Thorwin sat upon a half-buried boulder, his bare legs pressed against stone scorched black by fire and dragonflame alike. The heat bit into his skin, sharp at first, then dulling into something he barely noticed anymore. Pain had become familiar—an old companion he no longer bothered to greet.
In his hands he clutched a rough bundle of minced meat, dark and greasy, its scent heavy and unpleasant. It had once belonged to the orcs—the green brutes, as he still thought of them, though he had learned their true name through barked orders and cruel laughter. Orcs. The meat was coarse, half-burnt, seasoned only by ash and blood. It was no delicacy, not even close. Each mouthful tasted wrong—iron, fat, and something rancid beneath it—but Thorwin ate anyway, tearing into it with desperate efficiency.
Hunger did not allow choice.
He remembered the first time he had eaten food like this. The memory clung to him more stubbornly than hunger ever had. An orc had spat the meat onto the dirt in mockery, laughter booming as Thorwin stared at it. He had hesitated then—long enough for shame to twist inside his chest—before tearing it in half. One portion he swallowed, retching violently as it scraped its way down his throat. The other he had carried to his mother, hands trembling as he pressed it into hers. She had smiled at him, thin and proud and breaking all at once, before eating in silence.
He had vomited behind the cages that night.
But rage had kept him standing.
Rage—and need.
He needed meat. He needed strength. He needed his body to heal, to harden, to become something that could endure what this world demanded of him. Softness had no place here. Weakness was noticed. Weakness was punished.
Now, as he chewed without thought, Thorwin knew time had passed—how much, he could not say. Days bled into weeks, weeks into something longer, indistinguishable beneath smoke-choked skies and endless screams. He had stopped counting. The things that had once defined him—lessons, prayers, dreams of the tides—felt like fragments from another life.
Down below, slaves muttered and coughed as they labored in the depths of Blackrock, their voices hollow and broken. Thorwin might as well have been one of them for all he knew of the world beyond iron walls and fire-lit pits.
He knew only this now: how to fight, how to kill, and how to survive long enough to be dragged before the orcs again. To entertain them. To prove himself useful. To earn another day of breath.
The last of the meat was gone within minutes, swallowed with the same grim efficiency Thorwin applied to everything now. When his hunger had dulled to something manageable, he wiped his hands against his rags and wrapped a remaining chunk in a small, oil-stained cloth. He tucked it close to his side before rising, muscles protesting as they always did.
He had taken only a step when a voice called out to him—soft, urgent, and unmistakably familiar.
"Thorwin."
He turned at once.
"Tiffin," he answered, relief flickering across his face before he could stop it.
She stood near the skeletal remains of a scorched tree, its bark split and blackened as though struck by lightning long ago. Against the ruin of the land, she looked almost unreal. Her hair, once a pale gold, still caught what little light filtered through the smoke-choked sky, a quiet defiance against the ash and soot. Charcoal streaked her cheeks and forehead, yet her features remained sharp and unbroken—an aquiline nose, keen eyes too old for her age, and a stillness that spoke of endurance rather than surrender.
Like him, she wore rags—threadbare cloth tied and patched so many times its original color had been lost. Slowly, carefully, she approached him, as though afraid he might vanish if she moved too quickly.
"You won," she whispered when she reached him, her voice barely louder than the crackle of distant fires.
Her fingers rose, hesitant at first, before brushing his bruised cheek. The touch was feather-light, reverent even, and Thorwin flinched—not from pain, but from how unfamiliar gentleness had become.
"I did," he replied.
The words scraped their way out of him. His jaw tightened, fists curling at his sides as shame bled into his voice. Winning meant surviving. Winning meant another body broken beneath his hands. It meant cheers from orcs and blood on his skin. Victories no longer felt clean.
Tiffin did not pull away.
Instead, her hand slid down to his, fingers threading through his with quiet certainty. Her grip was small, but steady.
"I'm glad," she said softly. "You're here. That's all that matters."
For a moment—just a single, fragile moment—the world receded. The smoke, the screams, the iron walls and watching eyes faded into something distant. Thorwin looked at her, at the stubborn warmth in her gaze, and felt something stir in his chest that was not rage or hunger.
It frightened him more than any orc ever had.
"Thank you," he managed, the words barely more than breath. They felt fragile, undeserved—something that did not belong in a place like this.
Before she could answer, before he could linger in the warmth of her touch, Thorwin pulled his hand free with sudden force. He could not afford softness. Not here. Not ever.
The orcs watched for weakness the way carrion birds watched the dying. They delighted in it—prodding, twisting, breaking whatever still clung to hope. He had seen it too many times now: kindness punished, attachment exploited, love turned into a blade and driven deep. He would not give them that weapon.
Not Tiffin.
Not his mother.
His jaw set, and without another word he urged Tiffin to run with him.
They moved fast, feet pounding against cracked earth and scorched stone, weaving between jutting rocks and half-collapsed barricades as the din of the arena dissolved behind them. The orcs' laughter and the clash of iron faded into a distant echo, replaced by the rasp of Thorwin's breath and the frantic rhythm of their flight. Smoke stung his lungs, thick and acrid, as the land opened into a rough clearing—a place not meant to be seen by those still useful to their captors.
"This way," Tiffin urged, pulling him onward.
"You shouldn't be here," she said between breaths. "If they catch you—"
"They won't," Thorwin replied, though his pulse thundered in his ears. "They said I earned it."
She glanced at him sharply. "Earned?"
"It's their reward for winning," he said. "Against a priest." His jaw tightened. "They were laughing. They said I could go where I wanted—for a little while. That I'd entertained them enough."
The words tasted foul, but he forced them out all the same.
Tiffin slowed just enough to study his face, her grip tightening around his wrist. "That's why," she murmured. "That's why they finally let you into the camp."
He nodded once. "I asked for this. Not for food. Not for rest." His gaze stayed fixed ahead. "For her."
They passed between two crooked stakes driven into the ground, the boundary between the orcs' world and what remained of the humans'. The air changed instantly—thicker, heavier, alive with rot and smoke. The stench hit them first, sour and suffocating, followed by the sight of it all.
A makeshift camp stitched together from desperation and scraps.
Tents of patched cloth sagged between charred poles. Walls of dried clay and burned timbers leaned inward as though the camp itself were collapsing beneath the weight of its misery. Figures lay scattered across the dirt—some unmoving, others watching through hollow eyes too tired for hope. A few lifted their heads as Thorwin passed, disbelief flickering across gaunt faces. Others turned away, unwilling to witness another reminder of what strength cost here.
"I didn't know," Thorwin muttered. "I didn't know there were so many."
"They keep you separate on purpose," Tiffin said quietly. "Those who fight. Those who break."
She tugged him onward before he could linger. "Don't stare. They don't like it."
They wove deeper into the camp, toward the far edge where the smoke hung low and the tents thinned into shadow. Thorwin felt it then—a tightening in his chest, sudden and merciless, as though something unseen had seized his heart and pulled.
Tiffin slowed.
"There," she said softly.
And Thorwin saw her.
Thorwin followed her line of sight—and the world fell away.
There—beneath a torn canopy stitched together from rags and rope—sat a woman hunched against a broken crate.
His mother.
Adriana Stormsong looked smaller than he remembered.
Her once-golden hair, always so carefully kept, was dull now, threaded with ash and streaked with gray that had no right to be there. It was bound loosely at the nape of her neck, strands falling free to frame a face worn thin by exhaustion and hunger. Dirt smudged her cheeks, and her dress—once silk and finery—had been reduced to layered scraps, mended so many times it barely resembled clothing at all.
Yet even here, even like this, she sat with a fragile sort of dignity, her back straight despite the pain that must have wracked her body. One hand rested against her side, fingers curled as though warding off a wound she refused to acknowledge. The other clutched a small bundle of cloth in her lap—empty now, but held with the reverence of something once precious.
Thorwin stopped.
The world seemed to narrow, the noise of the camp dulling into a distant murmur. For a heartbeat, he could not move. Fear rooted him in place—not of the orcs, not of the camp, but of what he might find if he drew closer. Of what she might look like when she lifted her eyes.
"Mother," he whispered.
The word barely left his lips.
Her head lifted at once.
Even starved, even broken, Adriana would have known that voice anywhere.
Her eyes—still the same blue, though dulled by fatigue—found him through the gloom. For a moment, she only stared, as though her mind refused to accept what it saw. Then her breath caught, sharp and ragged, and the cloth fell from her hands.
"Thorwin…"
She rose too quickly. Pain flared across her face, and she swayed, one hand bracing against the crate. Thorwin was moving before he thought, crossing the space between them in long, desperate strides. He caught her just as her strength faltered, his arms wrapping around her with a force that surprised them both.
She was so light.
The realization struck him harder than any blow he had ever taken.
Her hands clutched at his back, fingers digging into the rough fabric of his rags as though afraid he might vanish if she let go. She pressed her face into his shoulder, and he felt her trembling—not with weakness alone, but with the breaking release of fear held too long.
"You're alive," she whispered, over and over. "By the light, you're alive."
Thorwin swallowed hard, his throat burning. He buried his face in her hair, breathing in smoke and dirt and the faint, fading trace of the scent he remembered—salt and parchment and home.
"I told you," he said, his voice low and fierce, though it shook despite his efforts. "I told you I wouldn't leave you."
Her hands slid up to his face, cupping his cheeks as she pulled back to look at him. Her gaze traced every bruise, every scar, every hard line that had not been there before. Her lips trembled.
"What have they done to you?" she asked softly.
The tears came all at once.
Thorwin wept with a sound he did not recognize as his own, his shoulders trembling as grief finally broke through the iron discipline he had forged in himself. He pressed his face into his mother's shoulder, stifling his cries, unwilling to draw attention—even here, even now. The camp was already filled with suffering; his sobs vanished beneath the distant screams, the coughing, the low moans of the broken.
Adriana did not speak.
She did not need to.
Her arms wrapped around him, firm and steady, holding him as she once had when storms battered the manor walls in Kul Tiras. In that embrace, he was no longer a fighter, no longer a spectacle for orcish cruelty—he was her child again, small and trembling, safe for the span of a heartbeat.
When his tears finally slowed, when his breathing steadied, she leaned close and whispered, her voice barely more than breath.
"Be strong, my child. Your mother will always be here."
She lifted a trembling finger and pressed it gently against his chest, over his heart.
"Here."
Thorwin swallowed hard, nodding once.
He held her a moment longer than he should have, memorizing the fragile rise and fall of her breath, the warmth of her hands. Then, with visible effort, he pulled away. He knew better than to linger. The orcs noticed everything—and their attention was a blade he would never allow to fall upon her.
"They'll give me more meat now," he said quietly, forcing steadiness into his voice. "For the fights. I'll make sure of it." He glanced toward Tiffin, who stood watch nearby. "She'll bring it to you. Every day."
Adriana opened her mouth to protest, but he shook his head, conviction hardening his gaze.
"I promise," he said. "We'll survive this. Together."
He took a step back.
Then another.
For a final moment, he looked at her—truly looked—etching every line of her face, every trace of strength and weariness, into his memory. He carried that image with him as he turned away, retreating into the smoke and ash of the camp.
Behind him, beneath the torn canopy, Adriana Stormsong remained standing—watching her son walk back into hell, carrying her heart with him.