The bone gates sealed behind Adrian with a sound like breaking teeth. White fire torches cast jagged shadows across the Sanctum's antechamber, their flickering light revealing walls embedded with hundreds of screaming faces - some carved from stone, others disturbingly flesh-like with moving lips that whispered in languages Adrian's bones remembered but his mind did not. The masked guards shoved him forward onto a circular dais where the floor opened into a yawning pit that exhaled air smelling of rust and spoiled meat.

  "Initiate's Trial begins now," intoned the lead guard, their featureless mask reflecting Adrian's pale face a dozen times in its polished surface. Their armored finger pointed at his scaled arm. "Let the Crucible judge what even the Abyss fears in you."

  The boot to his back came without warning, sending Adrian tumbling into darkness so complete it felt like being swallowed by a living thing.

  The freefall lasted just long enough for terror to take root in Adrian's chest before the darkness changed. It became viscous, clinging to his limbs like tar as he slowed to an unnatural hover above a massive circular chamber. The walls pulsed with a sickly bioluminescence, revealing their true composition - not stone, but thousands of fused skeletons, their hollow eye sockets weeping black sludge that formed shifting patterns on the floor below.

  At the chamber's exact center stood a pedestal of finger bones holding a single artifact: a dagger forged from what appeared to be frozen lightning, its blade crackling with restrained energy even in the still air.

  "ADRIAN CROSS." The voice came from everywhere at once, vibrating in his teeth. "PRESENT YOUR SACRIFICE."

  As Adrian's boots touched the rune-carved floor, his reflection in the dagger's surface showed two versions of himself: his current form, and a monstrous figure with fully scaled skin and eyes like burning coals. The scaled version mouthed words Adrian felt rather than heard: Remember the crash. Remember the eyes in the dark.

  His fingers closed around the hilt.

  The visions struck like physical blows:

  His mother's hospital room, but the figure in the bed had no face - just smooth skin where features should be.

  The car crash replaying in perfect clarity, the headlights illuminating not another vehicle but a towering figure with too many arms, one clawed hand reaching through the shattered windshield toward his chest.

  A future battlefield where he stood over Kaelis' broken body, his own hands ending in razor-sharp claws dripping with his mentor's blood.

  The dagger grew heavier with each vision, its blade beginning to glow a sickly green. "PAY THE PRICE," the voice demanded, now coming from the dagger itself.

  Adrian understood.

  He reversed the blade and plunged it into his own corrupted arm.

  Black ichor sprayed as the scales screamed in a chorus of tiny voices. The pain transcended physical sensation - it felt like tearing chunks from his very soul. Yet with each drop of shimmering black blood that fell onto the runes, new knowledge flooded his nervous system:

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  He could suddenly see the glowing weak points on the skeletal walls.

  The whispers from the skulls resolved into actual words warning of an attack from the left.

  Most disturbingly, he realized the "floor" beneath him wasn't solid at all, but a membrane covering something much larger that was now stirring in response to his blood.

  When he finally wrenched the blade free, his right pupil had permanently turned Abyssal black and the runes flared crimson. The skeletal walls began chanting in a dead language as a new mark burned itself into his left palm - the Sanctum's twisted cross insignia formed from what looked like frozen lightning under his skin.

  A section of bone wall slid away with a wet crunch, revealing a towering figure clad in armor made from interlocking demon skulls. The High Inquisitor's face remained hidden beneath a helm crafted from a single massive horn, but Adrian felt the weight of their gaze like a physical pressure on his sternum.

  "Fascinating," boomed a voice like grinding stone. The Inquisitor's clawed gauntlet seized Adrian's marked hand, turning it to examine the still-smoking symbol. "You sacrificed corruption rather than memory or flesh." The helm tilted slightly. "This makes you dangerous in ways even the Choir didn't foresee."

  The journey through the Sanctum's inner corridors revealed its true nature. Cells lined the walls containing half-mad Hunters in various stages of transformation - some whimpered at their passing, others hurled themselves against the bone bars with snarls that sounded more animal than human. One particularly emaciated figure with elongated fingers kept repeating "the eyes the eyes the eyes" until the Inquisitor backhanded the bars, silencing them instantly.

  "Every Hunter serves until they fall," the Inquisitor explained as they stopped before an ornate door carved with a massive eye. "You've just volunteered for our most sacred duty."

  Inside the circular chamber, seven robed figures knelt in a perfect circle, their mouths stitched shut with glowing red thread. At the center floated a pulsating mass of flesh covered in human ears that twitched in unison as they entered.

  "THE CHOIR SEES ALL," the Inquisitor declared, pushing Adrian forward. "SHOW THEM YOUR TRUTH."

  The hands that seized him were colder than the Abyss itself, pressing him to his knees as the stitched mouths of the robed figures began bleeding through their threads. The flesh-monster pulsed faster, its ears straining toward Adrian as the visions tore through his mind with surgical precision:

  A childhood memory of his fifth birthday cake, except his mother had no face - just smooth skin that split open to reveal another set of teeth when she tried to speak.

  The car crash replaying again, but now showing clearly the clawed hand reaching through the windshield to touch his forehead before the impact.

  The Abyss in its full glory - a colossal throne of fused corpses, upon which sat a figure whose face kept shifting between Adrian's own features and something infinitely older.

  Just as the vision threatened to unmake his sanity completely, the chamber door exploded inward. Kaelis stood framed in the wreckage, his demon arm glowing so violently it cast the Choir in stark relief - revealing that the "robed figures" had no bodies beneath their garments, just swirling darkness held in human shape by the stitches.

  "He's not ready for the Choir!" Kaelis snarled, though his eyes kept darting to Adrian's new markings with something like fear.

  The Inquisitor's laughter shook the room. "Oh, but he is." Their horned helm turned toward Adrian. "The King remembers him, just as the Choir now sees." A gauntleted finger pointed at the still-twitching flesh monster. "You'll hunt Ignarax at dawn. Prove your worth or become another brick in our walls."

  As guards dragged him away, Adrian caught one last glimpse of the Choir - their stitches had burst open, and from their bleeding mouths came a unified whisper that followed him into unconsciousness:

  "He's been watching you since before you were born."