" I guess we know how you earned your armor,” Isae said.
“That’s where the armor comes from?” Cisi said. “I thought all that stuff about slaying beasts was just stupid Thuvhesit rumor.”
“It’s not rumor,” he said. “It’s not really some story of triumph, in my case. It fell asleep and I killed it. I felt so bad about it afterward I marked it on my arm.”
“Why did you do it?” Isae said. “If you didn’t want to, I mean.”
“I wanted armor,” he said. “Not every Shotet earns that kind of armor, so it’s a kind of…status symbol. I wanted them to see me as an equal, and shut up about me having thin Thuvhesit skin.”
Cisi snorted. “They clearly have never weathered a Hessa winter. "

― Veronica Roth , Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark, #1)