The armored man gathered every slave, thirty ragged souls, in the ruined arena courtyard.
"Wait here."
He disappeared for ten minutes.
Returned with his armor scrubbed clean, blood gone like it had never existed.
"Follow me."
One slave, voice trembling with hope:
"Why are you… freeing us?"
The helmet turned.
"I'm doing this because I feel like it.
Don't get the wrong idea."
His words were; Cold.
Flat.
Exactly like every slaver who'd ever lied to them.
Hope died again.
They followed anyway.
No one noticed the thirty slaves walking through the city.
Not the guards.
Not the merchants.
Not even the dogs.
The girl in gray felt the faint ripple of concealment magic and understood:
He was hiding them invisible to the world.
They arrived at a mansion on the edge of town.
Three stories, wide garden, marble steps.
A "For Sale – 200 million lien" sign was ripped off the gate and tossed aside like trash.
The armored man kicked the front door open.
"Inside."
The slaves hesitated at the threshold.
He glanced back.
"What are you doing? Hurry up."
They filed in.
The hall was dusty, grand, empty.
The armored man clapped once.
"First job: clean this place.
It's filthy."
He produced brooms, buckets, rags from nowhere and started handing them out.
The slaves stared, dumbfounded.
Cleaning?
Not chains.
Not cages.
Cleaning.
And so the strangest day of their lives began.
Days turned to weeks.
The mansion slowly became a home.
Three meals a day, no questions asked.
Reading and writing lessons every morning.
Books, real books, the price of a small house, left in careless piles with a grunt of "Figure it out. Ask if you're stuck."
The armored man was always brusque.
"Hey, you. Dust the shelves."
"You, kitchen duty."
Never names.
Never "please."
Never removed their collars.
Yet no one was beaten.
No one touched.
No one sold.
When a boy with a limp asked for help with letters, the armored man sat beside him for three hours, grumbling the whole time, explaining every stroke.
When a girl cried from nightmares, a blanket appeared on her bed the next night.
He vanished for days at random.
Sometimes three days.
Sometimes a week.
Always returned with new slaves, collared, broken, terrified.
Then the cycle repeated: food, lessons, safety.
Until the mansion held fifty-three souls and stopped growing.
The gray girl watched it all from corners and shadows.
She saw the others start to smile.
She saw them play in the garden like children who'd forgotten they were slaves.
She saw them call the armored man "Master" with something dangerously close to affection.
She never joined.
She never spoke unless spoken to.
She never took off her collar.
Because collars meant owners.
Because kindness was always a trick.
Because the second you believed, they sold you again.
One afternoon she sat under the big oak, knees to chest, watching the others kick a ball and laugh.
A shadow fell over her.
The armored man looked at me, not aenacing stare,.but still I was wary.
He then crouched so they were eye-level.
"You still don't have a dream?"
She didn't answer.
He nodded like he'd expected it.
"That's fine.
Dreams take time."
He placed something on the grass between them.
A small wooden carving: a crude bear with round ears and a button nose.
"Made it while I was gone.
Thought of you."
He stood, walked away.
Left the bear.
The girl stared at it for a long time.
Then, with shaking fingers, picked it up.
Pressed it to her chest.
And for the first time in years, cried without making a sound.
The armored man never noticed.
Or pretended not to.
Either way, the bear stayed with her when she slept.
And the mansion kept getting louder with children who were starting to remember how to be children again.