Two months. That's all that stood between Siege and the gaping maw that was Anatheon Academy.
In that time, the Slag had changed.
Or maybe it was just Siege, and the world simply noticed.
Where once he was a nameless youth among the mold-stained alleys, he now walked the broken stone paths like a hero in borrowed glory.
The slum-dwellers watched him pass with something close to reverence—and something far closer to fear.
After all, no one from the Slag survived the Trial.
They entered as offerings. As meat. Siege hadn't just survived—he'd ascended.
Rank 1: Warrior.
A soul brushing against divinity. In a place where people prayed just to keep their bones warm, that meant something.
It meant hope. And hope was a dangerous thing.
—-
"Seems like I get to retire you early, old man," Siege had said with a lopsided grin, the day the stipend notice came.
"Ah, all fine wine and dining from now on, right?" Garret had chuckled, the sound more rust than mirth.
Three thousand union credits. Monthly.
Siege blinked at the number when it first came through, half-expecting it to vanish.
That was more than he and Garret had earned together in half a year of hauling steel and scooping garbage.
Garrith quit his job the same day. Walked off the site with his lunch still warm in the box, while his boss screamed something about abandonment and timelines.
The man had been red in the face, but Garret just laughed, coughed up a bit of dust, and never looked back.
For the first time in years, they ate real food.
Not paste. Not mold-pocked bread. Actual food, with taste and grease and tears.
Siege tried to pretend it wasn't surreal.
That this new life fit him. It didn't. It hung around his shoulders like an oversized coat—suffocating and utterly ridiculous.
He spent the following weeks in obsession.
If he was going to be thrust into a place where spoiled noble spawn tossed fireballs over lunchtime squabbles, he'd damn well be ready.
Books were stolen, borrowed, bought, and burned into memory. Names of True Gods, maps of old ruins, ancient rites whispered by the dying. He devoured it all.
Each night, he returned to the Slag with bleeding knuckles and aching muscles, and still, he trained.
He also tried the other thing—the magic. Or Aspect manipulation, as the shinier folks called it.
His results were... less than spectacular.
In the dingy gym beneath the slag towers, surrounded by rusted equipment and mold-eaten mats, Siege attempted the impossible.
The room smelled of sweat and men's dreams. He stood shirtless before a cracked mirror, flexed hard enough to burst something, and muttered ancient chants he'd copied from the back of a library book.
Nothing.
"Nothing at all, damn it!" he spat, stomping once.
He'd expected flame, or lightning, or at least a whisper of power. Maybe his skin would glow.
Or a sword would manifest from thin air and offer to serve him. Instead, he was just a sweaty guy glaring at himself.
Out of spite, he turned to what he knew. He brutalized the punching bag like it owed him money.
The poor thing took it for a while before giving up, its stuffing torn and bleeding onto the floor.
But Siege did marvel. Not at magic. At his own body.
He was stronger now. Not in the fabled, mountain-splitting way of legends. But strong enough to lift a small car.
Strong enough to kill. And perhaps most importantly, strong enough to survive.
He had seen the recruitment ads. Polished halls of obsidian and bone. Spires that kissed storm-choked skies.
Gods-in-training walking side by side, their bloodlines noble, their postures perfect, their eyes glazed with the apathy only centuries of privilege could bring.
Young masters and misses, the whole lot of them.
The Sons and Daughters of Fate.
Siege almost wretched at the thought.
He could already hear the cloying politeness, feel the condescension seep into the air like poison gas.
And yet… he had to go.
Because Anatheon was the only way forward.
The only bulwark left for humanity. The only place that taught the use of power instead of just hoarding it.
Ascendants trained there. They studied, bled, fought, and—if they were lucky—returned as weapons honed for a dying world.
For outside the Citadel walls, for the Outer Dark.
For the ninety percent of the world, overrun by grotesque things that wore the memory of life like masks.
Monsters birthed by wrath and rot.
The Corrupted.
Things that didn't just kill—they distorted.
Citadels were the last bastions. Each ruled by a Rank 5 True God, walking calamities that had once been human.
Halgrith's ruler was Lyssandra Maxwell—God of War and Wisdom, Legacy of Kartikeya, the six-faced Hindu general of divine armies.
A being of war-born serenity and impossible intellect. It was said she could kill a monster with a whisper, and save a man with the same breath.
And Siege? Siege was going to her school.
"Madness," he muttered one evening, watching his father sleep in their now-comfortably warm home.
The mattress had springs that didn't squeal. The lights didn't flicker like dying stars. They even had hot water now.
And yet... a dull fear gnawed at him.
What was he really?
A slumrat given a medal? A plaything for gods?
His power was a half-formed thing. Partially won from madness.
He was raw meat hurled into a lion's den, surrounded by bloodlines that could trace their heritage to ancient warlords and forgotten spirits.
And yet... he wanted to go. Not just to survive. To thrive.
To be more than just the lucky bastard of the Slag.
—-
Two months passed like storm winds through broken glass.
Now, as he stood before the black-clad electric train that would take him to the Academy, Siege took one last look at the Slag.
The towers loomed behind him, crooked and crumbling, home to rats and prayers whispered into soot.
The people had gathered.
Dozens of them. Old women with cracked teeth. Men who stood with broken backs and rusted tools. And the children—they were the loudest.
They called out his name between fits of laughter and mockery.
These were not ordinary children. Not in name, nor in spirit.
There was Leonydas, a scrawny, sharp-eyed boy missing three fingers who once killed a dog-sized rat with a crowbar and a grin.
Sigrún, named after the Valkyrie queen, already carried a dagger at her hip and spoke only in threats or lullabies.
Gilga, short for Gilgamesh, always covered in ash, dreamed of building a flying fortress out of scrap and fire.
Arjun, lean and wiry, obsessed with becoming a "god sniper" and hitting a Corrupted's core from a mile away with a slingshot.
Their names were not parental aspirations.
They were armor. Badges.
In the Slag, you named your child after a hero so the world would think twice before killing them.
It rarely worked.
"Siege the Slagwalker!"
"Bring back glory!"
"Kick one of those silver spoons in the teeth!"
He raised a hand in reply, unsure of what gesture was appropriate for such a miserable bunch of fans.
Maybe a thumbs-up. Maybe the middle finger.
His father stood beside him, arm slung over his shoulder.
"Try not to die," Garret said softly.
Siege nodded.
"No promises."
Then the doors of the train hissed open, and he stepped in with a steely gaze.