The boy woke to the sound of chains, not because they were loud, but because they never stopped.
They clinked with every breath the sleeping slaves took, a quiet metallic whisper that filled the stone barracks long before dawn. He lay on his straw mat, eyes open, staring at the ceiling he'd memorized years ago, the cracks, the water stains, the places where the mortar was darker from countless winters. He counted them the way others counted dreams.
Dreams were something he didn't have.
A boot struck the door outside. "Up," an overseer barked, though the boy was already standing. He moved with the practiced motion of someone whose body knew the routine better than his mind did. Step, straighten, don't think. Thinking led to mistakes. Mistakes led to pain.
The other slaves shuffled around him, groggy and muttering. The boy never muttered. He had learned long ago that words were wasted on someone with nothing to say.
The overseer walked down the line, tapping the iron collar around each slave's neck. When he reached the boy, he paused, not long, just enough to sneer.
"No spark in you at all," the man said. "Just a husk. Hurry up and get in line you creep."
The boy didn't react. Husk. Thing. Number. All the names were the same. They meant he was not a person, so he did not bother to feel anything about them.
A bell rang outside, harsh, distorted, made of black metal that didn't hum like normal iron. Light from the rising sun slipped through the cracks in the walls, pale and cold. It touched his skin and slid off as if it couldn't find anything living to cling to.
He stepped forward when the line moved, bare feet silent on the dirt floor. Another day of labor waited beyond the door, another day of breath without living.
He didn't know it yet, but this morning would be the last one he spent as lifeless as the overseers believed him to be.
Outside, the morning air was crisp enough to sting, but the boy didn't flinch as it touched his skin. The slaves filed into formation beside the outer wall, a towering barrier of dark stone carved with runes that glowed faintly under the rising sun. The runes were old, older than the compound itself, and the boy had never heard anyone speak of what they were for. He only knew that they hummed at night like distant insects, and that no slave who tried to cross the wall ever returned.
A horn sounded. The gates creaked open.
Work day.
The boy was assigned to the quarry again. He didn't mind. Not because it was easier, it wasn't, but because the noise of shattering stone drowned out thought. And thought was dangerous.
The group trudged down the packed dirt path, passing by armored guards who barely spared them glances. One guard, new by the look of his polished breastplate, wrinkled his nose as the slaves passed. "Smells like rot," he muttered.
Another guard laughed. "They're not people at all they're just sacks of meat. But useful for we don't have to do any work."
The boy didn't hear these things the way others did. The words slid across his mind like rain across cold stone. He didn't absorb them. He didn't resist them. He let them pass.
At the quarry's edge, the sun had climbed enough to cast long shadows into the pit. The overseers shouted orders, and the slaves divided into their assigned roles, haulers, cutters, carriers, and tool runners. The boy took his place beside a towering slab of rock. A pickaxe was shoved into his hands.
He raised it and began to work.
Swing.
Shatter.
Swing.
Shatter.
The rhythm was familiar. The ache in his muscles was familiar. The vibration that crawled up through his arms and into his skull was familiar.
But today… something wasn't.
When he swung the pickaxe for the tenth time, a strange warmth flickered beneath his ribs, brief, faint, almost imagined. He paused, grip tightening on the handle. The warmth disappeared instantly, like a frightened creature retreating into a cave.
"Move!" an overseer snapped, cracking a whip into the dirt beside his foot.
The boy resumed working without a word.
But he felt it again minutes later.
It wasn't pain. Pain he understood. Pain was sharp, clear, merciless.
This was… something else. Softer. Like a spark brushing against a pile of old ash.
He didn't know what it meant.
He didn't know it had a meaning.
By midday, the sun hung high and unrelenting, turning sweat into dust on their skin. The boy kept working, unbroken, expressionless, and empty. Other slaves collapsed. He didn't. Other slaves cried out. He didn't.
Still, that warmth pulsed now and then like a heartbeat that wasn't his.
He ignored it, until the accident.
A shout erupted from across the quarry. Someone's footing slipped, stones tumbled, and a massive boulder cracked loose from the upper ledge. It began to roll, picking up speed as it barreled downward.
It was heading straight toward a group of haulers.
They froze. Paralysis. Terror.
The boy did not feel terror. He didn't feel anything.
But the warmth inside him flared, bright, urgent, alive.
Before he knew why, his body moved. He dropped his pickaxe and sprinted toward the falling boulder. The other slaves stared at him, mouths open, unable to understand why someone like him, someone who never reacted, was suddenly running.
He reached the haulers just as the boulder crashed into the ground. A cascade of smaller stones flew outward like shrapnel. One jagged shard hurtled toward the youngest hauler, a boy barely ten.
Without thinking, the lifeless boy stepped in front of him.
He raised his arm.
The stone should have shattered bone.
Instead, it struck something else.
A flicker of pale light, a thin, curved veil that flashed around his forearm like a shield, sparked silently and vanished.
The stone hit the dirt.
The boy's breath caught. The warmth inside him roared, then steadied.
The hauler he'd shielded stared at him in wide-eyed disbelief.
"You… you glowed," the child whispered. "Your arm..."
The boy stared at his hand for a moment then tried to shake the light off of it. Eventually, it went away but was not unseen.
"HEY!"
An overseer stormed toward them.
The lifeless boy lowered his arm.
The warmth inside him dimmed.
The overseer grabbed him by the collar and wrenched him backward. "What in the hell was that? You think you're some kind of mage? Huh? You think you can use tricks here?!"
The boy said nothing. He didn't know what he'd done.
"I'll show you what we do here if you use those tricks again."
The whip cracked once.
Twice.
Three times.
"Now I better not see that.. whatever it was ever again!"
The overseer stormed away; they clearly weren't in a good mood and the boy could feel it; he couldn't tell if it was anger, fear, or confusion. He couldn't tell any of it after all, he didn't even know the emotions himself. After the whips, the boy sat down since it was break time after what had just happened.
He didn't cry out.
He didn't react.
But the warmth did.
It trembled, angry and afraid, and something else he didn't have a word for.
The other slaves were staring. Not with pity. Not with fear or curiosity.
And curiosity was dangerous.
The boy returned to work in silence.
And the faint, fragile warmth inside him refused to die down no matter how much he tried.
He didn't know it yet, but this would be the last day he lived as a shadow of a person.
Something inside him had begun to wake.
Something bright and it was not normal for the boy yet it felt so familiar. It wasn't the warmth of the sun. It was when he had first gained consciousness that it was the first good thing he had felt in years. And he yearned to feel more of it. He only needed to figure out how.