The mountain pass didn't just lead to the facility; it felt like a descent into the planet's diseased heart. The air grew thin and sharp, tasting of rust and wet stone, a metallic tang that coated the tongue. The wind, which had whistled through the pines outside, died a sudden death as they entered a narrow fissure in the rock face—a gash that looked like a wound in the world itself. This was the entrance to the Hollow Vaults.
Inside, the world vanished. Sunlight was a forgotten memory, replaced by the hellish, flickering glow of iron baskets filled with burning coal. Thick, black smoke choked the air, stinging the eyes and clinging to the back of the throat. The only sounds were the constant, maddening drip… drip… drip of mineral-heavy water from the ceiling and the muffled, shuffling tread of their own feet. It was a place that consumed noise, swallowing screams and hope with the same indifferent finality.
Joshey felt the horror like a physical blow. It was the smell that hit him first—a complex, nauseating cocktail of unwashed bodies, mold, cold stone, and a deeper, more terrifying scent: the ozone-sharp tang of pure, undiluted despair. It was the smell of souls being systematically erased.
Lucia, walking a pace behind him, did not smell despair. She smelled blood. Old blood, new blood, the blood of a thousand small cruelties. Her rage was not a fire; it was a supernova contained within the fragile shell of her body. She did not blink. Her grey eyes, wide and unblinking, were twin lenses of ice, recording every atrocity, every broken posture, every set of vacant eyes they passed. She was a bomb waiting for a target.
They were met by a senior handler, a man whose face was a roadmap of scars and whose eyes were two chips of flint. He didn't introduce himself.
"You're the new tools," he grunted, his voice a dry rasp like stones grinding together. "Listen. Do what you're told. Forget what you were. You belong to the mountain now."
The Walkthrough: A Tour of Damnation
He led them deeper, the passage sloping down as if leading to the underworld. The ceiling dropped until even Joshey had to hunch his shoulders. The air grew colder, a damp, bone-deep chill that had nothing to do with the season.
"Processing," the handler said, gesturing with a dismissive flick of his wrist towards a wider chamber. It was a scene from a slaughterhouse, but for people. New arrivals, bags still over their heads, wrists and ankles bound, were lined up against a wet stone wall. Handlers moved among them with brutal efficiency, not speaking, using sharp whistles and gestures to communicate. They ripped away clothing, inspecting limbs and teeth like farmers assessing livestock. A man who flinched was struck across the back of the knees with a iron rod, collapsing with a gasp that was quickly muffled.
Joshey's stomach turned. He saw a handler nonchalantly wipe a bloody nose on his sleeve before moving to the next person. This was where humanity was stripped away, replaced by a number scrawled in charcoal on a slate.
The Sorting System: Categorizing Human Misery
Further in, the corridor opened into a series of fenced pits, each a circle of a different kind of hell.
"Strong ones. For the mines and the fighting pits," the handler said, pointing to a pen where muscular men and women sat in silence, their eyes hollow, their bodies already showing the marks of early abuse.
"Young ones. Private buyers. Nobles." This pen held teenagers and children. They were cleaner, but their silence was more profound, a terrified, frozen quiet that was worse than any scream. One girl, no older than ten, rocked back and forth, her arms wrapped around herself, her eyes seeing nothing.
"Sick ones." He gestured to a dark, reeking alcove where figures lay motionless on the bare stone, their breathing a ragged, wet chorus. "Don't waste food on them. The mountain claims its own."
Lucia's hands, held tightly behind her back, trembled with a violence that threatened to shatter her own bones. She focused on the handler's neck, visualizing the precise angle and force required to sever his spinal cord. It was the only thing keeping her from exploding.
The Division: A Strategic Nightmare
They reached a junction where two tunnels branched off.
"You," the flint-eyed handler said, jabbing a finger at Joshey. "General Handler. This is your post. Your duties: Maintain order during slop time. Escort inventory to and from work details. Record headcounts. Break up fights. You hear a whistle, you move. You see a runner, you sound the alarm. You open a gate without orders, you become inventory. Understood?"
Joshey gave a tight, numb nod. He was being stationed in the heart of the male holding pens, a place of relentless, grinding misery.
The handler then turned his dead gaze to Lucia. "You. Warden's Aide. Different paygrade. You come with me." He looked her up and down, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes. "You watch the watchers. Log the shifts. Monitor the health of the high-value assets. You report directly to the overseer. You see a handler getting soft, you note it. You see damage on a prime piece of goods, you log it. Your eyes are for the ledger now."
It was a nightmare. They were being split up. Lucia was being taken deeper into the administrative heart of the beast, closer to the source of power, but isolated. Joshey was being left in the trenches of suffering. Their plan, which relied on coordination, was being torn apart before it began.
Joshey's Hell: The General Handler's Duty
Joshey was handed over to a brutish-looking handler named Goran, who smelled of stale sweat and cheap liquor. Goran gave him a once-over and sneered.
"Try not to puke, pretty boy. It just makes more mess to clean."
Joshey's new world was a cacophony of controlled horror. His first task was the headcount. He was given a slate and forced to walk along the fenced pens, counting the listless figures inside. The numbers were supposed to be just numbers. But he saw the faces. A man with a weeping burn on his arm. Another whose cough rattled deep in his chest. They looked at him not with hatred, but with a vacant resignation that was infinitely worse. He was just another cog in the machine that was crushing them.
He memorized it all. The guard rotations. The placement of the coal baskets. The rusty iron gate that led to the deeper, forbidden tunnels. And he looked, desperately, for Michael's face—the lean, intelligent features from Kaelen's sketch. He saw a hundred broken men, but not the one he sought. The fear that Michael had already been broken beyond recognition, or worse, was a cold knot in his gut.
Lucia's Purgatory: The Warden's Aide
Lucia was led to a slightly larger chamber that served as the overseer's post. It was warmer, but the air was thick with the smell of ink, fear, and cheap authority. The overseer, a bloated man named Vorlag—the very man Kaelen had named—sat at a desk, studying ledgers. He barely glanced at her.
"Your job is to make sure the numbers match the meat," Vorlag said, his voice a phlegmy rumble. "You'll do a damage assessment after the day's labor. Report any signs of rebellion. The handlers are lazy and stupid. You are not. See that they aren't."
She was given a ledger of her own. It was a log of human suffering reduced to columns and figures. Asset #347: lacerations on back, value decreased 5%. Asset #211: fever, isolate. Asset #098: attempted insubordination, discipline applied. She realized with a fresh wave of nausea that "discipline applied" often preceded an entry for "deceased."
Her rage was a frozen lake, so deep and so cold it was calm on the surface. She walked the perimeter of the central chamber, her sharp eyes missing nothing. She saw the casual backhand a handler gave a slave who moved too slowly. She saw the way the food—a thin, grey gruel—was deliberately spilled before it reached the pens. She saw it all, and she logged it, her hand steady, her face a mask of cool efficiency. But inside, she was carving a list of names, a death roster written in her mind. Goran. The flint-eyed handler. Vorlag. She would remember them all.
The Final Lesson
At the end of the orientation, the senior handler gathered them both again at the junction. His flinty eyes held no warmth, no humanity."This is the only lesson that matters," he said, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper. "You are not saviors. You are not heroes. You are a tool. A part of the machine. The mountain does not care about your conscience. It only consumes. You try to change the machine…" He leaned in, his breath a foul cloud. "...and the mountain will swallow you, too. You will vanish. And no one will ever know."
He looked at each of them, ensuring the message sank in. Then he turned and walked away, leaving them standing in the hellish, smoke-choked gloom, separated, surrounded by suffering, and utterly alone.
Joshey looked across the cavern at Lucia. Her unblinking eyes met his. No words passed between them. None were needed. In that shared, horrifying glance, a new pact was forged, far more terrible than the last. They were no longer just here to rescue Michael. They were here to burn this entire, wretched mountain to the ground.
The cold, rational part of Joshey was already at work, a dam against the rising tide of fury. He watched a handler kick a shivering old man, and the dam strained. He wasn't here to be a hero. He was an auditor.
He had come with a dual purpose. Michael's rescue was one. The other, born from his core nature as a strategist, was to scout. To gather evidence. To understand this abomination so he could dismantle it from the roots.
His mind ran scenarios, analyzing the facility as a corrupt business.
Option One: Report to the Guild. He mentally drafted the report. Unlicensed Slave Processing Facility in the Kherun Mountains. Evidence of extreme brutality, illegal conditioning, and probable tax evasion on profits. But the hope behind that thought was thin, brittle. The Guild's tendrils were everywhere. A place this large, this organized, couldn't exist without someone high-up getting a cut. Reporting it might just be sending a memo to the very people who owned it. At best, they'd do nothing. At worst, they'd send someone to silence him.
Option Two: Viggo Buys the Silence. This was more likely. He presents his findings, and Viggo, seeing a savvy operator, makes him an offer. A fat bribe to look the other way. The thought made Joshey's skin crawl. But it was a possibility he had to consider. And if he refused, then Viggo would know he had a principled enemy. The target on his back would triple in size.
Option Three: Burn It All Down. The image was satisfying—a wildfire of purifying flame roaring through these wooden barracks, turning the chains to molten slag. But it was a fantasy. A fire here would be a funeral pyre for the very people he wanted to save. They were chained in pits, locked in cages. They would burn alive. He couldn't rescue everyone. The logistics were impossible. He wasn't a liberating army; he was one man with a growing knowledge of fire and a sword he couldn't reliably use.
He forced the rage down, compressing it into a cold, dense diamond of resolve in his gut. He couldn't save everyone today. But he could learn everything.
He began his audit.
His eyes, sharp and analytical, scanned everything, transforming the horror into data. He noted the number of handlers on this level—twelve. He memorized their patrol routes, the lazy ones who lingered by the coal braziers, the sadistic ones who went out of their way to inflict pain. He counted the gates, identifying the one that seemed most heavily guarded—the entrance to the "underground pens" the orientation had forbidden.
He studied the slaves, not as people to pity, but as assets to catalog. He saw the "strong ones" being marched out for the day's labor—mining, probably. He saw the "young ones" being kept separate, their value being preserved. He saw the "sick ones" being ignored, left to die. It was a perfectly optimized system for misery and profit.
And through it all, he looked for Michael. He scanned the faces in the pens, the lines of men being marched to and from work details. The intelligent eyes, the lean face from Kaelen's sketch. Nothing. The fear that Michael was already broken beyond recognition, or had been moved deeper into the mountain, grew with every passing minute.
He was so focused on his grim survey that he almost missed it. A handler, a different one from the brutish Goran, walked past him, heading towards the forbidden gate. This handler wasn't escorting slaves. He was carrying a small wooden tray. On it were a loaf of decent bread, a wedge of cheese, and a clean cup of water. It was the only clean thing Joshey had seen in this entire place.
The handler gave a series of quick, sharp whistles at the gate. A moment later, it was unlocked from the inside and the man disappeared into the darkness beyond. A thought, cold and clear, cut through Joshey's despair. The shift change was a grim, silent affair. Handlers trudged out of the mountain's belly, faces grimy and blank, replaced by a wave of equally dead-eyed men. Joshey's walk back to the handlers' barracks—a foul-smelling, cramped longhouse—seemed longer than his journey into the mountains. Images of the day seared themselves onto the backs of his eyelids: the vacant stares, casual cruelty, and systematic erasure of hope.
He had seen no sign of Michael.
He sat on the edge of his thin, lumpy cot, the weight of it all threatening to crush him. The silence in his head was a vast, empty plain where Elias's voice should have been. The plan felt fragile-a spiderweb in a hurricane. He was one man in the heart of the machine, designed to grind people into dust.
A familiar old restlessness stirred in him. It was the same that had driven him in his past life, the need for control, for self-mastery in a world of chaos. He couldn't control this facility. He couldn't force Elias to speak. But he could control his own body. Sylvaine's words echoed, no longer a joke but a prescription: "A strong body can channel more power, recover faster."
He needed to be stronger. Faster. He needed every possible advantage.
He pushed the cot against the wall, clearing a small space on the hard-packed dirt floor. He sat cross-legged, his back straight. This was not a prayer. It was a systems check. A rebooting of the core processor.
He started to breathe.
It was a technique from a lifetime ago, learned not from wizards but from severe, silent monks in a remote Chinese temple. They'd spoken of stillness, of finding the void within. They called it meditation. Here, in this world, it might have a different name, a different theory, but the fundamental principle was the same: the mind must become a placid lake to reflect reality with perfect clarity.
Inhale. Slow, deep, drawing the cold, smoky air of the barracks deep into his lungs. He visualised it not just as oxygen, but as raw potential, as mana drawn into his core.
Hold. He sucked in his breath, condensing the energy within him. A pressure was growing in his chest, a soft hum inside. In this state of suspended animation, the chatter of his own fears quieted. The memory of a handler's boot connecting with flesh faded. The gnawing worry over Elias receded. There was only the pressure, the waiting potential.
Exhale. Controlled, steady. He willed the compressed energy to flow outward, a wave of pure focus not as a spell but washing through his limbs, right to the tips of his fingers and toes. He felt his awareness sharpen. The grain of the wood in the wall across from him became distinct. The faint snores of other handlers in the bunks became a map of the room. His own heartbeat was a steady, powerful drum.
This was the state. The blank slate. The total concentration. It was a state Elias's constant, brilliant presence had made impossible. Their fused consciousness was a roaring river of shared thought; this required a still, silent pool. For the first time, the silence in his head wasn't a void but a tool.
After ten minutes, he opened his eyes. The world seemed sharper, the colors more defined. The fatigue was there, still, but now a separate thing, a piece of data he could observe and set aside. He felt… clear.
Now, for the body.
He stood, his muscles loose and prepared. He remembered a cartoon from his youth-a simple, absurd training regimen followed by a ludicrously powerful, bald hero. It was a child's fantasy, but the principle-brutal, consistent, full-body exertion-was sound.
*One hundred push-ups.
He dropped into a perfect plank, his body a straight line. The first twenty were easy, the muscle memory of his old life still there. Twenty-five. Thirty. His arms began to burn. At forty, his triceps were screaming. He pushed through, his breath coming in sharp grunts, his focus narrowing to the simple, brutal arithmetic of up and down. Fifty. Fifty-five. His form broke on the fifty-sixth, his back sagging, and he collapsed onto the dusty floor, chest heaving. Fifty-six. Not one hundred.
*One hundred sit-ups.
He hooked his feet under the cot and got started. The burn in his core was sharp and hot from the first moment. He muscled through, his mind empty, counting each excruciating crunch. Twenty. Thirty. His abdominals quivered, seizing up. At thirty-two, a sharp, cramping pain lanced through his side and he fell back, gasping. Thirty-two. Frustration rose in his throat, hot and sharp. He was weak. This body, Elias's body, wasn't the finely tuned instrument he'd once possessed. It was a farmer's body, soft in some places, knotted with inefficient muscle in others.
He stood on shaking legs and walked out into the cold night air. The "run" was less a run than a determined, wheezing trudge along the perimeter of the palisade wall. The thin mountain air clawed at his lungs. His legs, already jelly from the push-ups, felt like lead weights. He pushed on, his breath pluming in the frigid air, his heart hammering against his ribs as if trying to escape. He made it two kilometers—one agonizing lap around the outer compound—before his legs gave out and he stumbled to a halt, leaning against the rough-hewn logs of the wall, vomiting a thin bitter stream of bile onto the frozen ground. He stood there, trembling, soaked in sweat that was already freezing on his skin. Fifty-six. Thirty-two. Two kilometers. The numbers were pathetic. A failure. But as his breathing slowly steadied, a different feeling emerged. Not triumph, but a grim, gritty satisfaction. The pain was real. The burn was real. It was a pain he had chosen, a struggle he had initiated. For the first time since arriving in this awful place, he was not just reacting. He was building. He was imposing his will upon the flesh and bone he now inhabited. He looked up at the cold, indifferent stars wheeling above the jagged mountain peaks. Elias was still silent. The facility was still a nightmare. Michael was still missing. But he had done fifty-six push-ups. He had done thirty-two sit-ups. He had run two kilometers. It was a start. The cold night air bit into Joshey's lungs as he finished his run, his body trembling with a mix of exhaustion and grim satisfaction. He leaned against the rough wood of the barracks, scanning the dimly lit compound. That was when he saw her.
A little girl, huddled by a stack of empty crates. She was elven, with hair the color of pale sunlight and eyes too big for her thin face. She clutched her knees and tried to make herself small.
Joshey's heart, still pounding from his run, gave a different kind of thud. An elf? Here? And so young…
He walked over, his steps slow so as not to startle her. He knelt down, keeping a respectful distance.
"Hey," he said, his voice softer than he'd used all day. "You okay?" The girl winced, drawing her knees closer. She didn't look at him. "What's your name?" he asked again.
There was a long period of silence, except for that eternal, distant drip of water. Then, a small musical voice: "Minna." He saw her tense, her large eyes darting around before finally settling on him with a look of intense scrutiny. "Are you… a handler? Or… a slave?" Her voice was barely a whisper.
Joshey realized he'd left his handler's identification tag in the barracks. An idea, reckless and born of a sudden, protective instinct sprang to mind.
The effect was instant. The fear in Minna's eyes melted away to be replaced by a spark of pure, unguarded relief. A tiny, hopeful smile appeared. "Really?"
"Really," Joshey said, his heart aching at how happy such a simple, tragic lie could make her. He slowly reached out and patted her head. She didn't pull away. Instead, she leaned into the touch, like a stray kitten finally accepting a moment of kindness. So innocent. So trusting. The gesture threatened to shatter the cold resolve he'd built around himself.
"What's your name?" Minna asked, her voice a little stronger now.
"Elias."
She cocked her head, and a teasing sparkle danced in her eye. She said something in a lilting language that was familiar, the structure akin to the Japanese he'd learned from countless late-night anime marathons. "Kaa-san ga tsukutte kureta no?"
Joshey blinked in surprise, then chuckled. He replied in kind-the words felt strange, yet right on his tongue. "Un, sou da yo." (Yeah, that's right.)
Delight at being understood lit up Minna's face. She giggled, a sound like tiny bells in the oppressive silence. "Elias-chan wa… Meemee da!" she declared, pointing a tiny finger at him. But the moment couldn't last. Minna's smile faded as a practical worry returned. "Elias… onaka suite iru… nanika tabe mono aru?" (Elias… I'm hungry… do you have any food?)
The question was a punch to the gut. He had nothing. Not a crumb. "I'm sorry, Minna. Not right now." He saw the hope in her eyes dim, and it hurt more than any physical pain. He leaned closer, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. "But I promise. Next time I see you, I'll bring you something. Something extra special. I promise."
She nodded, a small, trusting motion that made him feel both noble and like a complete fraud. Just then, a shadow fell over them. An old human man, his face lined with grime and a false, greasy smile, shuffled over. "Minna! There you are. Time to come back to the pen."
Minna shrank back at once, pushing herself against the crates, her fear returning tenfold. She shook her head, a frantic, terrified motion.
"Hey," Joshey said, his voice no longer soft. He rose to his feet, standing half between the man and the girl. "She doesn't seem to want to go with you." The man's smile didn't reach his cold eyes. "She's my daughter. A bit shy, that's all. Come now, girl." Daughter? Joshey's mind recoiled. A human man. An elven girl. Did this guy think he was an idiot?
"She's scared," Joshey said, and his voice was flat and final. "Back off."
The man's façade cracked, and his face twisted into a snarl. "Who do you think you are, you filthy slave? Mind your own business, you worthless piece of trash! She's mine to do with as I please!"
The insults washed over Joshey, but they didn't stick. He was watching Minna. He saw the pure, unadulterated terror in her eyes as the man yelled. This wasn't just fear of a handler; this was deeper, more personal.
He got down on his knees again and ignored the screaming man. He looked into Minna's wide, frightened eyes. "Minna-chan, sono hito shitteru?" (Minna, do you know that man?)
Her eyes began to well up with tears. She leaned forward, her tiny voice a terrified whisper meant only for him. "Yoru… yoru ni watashi o mitsukeru to… hen na fū ni sawaru no…" (At night… when he finds me at night… he touches me in a weird way…)
The world stopped. Every sound—the man's yelling, the dripping water, the wind—disappeared. There was only the pounding of blood in Joshey's ears and the little girl's whispered confession.
A coldness, deeper and more absolute than the mountain chill, settled into his core. This wasn't just anger. It was a tectonic shift. The final, crumbling collapse of the dam holding back the ocean of rage from his past life, rage against all the predators, all the bullies, all the men who used power to prey on the helpless. Rage he thought he'd left behind in a pool of his own blood.
He stood up, the movement slow, deliberate. He turned to face the man and the air around him seemed to grow still and heavy. "Get out of here," Joshey said, his voice low, a vibration more than a sound. "If you want to live, walk away now."
It was the first time since coming into this world that true killing intent radiated from him. It wasn't the focused lethality of Lucia; it was something older, darker, and far more personal. It was the promise of utter annihilation. Emboldened by his own depravity or too stupid to sense the danger, the man spat at Joshey's feet. "Or what, you slave scum? You'll do nothing! You're all talk! Joshey moved. The man screamed, a muffled, wet sound.
Joshey did not hear it. All he saw was the terrified face of the little girl. He felt the ghost of every injustice he had ever witnessed or endured. His free hand clenched into a fist. It didn't glow with fire; instead it grew impossibly, terrifyingly hot - the air around it shimmering with contained Pyro mana. He didn't throw a fireball; instead, he channeled the heat directly into his knuckles. Then he began to punch.
It wasn't a fight. It was an executioner's cadence. Quick, violent, mechanical thuds that resonated within the small enclosure. With each strike came the hiss of charring skin and the splintering of wood. He wasn't hitting the man; he was carving him into the wall. The air reeked from scorched meat and blood. He didn't stop. The rage of a lifetime, from two disparate worlds, had finally found a target. Every punch was for Minna. Every sizzle was for every helpless person in this damned mountain. Every crack of bone was for the part of him that had always hated predators like this. He only stopped when the man's screams had long since faded into silence, and the thing pinned to the wall was no longer recognizable as human. Joshey stepped back, his knuckles raw and smoldering, his chest heaving. In his eyes, the cold, murderous fire slowly receded, revealing a hollow, trembling exhaustion. He had just signed his own death warrant. He knew it. But as he looked at the little elf girl, safe for now, he found he didn't care.