“Ousal… I can make it quick.” Osias said solemnly.

He was grasping a weak hand missing two fingers. The skin stuck so close to the bone, that Osias feared the man had already died.

Alas, famished and battered… Ousal responded weakly:

“Visalros, you needn’t care for an old man. Endure. Endure and fight like you’ve always done.”

Osias paused briefly as he brooded over Ousal’s sickly thin body. It was a miracle itself that it had lasted this long. Perhaps the reason why he rejected the little rations provided was because he knew they’d simply be wasted on him.

Ousal coughed and hacked violently in a fit, spit, and blood intertwined as it dirtied his lips and mangled beard before adding:

“In time… I refuse to believe our kingdom’s armies wouldn’t rein another attack. You must survive until then.”

Narrowing his eyes at Ousal’s words, Osias asked:

“I never asked you… and it was too late to ask Geral and the others back then. But why? Why did you all follow me that day?”

With a smile stretching on Ousal’s cracked and lifeless lips and with a voice that was as hoarse as though knives were scratching against stone:

“Because you were strong. Impossibly so, even as an Ordinary. I have never seen another like us strike down a First Ordeal. Not once. I’ve told you once already… we were farmers before the war — old ones at that. So when we saw you lift your tattered helm and found a face as young as our sons would have been…”

Osual began to hack roughly once more, and Osias frowned deeply as he found more blood trickled from his mouth.

‘He’s going to die.’

“We—we felt as though following you will redeem ourselves, just a bit. Immortal, we called you. Ha! To think it was a lost boy underneath those vicious killings with your sword.”

Osias has come to find that ‘Visalros,’ meant immortal in Jorah — the common tongue in this place. Ever since his first day waking up in this place, they’ve been calling him immortal, both as a title and a name.

“H-how’ve you grown, boy.”

“But the old will only grow older, you… you still have something to do.”

Ousal’s sunken hand gripped Osias’s firmly, but only so briefly.

“...Thank you, Ousal,” Osias said quietly.

With a faint bloody smile, Ousal died lying atop the black stones that made their rotten cage. Osias didn’t know of any rites or traditions to do upon someone's death, but he stayed with Ousal’s body until it turned bleak and cold.

Then, gently picking up the light corpse he shuffled through the swathes of old bones and shackles left from the other fallen prisoners in the far end of their cage — a reminder of how many have died since they’ve been captured.

Placing Ousal’s cold corpse in the far end so it’ll return to the earth away from his sights, Osias sighed heavily before using Blood Reave to drain it entirely before heading back to the side of the cells for the living…

What was hundreds of prisoners eventually turned to dozens.

Three years… for three years they’ve been confined.

Every day, they’ll be pulled awake by the guards. Pulled deep below the city to dig a sort of tunnel array for them.

They’ll be kicked and lashed with whips. A scowl on your face meant you’d be beaten even closer to death. Their meals were nothing more than the rotted leftovers of the guards, far from enough to sate even the smallest corners of their stomachs.

Osias’s face scrunched darkly as he remembered what he and many others had to do to appease his hunger…

That daily cycle would repeat over and over and over until they’d break. And every month, the guards led by a Second Ordeal would descend into the dim chambers that held their cells.

They’d pick out a handful and force them to fight above in the courtyard. Those who’d win would return below once more, but that only meant that they had killed all the others that were picked.

Deep contempt plastered across Osias face as he recalled how many times he slain the very ones that turned to him in hope. How many times did the metal shackles that were used to restrain him turn to heavy weapons as he caved their heads in to survive.

No matter how many times he’d remind himself that this was an Ordeal… it stung nonetheless. To eat, sleep, and struggle in the depths of cruelty alongside them was enough to make it feel all so real.

Bringing himself to the corner furthest from where the corpses lay, Osias plopped down heavily, disregarding the waste he sat atop.

‘I wonder who’ll survive this time…’ He thought to himself.

Earlier this morning, before they were tugged along to dig the tunnels, the Second Ordeal warden picked out five of them into another fight for survival.

…Slowly, their numbers dwindled, but Osias found that all who remained were almost like him — resilient, and broken.

Yet all bidding their time.

‘Perhaps in their hearts, there must be something they can’t get over… or someone they can’t let go of. The same goes for me.’ He thought, once more studying the bleak faces of his fellow prisoners.

After learning the language in a few months of endless help and teachings from not only Ousal but from all the others as well, Osias in turn, exchanged teachings of battle.

He instructed and instilled what he knew of essence control along with the style of combat for those of the Red Sky to these imprisoned souls.

…Even if it meant some would turn against him using these teachings if they were ever pulled by the warden.

Clenching his thin fist, Osias inspected himself under the dim and distant torch light.

He was thin, almost as he was after he was retrieved from the Fettered Bournewood Branch. Old wounds covered his head and body, but his tattoos were the same as they always were. His dark grey hair grew long, reaching below his shoulders.

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‘Then there’s that…’ Osias thought, his ruminating stopped as muffled steps sounded beyond the entrance to the chamber.

The hefty rusted gates of thick metal creaked upon, grinding against the stone below as it groaned. A gust of cold, but dirty air followed the many who barged in, the sound of the door crashing against the wall reverberating throughout the chamber.

Two dozen First Ordeals armed to the teeth with the detestable sigil of the Golden Hawk displayed atop their hearts.

Osias’s eyes narrowed darkly as he continued to stay seated deep behind the bars that enclosed the cell.

His eyes brushed along the many other prisoners who shared the massive cell, almost half a hundred of them now.

They too shared the same resentment of their captors in seething wrath through their sunken eyes and thin cheeks.

From behind the two dozen First Ordeals was the warden — A Second Ordeal.

…And consequently, the loathsome key for Osias to succeed his Ordeal.

Osias watched, burning his eyes on every movement the warden made. Every aspect of their gleaming steel armor. Inspecting the long sword they kept sheathed on their side.

As much as Osias wanted to tear apart the bars and kill the warden, such things were not so easy. This was the reason why Osias spent all this time training the other Ordinaries, even learning from them at times.

It was quite intriguing… Osias once believed the origins of the cruel, ferocious, and almost feral way of fighting that the Red Sky adopted came from beasts, but instead, Osias found that it was likely the desperation of a human’s death throes forced to the limit.

Essence would only enhance these prolonged throes as you’d fight with everything you could to reap blood—blood that will fuel your strength as you continue to fight and slaughter.

It was something he picked up from the many fights Osias partook in as the warden picked him along with the other comrades turned prisoners.

So in a way, the style of the Red Sky fights perfectly with such an uncouth and unrestrained lot. Perhaps it was the War Art for the broken…

But most important, was that Osias felt as though he caught a glimpse of two things he narrowed down to that he shouldn’t have so seen so early on his Path in this foundation of the Red Sky’s War Art and the applications of it with different weapons…

First, was that as the years passed dreadfully slow and painfully, Osias honed his essence control to something akin to immaculate.

He began to weave his ferocious and almost volatile, but controlled method of flowing his essence into certain rhythms. It was erratic at times when he needed it to be, but these rhythms were paced to be controlled.

Second was something that arose with him being unable to access an abundance of blood essence like he once did atop a battlefield. Osias was forced to be as efficient as possible to allow his body to process the rest of his stored blood essence into physical strength.

And so his control, which was already incredibly efficient and elusive was born anew as he tempered himself steadily. It felt as though he could lead his essence to every little crevice and part of his body along in ways to fit his style. The growth he obtained under the pits of the city was the result of his spite unassailable will to leave, to succeed. At this level, his understanding will also help him to recognize the innate rhythms of how his enemies moved, breathed, and attacked with their own flow of essence.

But this second aspect of his growth was something he could foresee as his future.

Because although it was impossibly weak now… perhaps his blood connection could extend to the flow of others in a certain range.

It was far from now — something he could only develop as he progresses through his Ordeals and his blood connection grows stronger in time.

…But suddenly, the First Ordeal guards opened the old cell and pushed in the survivor of today’s battle, and it was one of the few faces Osias came to know over the years.

Behind the common guards, Osias looked towards the warden who simply waved their gaze across the fifty or so prisoners before turning around and directed the other guards outside after locking the cell and the entrance to the chamber once again.

It was odd.

To leave prisoners unattended. Even they were stripped, chained with heavy shackles, behind stalwart bars and a massive gate, starved, weak, broken…

Was this the hubris of mere Ordeal levels?

But regardless, Osias took full advantage of this.

He slowly brought himself to his feet while the others watched, and came before the man who survived the fight.

“Sarzal.” He said darkly.

“Did you kill them all earlier, or did the guards kill them?”

Sarzal the survivor was gasping for breath as both hands tightly gripped the bars to support him. He was missing a hand by the wrist, so his shackles only wrapped around his other as the rest dangled in the air.

His wild mane of hair was bloody dirty, like everyone else's, but most importantly was the murderous glint in Sarzal’s eyes as he turned towards Osias.

“I killed them all, Visalros. I didn’t want to go in the room.” He hissed coldly.

“Even Erin—”

“Yes! I killed him.” He yelled out before adding in a voice almost like a whisper, “I-I killed him.”

Osias paused briefly, before waking away with a nod.

It didn’t matter any longer… death was coming for them all eventually. Osias knew this, and the others did too.

He just needed something to occur so the attention would no longer be on them and the prison.

Osias needed the other two armies to advance and mount an attack on Qussai, the capital city of Golden Hawk.

Walking towards the bars, Osias wrapped his thin hand around them and tugged slowly. An eerie groaning metal sounded as he grimaced and let go, confirming once more that he had grown incomprehensibly strong.

‘If soldiers attack the outer walls, and cause a ruckus below here…’ Osias sneered at the bars.

Something he came to know as time passed miserably — the relic, the red-headed centipede that embedded itself so deep Osias didn’t know how much of his being was now intertwined with it, aided him in this way.

The passive strengthening of his body was faster.

It didn’t rid of the same requirement, that being an abundance of essence, but it still made his strength grow even faster. Thankfully, he stocked up a lot from his times in battle…

He didn’t know how strong he was compared to another Ordinary, but he was sure a First Ordeal would crumble before his clasps.

Sometimes… sometimes the urge to escape and leave so brashly would overwhelm him as though he was delighting himself in the intense rapture of Blood Reave. Such was the nature of strength.

However, doing something so foolish would only put him back into that cramped room once again.

Osias’s hand and whatever was left of his fingers clenched tightly as he recalled the time he was punished when he tried to save Ousal a year ago.

Dragged into a small stone room — one so low that he’d have to tuck his head to even fit inside as he breathed through small slits.

He’d be tightly seated and handed a finely crafted wooden carving tool, and before him lay a single slab of bone—a bone from a beast they had once fought, or perhaps the remains of a fallen comrade.

The task seemed simple: carve the bone into intricate shapes, over and over again.

Every day, he’d be given a new piece, and each day the pieces grew smaller and more brittle. The guards watched in silent amusement as the prisoners, their hands sore and calloused, struggled to create ever-finer carvings. The bone would chip, sometimes splintering at the final moment, forcing them to start anew.

Osias was already missing fingers by the knuckles, and if he’d disobeyed them or failed once more, they’d sever more as they entered.

Day after day he’d carve as the white dust of bone filled the air, clinging to his skin, and coating the walls. The room was filled with the dull scrape of bone against the tool, a sound that became an annoying whisper in the dark, damp confines of their cells.

Success brought only another bone the next morning, even smaller than before.

Over time, his hands would tremble, the fingers cramped and bloodied.

His vision blurred from endless days of staring at the fine details of their carvings. The never-ending hopeless task ate away at Osias one tiny, fragile bone at a time.

Sometimes he’d repeatedly slam his head against the stone like he did in a memory so far back to break his crazed mind and return to carving once more so delicately.

He can be tormented over and over again — he has endured such pains before.

But his mind…

Osias began to laugh under his breath as he found it all so disturbingly ominous. This entire Ordeal itself was unsettling!

Why? Why did he lead men? Why did he wake up in a war?

For what reason did he end up in chains once more?

For what reason was he miraculously spared just to be thrown into another dark chamber?

‘It's as though my soul bleeds... and the blood steadily, silently, disturbingly slowly, swallows me whole. The Ordeals… they are so much more insidious than Mance or anyone else let on.’

Even the war itself… was it a telling of a times past, or was it a foreboding future?

Osias murmured his suspicions quietly to himself as embers of madness rolled beneath his tongue. He walked towards the end of the cell, disregarding the looks of the other prisoners who thought of him as a leader.

…Towards the darkest end, he sat once more in his damp corner. He raised his knees and crossed his lithe arms and tucked his head against them with a scowl.

Too long. For too long has he suffered in another world.