Chapter 8: Cull the Weak
The horn blew just before sunrise.
A deep, warping note that rolled across Camp 12 like thunder through bone. It wasn't the usual crackle of the mission loudspeakers. This sound came from something older — a long, curved instrument carved from the rib of a behemoth long extinct.
Every combatant in the camp froze.
Kaelren didn't.
He was already awake, already dressed. The GAV band on his arm ticked softly — locked at x20 gravity. His breath steamed in the dawn air as he stepped from his tent, muscles tight beneath his scarred skin. He looked less like a boy now, and more like a storm wearing flesh. Matching his true age much more closely.
He didn't speak as the others emerged, faces pale, some still half-asleep, some trying not to shake.
They all knew what day it was.
The Winter Cull had begun.
A Synth Warden stomped down the central row of tents — her voice augmented, sharp as steel.
"All ranked combatants, report to the central square. This is not a drill. Any absences will be marked as voluntary Death."
In the chaos of motion, Kaelren stood still.
He looked down the path toward the center of Camp 12. Already, squads were forming. Low ranks shuffled with dull eyes. Mid-tier fighters clenched weapons in trembling hands. High-ranks stood apart, confident — but some with too much ease.
They hadn't trained like he had.
They hadn't bled for eleven months straight.
Kaelren rolled his neck until it popped and began walking.
He didn't bother with armor. He wore nothing but reinforced pants, his gravity band, and the blood-stained wraps over his knuckles.
His body was enough.
The entire camp had been called to the clearing. Not a single trainee was absent. No one dared to be.
Kaelren stood near the front, arms crossed, and muscles still aching from the last eleven months of battle and blood. Around him, a hundred others stood shoulder to shoulder, every rank above the bottom twenty called to gather in the bone-ringed center of Camp 12.
Instructor Vorr stalked forward, iron-heeled boots crunching the dirt. Her voice cracked through the air like a whip.
"The Winter Cull has begun."
Silence.
"You already know this part," she growled, pacing before them like a wolf ready to feast. "The bottom twenty of each camp — gone. That's the easy part. That's the kindest part."
She called it kindness, but the screams of the twenty who didn't make the cut still echoed in the background, tearing through the lie.
No one moved. Kaelren didn't blink.
"Last year," Vorr spat, "we lost over three hundred and fifty trainees during the Cull. Not twenty. Not forty. Three hundred and fifty. From camp 12 . That's what happens when there are no rules."
She stopped pacing. Turned.
"That's right. No rules."
A murmur of breath rippled through the crowd like the sound of wind before a storm.
"You want to kill someone before the Cull starts? Do it. Want to gang up on someone during it? Fine. Want to run? You'll be hunted and broken and fed to the dogs outside the walls of Blood Gloom."
She paused to let the words settle in their guts.
Kaelren finally understood why there were only seventy trainees left in Camp 12 when he joined — the Winter Cull had just ended. That meant, before the last Cull, Camp 12 must have held over four hundred youths.
Since then Hundreds had been thrown into the grinder that was camp 12 and it was probably the same in every camp bolstering their ranks to the hundreds.
"You think you've trained hard? You haven't. You think you've killed enough to be ready? You haven't. You think you're strong?"
Her eyes swept the crowd, landing for a heartbeat on Kaelren.
"You're not."
She let that linger.
"You'll be marching for six days. Six days through contested lands. We're headed to Blood Gloom City, where this year's Cull will be held."
Kaelren's eyes narrowed.
"The Bloodfang Clan and the Gloomtide Syndicate built that city together — and they run it together. The clans tenuous pact keep them alive. This Cull is their tradition, and they're watching."
She pointed toward the southern gate.
"Six days. Anyone who falls behind dies. Anyone who tries to flee dies. Anyone who gives up—" she drew her blade and let it hum against the air, "—dies."
Then she was gone.
The march began within the hour.
The first two days were brutal in their own way — not because of combat, but because of silence. The weight of what was coming silenced even the most arrogant mouths. Kaelren walked with eyes forward and fists clenched.
But unlike the others, he didn't spend those six days dreading what lay ahead.
The march wasn't hard physically even with 20x grav for the gravity bracelet. so the gene refinement Sutra didn't do much for him
As they moved through uneven hills and twisted old roads, Kaelren sunk deeper into the Qi cultivation refining it, stretching it, breathing it through every nerve. He used the motion of the march — each step a cycle, each breath a channel.
On the third day, he broke through.
The second realm of Qi Gathering hit like a storm in still water. His body didn't shift much — but his mind did. The world changed.
He began to feel everything.
Bird calls in the distance layered with the crunch of hidden rodents beneath the brush. Distant burning villages passed in a blur, but Kaelren could smell the snoke of the fires, he could clearly hear voices from distant people speaking.
The sky seemed deeper, the earth more alive. His perception had sharpened like a blade honed on both pain and purpose.
Gene Refinement had given him raw physical power. But Qi Gathering… it made the world clearer.
By the fifth day, Kaelren barely noticed the march. He had learned to train Qi even while moving, tuning every heartbeat into cultivation. The other trainees — many of whom had once outranked him — looked at him now with something close to fear.
On the morning of the sixth day, they climbed a wide ridge, and then Kaelren saw it.
Blood Gloom City.
It stretched wide across the horizon, its jagged towers and blood-stained spires clawing into the gray sky. The towers were massive, higher than anything Kaelren had seen in either world — even the ones back on Earth before his death. Brutal, black, iron-braced stone wrapped the entire perimeter, and built into the heart of it was a monstrous arena.
He couldn't see the details — not yet — but its presence was overwhelming. Wide as a district. Flat as a plain. That was where the Cull would happen. He knew it.
They began their final descent from the current hill.
As they neared the city's outer checkpoint, Kaelren noticed movement from other paths. More columns of trainees. Other camps. Some had marched from different directions, but all converged now, like streams to a single bloody ocean.
Camp 3. Camp 7. Camp 10. Their flags were visible, their ranks thinned.
Kaelren saw in each face the same truth he carried: only the strong would leave that arena alive.
He just walked forward — toward the gates.
The gates of Blood Gloom City weren't built for people.
They were made to break the will before the body even crossed the threshold — a crooked wall of rusted iron poles, each the height of a siege tower, topped with bones so sun-bleached they looked petrified. Skulls dangled on hooks like wind chimes, swaying in a breeze that smelled of meat gone black and forge smoke long settled into stone.
His boots hit the shattered path as if it were just another stretch of bloodland. His breathing was steady, drawn from deeper places now. Places that had learned not to flinch at death's grin.
As the others from Camp 12 followed behind, some muttered prayers. Others just kept their eyes down, trying not to meet the stares from the walls above.
Because there were eyes.
Watching. Measuring. Laughing.
The buildings were warped, asymmetrical things — more scrap than structure. Some were held together by chains or stitched hide. Others bore the sigils of old clans, burned over by newer marks: the skull-wolf of the Bloodfangs and the serpent-eye of the Gloomtide Syndicate. Blood ran in dried lines down the cracks in the stone, sometimes fresh, sometimes black.
Kaelren took it all in.
His senses had sharpened with the second realm of Qi Gathering. Sound was crisper, closer. Heartbeats thudded behind doors. Metal clinked beneath feet. And above all, the pulse of fear — thick and invisible — pushed against his skin like a second atmosphere.
His nose caught everything. Burned fat. Oil. Acid. Old piss. Fresh blood. The city reeked of power earned through ruin.
He heard a scream — short, wet — cut off behind a shuttered door.
No one turned.
A child crouched on a rooftop, yellow-eyed and barefoot, flipping a rusted knife between her fingers. She didn't blink when she made eye contact with Kaelren.
He didn't blink either.
They passed a corpse nailed to a wall. Not dead — not fully. Its fingers still twitched. Its eyes were gone. The tongue, chewed to ribbons, lolled from a broken jaw. Someone had written Failed Cull across its chest in a thick, tar-like smear.
Kaelren's jaw tightened.
But he kept walking.
This place wasn't built for comfort. It was a crucible. The only ones who survived it were the ones too hard to melt.
They turned the corner.
And then he saw it.
The Cull Grounds.
A vast, flat plain of black stone and crimson gravel stretched out before him — ringed by towering stands that rose like cliffs, jagged and uneven, packed with waiting seats carved from metal and bone. In the distance, massive gates dotted the arena's perimeter like scars. Each bore a camp numeral, painted in dried blood.
At the heart of the arena stood a monolith — a rusted spire stabbed into the ground, its surface engraved with names. A few had been crossed out. Most were not.
The silence here was heavier.
Like the city itself was holding its breath, waiting for the first blood to be spilled.
Kaelren didn't need anyone to tell him this was the heart of the Cull. He felt it. In the stone. In the scent. In the hunger that clung to every inch of ground like frostbite.
His feet carried him forward to the gate marked XII.
Camp 12's mark.
A pair of gene warriors stood guard — tall, muscular figures. They didn't ask questions. Just opened the gate and let them in.
The undercell was a tunnel of rot.
Walls lined with rusted chains. A floor of cracked stone slick with things Kaelren didn't try to identify. Faint torchlight cast everything in orange shadows. There were no beds. No benches. Just corners, filth, and silence.
Instructor Vorr stood waiting.
"You survive a week," he said, "you get food. Two weeks, a bed. If you make it to the end... maybe you graduate camp 12. Maybe not."
Eyes swept the group.
Then they locked on Kaelren.
He didn't smile. Didn't nod. Just stared like a man memorizing a name.
"The Cull begins tomorrow. Get your minds right."
Then he turned and vanished into the dark.
Kaelren stayed standing.
Waiting.