Silence was a weight heavier than any boot.
The woman was gone. Moloch was gone. The only sounds were the distant, wet cough of a dying man and the scuttling of rats in the shadows. The air in the infirmary was a thick, greasy soup of stenches—gangrene, shit, old blood, and the cloying sweetness of the herbs she had boiled into my medicine.
My body was a ruin I no longer recognized, a foreign land of pain. I lay on a stained, straw-stuffed mattress that was damp with God-knows-what, and I took inventory.
Two ribs, shattered. My left wrist, a mess of splintered bone now crudely set and wrapped in filthy linen. My shoulder, dislocated and forced back into its socket with a grunt of effort from the sawbones. My back, a landscape of torn flesh and weeping sores.
My thigh, where the boy's knife had torn through me, was a swollen, throbbing pillar of fire. My branded cheek, a raw, weeping map of agony. My stump, a hive of maggots.
But the worst pain was not in my bones or my flesh. It was in my head. The "fever" she had spoken of had not broken. It had settled. It was a slow-acting poison, a paralytic that held my body captive while keeping my mind horribly, terrifyingly awake. The nightmare she had shown me was not a fading dream. It was a loop. A perfect, seamless circle of horror that played again and again and again.
I was back in the mud. The weight of a man was on my back, the tearing, burning agony of violation a raw, living fire. The rain fell, cold and merciless. And through the rain and the mud, I saw their faces. Lior's face, smooth and triumphant, morphing into the grunting, bearded face of my first rapist. My father's voice, pronouncing my sentence, blending with the guttural laughter of the second. Elyra's smile as she kissed Lior, her eyes shining with a light that was never for me, twisting into the vacant, cruel gaze of the third.
The loop was seamless. Perfect. An eternity of betrayal compressed into a single, screaming moment. I tried to scream, but my face was pressed into the filth, and only a muffled choke came out. I tried to struggle, but the paralytic held me fast, a prisoner in my own broken body. I was trapped. Trapped in the moment of my breaking, forced to watch it on a loop for what felt like years.
Time lost all meaning. There was only the mud, the pain, the faces, and the loop.
Then, new hands. Rough hands. They grabbed me, not with the clinical indifference of the sawbones, but with the rough, casual contempt of guards. They dragged me from the mattress, the movement sending fresh waves of fire through my body. The paralytic was beginning to wear off, just enough for sensation to return, a slow, agonizing flood.
They dragged me from the infirmary, out into the pre-dawn gloom of the main trench. The air was cold, carrying the promise of a day that would be as gray and hopeless as the one before it. The sky was the color of a fresh bruise.
And they were all watching.
Every convict in the Meat Pit was lined along the fire-steps and trench walls, a silent, gaunt audience. Word had spread. I could see it in their eyes. They had heard the screams from Moloch's post. They had seen me carried to the infirmary. They knew what had happened. The story had grown in the telling, twisted into a new kind of legend.
"The cripple asked for rules. He got what he was asking for, but i think he desrve better."
There was no pity in their gazes. No sympathy. There was only a kind of grim, understanding acceptance. This was the way of the Pit. This was the law. And I had been stupid enough to forget it.
And then I saw them. They were waiting for me in a rough semicircle, blocking the path back to my spot under the carved words. Voss and the seven men. My rapists.
They didn't touch me. Moloch's orders were clear: I was his toy to break, not theirs. Not yet. But they made their presence known. As the guards dragged me past them, they spat. Thick, gobs of phlegm that landed on my face, my chest, my mangled hand. They pissed, hot streams that soaked my ragged clothes and ran in rivulets down my legs. They whispered, their voices low and venomous, just for me.
"Did you enjoy it, Lord Whore?"
"We were just getting started. Next time, we'll bring a whole company."
"Your little sister would be proud. She's probably taking lessons from Elyra right now."
The name, Lysenne, was a physical blow. It cut through the fog of the paralytic and the loop of the nightmare, a fresh, sharp agony that was worse than all the others combined. I tried to lunge at them, a guttural snarl tearing from my throat, but the guards held me fast. They just laughed, a chorus of cruel, mocking amusement that echoed in the vast, open sewer of the trench.
They dragged me past them, through the gauntlet of spit and piss and whispered threats, and dumped me at the base of the wall, beneath the carving that was supposed to be my creed.
**NEVER AGAIN**
I lay in the mud, my body a screaming mass of agony, my face and clothes soaked in the filth of others. The loop of the nightmare was still playing in my head, but now it was overlaid with the real-time horror of their voices, the feel of their spit on my skin. I was completely, utterly broken. Paralyzed by the drug, trapped in my own mind, and humiliated in front of the entire world.
And in that moment, lying in the mud, unable to even wipe the piss from my face, something inside me finally, truly, shattered.
It started as a slow, methodical process. A cataloging of every betrayal, every pain, every loss. I listed them in my mind, a litany of my own damnation.
My father. The man who was supposed to protect me, who had stood by and watched them brand me, who had sentenced me to this hell. His face, carved from winter granite, his voice calm as he ordered my hand to be taken.
My mother. The woman who had given me life, who had stood by and wept, but had done nothing. Her silence was a betrayal as deep as any other.
Lysenne. My little sister. The last pure thing in my life. The thought of her, of them using her name, of what they might have done to her, was a pain so pure and sharp it felt like it would physically split my skull open.
Maika. My shadow. My brother. The one person I thought I could trust. The memory of his smile as he handed me the cup of wine, the feel of his hands catching me as I fell, the look of apology in his eyes. His was the deepest cut. The most personal. The most unforgivable.
Lior. My brother. My heir. The golden boy who had everything, who had wanted the one thing that was supposed to be mine. His face, triumphant and cruel as he held Elyra.
Elyra. My betrothed. The girl I was supposed to marry, the girl whose initials I had carved in a watchtower. Her face, her smile, her laughter as she danced with him. The memory of her was a poison in my soul.
The Empire. The institution I had sworn to serve, the abstract ideal of honor and duty that had cast me into this pit of despair and forgotten me.
The Meat Pit. This place. This reality. Mud and shit and pain and death. The slow, grinding process of being broken, of having every last shred of humanity stripped away.
And my own body. The final, most intimate betrayal. The weakness of my flesh, the pain of my wounds, the way it had failed me, the way it had been used and violated by others.
I listed them all. Every one. I turned them over in my mind, examining them from every angle. I felt the pain of each one, fresh and sharp. I wallowed in it. I drowned in it.
And then, I reached a conclusion. It was not a conclusion born of rage or despair. It was a cold, hard, logical conclusion, the only possible answer to the litany of my own suffering.
There is no justice.
There are no rules.
There is no honor.
There is no love.
There is no family.
There is only meat. And there are those who eat it.
The thought was a revelation. It was a moment of perfect, crystalline clarity. It was the key that unlocked the last door of my mind. The cold, logical fortress of my dissociation, the armor that had protected me, shattered. And in its place, something new began to seep in.
It was a sensation like ice cracking, deep in the socket of my missing arm and in the raw, weeping flesh of my branded cheek. A cold, black, spreading fissure.
A single pulse of black-purple light bloomed in my remaining eye, so faint and so internal that I was the only one who could feel it. It was not a light that illuminated, but a light that devoured, a tiny, hungry singularity of pure, absolute nothingness.
And then, a whisper. It was not a voice, not words in the traditional sense. It was a feeling, a taste in the void where my soul used to be. A single, resonant thought that was not my own, but which felt more true than anything I had ever known.
*Then become the one who eats.*
The thought was a key turning in a lock I never knew existed. It was a cold, ancient, and utterly alien presence. It was the answer to every question. The solution to every problem.
And in that moment, the dam broke.
The cold, logical fortress was gone. The slow, methodical cataloging of my pain was gone. All that was left was the raw, overwhelming, animalistic agony of it all. The betrayal, the pain, the humiliation, the loss. It all came crashing down on me at once, a tidal wave of pure, unadulterated suffering.
I started to cry.
It was not the quiet, stoic tears of a nobleman. It was not the raw, gut-wrenching sobs of a broken child. It was something else. Something worse. It was the sound of a soul being torn to shreds.
A low, guttural moan escaped my lips, a sound of such profound and complete misery that it silenced the rats. My body began to convulse, great, wracking sobs that tore at my broken ribs and sent fresh waves of fire through my back. My one good eye streamed with tears, hot and salty, mixing with the mud and the piss and the blood on my face.
I cried for the boy I used to be, for the life that had been stolen from me. I cried for my mother, my father, for Lysenne, for Maika. I cried for Elyra, for the love that had turned to ash in my mouth. I cried for the man I had killed, for the life I had taken. I cried for the man I had become, for the monster I was becoming.
I cried for the world, for the Empire, for the Meat Pit, for the endless, grinding cycle of pain and death. I cried for everything I had lost and everything I would never have.
The sobs tore through me, a physical force that was as violent as any beating. I was no longer a man. I was an animal, a creature of pure, unadulterated grief, howling at the merciless gray sky.
I wanted to die.
The thought was not a new one, but it was now a screaming, desperate imperative. I wanted it to be over. I wanted an end to the pain, an end to the betrayal, an end to the loop, an end to the endless, agonizing crawl through my own personal hell. I wanted the sweet, final release of death.
I tried to force my own hand, my one good hand, to my throat. I tried to close it around my windpipe, to squeeze the life from my own body. But my arm was too weak, the paralytic still holding me in its grip. I could barely lift it from the mud. I was a prisoner in my own body, unable even to grant myself the mercy of a final end.
The frustration, the helplessness, was a new kind of agony. It was the final, ultimate cruelty. To be so broken, so completely destroyed, and yet to be forced to live. To be forced to endure.
I lay there, in the mud and the filth, my body wracked with sobs, my one good eye streaming with tears, and I regretted everything. I regretted ever being born. I regretted ever loving Elyra. I regretted ever trusting Maika. I regretted ever being Kaelen of House Veal. I regretted it all.
The sun began to set, casting the trench in a long, mournful shadow. The sobs slowly subsided, replaced by a quiet, hollow ache. I was empty. Drained. A husk.
I lay there, my eye open, staring at the carving above me.
**NEVER AGAIN**
And then, I heard footsteps. Slow, deliberate. They stopped beside me. I didn't have to look. I knew who it was.
Voss.
He crouched down, his burned face a mask of grim satisfaction in the dying light. He looked at me, at the tear tracks on my face, at the utter, complete devastation of my spirit. He saw what he had done. He saw what he and his men had accomplished.
"Moloch has a new job for you tomorrow," he said, his voice a low, rumble of contentment. "Something worse than killing boys."
I didn't answer. I didn't move. My eye was open, fixed on the carving above me, on the words that were supposed to be my creed, my promise, my threat.
**NEVER AGAIN**
And as I stared, the words began to blur, the sharp, carved lines softening and running like wet ink. For one single, terrifying heartbeat, they looked like they were bleeding downward, weeping thick, black tears into the mud.