The bell rang before sunrise.
That was unusual.
There were no task sheets posted. No buckets. No assignments shouted from the guard tower.
Just a line-up order. Men only.
06/50 stood among them, his face still swollen from yesterday's beating. His shoulder throbbed when he breathed, but he forced himself to keep standing straight.
A guard strolled down the line, spinning a club in one hand. Another followed behind, dragging something wrapped in a bloodstained canvas.
Then came the announcement.
"All unclaimed female corpses from the last four weeks are to be processed today," the first guard barked. "Ash pits are full. We're clearing space. Salvage what can be used. Burn the rest."
There were no gasps. No protests.
Just stillness.
One of the younger men beside 06/50 shifted uncomfortably, but said nothing.
They all knew what "salvage" meant.
The carts came mid-morning. Four in total. One at a time, rolled in by silent, sunburnt laborers.
06/50 told himself not to look.
He tried — gods, he tried.
But his head turned anyway.
The second cart creaked to a halt about fifteen feet away. Its canvas covering was thin, soaked through. One edge flipped up as the cart jerked to a stop.
He saw an arm.
Then a shoulder.
Then her elbow.
A pale scar — smooth and pink against the skin — ran just beneath it.
He knew that scar.
She got it carrying boiling washwater in winter. Slipped and fell, but smiled through the tears, saying it barely stung.
It was her.
His sister.
His knees locked. His chest felt like it was caving in.
And then a man beside him — someone he'd seen maybe twice in the pits — stepped forward, looked straight at her body, and said flatly:
"I'll take the shoes."
Another worker reached for her shirt.
A third began slicing her hair with rusted scissors. They were talking over her — talking over her body — like she was just… inventory.
They stripped her without looking at her face.
They didn't know her.
Didn't care.
Didn't even stop to wonder if someone in the line might have.
The next few seconds blurred.
Later, they'd say he shouted first.
Some would say he just charged without a word.
But 06/50 couldn't remember anything clearly — only that his hands were swinging and someone was screaming, and he couldn't tell if it was them or him.
He knocked a man flat with his elbow. Slammed another to the ground.
His fists weren't strong — but they were fast. Wild. Fueled by something deeper than pain.
He didn't care what happened next.
He just couldn't let them touch her like that.
Not her.
The guards swarmed him.
He took a baton to the side of his head. Then his ribs. Then the back of his legs. Someone kicked his shoulder hard enough to spin him.
They beat him until he stopped moving.
He woke in the punishment pit.
It was cold. Wet. Pitch dark.
The floor was covered in slimy moss, and something was dripping nearby. Maybe blood. Maybe water. His arms were bound, and his shoulder felt wrong — dislocated or broken.
But none of that mattered.
What haunted him wasn't the bruises or the pain.
It was what he'd seen.
Her body. Her clothes stripped. Her hair cut off like rope. Her memory tossed into firewood piles — because that's what happened next.
He heard it from one of the guards before they knocked him out.
"Once you've stripped what's useful," he'd said, "burn what's left. Toss it all in together."
Together.
Twelve. Twenty. Forty corpses.
All dumped into the fire. No names. No prayers. No resting place.
That was how she would end.
That was how he would end too — if he stayed.
For seventeen years, he never thought of escaping.
It was a fantasy — a story the children whispered in broken dreams.
But now, lying broken in that pit, something inside him shifted.
It wasn't rage.
It wasn't grief.
It was purpose.
I won't die like that.
I won't let them burn me too.