At that moment, the silence was heavier than the chains themselves.
elia slowly raised his eyes toward Frosty, while his mind boiled with restless thoughts.
How can I escape?
Everyone here can barely stand… no one has the strength to face them. Even I… even I am not enough. And if I escape? What awaits me outside? An unknown world… a world I do not know whether it is kinder than this hell or even crueler.
He lifted his head toward the cracked stone ceiling, as if searching its fractures for a lost answer. Frosty sat before him like a corpse that had lost its warmth, his eyes empty… that spark which once ignited when he saw the outside world for the first time had gone out, like a candle in a storm.
Even elia himself… his strong body, hardened by pain, and the muscles strengthened beneath the whips of slavery, bore none of the scars of "absolute obedience" that branded the loyal slaves. His body had bent, but his spirit never had.
As for the rest?
Just a group of bodies that had learned how to crawl.
Faces accustomed to staring at the ground.
Tongues that licked the feet of people they saw as less than human… simply because they had the power to do whatever they wished to them.
Hope?
It was a word used only for mockery.
But elia… was human.
And his dignity was harder than chains.
Escape alone was impossible.
Then… rebellion. A rebellion that might grant a small chance of survival… instead of remaining laboratory rats for their sadistic pleasures.
Suddenly, he stood.
A single step echoed beneath his feet, producing a creak like a scream.
He shouted, his voice tearing through the rot accumulated in the cell:
"You… you truly are trash that was thrown away!"
Hands that had been tearing apart stale bread froze.
Hungry eyes stopped fighting over the crumbs.
"I lived with you! I fought beside you! I almost rotted here just as the corpses rotted in the corners! While my bones refused to submit to those sorcerers who enjoy experimenting with their spells on our bodies… they laugh while we burn, they gamble while we bleed!"
The boys, men, and women exchanged glances.
Fear was clearer than anger.
Frosty… remained silent, his head lowered.
"I've had enough! I've had enough of being a puppet in their laboratory! I've had enough of bowing down! This is not life… the life worth living is freedom! And if I die while resisting… that is an honor that cannot be bought!"
He growled, his voice slamming into the walls like a caged beast.
But the response came cold.
"And who made you our leader?"
"You want us to die for your illusions?"
"We are alive… aren't we? Why leave what we have?"
Alive?
This is not living… this is postponing death.
The spark of anger nearly faded, but another voice rose.
Frosty stood slowly. His trembling body seemed too weak to stand, yet his eyes were different.
"He is right."
Silence fell.
"When I saw the world outside… my hope shattered. I realized how small we are. But… that pain is what made me believe that there is something worth striving for. We were not born human… but we became human through our feelings, our thoughts, and our will."
He breathed with difficulty, yet his voice grew steadier.
"If we remain… we will die by their will. But if we leave now… we may die. Yet we will die by our own will."
Some lowered their heads.
Some frowned.
Some ignored it.
But the words… spread like infection, like a plague awakening the dead.
"Do you… mean we should fight?"
At that moment, elia exploded.
"What do you think? That we will politely knock on their doors and demand our rights?! Do you expect mercy to beat within dead hearts?!"
He stepped forward, his eyes blazing.
"Rights are not given… they are taken! And freedom is born only from the womb of blood! If you want freedom… then let corpses fall! Wake up from your pathetic dreams! Break the doors! Kill them! And die if you must… but die standing!"
Heartbeats quickened.
Blood began to boil.
Fear transformed… into something else.
elia… who once died at the hands of rebels in his previous life… had now become a rebel himself.
And in a single moment, they charged.
Small and large bodies slammed into the iron door.
Creak.
Impact.
Cracks.
The guards outside heard everything… and did not care.
They smiled with confidence.
They knew how rebellions ended.
But those who had lived among rotting corpses no longer feared death.
One final collision shattered the door.
And hell erupted.
Swords pierced flesh without hesitation.
Magical flames burst from the hands of the sorcerers blue tongues of fire that devoured bodies with chilling coldness.
Screams… the smell of burning flesh… blood splattering against the walls.
But the slaves did not retreat.
The first fell, then the second, then the third. Some burned while laughing. Some were stabbed while shouting the name of freedom.
Charred corpses and severed limbs turned the dungeon floor into a red swamp.
The sorcerers and knights began to take the matter seriously.
But elia did not stop.
He broke the cages one after another, freeing more.
Chaos was his weapon.
He snatched a sword from a guard's corpse and felt its weight familiar… a memory of a previous life returning to him heads flying, battlefields, blind loyalty to an empire that had died.
"Hah! Worm!"
A guard rushed at him, his sword crashing down with bone breaking force.
elia blocked the strike, but the shock numbed his arm.
The difference in strength was obvious.
Then… he would not face strength with strength.
He let the sword pass beside his body, bent, twisted his body spinning in an impossible turn and aimed a swift stab at the guard's eye.
The guard stepped back at the last moment, then kicked elia violently.
He slammed into the wall. The air burst from his lungs.
The guard laughed.
"Your place is beneath our feet!"
Before he could finish his sentence, he stopped…
A thin sword pierced his skull from behind.
Its blade came out through his eye, and the laughter froze on his face.
He fell.
Warm blood flowed over elia's face.
He rose slowly… his breathing heavy… his eyes dark.
"Never give your enemy a second chance…"
In the dungeon yard, the slaves' war ignited.
Blood.
Fire.
Screams.
Chaos.
And elia was at its heart and its cause.
The slaves advanced, and their number was greater than any mind could have imagined.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, poured from the cells like a black flood emaciated bodies but eyes burning proving a terrifying truth.
How many experiments had been conducted?
How many failed attempts to create "one god" from human flesh?
How many souls had been crushed for the sake of a mad illusion?
Their numbers were testimony to their masters' despair.
At the front was Frosty.
His memory, pierced with fear, still retained one corridor he had seen once when he was taken out for an experiment.
He led the stumbling sometimes, shouting at other times.
"To the left! There's a staircase there! Don't stop!"
Those who remained of the strong surrounded him, protecting him like a candle in a storm.
But the further they advanced, the worse it became.
Summoners raised their arms, and the ground split open with black circles.
Crawling demons emerged long tongues, eyes like embers tearing apart whoever they reached.
The corpses of the dead rose from the pile of the fallen, their bones creaking as they attacked their former companions.
Expressionless sorcerers raised their staffs.
Fire devoured the front ranks.
Ice froze those who tried to leap.
Bodies shattered like glass statues.
The knights were not human in that moment.
They were human meat grinders.
Their swords tore.
Their armor rammed.
Their feet crushed.
Anyone who dared fight turned into a bloody paste beneath their blows.
And yet… the slaves continued.
Not because they were strong.
But because they were no longer afraid, and they had nothing left to lose except their lives.
They continued… for the absurd chance that their lives might, even for a moment, gain meaning.
One by one they fell.
Hundreds shrank into dozens.
Thousands became a pile of burned flesh and shattered bones.
A number not enough to survive, not enough even to form a real rebellion.
Frosty looked around, panting.
"elia…?"
He did not find him.
He must have died… the thought passed briefly through his mind.
At last they arrived.
They pushed the heavy iron gates.
The old hinges screamed… then opened.
The sky.
A vast sky… but the sun watched them.
And at its heart stood one of their "fathers."
The one who made them.
The one who called them experiments.
He looked at them with divine coldness.
Then he extended his hand.
A small sun formed above his palm a sphere of dense white light, pulsing with suffocating power.
A moment of silence.
Then an explosion.
It was not a slow burning.
It was complete erasure.
They turned to ash in an instant.
The screams evaporated before they could escape.
Bodies vanished as if they had never existed.
Frosty… smiled.
He smiled as he disappeared.
As if he had seen something in the final moment… something no one else understood.
And that sorcerer… smiled as well.
He raised his hand and gathered the scattered ash.
It turned into threads of pale light… souls.
Its weight was that of hundreds of souls.
A dense spiritual liquid, which he lazily swirled in his palm.
"Average quality…" he murmured.
"But they can be recycled… with the souls of the sorcerers and knights. A good mixture."
Then he paused.
"You really are… a little rat that wants to live until the end."
His eyes pierced through walls, corridors, and distances and settled on a single point.
Brighter. Heavier in weight.
elia.
…..
elia was not among the dead.
When everyone rushed toward the main gates, he chose another direction.
He used the chaos.
He used the screams.
He used the blood of those who trusted him.
Even Frosty… all of them were bait.
"Come on… come on you stupid legs… hurry!"
He ran, his lungs burning, his heart about to explode.
Freedom… was close.
He could feel it.
A door at the end of the corridor.
Light slipping from beneath it.
He laughed quietly.
"I survived…"
He pushed the door.
And did not find freedom.
But an auditorium.
A massive circular arena, as if it had been carved into the bowels of the earth.
Hundreds… thousands of faces sat in the shadows.
Nobles. Sorcerers. Knights.
Their eyes gleamed with hunger.
In the center lay a pile of bones.
A sea of dark blood surrounded it.
Blood from those who had fallen into this pit before him.
Above him, the sorcerer descended, his robe blazing like a living ember.
"My brothers and sisters!"
His voice echoed throughout the arena.
"I know how long you have waited to see a massacre! How much you have missed real screams! And today we have brought you a young man who believed that his life belonged to his own hands!"
The audience laughed.
"Today… he will truly fight for it!"
elia stepped back.
The door behind him closed.
In front of him, another door opened and from it emerged something enormous.
A shadow first… then a body.
Muscles tangled like ropes, skin deformed with old scars, half of his face missing with bone exposed, and in his hand a broad cleaver dripping with remnants of dried flesh.
"Gorath."
The sorcerer's voice was celebratory.
"If he wins… he lives another day.
If he loses… hell will be his only refuge."
The audience screamed.
Gorath stepped forward.
The ground trembled.
elia tightened his grip on the sword he had stolen.
Return to the battlefield? No… this is the battlefield now.
Gorath attacked without warning.
The cleaver fell like lightning.
elia rolled aside, seeing the effect of the strike as it hit the ground, which exploded under the blow, shards of bone scattering.
He rose quickly and stabbed the monster's leg.
The blade entered… but stopped halfway.
His skin was thick like armor.
Gorath growled and swung his arm.
One strike sent elia flying several meters.
He crashed down, his mouth filled with his own blood.
"Stand up!" the audience shouted.
"Fight!"
Gorath rushed forward, grabbed him by the neck, lifted himhis grip like an iron vise.
The air was cut off.
elia's vision began to darken.
But his mind did not stop.
Don't give him a chance…
Kill… or be killed.
He let the sword fall from his right hand… caught it with his left.
And with a desperate movement, he drove it into Gorath's remaining eye.
A scream shook the arena.
The monster threw him away violently, stumbling.
elia fell, crawling, his hand reaching toward the massive cleaver.
He grabbed it.
It was heavy… very heavy.
Gorath, now blind, groped the air.
elia ran.
He screamed.
All the pain, all the betrayal, all the corpses he had left behind gathered into that single strike.
The cleaver swung.
And cut.
The head separated slowly… then fell.
Silence.
Then an explosion of screams.
The audience stood.
Some were stunned.
Some were laughing.
The blazing sorcerer smiled.
"Interesting…"
elia stood in the middle of the blood.
Breathing heavily.
His body was shattered.
But he was alive.
He raised his head toward the stands.
There was no longer fear in his eyes.
Only a terrifying realization…
He had escaped the dungeon only to enter a bigger cage.
And the game had only just begun.