Above Skyler City's Central Dome the morning sky had the hard, metallic gray of the city itself—a mirror to
steel and ambition. Every twenty-five years the world gathered beneath the dome to watch an unforgiving
ritual: the selection of fifty Elite Xeon warriors. Not heroes. Not kings. Survivors who would be given the
power others could only buy.
Candidates packed the selection plaza: engineered prodigies, sponsored heirs with corporate sigils stitched
into their sleeves, musclebound gladiators bred for spectacle. Everyone had something to lose—or
everything to gain.
At the very back stood Candidate 4921.
Auren wore patched boots and a jacket that had seen better suns. His hands were calloused, his knuckles
mapped with faint white scars. To most he was invisible. To himself, this moment was everything. Luna—his
little sister—slept in a hospital five years away, stolen by a genetic disease that kept closing her eyes for
good. Auren had heard whispers of Orin-X0: a miraculous cure woven into the flesh of XiEon officers,
offered only to those who proved themselves on the Trials. Nothing could be bought; everything had to be
earned.
A voice, amplified and merciless, split the air.
"Test One: Neuro-Reflex Arena. Begin."
Light swallowed the plaza, and the arena drew a new map of danger: shifting floors, walls that breathed,
razor-winged drones slicing the sky. Illusions folded reality in on itself. Panic erupted. Candidates moved
like prey under a sky of electric intent—claws, blades, hacked energy rigs, raw desperation.
Auren's chest stung. He moved late, the world a slow drum. Blood warmed his lip; the soles of his boots
found slick. He should have been cut down. He should have been one more pile of failure.
Then a brute slammed into him and sent him tumbling toward an incoming blast.
For a second—too brief for fear—Auren let the past wash through him: Luna's pale face, the whisper of
machines, the promise he'd made. He could not die. Not like this.
Something in him woke.
Heat flooded his veins. Reflex sharpened into something feral and sure. His pupils narrowed; the world
snapped forward. The explosion bloomed—too fast, too hot—yet Auren moved, a blur through fire. The
ground cracked under his stride as he twisted, sprinting through the inferno. He felt the shockwave like a
coming tide and slid through its lip.
1
When the brute who had thrown him laughed and called him roasted, Auren heard another sound—too low
to be heard across the arena but sharp in his chest.
"Die."
The brute turned to see Auren's fist drive through his chest. The man's grin died mid-word. He fell as if the
world had decided to stop caring about him.
After that, nothing felt accidental.
Explosions resolved into patterns. Illusions collapsed before they could take hold. Attacks arrived and
passed like clockwork; Auren answered them with an economy of motion he had never owned before. One
by one, the stronger candidates fell—not by luck, but as if some hidden ledger had been balanced.
The crowd above whispered. The big screens traced names to ranks. When the announcer's feed rolled,
Auren's name flickered into place.
Candidate 4921 — Rank: 50th.
Auren's body protested in a new language—blood from his mouth, red tears from an eye he didn't know
could bleed. The world narrowed and then went black.
Watching from the VIP tier, Alys Virellis adjusted the collar of her pristine exo-suit. She was the kind of
elegance that cut: immaculate hair, a smile that read like a contract. The screen blinked again to show
Candidate 2256—Rank: 51st.
Pride is a slow ember. Alys felt it grow into flame.
Later the fifty were escorted beneath the dome to Iron Sector Zero: the Crucible. Auren woke to sterile
lights and the smell of antiseptic. A woman in white approached—Alys. She moved like the surface of an
ocean; everything about her had been designed to make others wet with awe.
She stopped close enough for the two of them to hear only each other.
"Ten million credits," she offered, voice soft enough to be a mercy. "Step down. Walk away. It'll buy a new
life."
Auren met her without theatrics. "I don't need credits. My sister needs Orin-X0. I won't step down."
Her smile tightened. "Desperation makes people do foolish things."
He turned away, and already the moment braided itself into fate.
Pride frayed at the edges of Alys's composure. She could have bought him off; she had not. Humiliation, she
knew, would get sharper than any blade. She would remember.
2
The Crucible was not a camp. It was a machine to either refine or break a person. When Auren opened the
sealed packet issued to him—a uniform, a data slate, a single message—the words on the screen were not
kind.
From: Alys Virellis
Not everyone is noble like you. Cadet 48 folded for me—sixty million credits will convince most people.
Auren typed the courtesy response anyone might, then watched the reply:
Alys:
"Don't take it personally. You humiliated me. Now your sister will pay if you don't."
Her voice over text was colder than a chamber—an oath disguised as etiquette.
The true Crucible had only just begun.