The cold was a fortress.
Inside its walls, the pain, the shame, the memory of seven violations were distant echoes, muffled by the thick, unyielding silence of the void. It was a psychological armor, a state of profound dissociation that my mind had forged to keep the body alive when the soul had already died.
I pushed myself up from the filth, my movements slow, deliberate. My body screamed, a chorus of a thousand agonies, but the sound was faint, as if coming from a great distance. I looked down at the rags that barely covered me, at the ruin of my flesh, and felt nothing. No shame. No anger. No pity. Only a vast, empty calm.
I knew what I had to do. Not out of a desire for justice or a need for vengeance—those were emotions, and emotions were a liability I could no longer afford. It was a matter of logic. A system had been violated. I would report the breach.
I walked through the trench, my limp a little less pronounced, my back a little straighter. The convicts who saw me scrambled away, their faces pale with a fear that was different from before. It was a primal terror, the kind a mouse feels for a snake. They saw the change in me. They saw the emptiness in my eye, the cold, stillness in my bearing. They saw the monster.
I found Moloch in his "command post," a slightly larger dugout reinforced with scavenged timbers and lit by a sputtering oil lamp. He was hunched over a crude map, a bottle of cheap brandy in one hand. He looked up as I entered, his burned face a mask of irritation.
"What do you want, Lord Killer?" he sneered, the name a new brand.
"Come for another pat on the head?"
"I was raped,"
I said. My voice was flat, toneless, devoid of all emotion. I might have been reporting the weather. "Seven times. By seven different men."
Moloch stared at me for a long moment, his good eye narrowing. He took a long swig from the bottle, then set it down with a thud. He didn't look surprised. He didn't look angry. He looked... disappointed.
"And?"
he said, his voice dangerously quiet.
"And it is against the rules,"
I said, my mind a cold, calculating machine.
"We are property of the Empire. Property is not to be damaged without orders from a commanding officer."
A slow, cruel smile spread across his face, a grotesque caricature of amusement. He started to laugh, a low, rumbling sound that was like rocks grinding together.
"The rules?" he chuckled, shaking his head.
"The *rules*? Boy, there's only one rule in the Meat Pit: the strong do what they want, and the weak take what they get."
He stood up, a mountain of black iron and malevolent intent. "I thought we had broken you. I thought we had finally beaten the last of the silk out of you. But you're still in there, aren't you? The little lord who thinks the world should be fair."
He took a step toward me, his shadow swallowing me whole.
"You want to talk about rules? Let's talk about rules."
His fist, a gauntleted hammer, slammed into my stomach. The air exploded from my lungs in a whoosh of pain. I doubled over, but the coldness inside me absorbed the shock, buffering the worst of it. I didn't cry out. I didn't fall.
I looked up at him, my one good eye meeting his.
"Is that all?" I whispered, the words a challenge I didn't know I had in me.
His smile vanished, replaced by a flash of pure, unadulterated fury. He hit me again, a backhand across the face that sent me sprawling into the wall of the dugout. The impact was a starburst of agony in my branded cheek, but the coldness held.
"Get up!" he roared.
I pushed myself to my feet, my body a puppet on strings of pain.
"The rules," I said again, my voice a monotone drone.
"I was damaged without orders."
He lunged forward, grabbing me by the throat and lifting me off the ground. My feet dangled in the air, his gauntlet cutting off my breath. I didn't struggle. I didn't claw at his hand. I just looked at him, my mind a placid, frozen lake.
"You want a lesson in rules, boy?"
he hissed, his face inches from mine.
"The first rule is: you don't speak to me unless spoken to. The second rule is: you don't come into my post and whine like a bitch. And the third rule is: you learn your place."
He threw me across the room. I crashed into a stack of wooden crates, the impact splintering the wood and sending a fresh wave of fire through my back. I lay there, a heap of broken bones and torn flesh, but the coldness remained. It was a shield, a suit of armor forged in the deepest pits of my own despair.
He stood over me, his chest heaving, his eyes burning with a cold, terrifying light.
"You see?" he said, his voice a low growl.
"You're still in there. The little lord. The noble. The one who thinks he's better than us. We'll have to beat him out of you. All of him."
He turned to the two guards who stood at the entrance to the dugout, their faces impassive.
"Hold him down," he commanded.
They dragged me into the center of the room, my body leaving a smear of blood and filth on the floor. They forced me to my knees, my arms twisted behind my back, my face pressed against the cold, hard-packed earth.
Moloch began to beat me.
It was not a frenzy. It was not a loss of control. It was a methodical, systematic, and utterly brutal process. He used his fists, his boots, the hilt of his dagger.
Each blow was calculated, precise, designed to inflict the maximum amount of pain without killing me.
He broke two of my ribs.
He shattered my wrist.
He dislocated my shoulder.
Through it all, I didn't make a sound.
I didn't cry out. I didn't beg. I retreated into the coldness, into the vast, empty fortress of my mind. I watched from a distance as my body was broken, as my bones snapped, as my flesh was torn. It was a fascinating spectacle, a study in the anatomy of violence.
When he was finished, he was breathing heavily, his face slick with sweat. He knelt down beside me, his burned face a mask of triumphant cruelty.
"Now you're learning,"
he whispered, his voice a foul caress.
"Now you're starting to understand."
He nodded to the guards
. "Take him to the 'infirmary'. Let the sawbones patch him up. I've got plans for this one."
They dragged me from the dugout, my legs useless, my body a screaming mass of agony. The other convicts watched from their shadows, their faces a mixture of pity and terror. They saw what happened when you broke the rules.
The infirmary was not a place of healing. It was a charnel house, a dark, stinking hole in the trench wall where the dying were sent to die. The air was thick with the smell of gangrene, pus, and death. A man, his face a mass of scars and his hands stained with old blood, hunched over a makeshift table, sharpening a rusty saw.
I was dragged from Moloch's post, my body a screaming mass of agony, but my mind a placid, frozen lake. They dumped me on the floor of a place they called the infirmary. It was not a place of healing. It was a charnel house, a dark, stinking hole in the trench wall where the dying were sent to die. The air was thick with the smell of gangrene, pus, and old blood.
A woman stood over a makeshift table, her back to me. She was sharpening a rusty saw, her movements rhythmic, practiced. She turned as the guards dropped me. Her face was a roadmap of the Meat Pit—a map of old scars and fresh, weeping sores. Her hair was a greasy, tangled mat, and her eyes, a dull, lifeless gray, held a spark of something that wasn't just indifference. It was loathing. A deep, personal, and focused hatred.
"Well, well," she said, her voice like grinding stones.
"Look what the rats dragged in. A little lord who couldn't handle the mud."
She grabbed me by the hair, her grip surprisingly strong, and forced my head up. She looked at my face, at the branded cheek, the empty socket, the filth. A sneer twisted her lips.
"I know your sort," she hissed, her breath foul in my face.
"Soft hands. Soft bellies. I fed men like you to my pigs back home. Thought you were gods, didn't you? Thought the world was yours for the taking."
She spat on the ground beside my head. "Welcome to the real world, your lordship."
The guards laughed and left. She turned her attention to my body. Her work was not healing; it was butchery. She grabbed my shattered wrist and, with a sickening crunch, forced the bones back into alignment. The coldness in my mind buffered the shock, but a gasp escaped my lips. She smiled at the sound.
"Still a little life in you, eh? Don't worry. I'll fix that."
She set my shoulder with a brutal shove that sent stars dancing across my vision. She wrapped my ribs in strips of filthy linen that smelled of death. When she was finished, she wasn't done. She went to a small, bubbling cauldron in the corner and ladled a thick, pungent liquid into a wooden cup. It smelled of rotting herbs and something else, something acrid and chemical.
"Fever's a killer out here," she said, her voice a venomous purr. "This will fight it. Drink."
She forced my head back and poured the foul concoction down my throat. I gagged, but she pinched my nose and held my jaw shut until I was forced to swallow. It was bitter, burning a trail down to my stomach. The world began to swim at the edges of my vision.
She laid me on a stained, blood-soaked mattress and leaned over me, her face a mask of grim satisfaction.
"Sleep now, little lord," she whispered, her voice the last thing I heard before the darkness took me. "Dream of home."
The darkness was not a refuge. It was a trap.
I was back in the mud. The weight of a man was on my back, the tearing, burning agony of violation a raw, living fire. I tried to scream, but my face was pressed into the filth, and only a muffled choke came out. The rain fell, cold and merciless.
But then, the face in the mud changed. The rough, stubbled cheek of my attacker smoothed. The hair lightened from matted black to a familiar, golden brown.
*Lior.*
The weight on my back shifted. It wasn't just one man anymore. It was a crowd of them, a writhing mass of violence and contempt. And through the rain and the mud, I saw faces I knew.
My father, his face carved from winter granite, looked down at me with disappointment. "You are a shame that walks on two legs," he said, his voice the same calm, judging tone he used when pronouncing sentence.
My mother wept silently, her white face a mask of horror, but she made no move to help.
And then I saw them, standing just beyond the circle of my tormentors, watching as if it were a play.
Elyra and the Knight of Light.
He was everything I was not. Tall, radiant, his silver armor gleaming even in the trench's gloom. He held Elyra's hand, his grip possessive. She was not crying. She was smiling, a soft, secret smile of triumph. She looked at me, at the thing being broken in the mud, and her eyes held no pity. Only a cold, calculating satisfaction.
The Knight of Light leaned down and whispered something in her ear. She laughed, a sound like bells, a sound I once loved more than anything. It was the sound of my heart breaking all over again.
The violation in the trench merged with the betrayal in the great hall. The pain in my body became one with the pain in my soul. I was being raped by my brother, shamed by my father, and forgotten by the woman I loved, all at the same time. The emotions I had suppressed—the grief, the rage, the betrayal—came roaring back, not as a cold fire, but as a supernova of pure, unadulterated agony.
I tried to scream their names. "Lior! Father! Elyra!" But the words were twisted, distorted by the mud and the pain.
The Knight of Light stepped forward, pushing Lior aside. He knelt, his radiant face inches from mine. He smelled of sunshine and lies.
"This is what happens to those who are weak," he said, his voice a gentle, cutting whisper.
"This is what happens when you love something you were never meant to have."
He looked up at Elyra, who was now stroking Lior's hair. "He was always the spare," she said, her voice filled with a final, chilling dismissal.
"Always the soft one."
The Knight of Light looked back at me. And then, he kissed me. It was not a kiss of affection. It was a kiss of conquest, a seal of ownership, as violating as the men who were still holding me down. His lips were cold, and they tasted of ash.
I screamed.
It was not a silent, internal scream. It was a real, raw, guttural shriek of pure, undiluted horror that tore from the depths of my soul.
I woke up.
My own scream was echoing in the small, dark room of the infirmary. I was drenched in cold sweat, my body trembling uncontrollably. The physical pain from my wounds was there, but it was dwarfed by the phantom agony of the dream. The betrayal felt as real as the broken bones. The shame was a fire in my blood.
The woman was standing over me, her arms crossed, a look of grim satisfaction on her face. Moloch was there too, leaning against the wall, his burned face a mask of cruel amusement. They had watched me. They had listened.
"Good," the woman said, her voice flat. "The fever broke."