That evening the light in my room was thin and tired, the kind that leaked through the blinds and made the dust look like tiny stars. I sat on the narrow cot, knees tucked close, the fabric of my hospital gown whispering whenever I shifted.
Outside, the corridor hummed air vents, distant footsteps, the low, mechanical breathing of the facility that never quite slept. I waited the way one waits for a storm: knowing it would come, feeling the tension in the air tighten with every breath.
The doctors would come for me soon. The thought sat at the back of my throat like a bitter taste. I could feel the schedule in the way the lights dimmed and the locks clicked; routine was a promise and a threat here. Tonight would be the same as before – tubes and needles, the cold of metal against my skin. The slow, steady pull that left me hollow by morning.
So I practiced something small to keep my hands from shaking. I tried to read aloud the numbers stitched on the pocket of my uniform, the ones that had been a mystery for so long. The sound of my own voice felt wrong at first, thin and rusty from disuse. "Thir… Thir… Thir… Thir… Thir… Thir…."
My tongue tripped along the syllables like a child learning to walk. Each attempt made my chest tighten, as if the effort and the fear were tied together.
I kept at it, patient and stubborn, the room swallowing my mistakes, offering nothing but silence in return, but I refused to stop. "Thir… Thirty… waaa…"
Finally, the sound came steady and clear: "Thirty… one… Thirty… one. Thirty-one."
The word landed in the room like a small, bright stone. For a second the fear eased just enough for my shoulders to drop a notch and for a tiny warmth to spread behind my ribs.
It was a victory as small and stubborn as the scar on the inside of my wrist: fragile, private, and fiercely mine.
Then the hallway hummed louder, footsteps nearing, and the room closed in on the next thing that would be taken from me. The number stayed with me, a bright coin in a dark pocket, proof that I could still hold something of myself, even when night wanted to take it away.
Moments later, the door opened with that same sterile sigh and Drewman walked in, followed by two doctors carrying their trays and machines like rituals. Their steps were measured, the sound of rubber soles on linoleum amplified in the small room.
I sat on the narrow bed unmoving, hands flat against the sheet, and watched them come closer.
It felt wrong to call it my room, but it was the only small place that belonged to me in this whole facility. A bed, white sheets, a blank wall, and the harsh white light that never softened much, those were the corners of my world. Tonight, even that small piece of ownership felt invaded.
This time they wouldn't take me down the corridor to the treatment wing. They set up the machines right there, beside the bed. The hum of the equipment filled the room, a low, mechanical heartbeat that made the hairs on my arms stand up.
They told me to lie down and I obeyed, folding my small body into the narrow space and letting the cool fabric press to my skin.
One of the doctors worked with quick, practised motions, too practised, like hands that carried experience that I could only imagine. A small stainless steel knife gleamed in the light, dropping lower to my skin.
My eyes fixed on the bulb above as the blade found a spot on my stomach, and the air itself seemed to thin. For a moment the world narrowed to the tip of the tool and the place where it would touch me.
When it cut, the pain was a clean, sharp thing that startled me more by its clarity than by its force. I held it down the way I had learned to hold everything here: breath in, clench, focus on one small thing until the discomfort blurred.
Drewman's voice came back to me in reminder, a phrase learned and repeated: "To be strong starts with endurance. Swallow the pain and keep your focus." Whether he said it kindly or as command, it didn't matter – the lesson had stuck like a scar.
I did not cry, I folded the pain inward and lay quiet, counting the seconds until the next motion.
The doctors worked around me with the gentle efficiency of people who are practiced at making small things fall apart. The light hummed, the machines clicked, as I breathed shallow and steady, and kept my mouth shut.
I lay quietly on the bed as the doctors finished stitching the small cut they had made on my stomach. Their hands moved carefully, their faces blank, like they were sewing cloth and not a child's skin. The thread tugged at my skin, reminding me the body could be repaired, even when the soul could not.
When they were done, one of the doctors dabbed at the spot with a sterile pad, his hands steady and practiced, while the other prepared a syringe filled with a liquid so white it looked like chalk dissolved in water. A ghost-white that ate the color from the room
They found a vein and pushed the needle in, and the liquid rushed inside me. At first, it was cold, almost icy, crawling through my arm. Then, in the next heartbeat, it turned hot, burning and itching all at once.
My body arched against the bed, the pain twisting in ways I had never felt before. It was as if fire and frost were fighting inside my blood.
I tried to stay quiet, I really did, but the agony tore a scream from my throat. It echoed off the walls, raw and sharp, loud enough for anyone nearby to hear. My chest rose and fell with heavy breaths, my fists clenching the white sheets until my knuckles turned pale.
When the burning finally dulled, they didn't give me time to recover. Another doctor stepped forward with a tray of empty glass vials. He attached one to the tube in my arm, and slowly, the crimson flowed from me into the clear glass, filling it with deep red. One vial, then another, then another – each lined up neatly on the tray like trophies of my suffering.
Tears slipped from the corners of my eyes, sliding to my ears as I bit my lip and forced myself to stop crying, to swallow the sound. Drewman's voice always rang in my mind: "To be strong starts with endurance. You swallow pain and keep focus." With him still in the room, I couldn't allow myself to look weak.
When the doctors finally left, Drewman remained behind, his shadow falling across me. I turned my head slightly, hiding my face, pretending I was fine. But the truth was plain in the streaks of tears drying on my skin.
Once they left, the door clicked shut behind them with a soft finality. Drewman lingered there for a moment, one hand still buried in his pocket, the other hovering near the handle as if unsure whether to leave it open. The room felt smaller with him inside it.
I pushed myself up slowly, my muscles trembling under the effort. Even that small movement sent a throb of pain through the fresh, raw wound beneath my gown. My eyes stayed locked on his, searching his face for some clue, some warning of what he wanted this time.
He raked a hand through his hair, muttering under his breath.
"You are pathetically weak, you know that," he said at last, voice flat but with an edge. "You're even weaker than when you first came here. But that's not why I'm here."
He paused, studying me as if weighing something. "Today you won't be doing any blood transfusion. I came to talk to you about something else."
He lowered himself onto the floor with an ease that felt practiced, folding his legs neatly beneath him. The motion was strangely calm for someone who had just insulted me. Then he gestured for me to come closer.
My body still ached; the wound burned where the fabric brushed against it. Vanik'shur wasn't gonna heal that one any time soon with Drewman in the room. I eased myself down anyway, carefully lowering – each movement until I was sitting across from him on the cold floor, my breath shallow, my eyes still on his.
"So, have you grown up into a man?" he asked, his tone cutting through the quiet like a blade. But I didn't answer.
Silence stretched between us, but this wasn't the first time he had pressed me with that question. He had already cornered me with the same words earlier this morning before I left my room for lessons. So why was he asking again now?
To understand, we have to rewind a little.
Yesterday evening, Drewman had been standing at a window, his frame tall and rigid, one hand buried deep in his pocket. His shoulders were squared, posture sharp, as if he bore the weight of something he would never name aloud.
It wasn't just any window, it was the one that gave him the only view of the world outside these sterile walls. The glass reflected only the faint outline of his stern face, eyes narrowed as though searching for an answer in the night.
The facility was not part of the city. It was hidden, tucked away in the silence of the outskirts, its walls more prison than refuge. And yet, from that vantage point, Drewman could see the faint shimmer of the city's lights flickering far in the distance. They weren't brilliant, not like the towers of old but scattered, dim, struggling against the weight of darkness.
Five years had passed since the Malgeds' invasion, and still the city was nothing more than a patchwork of scaffolds and rubble, a half-healed scar. Its skyline looked jagged, like broken teeth biting into the horizon. The wind pressed against the glass, carrying the faint scent of ash that still lingered even after half a decade.
Drewman's eyes stayed fixed on that fragile glow, his expression unreadable, yet his clenched jaw betrayed the storm behind it.
Then suddenly, something stirred at his right side, and Drewman's head snapped toward it instinctively. The hallway, which only a heartbeat ago had been empty, now held a presence. A figure stood there, cloaked in rolling dark mist, its form half-solid, half-smoke, like a shadow carved out of the air itself.
It was the same figure I had glimpsed once before through the glass wall of my room, talking to Drewman.
The shadow leaned forward, though it never moved its feet. A ripple of unnatural cold swept through the hall as if the air itself bent around its presence. The mist swirled, coiling up toward Drewman's face before taking a humanoid form and relayed a message.
Drewman's brows furrowed deeply as the sound reached him, his eyes widening with disbelief. His voice broke out, harsher than usual, echoing off the sterile walls:
"Is he crazy?"
The shadow gave no answer. It lingered only long enough for the weight of its message to settle into him, then dissolved, smoke unraveling into nothingness until the hallway was empty again, as if it had never been there at all.
But the silence it left behind was louder than any voice.
That was the reason Drewman sought me out this morning. His words had been sharp, and sudden, without context: telling me it was time I became a man. As if the shadow's message had forced his hand.
Yet the thought tore at me; how was I supposed to grow into a man when I didn't even understand what it meant to be one?
"You remember what I told you today, don't you?" he asked, his voice low but cutting.
And still, I said nothing. My throat tightened, and I focused instead on steadying myself against the fire crawling through my veins. Every pulse of pain burned like liquid iron, hot enough to make my breath shake.
"First," Drewman continued, his eyes narrowing, "you need to stop acting like a mute and start talking when I ask you something. I know you can talk. You've had a lovely teacher stand in front of you each day the whole day. So don't tell me you have never said anything to her."
His tone was sharp, colder than I remembered. And his expression… there was something unnerving about it, something different.
His eyes, usually half-lidded and distant with indifference, were sharp now, piercing, and carrying a weight that chilled me deeper than the pain.
I had always known Drewman as the man who leaned lazily against walls, hands in his pockets, a smirk tugging faintly at his lips; indifferent or nonchalant, sometimes almost mocking.
But this was different. This was the first time he demanded my voice, the first time he demanded my answer, and for once there was no trace of carelessness in him. He was serious, deadly serious.
But that wasn't all. His eyes burned; not just with intensity, but with something I couldn't name. A hidden emotion flickered there, raw and unmasked for the briefest moment. And his expression… Well, I couldn't even begin to tell what it meant – it wasn't anger, and it wasn't care either. It was something heavier, something layered, and it unsettled me.
Normally, my instincts would've pried deeper, read between the cracks of his face, drawn out meaning from the smallest shift in his tone. That was my usual self. But right then? I wasn't sure I wanted to know. I wasn't ready to face whatever truth a completely different Drewman might reveal.