Much like he had on the morning he thought he'd passed the Trial, Teris Argun woke up as the sun peeked over the horizon. This time, however, he wasn't smiling. No one smiled in the Pit. It was a place for cripples, criminals, and captured enemies of the Cissic. Never in his darkest nightmares had Teris thought he'd ever end up here, and the reality of his confinement was worse than anything he could have imagined.

The Pit was not actually a pit at all, but instead a huge prison-complex composed of an intricate network of wooden cages, all connected to and contained within a second, larger dome of interconnected wooden beams. Each cage could comfortably fit about ten people, but there were easily more than twenty in each one. The Pit was located at the top of one of the few beaches on the island, located in a natural cove. They were positioned only ten feet from the cool-looking sand, living on top of dry, dead dirt instead. It offered no protection from the sun, and Teris could see some of the other Pit residents waking up to the beginning of the sun's dreadful onslaught. It started at dawn and didn't stop till well into the evening when the sun passed mercifully behind the trees behind the beach. The only respite from the direct sunlight that blistered their skin was the shade provided by the wooden beams and bars. Even this was not truly a mercy, however. In the morning, when the shadows were long, there wasn't much conflict between the prisoners for the available shade, but this didn't last long. When the sun beat high above them, and the shadows were few, their true brutality came out.

Teris had watched one man kill another for a few more minutes in the shade.

His injuries had healed somewhat, but not in the way he would like. His knee no longer caused him vicious agony with every movement, but the joint had obviously never been set properly, and his every step carried with it a limp he knew to be permanent. It still hurt worse than anything he had ever imagined. The internal damage Abel had dealt him had faded from a constant ball of agony in his gut to a throbbing, dull pain, and Teris had largely gotten used to it. Apart from when he moved too suddenly, or breathed too hard, or when it rained. On these occasions, the white-hot pain would return, and with it an agonising fit of coughing that more-often-than-not left him hacking up blood.

Teris' jaw wasn't any better. Given his present situation, he was no longer concerned with the physical appearance of his face, but the damage went beyond the aesthetic. Every meal was a humiliation, his jaw producing a sickening grinding sound with every movement. The disgusting food they were served didn't help either. Most meals consisted of leftovers from the Clan's communal meal the night before, as well as bread so stale it may as well have been stone. Teris usually gave his bread away, if only to save himself from the agony eating it would cause him. It had made him a few friends though, and it was with one of them that he sat in the shade that morning, enjoying his respite from the sun for a few more hours.

Doloman was old. Older than anyone Teris had known before.

Now I think about it, the clan has very few elderly apart from the Elders.

This wasn't the whole story, however. Even just reaching the Second Awakening granted an extended lifespan ensuring an Inheritor of that level could live over a hundred summers and still look no more than fifty, barring disease or significant internal damage. The old people here were the ones considered failures: clansmen who had never advanced as Inheritors even in their latter years were considered useless, and promptly discarded. Teris had once looked down on such wastes of Cissic resources, until he himself had become one.

Dolomon had long, unkempt white hair, and his face was lined with age. He was smaller than even Teris, although his heavily malnourished body contributed more to that than natural size. The two sat in silence together under a shadow as Dolomon knawed on a piece of hard bread he had saved from last night. They didn't talk much, but Teris valued any companionship he could get in the Pit.

While they sat together, Teris thought about his family. None of them had visited him. That itself was not surprising. The Argun family was not as close-knit as some of the other ones that made up the Cissic clan, and in any case, it was uncommon for clan youths to have much contact with their relatives until after they passed the Trial.

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No point wasting time on the weak, after all.

His father had died on Teris' tenth summer. He hadn't known the man very well. To Teris' knowledge he was a shipbuilder, skilled with his hands, and it was this trait he had passed onto Teris, even before his Awakening. His father had been killed in some raid by a rival clan. They had arrived at nightfall and attacked viciously before being driven off. Teris' father hadn't even seen them coming, killed by an arrow before the sentries raised an alarm.

He knew his mother slightly better. Her name was Nadia, and he had met her a few times, albeit without much affection. She was a scout, leading small parties into enemy territory before reporting back. His was a humble family, and he had been meant to lead them to greatness.

So much for that, Teris thought bitterly as he looked down at his ruined body. The most she could hope for now was a portion of the proceeds from his sale. His sale. He was going to be bought by strangers and sold by the people he had worked his whole life to protect. He looked at Dolomon, choking down the rest of the bread, and couldn't decide which of them were worse off. Neither of them would sell for much, he guessed. He'd find one final way to disappoint his mother then. Teris had been good at that recently. In any case, it didn't matter. The slavers came in two days. Even if he could escape he'd be a dead man.

Fury suddenly overtook him, and Teris' fingers clawed through the dirt as he thought again about what he had lost. What had been taken from him. The rough dirt scraped the skin off his fingers as he allowed himself to weep silently.

Dolomon noted his companion's distress and put his arm around the boy. Teris looked at the old man's worn, lined face as his elder spoke to him.

"There is more to life than this island, boy. Crippled though you may be, this is only the end if you allow it to be. My legs may work better than yours, but I'd trade places with you in a heartbeat. Don't worry, you have nowhere to go but up."

Empty platitudes they may have been, but Teris did take some solace in the fact that things literally couldn't get worse. Or so he thought, until the Elders came down the hill towards the Pit to take his name from him.

He had assumed that this would be done on the day the slavers came, but it seemed that the Cissic's collective leadership had decided to simply have done with him without showing their ugly business to strangers.

It was a fairly small procession, containing only three Elders (the minimum required by law to unname a Clansmen), and Kohar, who apparently wanted to watch his student's utter humiliation through to the end. Kohar walked in stride with the Elders rather than behind them, as most other subordinates would. It made sense though, as he was one of the few people in the last fifty years to attain his Third Awakening before he saw thirty. A huge achievement, and one Teris felt certain he could match. Or could have

Teris looked at the Elders, and noted that this was the first time he would have a real conversation with one. They didn't look elderly. All three men appeared to be in the prime of their lives, with the common dark skin and close-cropped hair of the Cissic.

Even the thought of resisting died in front of men who could crush him like a bug.

The group stopped at the outer boundary of the Pit, before the Elder at the front of the group made a beckoning gesture towards Teris. They wouldn't lower themselves by entering the Pit, nor would they allow Teris some dignity by allowing him to leave. This was it. The final humiliation before he was sent across the world to whoever wanted him. The ritual of unnaming was usually reserved for criminals, but all Cissic who were sold into slavery were unnamed, almost as a formality.

No Cissic was a slave, so those sold were stripped of their family names that bound them to the clan. Teris had never cared much about his family's legacy, but now, faced with losing it, he wanted nothing more than to place the Argun name behind his own. However, Teris was powerless.

He was too broken even to beg.

Slowly, painfully, Teris hobbled over towards the Elders and Kohar, using a twisted piece of driftwood he had found as a crutch. The men looked at Teris with utter disdain, like a beaten dog. He didn't know the names of the other two, but the man who had beckoned him was Yossuf. He had seen ninety summers, and was among the more senior of the clan's ranks.

Yossuf cleared his throat as Teris approached, and begun his speech in a calm, businesslike manner.

"Teris Argun?"

Teris nodded slightly. "Yes".

"You have been found guilty of assaulting a clansmen, as well as being unable to return the clan's generosity for raising you due to your crippled condition. You have therefore been unnamed, and I carry this sentence out on you today. Do you have any final words as a member of the Cissic clan?"

Something in Teris broke, and he shook his head. Anything he said now would only disgrace him further. He was only being punished so severely due to Abel's sudden ascension, having attained the Second Awakening at an incredibly early age. The strong eat and the weak were eaten.

Teris had always thought he was strong.

Annoyed by his silence, Yossuf traced an X in the air with his right hand, before spitting at Teris' feet through the bars.

"I unname you. You are never to refer to yourself as an Argun again, on pain of death. May your soul's next Bearer not disgrace their family so."

With that, the group turned and walked away. Kohar with them. Teris, formerly Argun, looked at his mentor, hoping, praying desperately for his surrogate father to intervene, to save him somehow.

Kohar never looked back.