"What is this…? Where am I…?"
His voice was broken, as if the words themselves were stumbling in his throat.
"I was supposed to die… and for everything to end with the beginning of a long, endless hell… not with a new life!"
This was not the light of the afterlife.
This was not the burning of the soul.
This was not even the darkness of nothingness.
His eyes opened with difficulty, and he felt his body surrounded by a cold, viscous liquid. It pressed against his chest, pierced his ears, and slipped into his mouth. He couldn't breathe. He tried to scream, but the scream shattered into silent bubbles.
Before his eyes, beyond the thick glass, stood those young men in dark clothes, waiting.
Their faces had no expressions.
Their eyes were rigid.
They were looking at him… not like a human.
But like a thing.
Like a laboratory animal.
The liquid began to withdraw gradually, with deliberate slowness, as if they were enjoying watching his struggle. The level dropped… more… more… until it disappeared completely.
He collapsed onto his feet.
His body trembled as air rushed violently into his lungs, as if his chest were tearing apart from the inside. He coughed violently, vomiting the remnants of the liquid while his knees shook.
Heavy footsteps approached him.
A large man with a massive build, broad shoulders, and a sharp gaze. His face was harsh, devoid of mercy.
He bent toward him… and grabbed him by the head the way one grabs a stray puppy.
"Let me go, you bastard!"
elia tried to strike him.
He raised his hand… but it didn't reach.
His hand…
His hand was small.
Very small.
He froze for a moment, then lunged by instinct, trying to bite the man's forearm.
His teeth clamped down.
But…
Nothing.
The man's expression didn't change even slightly. He didn't even blink.
"What a savage," one of them said coldly.
"And what did you expect from a failed experiment?" another replied while flipping through some papers.
"So many lives were wasted on him… perhaps we should adjust the ritual again. More blood. Fewer souls. Or the opposite."
"Yes… perhaps the problem is the balance."
They were discussing it as if it were a cooking recipe.
Not one of them even looked at him.
He was dragged away from the glass tank, his feet scraping against the metal floor, his mind unable to comprehend what had happened. He tried to resist, tried to strike, tried to break the man's grip.
But every patience has its limit.
Suddenly, the man threw him violently against the wall. His small body slammed into the stone, and his bones rattled from the impact.
Then came the first kick.
And the second.
And the third.
Without a single word.
Cold, methodical kicks, until the pain inside him shattered into emptiness.
His vision began to fade… the sounds drifted away… and darkness swallowed him.
…
"Wake up…"
The voice was faint.
"Wake up…"
Closer.
"Wake up!"
The voice exploded inside his head.
A sharp headache pierced his skull. It felt as if hammers were striking his brain from within. He slowly opened his eyes to find himself in complete darkness, broken only by the light of a small torch swaying in the corner of the place.
It wasn't real light.
It was the remnants of light.
A smell suddenly struck his nose—a familiar smell. A smell he knew well from battlefields… rot, dead flesh, old blood.
But here… it was worse.
His awareness returned all at once. He quickly stood in a defensive stance, his breathing rapid.
"Wait! Calm down! No need to panic!"
A child's voice.
He noticed a group of children backing away from him, curling into themselves like trapped animals.
"Who are you?! And where am I?!!"
He shouted with everything he had, his voice echoing between the damp stone walls.
They avoided him.
But one boy stood in front of him.
His eyes were different. Not afraid… but exhausted.
"Shut up, you failure," he said with sharp coldness.
"You're not better than us. You're stuck here like the rest of us."
elia felt anger boiling in his chest.
"What are you talking about?! I am a proud soldier of the Empire! Just tell me where I am, and you will be rewarded by the great Empire!"
Silence fell.
Then the boy burst out laughing.
"Hahahahaha… hahahahahaha…!"
A hysterical laugh, long and cracked.
"Is that why they brought you to the pen? You're completely insane! You truly didn't meet their standards!"
His laughter slowly subsided, but the dead smile remained on his face.
"Listen carefully, because I won't repeat this… you have years ahead of you to learn obedience. It's your only way to survive. But in your case… maybe being experiment material would be better."
"You'll die faster."
elia felt the ground sway beneath him.
"Liar!"
He lunged to attack them, but his feet did not move. His hands froze, then he fell as that body of his did not obey him.
He then noticed the children behind him holding him tightly, preventing him from moving. Their hands were weak, but they clung to him.
At that moment, he saw the entire cell.
Children almost without clothes, skeletons in the corner, and recently rotting corpses.
Dampness, filth, silence. Then he looked at his small body… far smaller than it should be.
His mechanical parts were gone.
The iron that once adorned his limbs as a military pride had disappeared.
Death had not taken him.
But life had returned him with a body unworthy of a warrior.
"Bind him until he calms down," the boy said coldly.
"We must remain human… not experiments as they want. Do you understand, boy?"
Everyone obeyed him.
They tied his hands and feet with chains that had been placed there… as if they were waiting for their next victim.
And they left him.
Alone.
Far from the torch.
In the darkness.
Time passed slowly, heavily. He heard the iron door open every few hours. One of them would be taken.
Sometimes they returned. Sometimes they did not.
And whoever resisted was simply killed.
Here they are slaves, and a slave possesses no dignity. If he objects, he is killed. If he demands, he is killed. And certainly, if he opposes, he is killed.
A slave is not at the bottom of the pyramid, but beneath the lowest of the low.
His human eyes moved silently, watching the boy who sometimes looked at him with a strange gaze. He did not understand it. Was it pity? Contempt? Or a warning?
He was chained anyway. There was no point in causing chaos.
"How some of the court scholars would have rejoiced if they were in my place now…"
A stream of memories slipped into his mind.
The theory of parallel worlds.
An infinite number of universes.
A transition that requires energy surpassing life and death.
They had laughed at them back then.
They mocked them.
"Energy that crosses the boundary between annihilation and existence? That is madness."
But he… had died.
He felt death, and then woke up here.
He clenched his small fingers within the chains.
If that theory was correct, then this was not hell.
But another world.
"Damn everything…"
The thought kept repeating inside his head like an echo in an empty cave.
"Out of all people… me? Why me? If it had been someone else… it would have been better."
He closed his eyes in the darkness, the cold chains surrounding his wrists and ankles.
"I achieved my goal. I fought until the end. I bled defending my empire. I offered my blood to the Emperor…"
His jaw tightened.
"So why do I need a second life? A worthless life… where there is no order… no honor… no banner to fight under."
Time passed slowly.
Drops of water falling from the ceiling of the cell.
The faint breathing of the children.
The sound of their bodies rubbing against one another seeking warmth.
Then the torch went out. The last thread of light disappeared, as if it were an official announcement that night had fallen. And in this place, night is not a time for rest… but a time for submission, for the good slave sleeps after his master.
Complete darkness spread.
He could no longer see his hand in front of his face.
Only blackness.
…
Light footsteps approached.
The sound stopped in front of him.
He felt someone's presence… very close.
"Have you improved?"
The boy's voice.
"Have you stopped spitting nonsense from that mouth of yours?"
His voice was mocking, but low… as if he feared crossing an invisible line.
elia raised his head slightly, and his voice came out hoarse.
"And you… will you stop being a whore?"
A short silence followed.
Then the boy breathed slowly.
"As crude as I see."
He paused for a moment, then continued. "But that doesn't matter. As long as you're calm, we can remove those restraints from you… later. Not now of course. Who knows? You might fall into another episode."
The sarcasm in his voice was obvious, and he did not try to hide it.
elia could not see his expression, but he felt his crooked smile in the darkness.
"Where am I?" he said this time calmly, but with a tone as sharp as a sword's edge.
The boy hesitated.
"I don't really know."
Silence followed.
"We were born here. All of us."
His voice changed at those words.
It became rougher. Heavier.
As if something inside him tried to break… but he suppressed it by force.
"We are merely failed experiments… for those mages."
elia's thoughts froze.
"What do you mean… by experiments?"
The boy laughed a short laugh devoid of joy.
"Creating a god."
Silence.
"At least… that's what I heard. And that's all I know. They want to create a god of their own. A god that answers to them."
He sighed bitterly.
"In my opinion? A foolish act. But… of course, we are not allowed to have opinions."
elia felt something cold run down his spine.
A god?
A human… creating a god?
"What nonsense is this?"
But another word stuck in his mind.
"Mages?"
He emphasized the word.
In his previous world, magic had been nothing more than stories for children… or trivial games for the common folk.
"I almost forgot that you were born today as well," the boy said mockingly.
He moved a little closer until his voice became a whisper.
"Mages are the warriors. They are the rulers here. They control everything."
"They move nature with their will. Fire, wind, earth… even flesh and blood."
"And here, in this temple, there are only mages and summoners."
He paused for a moment.
"And those who created us… you could call them our fathers. But they are not. They are of a very high level."
His voice lowered even more.
"Even if you think about resisting… you will not succeed."
Silence filled the space.
elia found nothing to say.
His mind began connecting the threads.
Mages.
Summoners.
Creating a god.
This…
Resembled the RPG games children used to talk about in the back alleys of the capital.
It resembled the cheap stories he used to despise.
But he remembered something else.
The theory of parallel worlds—that every idea and every story might be another real world.
And if that was the case, then he was not in hell but in a different world.
"I understand," he finally said calmly.
"Thank you… "
He stopped.
"I don't know your name."
The boy laughed quietly, a short laugh without life.
"How ridiculous you are."
Then he added,
"We are experiments. We are slaves. We do not need names."
He stepped back.
"Names are given to those who possess value."
"As for us… welcome among us."
"Damn…"
Now he understood.
He was not just standing at the bottom of the pyramid.
He was beneath the ground itself.
No name.
No dignity.
No identity.
Just material.
But within that darkness, inside the body of a small child, within the cold restraints, something began to move.
"I must survive…"
He closed his eyes.
"The empire must be rebuilt…"
He felt a burning bitterness.
"My fall while protecting the Emperor… perhaps it was not pride."
His expression hardened.
"Perhaps it was a disgrace that clung to my shoulders."
If he had died without completing his duty, then this world would be the field of his atonement.
"All I have to do… is survive."
He began to draw his objectives inside his mind.
Like a commander drawing a battle map.
First: break free from the restraints.
Second: understand this world.
Third: gain power.
Then build slowly from absolute zero.
"I will rebuild the empire."
There is no banner here, and there is no crown there.
But they can be made.