The iron gates groaned as they opened for the first time in years. Alpha stood among the others, his bare feet sinking into the damp soil, his back still marked by the jagged tattoo that named him. Alpha Omega. That was all he had. Not a family. Not a story. Just the name scrawled into flesh by a hand that no longer remembered him.
"Move," the overseer barked, his whip cracking against the ground. The slaves shuffled forward, some limping, others clutching each other with trembling hands. They walked as though the world outside the walls were some fabled heaven. In their eyes, this was freedom.
Alpha walked in silence.
The yard behind him shrank as the crowd spilled out into the outskirts. The slave barracks, the sweat-soaked earth, the endless ringing of chains—gone. What replaced it was wind. Cold, thin, and sharp. For the first time, he could hear the open world. And it frightened him.
He didn't smile. He didn't cry. His face was a hollow mask.
---
The streets of the outskirts welcomed them with nothing. No fanfare. No pity. Just narrow alleys, sagging roofs, and hungry eyes peering from doorways. The freed slaves were not citizens; they were refuse spat out by an empire that no longer needed them.
Some knelt to the ground, kissing the dirt. Others laughed like madmen, running into the distance. Alpha watched them scatter. Like dry leaves torn from branches, they had no roots.
He turned down a crooked lane and kept walking.
---
The sun had begun to dip, staining the sky with rust. Hunger gnawed at him, a familiar companion. He had always known hunger within the yard, but then, at least, there had been scraps. Here, even scraps were a luxury. The markets overflowed with bread and steaming meat pies, but when Alpha reached for them, the sellers spat at his feet.
"Slave filth."
He kept walking.
The alleys stank of piss and rotting hides. Dogs snarled at him, ribs jutting out from their thin skin. The city had no love for the freed. They were left to starve, or to steal, and then to die when the guards came.
---
Night fell.
Alpha found himself near the edge of the city, where the cobblestones gave way to dirt paths. Here, the sky felt heavier, the stars sharper. He leaned against a broken wall and closed his eyes.
Silence.
It was not peace. It was emptiness.
Inside the yard, his days had been pain and repetition, but there had been rhythm. The clang of chains, the lash of whips, the grunts of labor. Out here, there was no rhythm. No purpose. Just the weight of air pressing down.
He realized then: freedom meant nothing.
The overseers had stripped the shackles from his wrists, but they had left the ones buried in his soul. Shackles of hunger. Shackles of weakness. Shackles of ignorance.
And without chains, without orders, what was he? Nothing.
---
The others had run off to chase what scraps of life they thought awaited them. Alpha stayed still. Stillness was all he knew. His body was lean, hardened by years of labor, but his spirit was brittle. The emptiness stretched on, vast and merciless, and he had no weapon to strike against it.
He pressed a hand against the scar on his back where the name *Alpha Omega* was burned into him. His only inheritance. His only proof of existence.
He whispered it under his breath.
"Alpha… Omega…"
The sound was strange to his own ears. A name born not of choice, but of a wound. Yet in that moment, it was all that kept him from vanishing into silence.
---
From the city's center, bells tolled. Deep, heavy, echoing through the night air. The funeral of the Emperor stretched on. The empire mourned its fallen ruler, while the freed slaves—out here, forgotten—mourned nothing.
The world shifted, but Alpha felt nothing shift within himself.
He lay down beneath the broken wall, the dirt cold beneath him. His body ached, but he did not close his eyes. Sleep felt dangerous in a world that no longer had walls.
The stars blinked above, countless and indifferent. Somewhere beyond them, gods might be watching. Or perhaps they weren't. Perhaps they had never watched at all.
Alpha clenched his fists.
Chains gone. Hunger rising. Emptiness all around.
The boy who bore the name of beginning and end found himself standing on the border of life with nothing to hold him steady.
He had not yet seen the Labyrinth. He had not yet heard the voice of Veyres. But something within him, a faint ember he did not yet understand, whispered one truth as the night deepened:
This is not freedom.