Chapter 4

I watched my mother's frozen expression, and a memory surfaced from a year ago.

Coach Kane had discovered something unusual, my aptitude for perception-type combat arts. It wasn't just strong; it was genuinely rare. He had purchased specialized perception-amplifying ore out of his own pocket, and gone to my mother to make a case: let me develop as a perception-specialist, not the brute-force path, but the one that actually fit what I was.

Perception-type warriors were almost unheard of in pack society. Those who developed the ability fully often became the true strategic core of an entire pack, the kind that couldn't be replaced with raw power.

What did he get for that?

My mother went to the pack council and screamed at him directly: "Perception-types are useless. Can't fight. Any wolf with strong perception is just like that pack-betraying father she has, weak where it counts. My daughter takes the pure combat path. She does what I say."

Coach Kane was eventually pressured into filing for his own dismissal.

And I lost the last small window of belief I'd had in any future at all. I became a weapon in her hands, a weapon that had no inner life left.

The memory dissolved.

The final Trial ended. The last bell echoed through the entire arena complex.

Every other contestant stepped down from their positions with the exhale of people who had been holding their breath for days.

Only my shell remained, slumped motionless against the stone platform in the rest zone. The muscle fiber throughout my wolf-body had fully necrotized. The joints had set into something close to gel. Even the faint residual pulse of the Submission Mark could no longer shift this dried-out husk a single inch.

The arena judge organized his final records and walked over to the platform. He waved a hand in front of my face.

"Contestant, Trials are over. Please clear the platform."

Nothing. Only a smell, dense enough to turn a stomach.

Outside the arena at the same moment, my mother watched the exit corridor with mounting anxiety. Every other contestant had walked out. My silhouette never came.

The Record Keepers' crystal orbs were all trained on her, waiting for the final interview, the "first-ranked warrior's" closing statement.

This was the public moment of glory she absolutely could not let fall apart.

"I can't stop now... first place is mine... it has to be..."

She fell into a kind of frenzy. Without thinking, she shoved her own fingers into her mouth and bit down until they bled.

She pressed the blood-soaked fingers against the black jade plate and began reciting a Branding Enhancement incantation, the old, obscure kind. This was consuming the Submission Mark's own lifespan, force-drawing the last dregs from the sub-mark.

She knew what it meant when Enhancement was pushed this far: the host would be destroyed completely. She knew. She didn't stop.

Inside the arena, under the judge's horrified gaze, my body wrenched itself upright in a motion that should not have been possible, bending backward first, then locking straight up.

Crack. Crack.

Both kneecaps snapped from the inside as the force of standing on fused, brittle bones proved too much to hold. The broken fragments punched through the skin of my lower legs.

What ran out wasn't the vivid red blood of a living wolf. It was thick, black, already-putrefying fluid.

The judge scrambled backward, sat down hard on the ground, then turned and half-ran, half-crawled out of the arena to call the pack's enforcement unit.

My body began to move, dragging broken leg bones, one step leaving a black footprint, then another, down the corridor toward the exit.

The screams behind me rose and fell as I passed.

At the far end of the corridor, the shell walked out into the blinding noon glare.

The crowd outside exploded into chaos. Crystal orbs blazed.

My mother's manic, feverish smile stretched across her face. She opened her arms like someone welcoming a legendary weapon home.

"Look, she's coming out! She's done it, she's made my dream real!"

The moment she stepped forward to embrace the shell, the body finally gave out.

A dull, heavy impact. It pitched forward and hit the hot stone flat.

The force of impact split the skin across a chest wall that had been rotting for too long to hold itself together.

In the dead silence that fell over everyone watching, the Submission Mark over my heart, the last ember of it, guttered out as the body collapsed entirely.

From inside the broken chest cavity, a small piece of jade slid free, blackened completely, the physical anchor of the mark itself. It hit the ground with a faint cracking sound, and then it crumbled to dust.