For the first time in my existence, I felt utterly, terrifyingly alone. The kind of loneliness that crawls under your skin and makes you feel like you don't belong anywhere in the world. I and two other captives were bundled tightly in the back of a creaking wooden wagon, its wheels groaning against the dirt road as it carried us farther away from everything familiar. The horses clopped steadily, unbothered, while the men at the reins barked orders in a language that felt like knives to my ears.
I was only eleven years old. Eleven, and already my life had been reduced to ropes around my wrists and the endless rattling of a wagon that smelled of fear, sweat, and dried blood.
It took us two days to get to the camp. Two long days of sitting cramped in silence, surrounded by strangers who were just as broken as I was. The road stretched endlessly, dust rising and choking us every time the wind shifted. I wanted to cry, but my tears had dried into salt on my cheeks. I wanted to scream, but my voice felt too small against the weight of fate pressing down on me. I barely slept.
When we finally arrived, I learned that the camp was no place of rest. It was a pit of despair where surviving captives from different nations were gathered like cattle. From here, we would all be taken to Vernia, to live forever as slaves, our names and past lives erased, our future uncertain.
The first humiliation struck me before I could even step inside. As we were ordered down from the wagon, an urgent pressure swelled inside me. My bladder screamed for release, and I squirmed in panic. I looked up at one of our captors, my voice trembling as I begged him for help, for permission, for even a shred of mercy. But instead of compassion, I received the burning lash of a cane across my back.
The pain stung, sharp and sudden, making me bite my tongue to keep from crying out. Terror consumed me, and before I could stop it, warm liquid spilled down my legs, soaking my tattered clothes.
"What a pig!!" someone shouted from the crowd, their voice dripping with disgust. I didn't look to see who it was. Shame threatened to crush me, but at the same time, I felt a twisted relief. My body was free from its torment, even if my soul was not.
We were herded into a small tent that barely contained the dozens of us. The air inside was suffocating, thick with sweat and despair. I gasped constantly, chest heaving, afraid that if I stopped, I might pass out. Tears carved their non-negotiable paths down my cheeks, steady rivers I could not dam. Every twelve seconds, as if on cue, a new stream slid silently, soaking my chin. No one comforted me; no one even noticed. We were all too busy drowning in our own misery, each one of us.
We spent four endless days in that camp. Days that bled into one another, marked only by the cruel commands of the men who owned us now. We were turned into errand machines, tools for their convenience. I hated them with a hatred too large for my small body to contain. I hated the way they laughed as they watched us stumble. I hated the way they spoke to us as though we were beasts and not children of mothers and fathers who once loved us.
I was assigned the task of collecting firewood from the forest, a duty no one else wanted. My hands blistered from carrying sticks larger than my frame. My legs burned from walking endlessly into the trees, dragging back wood for meals I would barely be allowed to eat. Cooking was done by the women, and though they sometimes looked at me with pity, no one dared defy the men who barked the orders. I was the only little girl among the captives, and that fact made me feel smaller, weaker, more fragile than I had ever felt before.
At night, the torment did not cease. Sleep offered no comfort. Hunger clung to me, defying my sanity. My dreams were cruel reminders of the life I had lost. In those dreams, I sat at home with my family around a table glowing with food. My father's voice rumbled warmly, my mother's laughter floated like music, and my little brother tugged playfully at my arm, demanding more stew than he could handle. I would smile, I would laugh, I would breathe freely. But every time, without fail, the dream shattered into the cold truth of the tent. I would wake up on the hard ground, surrounded by sobs and snores, the smell of unwashed bodies and hopelessness thick in the air.
I missed them. I missed my father's steady presence, my mother's gentle embrace, my brother's innocent giggles. The hole inside me grew larger every day. And with it grew something darker, the desire for revenge. Every humiliation, every lash, every insult planted a seed of fury. But the more the days passed, the more that fury seemed useless. I had to just endure. The chance to fight back was slipping further and further away. I was too small, too powerless, too trapped. Each time I thought of escape, despair strangled the thought before it could bloom.
By the fourth night, hope was nothing but a fading ember inside me. It dimmed by the rise of the new day.
On the fifth day, we were roused before dawn. The men shouted, prodding us with their sticks, ordering us to move. The journey to Vernia had begun. Vernia, the land of no return, the place where we would be stripped of all that we were and remade as slaves with no rights, no names, no freedom.
As we marched away from the camp, chains clinking like cruel music, I looked back one last time. The tent that had suffocated me now seemed almost merciful compared to what awaited us. My heart sank, but my feet obeyed, dragging me forward toward a future I could not stop, a future where I would be no more than a shadow of myself.
And so began the journey to Vernia, where my childhood ended forever.