"It should be in this direction. What is that thing?"
"I don't know. Maybe it's an escape pod from one of Kiavahr's nobles?"
"Then we have to find him before the overseers do!"
Footsteps and whispers echoed faintly through the depths of the mine. A group of slaves, backs bent from years of toil, shuffled through the dust.
The lead miner suddenly froze. A stranger stood in their path.
The miners instinctively mistook him for an overseer; his spotless clothes clashed sharply with their own rags, caked with the grime and sweat of years.
Knuckles whitened around crude knives. Their pale faces hardened with a desperate resolve.
Caelan's gaze swept over them slowly. He wasn't Angron; he couldn't read minds. But every flicker of their eyes, every taut muscle, every tremor of their fingers told him what he needed to know. He knew this kind of rebellion, born not of hope, but of despair.
The weak are always the easiest targets for injustice. Yet as long as there's a sliver of life left in them, they cling to the idea of fairness and endure in silence.
Only when oppression exceeds all limits do they rise to defend their dignity and rights, no matter the cost.
"I'm not an overseer," Caelan said evenly, "nor am I your enemy. I came here for a child. If you truly wish to rebel, you must first recognize who your real oppressors are."
His calm, deep voice rippled through the tunnel like still water disturbed by a stone. The miners exchanged uncertain glances; fists loosened, then clenched again.
The fire of rebellion flickered in their chests, but the long years of submission had left layers of ice too thick to melt.
But what if he's telling the truth?
What if he really isn't one of them?
The lead miner spoke. "You said… a child?"
"If he just fell down here," Caelan said, "then yes, a child."
"Then we'd better find him before the overseers do. Are you coming with us?"
"You know where he is?"
"Roughly." The miner's eyes narrowed. "So, will you come or not?"
"Lead the way," Caelan replied.
The tall miner in front tightened his grip on the knife until his knuckles turned white, stepping closer to Caelan. Yet he didn't strike.
Once they surrounded him, the tall miner relaxed his hand and said, "I'm Erin. What's your name?"
"Caelan."
Erin regarded him warily. This man was surrounded and outnumbered, yet still utterly composed, even casual. That kind of calm was more unsettling than any threat, it meant either madness, or confidence born from unimaginable power.
Either way, Erin dared not act rashly.
He gestured for his comrades to move. Together, they led Caelan deeper into the tunnels, winding through paths they knew as well as their own heartbeat.
This mine was their prison, and their home. Since the day they'd been exiled to Lycaeus, they'd never left it.
"You said the child, what does he look like?" Erin asked.
"Black hair, black eyes. Pale skin."
"How old?"
"I don't know."
"You came for him, but you don't know his age?"
"Maybe a baby. Maybe a child. Their kind grows differently from humans."
"Their kind?" Erin stopped walking. "I thought there was only one."
"In this world, yes, only one," Caelan said.
"So you're from… another world?"
"I thought that was obvious."
Erin stared for a long moment, then shook his head. "You're not like the Tech-guild capitalists."
Caelan raised a brow. "This world has capitalists?"
Erin frowned. "Your world must be more… enlightened, then?"
Caelan gave a dry chuckle. "Enlightened? No. Compared to gangs, religious tyranny, tribal systems, or slavery, capitalists are positively progressive."
Erin's frown deepened. "You sound like you admire those bloodsuckers."
"I just think they'd look better hanging side by side from the streetlamps."
Erin smirked. "Maybe we'll get along after all."
He wasn't sure if he believed Caelan yet, but until the child was found, suspicion could wait.
Eventually, their path intersected with another group of young miners. "Sharokin, with us," Erin ordered. The boy nodded, signaling his own small band of boys and girls to follow.
The deeper they went, the more miners emerged from side tunnels, drawn by the same strange phenomenon that had lit up the sky earlier. Lycaeus was a stagnant world, where nothing ever changed. The falling "meteor" was the first miracle they'd ever seen.
They converged, like iron filings drawn to a magnet.
At last, at the end of a collapsed tunnel, they found him.
A boy, bare, snow-white skin, shoulder-length black hair, and eyes as dark as night. Just as Caelan had said.
He raised his head, and those eyes, two still pools of shadow, reflected the crowd gathered around him. Calm, distant, unblinking.
A small girl stood protectively beside him; she had been the first to discover him among the rubble.
"Out of the way!"
An overseer shoved through the miners, cursing as he forced his way forward. The miners stumbled back, terrified, and then,
The boy reached out and took his head off.
In one motion.
Blood sprayed like a fountain. The body collapsed before the head hit the ground.
The miners froze, mouths agape. Some tried to run, others stumbled and fell, but most stood paralyzed by fear.
What kind of child could do that?
Caelan walked forward through the retreating crowd. The boy let the severed head drop, rolling across the stone floor in a smear of red.
Then he lifted his arms toward Caelan.
Without a word, Caelan draped his coat over the boy's shoulders and crouched. The boy's cold arms wrapped around his neck. He lifted him gently, took the girl's hand, and turned to the stunned miners.
"Time to go," he said quietly. "Unless you want to wait here for the rest of the overseers."
Erin's eyes sharpened. He rushed over and hissed, "This way, quick!"
He didn't know who they were, but he knew power when he saw it. This boy could change everything.
"Scatter!" Erin shouted. "Avoid the patrol routes! Sharokin, stay and make it look like a cave-in, hide the body!"
The miners obeyed without question. In seconds, the tunnels were filled with the echo of retreating footsteps and the hiss of lit fuses.
In a narrow side tunnel, Erin finally broke the silence. "What's his name?"
"Corvus Corax," Caelan said.
"You're his father?"
"No. His mentor."
Erin swallowed. "You just met him, didn't you? And you weren't afraid?"
"Corax has many flaws," Caelan said softly, "but he won't harm me."
"Flaws?" the boy asked, tilting his small, bloodstained face.
He was newly born, how could he already have flaws?
They reached a small refuge lined with dusty mats. Erin sat and gestured beside him. "Rest here. The overseers never come this deep."
He called to the girl. "Ephrenia, food, remember where we hid it?"
The girl nodded and vanished into a side passage.
Erin's gaze flicked between Caelan and the boy. "When will you leave?"
"Not until this world is free," Caelan said.
"You're… helping us?" Erin blinked.
"Tell me," Caelan said. "In Kiavahr's tongue, what does Corax mean?"
"'Savior.'" Erin froze as the word left his mouth.
'A child, a savior?'
Caelan placed a hand on the boy's head. "Remember, Corax, you are the savior of Lycaeus and Kiavahr."
"I will remember," Corax said.
He tugged on Caelan's collar, insistent. "Flaws. Tell me."
"You're still young," Caelan murmured. "When you're older."
Corax frowned. "Tell me. I can learn. Change."
'They grew too fast. Their brilliance came at the cost of childhood itself.'
Caelan wanted to let him be a child, but Corax wanted to grow up now.
"Not yet," Caelan said.
Corax stared at him in silence, stubborn eyes burning like twin flames.
If either of them was going to yield, it would be Caelan.
Erin could only watch, sensing the strange, invisible current between them, something deep, old, and impossible to name.
Then Caelan spoke again, quietly:
"Corax, do you know what a trolley is?"
"A… transport machine," the boy answered.
"Imagine this: a madman ties five people to a trolley track. A runaway trolley is coming. You can pull a lever to divert it, but there's one person tied to the other track. Do you pull it?"
Corax closed his eyes, thinking. Then nodded.
"If you do nothing, five die, but you are innocent. If you pull, one dies by your hand. Do you still pull?"
He nodded again.
Caelan sighed. As expected.
That was Corax's greatest flaw: he always chose the path of necessary sacrifice.
He would one day free Lycaeus, destroy Kiavahr's Tech-Guilds with nuclear fire, and bring liberation to his people. But on the day he won, the Emperor would arrive, and Corax would abandon his revolution for a greater cause: the liberation of mankind.
In doing so, he left his own world to rot.
The Tech-Guilds were replaced by the Mechanicum. The oppressed remained oppressed. Lycaeus gained freedom only to lose it again, just under a new name.
And Corax called it a "necessary sacrifice."
He would do it again and again, banishing Terran-born sons from his Legion, cutting away what he thought was diseased, until nothing was left but his own ideal image.
Every time, he told himself it was for the greater good.
Every time, he chose the easier road.
Just like Curze.
Curze saw the future and broke beneath it. Corax didn't see it, but he made the same choices.
Both believed the easy road was the only road.
Curze once said, "You and I are the same." Corax denied it until the day he faced Curze in battle and fled, realizing, in that instant, that Curze had been right.
The only difference was that Curze went mad, while Corax could still stand in the light.
Curze ruled Nostramo through fear, but for decades, his rule brought peace and order. Crime vanished. Lives improved.
Corax's revolution, by contrast, was left unfinished. Under the Mechanicum's rule, Kiavahr's people suffered even worse.
Curze, for all his madness, completed his justice. Corax never did.
Because when faced with the trolley's lever…
Corax always chose to compromise.
.....
If you enjoy the story, my p@treon is 30 chapters ahead.
[email protected]/DaoistJinzu