The iron collar around Kael's neck buzzed again low, sharp, and cold. Not enough to kill. Not yet. Just enough to remind him that breathing was a privilege, and that privilege could be revoked at any time.
He moved through the stone corridors of Sector Delta, wrists bound in rusted cuffs, ankles dragging iron links behind him. The walls were jagged, molded from half-melted stone and darkened with age-old soot. The air reeked of old sweat, rotting food, and forgotten blood.
Another day. Another silence.
In this prison, names were forgotten early. Kael only heard his number now.
"Seventeen."
He had stopped correcting them. Not because they broke him. But because wasting words here was like spitting in a storm.
They didn't let you speak often. Not unless it was a scream.
"Move it, scum!"
A guard's baton struck his shoulder. He staggered, caught himself. Gritted his teeth. The collar pulsed in warning don't retaliate, don't hesitate, don't even think wrong.
He obeyed.
The weight of the crate they made him lift felt deliberately unfair. Not heavy enough to crush him outright. Just enough to strain bones that hadn't eaten in two days.
Sweat stung his eyes. His arms trembled. But he didn't drop it.
They watched for that failure. They liked it when you failed. It gave them an excuse.
Around him, the others worked in silence. Rows of men and women, most just skin stretched over bone. Lifeless. Shuffling. Dead long before their hearts stopped.
Kael didn't know their stories. Didn't ask. He doubted anyone here even remembered why they were imprisoned. Sometimes he thought maybe he made it up maybe he was born in chains.
But then a memory would flicker through the haze.
A girl's laugh his sister's, maybe. Or his mother's?
A hand in his hair. A voice saying "Run."
He didn't remember the rest.
Just the fires. The screaming. The sky breaking open.
And the day everything inside him went quiet.
That Night
His cell was dark. Barely enough space to sit up. The stone was cold. His back still bled from the lashes. He pressed it to the wall anyway. Cold numbed pain.
He watched the dripping corner again. One. Two. Three...
He counted to stop himself from screaming.
His breath slowed.
Then...
He heard something.
A voice. No not a voice. A vibration in the air. Beneath the silence. Beneath the stone.
It didn't speak in words. It pressed into him. Whispered through the marrow of his bones.
Kael...
He froze.
It wasn't real. Couldn't be.
The collar burned. Just for a moment. Like it sensed something.
He touched it instinctively but the pain stopped. Everything stopped.
His cell was silent again.
But something had changed.
His skin itched. Not from bugs or dirt. From the inside. Like something had shifted. Like a thread had snapped somewhere deep, and now... something was unraveling.
He pulled his knees to his chest. Tried to sleep.
But the whisper came again.
You are not broken.
Elsewhere, Deep Beneath the Compound...
Unseen to Kael, a series of glowing blue runes flickered in the lowest chamber. Locked behind seven seals, a long-dead shard stirred faintly.
It had no name anymore.
No shape.
Just a purpose.
To awaken what was forgotten.