauling coal in another Raxian mine miles away, an older sister likely serving in the Pits beneath Tyrannis's Citadel, a place whispered about with visceral dread even among the hardened slaves. He felt a pang, not of anger, but of cold necessity. Their chains were part of the equation, factors to consider in his own calculations for freedom, but not anchors to drag him down into useless martyrdom.
He didn't want power, not like the Raxians craved it. He didn't want wealth; coin meant nothing if you couldn't feel the sun on your face. He didn't want to overthrow Tyrannis or even save Athens. Its god was dying, taking the Dominion with it; that was the inevitable end Umbral's very nature guaranteed. Trying to fight that tide was like trying to punch the ocean into submission.
He wanted something far simpler and, in this world, infinitely more difficult: freedom. The absolute, untethered freedom to walk without fear of divine whim or mortal cruelty. The freedom to lie on cool grass under a night sky unfiltered by forge smoke or the oppressive aura of a god, and simply watch the stars. Real stars, not the cold, captured light of lumen-crystals.
To achieve this, he would do anything. Killing Borlag might bring a fleeting satisfaction, but it wouldn't bring freedom; it would bring a swift, painful death. Using the desperation of other slaves, manipulating their hopes or fears to create an opportunity – that was a tool, amoral and effective. Sentiment was a vulnerability, compassion a luxury he couldn't afford. His goal was singular, absolute.
It had a name, whispered in fragmented slave tales, dismissed by Overseers as fantasy, mentioned in no respectable maps or histories. The Godless Quarter. A place beyond the reach of Tyrannis, Umbral, the Dragons, the Angels, all of them. A blank spot on the divine map, supposedly shielded or barren, where mortals could exist without gods breathing down their necks, shaping their reality, murdering their parents for sport.
Most believed it a fiction, a desperate myth concocted by broken minds yearning for impossible escape. A fairy tale written by some long-dead slave, they sneered.
Kaelen clung to it with the tenacity of a drowning man gripping driftwood. It didn't matter if it was barren desert, frozen wasteland, or impenetrable jungle. If it was free, it was paradise.
Thunk… thunk… thunk. The pickaxe rose and fell. Outside the Chasm, beyond the smoke-choked skies of Vol Raxis, past the dying fens of Athens, across domains ruled by monsters and miracles and machines, perhaps the Godless Quarter waited. And Kaelen, chipping away at the indifferent stone, calculated the precise angle and force needed for the next swing, conserving his energy, nurturing the cold, sharp shard of hope within him. Time, and blood, would tell if the fairy tale was true. And he had every intention of living long enough to find out.