Chapter Thirteen — The Rot Beneath the Stone
The heat was unbearable.
Not the dry desert heat from before — that had at least come with open skies, with wind and distance. This was wet heat. Sour and clinging, like something that had been breathing for too long. The air didn't move. It stuck to the skin. Thick with sweat and piss and blood and things that went unnamed because naming them made them real.
He'd stopped breathing through his nose a long time ago.
The stink was constant, but it shifted—evolved. A week ago, it was the smell of men too long unwashed, of torn flesh left to fester, of cracked leather and mold. Then it turned sweet, sickly, like something rotting under the floorboards of the world.
The bodies didn't get removed right away.
Some died quietly in the corners. Others curled up and stopped moving after days of starvation or fever. One man slit his own throat with a sharpened bone and bled for hours before anyone even noticed.
The guards came eventually. Not for them — not out of care.
Just to keep the stink from choking everyone in the corridor outside.
Lucien watched them drag the corpses out by the ankles. Just dumped them into a cart and left.
No ceremony.
No burial.
Sometimes, the dead weren't even dead yet.
He didn't look anymore.
Didn't flinch.
Didn't blink.
Because blinking meant weakness.
And weakness got you noticed.
The floor of the cell was packed dirt, but it had long since turned into a sludge of filth. Piss, blood, spit, vomit, and worse. It never dried — not in this heat, not with the weight of a hundred barefoot men pacing, fighting, dying. There were no drains. No buckets. The stink rose like steam off a swamp. The corners were the worst — dark and wet and alive with flies.
Lucien had seen a rat crawl out of a man's open stomach once.
That had been the first week.
Now?
He'd kill for that rat. For the meat.
The water trough got filled once a day, maybe. Sometimes twice. It was just a shallow metal bowl near the barred door. Everyone had to fight for it. There was no line. No order.
Just fists.
He only drank if he won.
Otherwise, he went without.
The guards didn't speak. Or maybe they didn't care to. They'd open the door, kick in a tray of dry bread, or sometimes meat so rancid it moved on its own. Once, Lucien found a beetle crawling out of his portion.
He ate it anyway.
Everyone here looked like ghosts.
Ribcages pressed tight to pale skin, eyes sunken into bruised sockets, lips cracked and black. Clothes hung like rags. Some had been wearing the same tunic since they were captured — it had become part of them, soaked in their sweat, their fear, their failure. And underneath it all, that smell again. The smell of man, left too long to rot.
Lucien couldn't remember what clean smelled like.
Or home.
Or what the sun felt like on skin that wasn't blistered or broken.
He'd stopped dreaming.
Sleep was shallow, always light, always in half-hour bursts. If you slept too deeply, you woke up with bruises. Or worse.
He made his corner work. Stayed by the wall where the stone was slightly cooler. Guarded his back. Never fully lay down. Curled around his food like a dog.
His body — or the body he now inhabited — had grown leaner but still held more mass than most of the others. Bigger bones. Stronger legs. Wider shoulders. That gave him an edge, and he used it.
The others didn't bother him much anymore.
They'd tried. Once. A group of three when the food tray had come in short. They thought numbers mattered. Thought desperation could replace strength.
He'd cracked a skull on the wall and broken a jaw with a knee before the others pulled back.
Now they just watched him from the corners.
Eyes hollow. Full of hate, but not courage.
Lucien didn't care.
Let them hate him.
Let them all die.
If that's what it took to get through this — whatever this was — he'd do it.
The worst part wasn't the heat.
Or the rot.
Or the fights.
It was the silence that came after.
When the others lay still.
When no one begged.
When the screams faded and the breathing slowed.
When he sat alone in that dark corner and listened to the air pulse like a dying lung.
When the hunger stopped screaming and started whispering.
That was when it got dangerous.
That was when the thoughts came.
About who he used to be.
What he'd left behind.
What he'd become.
And whether he'd already died back in that desert…
…and this was all just some punishment.
Some Trial.
He couldn't tell anymore.
All he knew was the cell.
The heat.
The stink.
And the next time the tray came, he'd be ready.
He always was.