feedback for 1st chapter pls

[Ahrihn]

hello people! I'm currently writing another novel and wanted some feed back for my first chapter. Please be as brutal as you lot need, I can take it. I appreciate any and all efforts!

The first chapter:

Intelligent people die faster than dumb ones. That was the first rule that Shen Zhiyuan’s elder brother had taught her, before he’d promptly sold himself into a fighting arena as ‘a smart one’.

And the adrenaline-starved crowds certainly agreed.

The whistles and screeches of the horde outside were loud enough to pierce through the bolted steel doors and mould-stained cement walls of the arena’s waiting room. The air, a sour concoction that had more nicotine smoke and exhaust fumes than oxygen, was thick like wet ash in Shen Zhiyuan’s throat. It took her a scrunched nose and a suffocating cough not to choke on it.

‘You hear those crowds, Huchun,’ she said, crossing her arms. The black linen of her tunic rubbed coarsely on her skin. ‘They’re screaming like they’ve got a stick up their ass. The chairman must have planned something. Today is different.’

Her brother scowled. His face puckered up like someone had placed a bowl of shit under his nose. ‘Language,’ Wei Huchun said. ‘No swearing.’

She rolled her eyes. Swearing was hardly as bad as being a Debater.

Debaters wielded their perceptions of truth and reality to clash against others’ for entertainment and money. But losing came at a high risk of collapsing into a Delusion, an existence worse than death. She had tried fruitlessly on more than one occasion to dissuade her brother. He’d sworn that since he’d been the one to take her from her mother’s abuse, she was his responsibility. Blood-related or not, he loved her enough that he’d cut off his own arm to feed her; it was agony to her that his promise extended to gambling his soul.

She’d lost count of the Realities that had vanished at her brother’s words and fists. Those who had faded out of existence as spectators applauded at their deaths, betting on how long it would take to disperse like a curl of smoke. But the times he’d tortured himself for a bribe of copper rivalled the number of floors in the tallest pagodas. The money they had could never take them to see the sky; the grand city crushed them under layers of shadows and buildings wedged together, until even weeds like them couldn’t sprout under the poisoned rubble.

She took a step towards Wei Huchun’s chair in a cheap bid to make herself just a little bit bigger, just that shred of strength more. But it was a useless one; his green eyes, gentle with the hue of the sea, reflected her tiny silhouette. It was shallow and brittle in the dim orange of the flickering lantern light — her stature, no matter how muscular, could never compare to her brother’s grand height, to his sharpened tongue. Not even as he sat on a trembling stool, quietly wrapping his scarred forearms with a strip of white hemp. Her efforts and her words were useless.

All because he knew — they both knew — that she was still too weak. Too weak to kill for strength. Too weak to kill for money. Too weak to kill her mother. Her brother had to do it in her stead, but each time he did it brought a shameful dread to her throat. The fact that she’d still let him go after all these years was heavy, like sin stamped on her spine, a burden borne of her inability. To be educated and intelligent was to have a strong Reality and having a strong Reality meant becoming a Debater and becoming a Debater was to risk a stronger backlash once her Reality broke. The collapse of her beliefs would no longer be a slap on the wrist but rather a snap of her neck. She had been bankrupted of courage for years, and for it she gorged herself on guilt and self-imposed idiocy.

‘I’ve got a point though, that it’s different,’ she said. ‘The crowds haven’t smoked nearly enough opium. They’re always higher than the First Floor.’

‘I know today’s different,’ Wei Huchun said. His voice, always soft but serrated with an edge of finality, dusted across her frown and the tense curve of her lips. ‘That’s why the chairman’s paying me so much more.’ The lean muscles of his legs tensed as he got to his feet. He was pale enough to almost glow. The shadows danced over his skin. ‘Relax, Yuan-mei. I’ve been a Debater for years — I’ll survive this round. Trust me.’ He nodded to the steel door.

‘I trust you,’ Shen Zhiyuan said. She walked over, flipping the latches and pulling out the bolts. The rust bit into her calloused skin with a chilled edge. ‘But I’d worry less if I worked with you.’

He just smiled as she pushed the doors open — all thin lips, gentle gaze, and dark shadows on hollow cheeks. ‘There’s no need for that,’ he whispered back, the almonds of his green eyes curving into crescents. ‘I’m the big brother, after all.’

He gave her head of black hair a firm ruffle. The brushes of his calloused fingers in her long tresses were warmer than safety. Then he stepped forward and into the explosive flashes of the arena lights. The stands around the sandy floor erupted into cheers and screams, people slamming to their feet and howling, the bird-engraved walls of the rounded arena trembling with their might. Glaring lights beamed down on Wei Huchun. He left her in the shadows of the waiting room, unable to do anything but uselessly clench her hands tight enough to bring pinpricks of pain to her palms.

It was when he walked away to face his opponent — a tall and leanly muscular woman, all sharp smiles and flying dagger at her fingertips — that the weakness hit Shen Zhiyuan. As though shoved from dry land into the churning sea, the protective barrier that had been her brother’s Reality slid away like a rug pulled from under her feet. In its absence, her own Reality weakly stirred to life. It awoke with a flinch, colours dulling, the growing bitterness of ash on her tongue, and the blinking of glowing spirits.

Wei Huchun did not believe in the little ghosts and sprites that she saw, rendering him blind to them. And his stronger Reality would blind her in turn when she came near him and entered his area of effect, his Domain. It was a bit of a shame for Wei Huchun to miss out on their beautiful, neon blue forms, but it was also a blessing — at least her brother didn’t wake after each nap to demons drooling over his face. These little blobs, however, were harmless. Each smaller than her palm and soft like mashed potato, the spirits drifted through the air as jellyfish would in water, skimming her pale skin with the softest of tingles.

Shen Zhiyuan gently brushed them aside, as though lifting a curtain away. She turned back to her brother, fingertips tightening on the doorframe of the cellar to peer into the arena. There was a yellowed dusting in the doorway — sand tracked in and out with the crunching kicks of Wei Huchun’s boots gathered up over years and years of Debates, evidence that no-one bothered to sweep away. The grit of dust and blood-soaked concrete powder lodged itself in the folds of her knuckles, glued to her salted sweat.

Then, a roaring burst of applause.

The chairman had arrived and the audience welcomed him with clapping and yelling so chaotic and wild it seemed the ceiling, pieced together from rubble, would collapse. He stood above them all, in a silk-lined box that jutted out of the arena’s finest stands. Microphone clipped to his blue round-necked collar, white makeup painted on his round cheeks and thick arms spread wide like swallow’s wings, he cried, ‘Welcome to the Fifteenth Floor’s best Debating arena, the Truth-Seekers!’

The stands exploded into cheers. It brought a stinging pain to her ears, the abrasive applause echoing in the air. Someone went as far as to throw a handful of copper taels at Wei Huchun’s face; he stooped over to pick it up amid the roaring laughter. Shen Zhiyuan wanted to yell at him to leave the coins, to nurse whatever dignity he had left. She owed him everything — if someone had to be laughed at while picking up loose change, it should’ve been her. At most she could’ve come back after the round was over to dig them out from the sand.

‘Today we present our finalists of the Debating season: the science-believer Wei Huchun, and spirit-user Li Xia!’ The chairman’s grin split from ear to ear as the screams reached new heights. He gestured a great flourish to the makeshift arena with his arms, ‘And today, to celebrate this century’s opening of the Golden Pagoda, the grand prize will be a bag of twenty gold taels and one of only five hundred invitations to the Pagoda Competition!’

Screeches broke the air. The urge to vomit burned at her even as the greed for gold did — after all, twenty gold taels could feed her and her brother for a full year. They could even replace Wei Huchun’s bandages with real leather gloves. Of course, selling the invitation to the Pagoda Competition to the right buyer could even let her rise to the Eleventh Floor; its acclaimed prize, the lure of becoming the Pagoda Master’s heir, was too great of an incentive, even with the competition’s death tolls. After all, the Pagoda Master was the holder of the True Reality — the ultimate and only truthful worldview amid the billions of other false ones. To comprehend it was to understand creation itself, to have the universe bend at one’s fingertips.

That was the promise the Golden Pagoda offered, and it would always be out of her reach. How could Shen Zhiyuan dare to covet it when she felt that every metaphysical theory was a possibility? Her dithering beliefs had her Reality unable to decide between science or folklore.

She crept forwards. The applause was so heavy that vibrations clawed across her skin and buzzed in the back of her teeth. A heaviness burned in her blood, her deepening unease lighting up the tensed curve of her brother’s shoulders. The chairman would surely keep Wei Huchun from becoming a Delusion or dying — after all, he was Truth-Seeker’s little mascot, their money-maker and muscle deterrent all rolled into one. He was one of the chairman’s few hopes of climbing onto a higher Floor.

The man standing in the silken box again opened his fleshly lips to speak, but before Shen Zhiyuan could quite catch onto his words, the world trembled and spun, the neon lights of the spirits snuffed out like candles.

Then, an all-consuming black.

Chills crawled over her, panic clawing up her throat as trembles seized her. Her muscles tensed. She blinked but quickly took her cool — this darkness was likely temporary, imposed by another’s Reality. Besides, it wasn’t like she used her eyes much in the Lower or Hell Floors — no sunlight came down past the Eleventh Floor anway.

Then a man’s voice washed over her ears with a sigh. ‘Little girl. Do you see anything?’

She wasn’t alone? Terror, a fright that gripped at her legs from the dark, seized her throat. ‘No,’ she said. Her voice came out strangled and terse, like a string about to snap. The ground trembled from applause outside the open door. She spun to face the man’s voice, her hand fingering the worn grip of the concealed gun at her waist. How was a man here? Why didn’t she notice? Did the chairman set this up? Panic came and it was like someone had seized her around the neck. ‘I can’t see, it’s all black.’

‘Mn. My Reality is stronger than yours, then.’ The man’s voice was a smooth, richly thick one. It came from above her. The man had to be tall for a Minor, if his stature rose above hers. Most in the Hell Floors — criminals and felons, the abandoned, those abhorred by society or the utterly ruined — survived by adapting to a never-ending starvation of everything. Maybe the rich and powerful Majors that lived on the Upper Floors hoped that the sewer rats at the bottom of the world would be crushed flat into paste by poverty and the constantly sinking, perpetually rising city. Pagodas were built higher and higher over the corpses of older buildings until death and decay and filtered darkness were number into Floors.

Was this man one of them? A hound of the rich and wealthy?

At her dry, prickling swallow the man gently assured her on the entirely incorrect fear, ‘There’s no need to panic, the blindless isn’t permanent. I was born completely blind, you see, so I can’t picture colour. Thus, my Domain forbids all light.’ Another sigh. ‘Sorry about that. But you’ll be out of it, soon enough.’ There was a cold rap of heels on concrete. Footsteps.

She blinked. Huh?

Then something smashed into her gut — a boot or a brick, or maybe a hammer —air was punched out of her lungs and she flew.

Blasted out of the darkness, the man’s Reality was ripped away from her, the light and colour and everything flooding into her senses. She fell with a sick, dizzying tumble, and came up with a mouthful of sand, the stinging grains burning into her skin and the side of her neck. Pain bloomed across her skin as she spat out the disgusting grit and dry-heaved from the impact to her stomach. The sand coated her tongue, dirtier than any swear word could be.

There was a furious woman on the far end of the arena, and behind her was a screaming little boy, shoved by a burly man out a steel doorway. Across them was a frozen statue with wide green eyes — her terrified brother. His expression was hard and disbelieving. Shen Zhiyuan blinked up at him in silent shock, fear coiling in her stomach. If even her brother wasn’t aware, if even his calm soul was trembling, then…

What was wrong? What could she do?

‘My dear guests,’ the chairman’s voice boomed, ‘today’s round will not have just two Debaters, but four! But don’t fret! While our newest contestants may be weak in their Realities, they are in fact the finalists’ beloved younger siblings! Place your bets, dear guests — will our champions protect their siblings? Or will they kill them for the competition’s chance at ultimate power?’

Shouts echoed in her ears, tumbling and ricocheting like a ball locked in her head. Wei Huchun bolted to her side, kicking up sprays of sand and scooped her up into his arms. Gasps ripping themselves from Shen Zhiyuan’s lips — the man who’d kicked her into the arena had most definitely bruised her ribs. She gripped at his collar as he helped her stand, copper coins hailing off her skull and knocking into her ankles. The woman across them — the spirit-user Li Xia — had clasped her hand across the little boy’s lips to smother a scream. He had to be no more twelve, what with his round amber eyes and rounder cheeks. His sister’s were hollow like caves.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, please give it up for our contestants! And now —’

Her eyes rolled up to the ceiling. Roving, glaring lights. Madness lighting up blurry, indistinct faces. The sky of cement and rusted pipes raining chipped copper coins. The serrated grin on the chairman’s round face.

‘Let the final Debate, begin!’

Please be as brutal as you all need, i love honest and sharp feedback. Ideally, please identify areas in the chapter and tell me which are good (so i know what i'm doing well and should keep) and which are boring, too lengthy, slow-paced, etc so I can fix them.

Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated! Thank you!

 

[SurfAngel_1031]

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