As soon as he entered the Nerve Tower, he knew what he’d see.

Even so – even hearing the voices of his comrades whittle away as the flashing light took him – he didn’t close his eyes.

Because one born in light does not fear the dark.

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He was standing in a field of corpses.

The field had once been his village. He didn’t remember its name.

Around him were the bodies of his friends. There was Luca, chewed up and broken beside his girl, Tara. Her face was a miasma of blood and broken bones. Her throat had been torn open by something that was half-man, half-wolf. He wouldn’t have even recognized her if she wasn’t holding Luca’s hand when she died.

Mama and papa were there too. When the house had burned down in the wake of the great fire wyrm’s attack, Mama had throw herself on him as a shield. Even then, as a child, the logical part of his brain told him what she was doing was pointless.

He had looked into her eyes as she burned, and heard the last command she gave her only son:

“Live.”

Now he crawled out from under their crisping bodies to look upon the wreck of his village proper. Everything was a mass of ruined stone and burning thatch. The creatures had come, they had killed, and they had gone – every one of them singing a name on their vile lips as they pillaged and burned the village. One word: Archon.

It was a name that would live in his heart, forever.

Something stirred nearby. Behind him, one of the wolf-beasts was trapped in the rubble – its claws flashing and lashing out at him in a death-spasm. Without thinking he grabbed the dagger at his belt and met its charge head-on, forcing his dagger between its claws and gritting his teeth in fear and adrenaline. In the heat of the moment, all fear left him. He was nothing but pure instinct. A child had died that day. And something else was being born in the funeral pyre that was his home.

The beast forced him outside, using its bulky body to crash through the remains of the burning door with him and sending a deluge of spittle into his face.

He could die, now. He could leave and meet mama and papa again. He was a baker’s son – his System had only activated two weeks ago, blazing with black neon-glitz letters that told him he was a ‘Baker – LVL 1’. And that was all he would ever be.

Now, his knife dangled above the jaws of a beast that had come from a nightmare realm. And he would carve it up as he had carved his first loaf of bread.

He pushed off from the ground, the creature’s wounded arm giving him just enough of an advantage. He kicked at its wound, heard its howl, and plunged his blade into its neck, snarling with delight as he heard it scream to the silent moon that watched this battle unfold with its uncaring gaze. He kept stabbing at the thing even after it had stopped moving. The only screaming in the village now, was his own.

Then – voices nearby.

“That’s enough, little warrior.”

He didn’t stop. Not until he felt the arm of someone strong grab his and try to shake the knife from his tiny hand.

When he wouldn’t let go, the man who held him brandished a blade and made to slice his arm clean off, saying something about how they didn’t need this kind of crazy tonight.

“Wait.”

Another voice – that of a woman’s – stopped everything. He looked up at her and snarled like a beast, trying to keep the tears from streaming down his face, trying to avoid looking at the charred bodies at his feet.

“Unhand him, Zestrius,” the woman said. “This one’s a fighter.”

She seemed impressed by his recent kill, and when he felt his arm released he fell to the ground and panted at the woman’s feet.

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“Well?” she asked him. “What’s your name, my little killer?”

He looked up at her, soot covering his face, blood running down his fingers, and said nothing.

“Wolf got your tongue?” the woman chuckled. Her blonde hair ran in little ringlets down her pale face, framing a pair of almond eyes that bore the fires of his former home within them.

But the smile she shone down at him, and the great silver rapier glistening at her side – these things showed him strength. Strength enough to keep him from crying out in anguish.

“This one’s an accident waiting to happen, Carliah. Best we leave the kid and move on – the army has probably moved North by now.”

The woman said nothing to her comrade. Instead, she bent lower, licking her dry lips in the face of the panting boy.

“A boy who has lost everything, and at such a tender age,” she said. “A child like this is exactly what we need, Garrix. Tell me, boy, if you still have a tongue in that angry little mouth of yours, what do you want, right now?”

He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t think he showed any emotion at all.

“I want to kill them,” he said, looking back at the perforated corpse of the wolfman. “I want to kill them all.”

The woman’s smile only grew.

“Good,” she said. “I can work with that.”

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His first days in Caer Krea flashed through his mind. The trials of the Greycloaks were designed to root out weaklings. He made friends, and saw them die – or worse, saw them consumed by monsters living outside the walls. Carliah had no qualms about throwing children against maneaters or ghouls, serpents or drakes. In her eyes, they had been born into a world in a constant state of strife. It was better that they learned that the law of this realm was the law of survival. And survival required a stern hand and an even stronger heart forged in battle. Her boys learned. Or they didn’t.

She loved to get them early. He was no exception. There were days when she pushed him so far that other recruits thought it nothing but cruelty. Once, she threw him into the monastery pits with three other recruits – boys whose parents had left them at the monastery gates – and ordered them to fight until only one remained.

She wasn’t even surprised when he emerged from the pit, starving, and shaking, but victorious all the same.

“He has a Grey spirit, alright,” she’d tell her comrades at dinner. “Mark my words – that boy’ll go far.”

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It was his twenty-first birthday when he’d learned the truth: there was a new Archon seeking to dominate the earth.

Its name was Gyko. And it was already making gains across Argwyll’s Eastern perimeter. Entire cities had been engulfed by overgrown thorns and sentient plant-demons. Clouds of toxins threaded their way between towns and villages, polluting everything they touched. Wells dried up, and monsters the likes of which no one had ever seen before would soon be knocking at the doors of the monastery.

Like the other boys when they came of age, his time had come to take the blood of Krea.

The ceremony was a short one – a condition imposed by a lack of time. Carliah gathered the newest recruits who had survived their long Grey Decades and would now sup from the blood of the old angel – the one who had come down and told humans they were the true rulers of this earth, to hold and protect it in Lord Kaedmon’s name.

In truth, he didn’t know if he believed all that. If Kaedmon was so good, how come he’d let his village get burned up? Why hadn’t Kaedmon sent an angel down to save mama and papa, or Luca and Tara? He had never believed the guff they spat in his religious studies classes. All he knew was that if he had a blade in his hand, he could kill monsters. He could kill anything.

But as he watched the ceremony take place, he felt his pulse quicken. The other boys supped from the goblet, filled with silver, viscous liquid, and either fell ill or died right there on the spot. It was said that of all new recruits, 5% took to the blood of the angel. The boys knew this, of course, and yet here they were of their own volition. Carliah made it clear they didn’t have to take the trial. Their service to the Greys was up – they could walk free if they wished. But they didn’t. Because for most of them, a 5% chance was better than what waited for them out there. Better to die a hero than live a servant to the new devil of Argwyll.

When it came to his turn, his feet wavered on the steps of the great hall. He looked up at the fresco of Krea – so fierce and regal atop the body of Karfangg – and told himself that his life had all been dumb luck up to this point, anyway. What was the point of worrying about something he had no control over?

Little did he know then just how wrong he was.

As he re-lived the memory now, he wanted to slap the chalice out of his child-self’s hands.

But instead he was forced to watch as he guzzled down the blood and fell, twitching wildly on the great steps of the Hall. His brothers and sisters simply looked on, a few of them smiling to see Commander Argent’s favored child die before her at the end of days.

As darkness crept across the skies outside, and the guards were about to drag his body away, that’s when it happened.

Light.

A pure, unnatural rush of lightning surged through his inert body, sending his vocal cords into a frenzy. His scream shook the entire Hall, woke the eldest Greycloaks from their slumber, and embedded itself in the minds of all who looked on. For they were hearing the voice of a legend. The voice of the reborn.

“By Kaedmon…” Carliah whispered.

His eyes opened – pale, blue, and brilliant – as the new words of his System screen flashed before him:

[LIGHTBORN: LVL 30]

Back then, those words were like the writings on a golden door that would lead him to paradise.

But now, looking back through the lucid dream of the Tower, he saw them for what they truly were: as scrawlings on an untended grave.

In Carliah’s ecstatic eyes he saw just how much of a nightmare his life was soon to become. The trials of his youth had been nothing but a prelude.