Dawn in the Pit was not a sunrise; it was a slow bleed of grey light through the grate far above, illuminating a world of huddled shapes and listless misery. The day began with the clank of a chain and the groan of a pulley. A massive bucket, slick with rust and grime, was lowered into the center of the cavern.
It was filled with slop—a foul-smelling gruel of boiled grain, vegetable peelings, and whatever scraps could be spared from the kitchens of the slum's enforcers.
The prisoners, once human, were now a pack of starving animals. They surged forward, a wave of desperation, clawing and biting for a handful of the stuff. The weak were trampled, their whimpers lost in the feral snarls of the strong.
Ravi did not move. He remained in his self-made circle of isolation, watching the grim ritual. He felt hunger, a dull, gnawing ache in his gut, but the instinct to fight for sustenance was a language his new body had yet to learn. The sight filled him not with pity, but with a cold, analytical sorrow. This was the base state of his world: survival at its most wretched.
The feeding frenzy subsided as quickly as it began, leaving the victors licking their fingers and the defeated weeping in the shadows. It was then that the grate above scraped open with a screech of tortured metal. Three figures descended on a crude metal platform, their armored boots clanging with authority.
Two were standard enforcers, their faces hidden behind dented helms. The third, however, needed no helmet. He was a bull of a man with a thick neck and a face like a slab of raw meat, a web of purple veins pulsing at his temples. He wore stained leather armor studded with iron, and a heavy, serrated blade—more saw than sword—was strapped to his back.
This was Garrick Veinsaw. The Lawless Warden.
A hush fell over the Pit. Fear, thick and suffocating, replaced the air. Garrick was not just a guard; he was the Pit's resident god, a creature who thrived on the art of suffering. He stepped off the platform, his boots sinking into the mud, and surveyed his domain with a look of utter contempt. He was humming, a jaunty, off-key children's tune that was somehow more terrifying than any war cry.
His eyes scanned the crowd, searching, hunting. They landed on a small figure huddled near the wall—a girl, barely a woman, with tangled brown hair and wide, defiant eyes. She was mute, a fact Garrick found endlessly amusing. She had spilled her share of the slop during the morning's scrum. An infraction.
"Well, well," Garrick's voice boomed, a gravelly baritone that echoed in the cavern. "Look at Little Sparrow. Wasting gifts."
He stomped over to her, the crowd parting before him like water. The girl pressed herself against the cold, damp stone, but her eyes never left his. There was no plea in them. Only hate.
For a man like Garrick, that was fuel.
"No tears? No begging?" He crouched, bringing his face level with hers. The humming stopped. "You're no fun at all. We'll have to work on that."
He reached out and grabbed her left hand. The girl flinched but made no sound. With a sickening, deliberate slowness, Garrick took her index finger and bent it back.
A sharp crack echoed in the dead silence.
The girl's body seized, her jaw clenched so tight a muscle trembled in her cheek. Sweat beaded on her brow. But she did not scream. Her eyes, now shimmering with unshed tears, remained locked on his.
Garrick chuckled, a low, guttural sound. "Stubborn. I like that." He moved to her middle finger. "Let's hear you sing for me, Sparrow."
And that was it.
The spark. The catalyst.
In the center of the Pit, Ravi's head lifted. His ashen eyes, which had been passive mirrors to the world's misery, now held a focal point. He saw the scene not as a man would—with outrage or pity—but as a creator sees a flaw in his design. A bug in the system. A line of corrupted code that had to be deleted.
He began to walk.
His movements were slow, unhurried, each step measured and silent in the mud. The other prisoners, sensing a shift in the oppressive atmosphere, scrambled out of his path. They stared, mouths agape, as the silent, naked beggar from the night before walked directly toward Garrick Veinsaw.
The Warden, still focused on his victim, heard the soft squelch of footsteps and looked up, annoyed. "What's this? A hero?" he sneered, seeing the approaching figure. "You look like you couldn't fight off a stiff breeze. Get back in your hole before you—"
Garrick's words died in his throat.
Ravi was before him now. His face was a mask of perfect, chilling neutrality. There was no anger. No hatred. There was nothing. It was the placid calm of a deep ocean trench, an emptiness more terrifying than any rage.
Garrick, for the first time in a decade, felt a prickle of genuine fear. He let go of the girl's hand and started to rise, his hand instinctively going to the hilt of his blade. "I gave you a warning, scum."
Ravi did not stop. He raised his hand, palm open. It was not a strike. It was a gesture of finality. He placed his hand gently on the Warden's sweaty forehead.
For the bystanders, the effect was instantaneous and baffling.
Garrick Veinsaw froze solid. His sneer of arrogant cruelty dissolved, replaced by a slack-jawed look of utter confusion. His eyes, wide with a horror he couldn't name, unfocused. He seemed to shrink, to deflate like a wineskin being emptied.
But from Garrick's perspective, it was an eternity of terror. The moment the beggar's cold palm touched his skin, his world dissolved. His name—Garrick—unraveled like a loose thread. The memory of his mother's face, the taste of his first kill, the feel of his serrated blade—it all bled away into a grey, featureless static. He was being deleted, atom by atom, from the scroll of existence. His mouth opened to scream, but he no longer remembered what a scream was.
His body, now an empty vessel, lost its integrity. He crumbled, starting from the head down, into a cascade of fine, grey dust and blackened ash. The dust settled on the mud, leaving nothing behind but his leather armor, his wicked blade, and a small, shifting mound where a man had just been.
A soft click resonated deep within Ravi's soul. A fragment of his lost power, a sliver of forgotten law, slotted into place. A whisper, ancient and absolute, echoed in his mind.
"Let this being be forgotten."
The silence that followed was absolute. The two enforcers stared at the pile of ash, their minds refusing to process what they had seen. The prisoners were frozen, statues of disbelief and terror.
The mute girl was the first to move. She cradled her broken hand, her gaze fixed on Ravi. She was not looking at a savior. She was looking at a power beyond her comprehension, a quiet, walking apocalypse that had just erased her tormentor from reality itself.
One of the enforcers finally broke, his nerve shattering. He drew his sword with a panicked yell, pointing it at Ravi. "Demon! What are you?!"
His shout broke the spell. A prisoner, an old man who had lost his son to the Warden's games a week prior, let out a raw, guttural roar of pure rage. He picked up a rock and hurled it, striking the armored guard in the helmet.
It was all the spark that was needed.
The Pit erupted. Decades of pent-up fear, rage, and despair exploded into a single, violent cataclysm. The prisoners, no longer a flock of sheep but a tide of fury, surged forward. They swarmed the two terrified enforcers, overwhelming them with sheer numbers.
The riot had begun.
Amid the chaos, Ravi stood motionless beside the pile of ash. He looked down at the mute girl, then turned and walked away, a ghost moving through the storm.
Up on the surface, as screams and the clash of makeshift weapons echoed from below, the rumor began to spread like wildfire through the Ruinspire Ward. It started as a panicked whisper from a guard who had escaped the platform.
It was not "A beggar killed the Warden."
It was something far worse. Something that would chill the blood of priests and warlords alike.
"The Warden is gone," the guard stammered, his eyes wide with madness. "The Ashen Beggar… he touched him… and unmade him."