I was loaded into a military transport truck by three SDC officers in full tactical gear, their faces hidden behind reinforced masks, apparently this was necessary to transport one half-dead dock worker with broken ribs.

  Two of them gripped my arms so tightly I could feel the bruises forming. The third walked behind with a stun baton crackling with enough voltage to drop a charging Troll.

  "Careful with the merchandise," I slurred through swollen lips. "I'm a collector's item."

  The officer to my right tightened his grip. "Shut the fuck up, murderer."

  The truck's interior reminded me of the freezers we used at the docks for storing Abyssal Squid—all metal, no windows, cold enough to see your breath. They shoved me onto a bench welded to the wall and secured my wrists and ankles with re-enforced cuffs.

  Which was hilarious, considering how broken I was.

  The truck rumbled to life, and we pulled away from the hospital.

  I closed my eyes, trying to focus on something besides the grinding pain in my ribs. Instead, I saw Rell's face as Dad pulled her into that final embrace. Her eyes wide with betrayal and terror. The spinning teeth. The sound—god, that sound. Like meat being fed into an industrial grinder.

  I vomited on the floor of the transport truck.

  "Aw, fuck," one of the guards complained, scooting his boots away from the splash zone.

  "Sorry," I gasped. "Just remembering breakfast with Dad."

  The guard with the stun baton took a step forward, but the one in charge held up a hand. "Leave him. Hoffman wants him delivered intact."

  The ride was rough with every pothole sending jolts of agony through my broken ribs. When the truck finally stopped, I was drenched in cold sweat and tasted blood where I'd bitten my cheek to keep from screaming.

  The back doors swung open, revealing the SDC Holding Facility—a massive concrete structure with no windows.

  "Home sweet home," I muttered as they unshackled me from the bench but kept the cuffs on.

  They marched me through a series of security checkpoints, each more depressing than the last. Metal detectors. Scanners. And a bored-looking guard.

  "Name?"

  "Fischer Magni."

  "Are you Sacred?"

  "Not yet."

  "Did you kill your sister?"

  "No. My father did."

  She frowned at the last answer, making a note on her tablet.

  She waved to the guards to proceed.

  They took my hospital gown, hosed me down with something that burned my eyes and skin, then issued me a gray jumpsuit with "SDC PRISONER" stamped across the back. The material felt like it had been woven from sandpaper and scratched at every inch of my skin.

  "Any items to declare?" a bored clerk asked from behind thick glass.

  "Just my winning personality."

  He didn't even blink. "Any medical conditions?"

  "Broken ribs, broken heart, and I'm pretty sure I've got the Sacred infection working its way through my system like a tapeworm with a point to prove."

  That got his attention. He looked up sharply. "You’re infected?"

  "I think. I started having dreams last night. Or for the last few days… not sure I was knocked out for a while."

  He pressed a button, and a red light began flashing silently above his station. Within thirty seconds, a woman in a white lab coat appeared, flanked by two more guards. Her eyes were a startling violet.

  "How long since the first symptoms?" she asked.

  "A few days. After my father murdered my sister and threw me through a wall."

  She ignored everything except the timing. "Elevated temperature? Visual disturbances? Auditory hallucinations?"

  "Yes, yes, and I keep hearing my sister scream as she's being eaten alive. Does that count?"

  The doctor's face remained professionally blank as she made notes on a tablet. "Put him in Isolation Block C. Room 17. Full monitoring, Sacred-grade restraints, emergency response team on standby."

  "He’s probably going to die anyway, let’s just throw him into gen-pop," one of the guards protested.

  "You want to be responsible if he manifests a combat Origin and tears this place apart?" she asked coolly.

  The guard shut up.

  They marched me deeper into the facility, through corridors that all looked identical—concrete floors, reinforced walls, overhead lights protected by metal cages. The air grew progressively colder and damper as we descended. By the time we reached Isolation Block C, I was shivering uncontrollably.

  Room 17 was a six-by-eight concrete box with nothing but a toilet, sink, and a platform that generously could be called a bed.

  "Home sweet home," I said again as they shoved me inside.

  "Meals three times daily," one guard recited mechanically. "Medical checks twice daily."

  The door slammed shut with the finality of a coffin lid, and I was alone.

  I sank onto the platform bed, wincing as my ribs protested. The room was lit by a single light recessed into the ceiling, protected by the same metal cage as the ones in the hallway. No windows. No clock. Nothing to mark the passage of time except the throbbing ache of my injuries.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  "Well, Rell," I whispered to the empty room. "Looks like I'm getting that Sacred awakening I always wanted..."

  My voice echoed back at me, hollow and small.

  I curled onto my side, facing the wall, and closed my eyes. The worms from my dream slithered through my thoughts, bone-white and hungry.

  The first night was the worst.

  Not because of the hard bed or the cold or even the pain from my injuries—though none of those helped. It was the fucking dreams.

  I stood in an endless field of bones and blood. A landscape made of them—mountains of femurs, valleys of ribs, rivers of blood, forests of spines stretching toward a blood-red sky. And moving through it all, bone-white worms. Thousands of them. Millions. They flowed like rivers, burrowed like maggots, twisted themselves into shapes both beautiful and horrifying.

  I woke up gasping, drenched in sweat despite the cell's chill.

  My skin felt too tight, like something underneath was pushing to get out. When I stumbled to the sink and splashed water on my face, I caught my reflection in the polished metal above it.

  My eyes had changed. The brown irises were now ringed with gold, and the whites had a faint reddish tinge.

  "Shit," I whispered.

  I'd seen these symptoms before.

  I watched Rell go through them.

  First the dreams, then the physical changes, then the Trial. But Rell had Dad to guide her—to prepare her for what was coming, to explain the process.

  All I had was a concrete box.

  I sank back onto the bed, pressing the heels of my palms against my burning eyes. The infection was working its way through my body, rewriting my genetic code, preparing me for the Trial. And when it came—when I was pulled into that pocket dimension to face my deepest fears—I'd be alone. Unprepared. Grieving.

  Perfect conditions for failure. For death.

  "Is that what you want, Dad?" I asked the empty cell. "Two for two? The complete set of dead children?"

  The cell didn't answer. But the worms in my mind did, twisting together into a single word:

  Survive.

  Meals came three times a day, delivered through a slot in the door. Bland protein cubes, vitamin supplements, and water.

  Enough to keep a body functioning, nothing more.

  The medical checks were equally perfunctory—a different Sacred each time, scanning me with their Origin, making notes, never speaking directly to me.

  I tracked time by these interruptions. Three meals, two checks. One day. Then another. And another.

  By the fourth day, the changes were impossible to ignore. My temperature fluctuated wildly—one hour burning with fever, the next shivering with cold. My skin had taken on a ghostly quality, the veins underneath visible as dark lines. And my eyes—the gold rings around my irises had grown thicker, the whites now definitely red.

  The dreams intensified. Each night, the bone field grew larger, more complex. The worms more numerous, more active. They formed structures now—towers of writhing ivory, bridges spanning chasms of blood, even crude humanoid shapes that walked on legs of twisting, squirming white.

  Survive.

  The voice grew louder, more insistent. And I began to understand what it meant.

  On the fifth day, a new face appeared at my cell.

  Not a guard or a medical Sacred, but a woman in a crisp SDC uniform with the insignia of the Research Division. She studied me through the small observation window like I was a particularly interesting specimen in a jar.

  "Fischer Magni," she said, her voice tinny through the speaker beside the door. "I'm Dr. Eliza Santos. I'll be monitoring your Awakening process."

  "Lucky me," I croaked, my voice rough from disuse. "Do I get a party hat?"

  "Your infection is progressing rapidly," she continued, ignoring my attempt at humor.

  "I'm here to prepare you."

  I laughed, a harsh sound that hurt my still-healing ribs. "Bit late for that, don't you think?"

  "The SDC has protocols for emergency Awakenings," she said. "We can administer stabilizers to slow the process, give you time to—"

  "To what? Get my affairs in order? Write a will? I've got nothing left to lose, Doc. Let it come."

  She studied me for a long moment. "Your father predicted you would say that."

  The words hit like a physical blow. "What?"

  "Mikkel Magni has been cooperative with our investigation. He's provided extensive information about both you and your sister. Including predictions about how your respective Trials would unfold."

  I was at the door in two strides, pressing my face against the observation window. "He's lying to you. Whatever he's told you is bullshit. He murdered Rell. He consumed her Origin. He's not a grieving father—he's a monster."

  Dr. Santos took a small step back, though the door between us was reinforced enough to withstand a Sacred beast.

  "I know what I saw." I snarled.

  "What you saw was your sister's tragic death by your hands, followed by your own violent attack on your father. Trauma can distort memories, Mr. Magni. Create false narratives as the mind tries to process unbearable events."

  I slammed my fist against the door, hard enough that pain shot up my arm. "He told us everything before he did it! He explained how he'd been planning it for years, how he needed her Origin to evolve his own. He opened his mouth and—" My voice broke.

  Dr. Santos made another note on her tablet. "The delusions are consistent with late-stage Signal infection. We'll continue monitoring."

  "They're not delusions!" I shouted as she turned to leave. "He's manipulating you! He's manipulating all of you!"

  She paused, looking back at me with what might have been pity. "Your Trial is coming, Mr. Magni. I suggest you focus on surviving it, rather than these elaborate conspiracy theories."

  "When I come back," I said, pressing my face closer to the glass, "when I Awaken, I'm going to find him. And I'm going to make him confess. And then I'm going to kill him."

  "That," she said quietly, "is exactly what he said you would say."

  She walked away, leaving me staring at my own distorted reflection in the observation window.

  A face I barely recognized anymore.

  The worms whispered in my mind, louder now.

  Survive.

  On the sixth day, the guards started watching me differently. Not with the contempt reserved for murderers or the wariness shown to the potentially violent. They watched me with the nervous respect given to an unexploded bomb.

  My body had begun to change in ways that couldn't be hidden.

  My skin wasn't just ghostly now—it seemed to ripple sometimes, as if something moved beneath the surface. My hair, once deep red like Rell's, had started to lose its color, fading to a pale pink on its way to white. And my eyes—the irises were more gold than brown, the whites completely crimson.

  The medical Sacreds who scanned me kept their distance, their faces carefully blank. But I could see the fear in the way their hands trembled slightly, the way they hurried through their examinations.

  They knew what was coming. What I was becoming.

  That night, the dream changed.

  I wasn't just observing the bone field anymore—I was part of it. The worms burrowed under my skin, replaced my bones, and filled me from the inside out. It should have been horrifying. Instead, it felt right. Inevitable.

  I woke to find my sheets soaked with sweat and something else—a clear, viscous fluid that seemed to have seeped from my pores. When I touched it, it moved, coiling around my finger like it was alive.

  Like a tiny, translucent worm.

  I should have been disgusted. Terrified. Instead, I felt a strange sense of anticipation. Of becoming.

  "Soon," I whispered to the empty cell. "Soon."

  The worms beneath my skin writhed in agreement.

  I sat on the edge of my bed, oddly calm.

  The pain from my injuries had faded, replaced by a strange numbness that spread from the inside out. The worms were no longer just in my dreams—I could feel them moving through my body, restructuring it.

  "Any last-minute advice, Doc?" I asked, my voice rougher, deeper than before.

  "The Trial reflects your deepest fears," she said. "But it also reflects your potential. Your father believes your Origin will be exceptional."

  "Of course he does," I said with a bitter laugh. "He's planning to eat it too."

  She sighed, clearly having given up on convincing me of my delusions.

  "And if I don't survive?"

  "Then your remains will be processed according to SDC protocol for failed Awakenings."

  "Peachy."

  My skin crawled—literally, as the worms beneath it shifted and twisted.

  A pain like nothing I'd ever felt before tore through my body. Like every cell was being ripped apart and reassembled. I fell to my knees, a scream caught in my throat.

  "He's transitioning!" Dr. Santos shouted from somewhere far away.

  The guards backed away, raising their weapons.

  The world around me began to fracture, reality splitting along invisible seams. Through the cracks, I could see another place—a landscape of blood and bones. Waiting.

  "Fischer," Dr. Santos called, her voice distorted as if coming through water. "Find something to hold onto. A memory, a person, a goal."

  I tried to answer, but my mouth was full of something writhing and alive. White worms spilled from my lips, my nose, my ears—pouring out of me in an impossible flood.

  As the world dissolved around me, as I felt myself being pulled into the Trial, I focused on one thing. Not a happy memory. Not a loved one.

  Revenge.