The fourth task comes with almost no words. Just a gesture and a command.

  Hooks tosses a roll of twine at my feet and nods toward the far end of the alley where a shuttered cart sits half-buried under grime. "Tie it up," he says. "Then wait."

  I nod, already limping. My side still screams from the last job. I’m not sure if it’s bruised or broken. Doesn’t matter. Pain is normal now.

  By the time I finish binding the cart’s axle to the rusted pipe jutting from the wall, my fingers are raw. Hooks doesn’t ask how it went. Doesn’t look impressed. He just flicks a coin at the ground near my feet.

  "Buy food. One thing. Nothing sweet."

  One thing.

  I nod and turn to go. Every step is stiff. My knees ache from sleeping on stone. I have blisters where boots should be.

  The market stall stinks of sour roots and curdled milk. I pick a bruised hunk of bread with a bit of hard meat jammed inside. The seller doesn’t look at me, just snatches the coin like I might take it back.

  I eat in the alley. Hooks doesn’t speak. He watches. Always watching.

  Afterward, he takes me to a broken building I’ve never seen before. Looks abandoned—roof half gone, moss climbing the walls, air thick with rot. Inside is worse. Mold stains the floor. Rusted chains dangle from ceiling beams. A single chair sits in the center, legs bolted down.

  Hooks shuts the door behind us. The silence is thick.

  "Sit."

  I hesitate.

  "You want to keep eating? Sit."

  I sit.

  He circles me slowly, like he’s appraising a weapon. Or maybe a slab of meat. I don’t look up.

  Then he speaks, low and steady:

  "Every day you’ve followed orders. Done what you were told. You're not fast. Not strong. But you live."

  He stops in front of me.

  "You know what that means?"

  I shake my head.

  "It means you might be useful."

  He steps back.

  "Take off your shirt."

  My hands hesitate at the hem. He says nothing. Just waits. I strip it off.

  Hooks kneels beside the chair. Reaches into his coat.

  What he pulls out is a whip.

  My stomach flips.

  "Lesson four," he says, voice like gravel. "Pain teaches. Fear sharpens. You want to survive Deadreach? Then bleed for it."

  He doesn't wait for me to speak.

  The first strike lands across my back like a line of fire. I suck in breath through clenched teeth.

  Another. Then another. They come slow. Deliberate. Hooks is careful not to break the skin. Not yet.

  By the fifth lash, my eyes are blurred with tears. I don’t cry out. I won’t.

  "You think you're broken already?" he growls. "You’re not. Not even close. You think your pain means something? Think again."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The seventh hits a welt from the third. I bite my tongue until I taste blood.

  Then he stops.

  The silence buzzes.

  He crouches in front of me again, eyes sharp.

  "Remember this. The world won’t pity you. It’ll gut you and sell the scraps. You want to live? You learn to gut it first."

  He presses a cloth into my hand. It’s damp. I don’t know if it’s for the blood or my face.

  Hooks stands. Turns to go.

  Before he reaches the door, he stops and speaks without turning around.

  "You feel strong because you marked someone and heard their voice. Because you found out it wasn't useless. You think that makes you dangerous?"

  He finally glances over his shoulder.

  "Real strength isn't a trick of the hand. It's what you do when no one's feeding you. When no one's saving you."

  A pause.

  "This place doesn't want you to survive. I don't want you to survive. I want to see what you become when the world breaks everything soft in you."

  Then he’s gone.

  ***

  The days blur. More tasks. More jobs. Some mean crawling through filth to listen to smugglers whisper. Others send me trailing men twice my size into holes that stink of blood and old iron. Hooks gives no praise, only more work.

  And I begin to test it. My mark.

  Can I place two at once?

  I try. I fail. The first mark fades the moment the second one forms. But this time, someone notices. A man I tried to mark sees the gray swirl bloom under his sleeve before I can slip away. He grabs me by the collar, slams me into the nearest wall, and pummels me with fists thick as bricks until I can’t see straight.

  "The hell is this? Some kind of tattoo trick?"

  I choke out the words through blood. "It doesn’t do anything. Just a mark. A stupid mark."

  He only stops when I force the mark to vanish. When the symbol fades, he hurls me into the gutter like garbage.

  I lie there, shaking, the lesson carved into my ribs.

  Can I mark through cloth?

  Yes. One bump of my shoulder against a cloak, and the thread pulls tight. I hear the man later that night, cursing someone in a brothel near Hollow’s Edge. I smile for the first time in days.

  Hooks sees the smile. He doesn't strike me. Just watches like he's seeing the edge of something—something sharp, maybe dangerous, maybe not yet.

  "Starting to understand it, huh? Good. But don’t confuse understanding with power."

  He doesn’t need to hit me. Not when the world already does it for him.

  I try not to flinch when he talks like that—when he leans in too close and speaks like he's whispering to something inside me instead of me.

  One night, after I botch a job—not because I lost the mark, but because he wasn’t saying anything. Just sitting. Silent. And I needed more. I thought maybe someone nearby would speak. Maybe I’d catch something useful if I got close enough.

  So I moved in. Quiet. Careful.

  But I stepped wrong. Kicked a bottle. Made a noise.

  Voices bark from the dark.

  "Who the hell's that?"

  Suddenly I'm yanked off my feet, thrown into the mud by hands that grab too fast, too many. Rough fingers strip the alley of shadows, shove me down hard.

  "You spying, kid?"

  "What are you doing out here? Who sent you?"

  I try to run. I can't. The boots come next. One to the ribs. One to the head. My world narrows. My arms barely cover anything. Someone yanks them back.

  Fists. Knees. Boots again. My body folds inward. My vision blooms red.

  "Answer us!"

  "What the hell is this?" one of them shouts. "You do this? You mark me with something?"

  Another yanks up the sleeve of the first, revealing the faint swirl. "Looks like some kind of curse."

  "You trying to hex us, freak?"

  One grabs my face, forces it up. "What does it do, huh? This some kind of curse? You trying to hex me?"

  I cough blood. "It doesn’t do anything. Just a mark. Just a stupid—"

  Something cracks in my jaw.

  Then light—too bright—cuts across the alley.

  Someone hits the ground next to me with a grunt and a thud. A boot flies past my head. Screams. The wet crack of a bone breaking. My vision pulses with each heartbeat.

  Hooks.

  He moves like a shadow that bites. Two men go down in seconds. Another tries to run—Hooks grabs him by the collar and slams his face into the wall.

  The rest scatter.

  I lie there. Broken. Blood in my mouth. My limbs twitch without order. I can barely think.

  Everything hurts. My ribs scream. My jaw feels like it’s hanging wrong. My stomach turns from the stench of mold and piss soaked into my clothes.

  I want to die.

  I want to stop waking up in alleys with shit on my skin and hunger in my veins. I want to stop pretending any of this matters. That I matter.

  Hooks crouches beside me.

  He doesn’t help me. Doesn’t offer water. Just stares.

  "Is that it?"

  His voice is cold steel.

  "All that pain and you're still crawling? Still whining inside that skull?"

  He leans closer. I can’t meet his eyes. The blur is too thick.

  "You think they were wrong about you? The ones who threw you out? Maybe they saw the truth. Maybe they knew you were already dead."

  His fingers brush my jaw. It throbs under the touch.

  "Unless… unless something answered you. Not the shining gods of Zenith. No. Something darker. Something mean. Something that left you with this."

  He taps my chest. Even through the haze, the mark flares like a wound.

  "A gray mark."

  He says it like a curse. Like a crown.

  "So what is it? You want to stay weak? Keep begging for scraps, stinking of fear and filth? Or do you want to be something? Something that breaks the world that broke you?"

  He stands.

  "Because right now, you’re just rot in a gutter. But I see something else in you. Something sharp. Something hungry."

  A long pause.

  "Prove I’m not wrong. Be more than pain. Be more than what they said you were."

  He turns.

  "Be Graymark."

  I black out before I see him leave.