-------------"Monsters cleanse the kingdom" - Baeman the old----------
The lashes did not heal cleanly. But the blood stopped much earlier than any man's should.
Jalen's back was a web of scabs that cracked open with every motion. His ribs burned when he bent to lift baskets, when he reached too far for water, when he dared breathe too deeply. The bandages he tied himself were filthy rags stiff with his dried blood, but clean cloth was a luxury of the higher rings, not for the rats of the Bottom.
The guards warning had been clear: if he did not return to labor, if he shirked, he would not be whipped next time. He would be discarded. The First ring had no use for the unworking. Either you should work or you should be dead.
And so, Jalen worked.
The First Ring was pitiless.
Every stone in its alleys seemed slick with salt and grime, every gutter clogged with fish guts. Smoke from the cook-fires clung to the air choking the folks. Waste from the Second Ring spilled down their walls, via ducts that caused the bottom streets to be strewn with rotten vegetables, broken crockery, and worse things. These landfills were mines for beggars who occasionally pick up something useful that might get them a piece of bread.
Men hunched pulling carts, their bodies permanently bowed from years of carrying burdens meant for beasts. Women stooped with swollen hands, scrubbing laundry that never truly came clean. Children with bellies taut from hunger scavenged the gutters with sharp sticks, competing with stray dogs for scraps.
To be born here was to be shaped by struggle. To survive, one had to become harder than the stone foundations of the city itself. Most in the first ring had been hardened both in body and mind by the hand that dealt their fate.
Jalen felt himself hardening.
The old Jalen - the boy who kept his head down, who whimpered quietly in the dark - had died somewhere between the butcher's fists and the whipmaster's lash. What remained was a leaner, quieter and sharper man. The whispers made sure of that.
Endure
The whispers said each night, when the Hole's breath flowed like a tide through the cracks in the city walls.
Endure and grow teeth.
And so he endured.
The people of the First Ring began to notice.
When Jalen walked through the fish market with his basket of spoiled bread, voices hushed. He was not stronger, not taller, not suddenly rich or noble. But something in his eyes made people turn away. Eyes once downcast, now fixed on the world with a steady, unflinching stare. A stare that remembered pain - and promised the same in return.
Children who once jeered "rat" now darted to alleys when they saw him coming. Men muttered that he was cursed. Women drew signs of warding in the air to prevent the evil tainting them.
Cursed. Blessed. Jalen could not tell the difference anymore. He did not care.
The priests came next.
Three of them, masked and robed, their garments heavy with white threads that seemed pristine in the First ring. They found him at dusk, outside the water well. Their shadows stretched long in the lamplight, cutting across the ground like blades.
"The Hollow stirs in you, child," one intoned, voice muffled by the mask.
"Do you hear it?" The second asked.
Jalen hesitated. The truth pressed against his teeth. Yes, he heard it. He heard it as clearly as his own heart. But truth was dangerous. And for these hyenas Jalen only had lies to spare.
"No," he said at last, voice flat.
The tallest priest, the one that has not spoken tilted his head. "Your silence under the lash, your endurance, it was not natural. The Hollow does not bless lightly. If it speaks to you, you must tell us. Otherwise the consequences shall be less than savory."
The voice of the priest had a hypnotic tint that made the ones listening inadvertently accede to his demands.
Jalen's jaw clenched. His body screamed to submit, to nod, to let them take him. Yet the whispers rose like a tide, curling in his ears.
Say nothing. They are fat with comfort. They do not deserve what we give you. The one in the front is trying to misguide you. Dull your senses.
So he bowed instead, hands trembling. "I am nothing. The Hollow does not waste its voice on me."
The priests eyes lingered, their masks reflecting firelight, before the first one finally hissed, "If you lie, the abyss will claim you whole."
They left him there, sweating in the dark, heart beating wildly against his ribs.
That night, Jalen dreamed.
He was standing at the edge of the Hole, the First Ring stretching behind him like a sea of broken backs in the distance. The abyss yawned before him, endless and black, yet alive. From its depths came tendrils of a shadow, curling like smoke. They wound around his limbs, around his chest, sinking into the fresh scars on his back as it spoke:
You endure,You are not theirs. You are mine.
The tendrils pulsed, filling his veins with something hot and viscous, something wrong and at the same time right, something alive. He gasped and fell to his knees and woke slick with sweat, his hands glowing faintly with a dull grey shimmer before fading to nothing.
He stared at his hands for a long time in the dark, terrified and exhilarated both.
The next day brought cruelty sharper than whips. Being eyed by the priests always comes with a price.
The guards seized his day's rations, laughing as they tore the stale bread in half and tossed it to dogs.
"You eat too much for a rat," one jeered, shoving him into the mud.
Jalen crawled back to his feet, body trembling. Hunger was an old companion, but now it gnawed differently. Not just at his belly, but at his chest, his throat, his very bones. At whatever pride he had. By dusk he collapsed against a stone wall, vision swimming.
And then, the whispers again — not soft, not coaxing, but sharp.
Take.
Jalen lifted his eyes. A boy no older than eight clutched a crust of bread nearby, gnawing it with wide eyes. His ribs jutted, his frame no sturdier than Jalen's own had once been.
The hunger in Jalen roared. His hand twitched.
Take it. The fat survive by stealing. Why not you?
He staggered forward two steps before freezing. The boy's eyes met his. They were frightened, hollow, but alive. The same eyes he had once.
Jalen's storm-grey eyes burned. He turned away, teeth clenched until blood filled his mouth. He would not steal from another starving rat.
The whispers ebbed, cold and disappointed.
Weak. But still mine.
That night, the ache of hunger was worse than the pain of the lashes had ever been. His body curled in on itself, his breath shallow. His belly screamed, clawing at itself until he thought he might go mad. In the haze of half-sleep, he thought he heard scratching at the hovel's walls, a low hum beneath the floorboards.
And then he saw it - a rat, its whiskers twitching, its eyes glinting green in the night. It zig-zagged its way across the dirt floor, searching for crumbs that did not exist.
Jalen's body moved before thought. His hand shot out, faster than he expected, and closed around the creature. It writhed, squealing, claws raking his palm.
For a heartbeat, shame burned in him. He was no better than the scavengers the guards mocked. But the hunger was too sharp, too endless, too hard to ignore.
He bit into the rat's neck.
The squeal cut off. Warm blood filled his mouth, metallic and hot. He gagged, then swallowed. He tore flesh with teeth, hands shaking, consuming with animal desperation until nothing remained but bones and fur he could not bring himself to chew.
When it was over, he sat in the dark, mouth red, trembling.
He should have been horrified. He should have wept. Instead, his stomach calmed. His body warmed. The hunger dulled.
The whispers coiled around him like smoke.
Good. Rats eat rats. Now you are truly ours.
Jalen closed his eyes. A tear slipped down his cheek, but not from sorrow. It was relief. For the first time in days, he did not feel empty.
When he blinked awake later, he swore he saw the scabs on his back twitch, knitting faintly, almost alive. His breath caught. His skin felt too tight, his blood too hot.
The Hole was changing him. How he did not know.
And though the thought should have terrified him, it did not.
It thrilled him.
He lay awake until dawn, staring at the cracked ceiling, listening to the whispers curling through the silence. His stomach was no longer hollow, his body no longer weak. Beneath it all a current thrummed steady and sure. Something had been planted in him. Something that would not die, no matter how deep the city ground him into the mud.
He was still a rat. Still the lowest of the low. Still beaten and hungry.
But rats had teeth.
And soon, the city would learn how sharp they could be.