Chapter 5: Slave Market
The air was thick with smoke, sweat, and fear.
Even from the carriage, I could feel it—the stench of desperation, the muted cries, the subtle tremor of hope that clung to some as tightly as a life raft. I had seen death before, yet the sight of human suffering never failed to pierce something deeper. Something that even multiple lives had not dulled.
I watched the market from the edge of the crowd. Children no older than I was being paraded, chained, and inspected like livestock. Adults with hollow eyes traded in whispered murmurs, as if the weight of their chains had also claimed their voices. And the nobles—smiling, laughing, bidding—entirely oblivious to the humanity before them.
My fingers curled, though my expression remained calm. Rage surged beneath the surface, but it was a tool, not a storm. I had learned in my past lives that raw anger was a weakness. Strategy, patience, and understanding were weapons far sharper than steel.
And yet… even strategy required knowledge of the battlefield.
I focused on one boy, no older than ten, with dirt-smeared cheeks and eyes too old for his age. He moved with the quiet awareness of someone who had learned to survive in the harshest of conditions. That awareness told me what I needed to know—he would not break. Not easily.
I made a decision. One day, he would be mine. A future subordinate. But not yet. Patience, always patience. For now, observation.
A noble raised his hand to bid, and I caught every movement—the subtle hesitation, the overconfidence, the flicker of greed in his eyes. If left unchecked, these men would destroy not only the lives before them but the very foundation of Dicathen. And I… I would be the force that corrected it.
The market stretched endlessly, a network of suffering hidden beneath the polished surface of the kingdom. Each person chained, each coin tossed, each laugh at the expense of life would be remembered.
I would change this world. And I would do it not as a child screaming in outrage, but as a Heavenly Monarch, patient, calm, and inexorably inevitable.
As the sun dipped lower, casting long shadows across the cobblestones, I let my gaze wander again to the streets beyond the market. There, another shadow moved—another child destined for my guidance. Each one would be shaped, trained, and forged into the pillars of a new Dicathen.
And the world would bend to the vision I had already begun to see.
Because even now, as the cries of the oppressed filled the air, I understood one immutable truth:
Power without purpose is meaningless. And I would wield both.