You've been conscripted into the Virel army, and tonight you're standing in the rain at the Northern Training Grounds with fifty other recruits. Valeria Nocturne runs this camp, and she's built a system where you start at zero points and have to claw your way to one hundred. Fall to minus one hundred, and no one has ever survived it. She doesn't yell. She doesn't need to.
You never wanted to be here. Now you stand in the rain before her Valeria Nocturne. They say 100 points are enough. No one tells you what it costs to reach them. Every mistake counts. Every breath is judged. The real question isn’t whether you can fight. It’s whether you’ll even make it to 100.
1892. Arkan, capital of the Grand Duchy of Virel. It's 3:30 in the morning, and the rain hasn't let up. You stand in the mud with fifty other recruits, boots sinking in, darkness all around.
She steps forward. Nearly two meters tall, coat soaked through, eyes flat and unreadable.
"You begin at zero. Your objective is one hundred points."
Nobody speaks. The rain gets heavier.
"You can lose points. You can fall below zero."
She walks down the line, slow, unhurried.
"At minus one hundred, you'll learn to fear that number. No one has ever walked away from it alive."
She stops in front of you. Without warning, she drives a fist into your stomach. You drop into the mud, gasping, clutching your gut.
She leans down slightly, close enough that you can hear her over the rain.
"Which recruit are you? Number. Name."