First Bell didn’t feel like a beginning that morning. It felt like a sentence.

  The anticipation that had buzzed in my chest all night had curdled into a hard knot of dread by dawn. Field assignment. The words echoed in the sterile air of the dormitory as we dressed in silence. Tavin moved slower than the rest of us, his movements stiff, his face pale. The brief respite the knife had given him seemed to have evaporated with sleep. His disc was a dull grey, but his eyes held a new, glassy sheen.

  I wanted to ask if he could do this in his current state. The question sat on my tongue, bitter and useless. We were all going, ready or not.

  No one spoke as we filed down to Floor Four—the mission level. The corridor here was different. The seamless ivory was interrupted by doors of dark, reinforced wood, each marked with bronze plaques: ARMORY. GEAR STORE. BRIEFING ROOM. DISPATCH.

  The air smelled different too—less of ozone, more of oil, leather, and something metallic and cold. The hum of the Tower was fainter here, replaced by the distant clang of metal and low, urgent voices.

  We were herded into the Briefing Room. It was larger than the training auditoriums, dominated by a massive table carved from a single slab of black stone. Maps were spread across it, weighted at the corners with polished stones. The walls were lined not with windows, but with tapestries depicting historic containment missions—Wardens and Hollows standing triumphant over sealed Taint vents. The figures in the tapestries looked like heroes. The Hollows I’d met just looked tired.

  Warden Thale stood at the head of the table. He wasn’t alone.

  Two other Wardens flanked him. One was a stocky woman with a severe bun and a scar that pulled at the corner of her mouth. The other was the bald Warden from our intake—Bryn. His flinty eyes swept over us, lingering on each face for a heartbeat too long, as if memorizing flaws.

  But it was the figure standing slightly apart, by a map of the northern reaches, who froze the blood in my veins.

  High Sage Marius Korr.

  He looked just as he had in the street—tall, silver-haired, impeccable in robes of deepest blue edged with gold that seemed to drink the light. He examined a map with detached interest, one long finger tracing a route. He didn’t look up as we entered, but the temperature in the room dropped several degrees.

  “Sit,” Thale said, his usual mild tone edged with a new formality.

  We took the stone benches along the wall. Tavin sank down beside me with a quiet groan. Caius sat stiffly, trying to project composure. Seren was a silent shadow. Gawain just stared at the floor.

  “You are here,” Thale began, “because your basic training is complete. Theoretical knowledge, however, is not containment. The Taint in the wild does not wait politely in glass vessels. It erupts. It corrupts. It adapts. Your first field assignment is not a test of strength, but of obedience. You will follow orders without question. You will maintain formation. You will report any anomaly, no matter how minor. Is that understood?”

  A muted chorus of “Yes, sir” echoed in the room, even though it was just the five of us.

  The stocky Warden stepped forward. “I am Warden Vessa. I will be overseeing your gear and operational protocols. You are not soldiers. You are containment specialists. Your weapon is your will. Your armor is your discipline.”

  She gestured to a side door. “You will be issued field gear. It is heavier than your dormitory tunics. It is treated to resist low-grade Taint permeation. It will not save you from a direct breach. Remember that.”

  Korr finally turned from the map.

  The room seemed to shrink. He didn’t speak at first. He just looked at us, his gaze moving from face to face with a slow, chilling precision. When his eyes met mine, a jolt went through me—a mix of fear and that strange, unwanted recognition. He knew exactly who I was. Not just my number. My name.

  “The Morvian Rot,” Korr said, his voice a smooth, cold baritone that filled the silent room. He tapped the map. “A blight zone approximately twenty miles northeast of Valdrence. It was a logging village, once. Now it is a textbook example of a Grade 3 persistent leak. The Taint has saturated the bedrock. It seeps to the surface in predictable, if irritating, cycles.”

  He paced slowly along the table. “The village itself is lost. The objective is not reclamation. It is management. The leak must be kept from expanding toward the farmlands that feed our city. A rotating schedule of Hollow teams performs containment sweeps. You are the newest iteration of that schedule.”

  He stopped behind Thale. “Warden Thale has reported on your progress. Some of you show promise.” His eyes flicked to me, then away. “Others show… the expected difficulties.”

  I felt Tavin’s knee press against mine, a faint tremor running through him.

  “In the field, difficulty is not an academic concern,” Korr continued. “It is a contagion risk. A single Hollow losing control during a containment can destabilize an entire team, creating a cascade failure that would require significant resources to correct.” He let the implication hang. “You will be paired with senior Hollows. You will watch. You will assist. You will do exactly as they do. Deviate from protocol, and you will be removed from the field. Permanently.”

  The word removed didn’t mean sent back to the dormitory.

  “Questions?” Korr asked, though his tone made it clear none were welcome.

  Caius, either from bravery or stupidity, cleared his throat. “Sir. What is the… nature of the threat? Beyond the Taint seepage?”

  Korr’s lips thinned into something that wasn’t a smile. “The Taint is the threat, boy. It warps life. Vegetation becomes hostile. Animals become aggressive or… reconfigured. And sometimes, the Taint finds a vessel it cannot simply seep through. A vessel it can fill.”

  He paused, letting our imaginations fill the silence with terrible shapes.

  “But you will have protection,” Korr finished, glancing at Warden Bryn. “Senior Wardens will be present. Your job is absorption, not combat. Remember your place.”

  “And if we can’t absorb it?” The words were out before I could stop them, quiet but stark in the still room. Korr’s gaze settled on me, weighing.

  “Then you break,” he said simply. “And we contain you.”

  The briefing ended with logistical details—rations, water, marching order. We were to leave at dawn the next day. As we were dismissed, Korr’s voice stopped me.

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  “Hollow 2147. A word.”

  The others filed out, giving me wide berth. Tavin shot me a worried glance. Thale and the other Wardens paused, but Korr waved a dismissive hand. “Leave us.”

  The door closed, leaving me alone with the High Sage in the map-strewn room. The air felt thick, charged. The pressure was suffocating.

  Korr examined a dagger on the table—a ceremonial piece, its hilt wrapped in silver wire. A cold sweat prickled between my shoulder blades. He knows about the knife. The thought was irrational, immediate. He knows.

  “Your grandfather had a fascination with maps,” he said, not looking at me. “He believed they told hidden stories. That the landscape remembered what people forgot.” He finally turned. “A romantic notion. And a dangerous one. The landscape is indifferent. It simply is. Just as the Taint simply is. Our job is not to understand it, but to control it.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, my voice steady despite the hammering of my heart.

  “Warden Thale’s reports are concerning.” Korr picked up a slate, scrolling through notes only he could see. “Rapid saturation. High integration. Low somatic distress. Your biometrics resemble his, you know. Aldric’s. In the early days.”

  I said nothing. The warmth in my chest pulsed, slow and deep, as if in recognition of the name.

  “He was my friend,” Korr said, and for a moment, a flicker of something genuine—loss, or perhaps just the memory of it—passed over his face. It was gone in an instant. “Brilliant. Charismatic. He could make the others believe anything. Even that the poison we contained was a kind of… music.”

  He set the slate down with a soft click. “That music drove him mad, Kieran. It will drive you mad too, if you listen. The field is where it gets loud. Where the whispers have space to breathe. Do not listen. Contain. That is all.”

  “Is that a warning, sir?”

  “It is a fact.” He walked to the door, then paused. “Your father… he still forges, I hear. Using the old techniques. Tell me, does he ever speak of Aldric? Of what he believed?”

  Every instinct screamed to lie. “No, sir. Never.”

  Korr watched me, his winter-salt eyes unreadable. “A shame. The past has lessons. Even if they are only lessons in failure.” He opened the door. “Dismissed. Prepare well. The Taint has a way of finding weaknesses.”

  The Gear Store was a cavernous room lined with racks and shelves. Warden Vessa oversaw the process with brutal efficiency.

  We were stripped of our soft dormitory tunics and issued field gear. The fabric was a coarse, dark grey hemp, treated with something that made it stiff and smelled of bitter herbs and ozone. It was heavier, with reinforced seams and leather patches at the knees and shoulders. A thick belt held a canteen, a pouch for hardtack, and a loop for the lead disc, which we were ordered to wear externally in the field.

  “The disc is your lifeline,” Vessa barked as she tossed a set of gear at me. “If it glows, you alert your Warden immediately. In the field, a weeping seal isn’t just your problem—it’s a beacon. A lure.”

  “What does it draw?” Tavin asked, his voice small.

  Vessa didn’t answer. She threw a rolled-up blanket and a oilskin cloak at his chest. “Learn by doing.” She then turned to a senior Hollow assisting her, her voice dropping. “Check the spares for 1107’s team. They came back two short last time.”

  The senior Hollow, a man with a sunken cheek, just nodded and moved to a rack in the back where older gear hung—tunics torn at the shoulder, a cloak with a jagged, burnt hole. No names. Just numbers, faded almost to nothing.

  Last were the boots—sturdy, scuffed leather that laced to the knee. As I sat to pull them on, I carefully adjusted the strap holding my father’s knife against my calf. The strange metal was cool against my skin, a secret anchor.

  Seren, already dressed, stood staring at the wall of old gear. “Where do they go?” she asked, so quietly I almost didn’t hear. “The ones who don’t come back?”

  No one answered.

  Caius struggled with his belt, his fine hands fumbling with the coarse buckle. “This is absurd. We’re meant to be instruments of purity, not… pack mules.”

  “Instruments break,” Gawain said, his first words in hours. He was already dressed, his gear hanging loose on his gaunt frame. He looked like a skeleton draped in grey cloth. “Mules endure. Sometimes.”

  Warden Bryn appeared in the doorway, his presence sucking the air from the room. “Follow,” he rasped.

  He led us down another spiral stair—one that led to the ground floor, but to a part of it I’d never seen. The architecture grew rougher here, the ivory walls giving way to plain stone blocks. The air grew damp and cold. This was the base of the Tower, the root sunk into the bedrock.

  We entered a vast, low-ceilinged chamber: the Launch Bay. Huge iron gates, currently closed and barred, dominated one wall—the exit to the world beyond Valdrence’s inner walls. Lanterns hung from chains, casting swinging pools of jaundiced light.

  And here, waiting for us, were the senior Hollows.

  There were four of them, two men and two women. Although shorter than the other two, one woman was the one who appeared to be in lead.

  Their gear was identical to ours, but it was worn, stained with mud and other, less identifiable substances. Their faces were the same as Garrett’s in the Common Room—etched with exhaustion, eyes holding a flat, patient emptiness. They looked at us not with curiosity, but with the weary assessment of veterans watching raw recruits march toward a trench.

  The woman with a long braid of faded red hair and a network of fine white scars across her cheeks, stepped forward. Her disc read 1107.

  “I’m Elara,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Team Lead. You stick with your assigned senior. You do what they do. You stop when they stop. You run when they run. Your thoughts are irrelevant. Your obedience is not.” Her eyes, a pale, washed-out blue, scanned us. They lingered on Tavin’s pallor, on Caius’s trembling hands. “The Morvian Rot is quiet today. That means it’s listening. Don’t give it anything to hear. Don’t think too loud.”

  Bryn moved to the massive gate mechanism. “You have forty-eight hours. Contain the seepage markers outlined in the briefing. Return before Third Bell, day after tomorrow. Failure to return is not an option. The gates do not reopen for stragglers.”

  He began turning a heavy wheel. Chains rattled. With a grinding shriek of metal on stone, the iron gates began to part.

  A sliver of grey daylight appeared, widening. A gust of wind rushed in, carrying with it a smell utterly alien to the sterile Tower: wet earth, rotting leaves, and beneath it, the faint, unmistakable coppery tang of wild Taint.

  My heart hammered against my ribs. The warmth in my chest surged, not with fear, but with a terrible, eager curiosity. It felt like coming home to a place I’d never been.

  Elara nodded to her team. The senior Hollows moved toward the light without a backward glance.

  One of them, a tall man with a limp, glanced at me as he passed. “Keep up, kid,” he muttered. “Or you’ll learn why they call it the Rot.”

  “Move out,” Thale said from behind us.

  Tavin took a shaky breath beside me. Caius straightened his tunic with a trembling hand. Seren’s face was a mask of calm. Gawain just walked.

  I adjusted the strap on my knife, felt the locket cold against my chest, and took my first step toward the widening gap of sky.

  We crossed the threshold.

  The iron gates boomed shut behind us, the sound final as a tomb sealing.

  I stood on a stone ramp leading down from the Tower’s base, blinking in the diffuse grey light. Valdrence’s high inner wall rose behind us. Ahead lay a blasted courtyard of cracked flagstones, and beyond that, the smaller, outer gate that led to the world.

  But it was the sky that held me.

  It wasn’t blue. It was a bruised canopy of grey and violet, streaked with clouds the color of old bruises. The sun was a pale, silver coin behind the haze. The light it cast was shadowless and sickly.

  This was the protected sky. The one the Severance Tower was meant to preserve.

  I looked back once. The Tower rose, a blinding white needle against that sickly sky, beautiful and terrible. Our cage, our sanctuary. From out here, it just looked like a prison.

  Elara didn’t pause. “Column formation. Juniors in the middle. Move.”

  We fell into line, a ragged grey caterpillar, and began the march toward the outer gate, and the Rot that waited beyond.

  The Taint in my chest hummed, a low, vibrating note of anticipation.

  Finally, it whispered again, not just to me, but to the wide, wounded sky.

  We are outside.