I came awake already screaming. My hands flew to my neck and met whole flesh, but I could still feel it, and all the fear I’d kept hidden from Sett was bouncing atonally off the cream-colored stone walls, totally beyond my control.

Strong, gentle hands gripped my flailing limbs, and a yellow-haired Healer was there with a soft voice and smiling face. I heard nothing that she said. “It wasn’t supposed to be real, it wasn’t supposed to be real!” I shrieked, sobbing as I said it over and over. Total hysteria, and I hated myself for it, but Sacred Aspects, I had felt my own head get cut off and I was not sure how to make that something that I knew about myself. I remembered the pain of my cheek hitting the floor, the dizziness of my head spinning like a top, and the random luck of landing where I could watch my own body fall to the floor gouting blood from neck and shoulder. Things had gone gray, and then I’d felt myself die. The arm I had expected, and the painless shock of the blow had powered me through those first few seconds, but then it was supposed to be over, erased as if it had never happened. Instead, all the pain hit me just as the damned thing had swung for my neck, and I’d felt every single fiber of my neck stretch and tear under its sword-talons. Unacceptable! This was not at all how Father had described it, and as soon as I had the courage to face him again, he was going to get an earful. Just like everyone was right now, because I still hadn’t stopped screaming.

“Shhh,” the woman said, sneaking a word in edgewise when I drew another breath. She stroked a warm hand across my neck, and the feel of fingers on that violated flesh – whole now but still aching – shocked me into looking at her. She might as well have spit in my open mouth for how offended I felt by her touch, and the indignation short-circuited my screams. She must have known, because she let her hand fall away and winked at me before moving out of sight. I sat up, realizing for the first time that I was laid out on the floor of the Entrance Hall and that I was not the only one making noise. Cries, whimpers, and shaky breaths sounded on all sides from nearly three dozen other supplicants. A few had already gotten to their feet and were looking around in awe, while most of the others were in various states of emotional disarray.

Realizing I was in company locked my panic away faster than anything else could have. Hopefully everyone was so occupied by their own trauma that no one would remember my outburst. There would be time to sob in the dark later; there were things I could learn about the others now that I might not be able to divine later. A dark-haired boy sobbed into his hands in the heartbroken kind of way that said he might never recover, and gap-toothed girl had huddled up against the nearest wall and jumped if anyone came too near her. Those were two to remember; time would tell whether they were to be avoided or exploited. That loudmouth Aldric was staring around at the clean, elegant lines of the Entrance Hall, and Sett was just now coming awake, silent and serious, rubbing at his chest and stomach in a thoughtful kind of way. No tears from him. I stifled a spike of envy. I should have expected as much – nobody could take a beating like that kid.

I got to my feet, glad that Father had never liked greeting the new supplicants and hopeful that none of his assistants did either. I’d casually polled everyone I encountered in his office outside the Tower, but there was always a chance he had underlings that never left the Tower, and for all the planning and scheming I’d done over the last two years, this was my first look inside. The Entrance Hall did not disappoint. I didn’t want to gawk like the mudfooters from the Crim, but it took effort to keep my eyes from bulging. I’d grown up in relative luxury compared to Sett and his mates, but this… Huge carved columns of clean, white stone somehow managed to look graceful as they held up the distant, gold-inlaid ceiling, luminant globes hanging in midair without any apparent support shedding a gentle golden glow over everything. The Healers were dressed in impossibly clean yellow tunics, and despite having patched up every kind of wound – including reattaching my own blessed head – there was not a drop of blood anywhere. The demon was, of course, long gone, and I didn’t see anyone with the scroll and quill insignia of a Summoner. Just as well; I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to know who’d held the reins of the beast that had killed me, especially since there was a good chance I’d need to take classes from them.

An impressive-looking woman in deep red robes strode in through the ornate double doors on the far side of the Hall, clapping her hands for attention. The Healers helped the last few stragglers to their feet and filed out. The one who had touched me threw me a sidelong glance as she went, and I wasn’t sure whether to scowl or wink at her. She was pretty enough, but I could still feel the shadow of my own death within my neck, and I didn’t think I’d fancy kissing someone who’d held my severed head in her hands.

“You probably think it quite the accomplishment,” the red-robed woman said, “that you’ve entered the sacred Tower. It is not. Those who ran are less than gormek; they’re barely worthy of the suicide run we’ll give them at thirty-five. You, on the other hand, have faced death. I watched each one of you, and you were all pathetic. The fact that you did not run means you have reached the bare minimum that can be considered human. You are still asleep, though: still gormek. You know nothing, and I am here to nudge you toward waking, even if it means killing and healing you five times a day. During these initial challenges, you will always be healed, but you will often be hurt. Expect the blackness of death on a regular basis.”

I felt my lips peel back in a grimace. That was going to happen again? Repeatedly? Father had told me less than I thought.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Your sad little school was hardly worth the bricks that made it,” the woman said, tossing her raven hair imperiously. “Trying to change that now would be a waste of my breath. First you will be placed in the Threshing, where you will have to work together to surpass a series of tests. You will be observed for what virtues you might be able to develop. Be fast. Be cunning. Be brave… and when you die, get back up. That is all.”

Then the lights went out, and suddenly I was somewhere else entirely. I could feel the shift in air pressure and temperature. This new place was even colder than it had been outside, where the deep mud was still thawing before planting. The harsh, scared breath of several others surrounded me, so I’d be saddled with a few other idiots for this new challenge. I flexed my fists, feeling the tendons between my knuckles creak. Would they send a Summoned monster in at us in the dark? It would be a relief to pound out some of my fear and confusion on an opponent, and there were plenty of extra bodies to keep an enemy occupied. Father hadn’t said anything about more testing after the initial entry, and it wasn’t as if I could have asked too much about it without letting him know what I was up to. Most of the gormek out in Misfell would have traded a variety of body parts to be the son of the Master of Facilities, exempt from the Entry Test. To me, it was a damned inconvenience.

There were two kids to my left, one directly across from me, one off to the right somewhere, and two behind me. The sounds were claustrophobic, meaning the space couldn’t be very large. Five meters across, maybe?

“Feel at the walls,” I said loudly. One of the mudfooters to my left jumped, letting out a squeak. The poor sap hadn’t even known I was there. “If there’s a door, something will be coming through for us to fight. If not, then this is something else.”

“Does anyone have a firestart pouch?” I recognized Sett’s voice and was glad to hear it. He might not be the best fighter, but he had a good head on his shoulders. He’d be an asset.

“We were marching to the blessed Tower,” another boy grumbled. I thought it might have been Aldric, though it could have been any dozen of the whiners I’d heard as I snuck into the supplicant line half an hour ago, in some other lifetime. “Leave all worldly possessions behind, remember?”

“Who knew you’d need a light in Sharell?” said another cool voice, this one at my back.

“This isn’t heaven,” said a glum voice to my right. “This is Sheol.”

No point in dawdling. “All right, we don’t have a light,” I said. “Use your hands.”

“You use your hands,” someone muttered, but I heard everyone scattering to do as I’d said. Within moments I heard the gentle scrapings of hands against stone. It sounded as if I was roughly in the center of the space.

“Stone walls,” someone said.

“Found a corner,” Sett reported.

“Ow,” said a new voice, likely a girl. “Some of these stones stick out. Half a hand, at least.”

“I’m feeling the same,” said a boy right next to her.

More voices chimed in, and I stood motionless in the center, crafting the space in my mind. Soon enough I had the shape of it. The room was square and had no apparent door. The jutting stones were only on one wall, and jutted out every meter or so at varying heights.

“It’s a climb,” I told them. “They put us in a pit and we have to climb out.”

“Thanks, genius,” said the same mutterer I’d heard before. I was increasingly sure it was Aldric. I’d have to deal with that if it continued, but now wasn’t the moment.

“Come on, don’t tell me none of you ever snuck out of the Crim in the dark,” I said.

“Of course not,” Sett said from the other side of the room, sounding scandalized.

Someone else snickered. A girl. “Sett the Ascended, too holy to sneak a pint or piss in an alley.”

“How many days since your last pint, Holry?” the boy that was certainly Aldric butted in. “Or was it five pints? Have your hands stopped shaking yet?” If he was sticking up for Sett, he might not be all bad, even if he couldn’t shut up.

General laughter sounded, and I fought down a pang of outsider loneliness. These kids knew each other, and that would help us, but sometimes I wished I could have snuck into the Crim as a boy. I’d always had servants, but friends weren’t exactly thick on the ground when your father wanted people to forget that he had any offspring.

Sett was the first to move to the wall. Within moments they’d discovered that there were two rough climbing paths upward. I put myself second in line behind an unknown girl on the other line upward, trusting Sett to manage the first path. There were seven of us, all told. Of course they’d put us in groups of seven. It was the sacred number, the number of divine Aspects and also the number of Orders we could follow as we trained for the Everwar. Mustn’t let the supplicants forget what this was all about.

Finding the handholds in the dark wasn’t the most enjoyable thing I’d ever done, but the girl ahead of me was kind enough to call out when she found one, which made it much easier, and I passed the information back down the line as we ascended. I’d hauled myself past at least ten handholds, meaning that we’d climbed something like ten meters, and my hands were starting to wonder how long we were going to keep doing this. My brain, on the other hand, was thinking that even if this wall rose for another hundred meters, this was an awfully simple task for gauging our abilities.

That was when a gout of brilliant flame burst from the wall up ahead of me, catching the girl up top right in the face.