Chapter 3 The Cage of ExtractionE
The fortress had no banners, no sigils, no marks of pride no nothing that serves as means of identification only a hidden barren land.
They called it the "Cage of Extractione", where those stripped of their True Names were exploited, experimented, killed, and deeply researched.
The Cage of Extractione was one of the places even the Houses pretended not to know existed.
"Ahh my head it hurts, ahh my legs ahh everything hurts, where am I? What am I doing here? Damn".
"Ah I was just taking a stroll around the kingdom reminding myself of how important I am to myself"
"Ah I remember some people surrounding me who are they?" Uzo said.
He remembered light, too bright to be holy, and the sound of his own breathing bending in and out of place, asif the air couldn't decide if it still wanted him or not.
When he regained consciousness fully he realised, his wrists were locked in silver bands engraved with unreadable words.
They rushed faintly against his skin, like the speed of sound.
There were other cages that were lined up in the corridor some were empty, some were filled, some faintly spoke names that was not owned anymore by anyone or anything.
It was at this moment he first saw Ronnie Miller.
She sat against the far wall, knees drawn up, her hair tangled like the remnants of a shadow.
There were different bruises across her beautiful body like one whom was violated and been experimented a hundred times.
She was scared, full of despair, self denial, and in pains like one who was about to give up when all hope is lost when Uzo moved, but her eyes stayed sharp eyes that didn't beg for pity, only answers.
"Another one?" she rasped in weak breath.
Uzo didn't reply because his throat was sealed tight and couldn't speak at that moment.
The guards had left a bucket of stagnant water near her cage, the smell of different bloods of people rode beneath the iron and ash.
"They call this place The House Below," she said weakened. " But it's not a house, It's a mouth that eats the forgotten."
Days blended into nights, weeks blended into months or maybe it was the other way around, the fortress had no windows it didn't need any at all.
The wordgulars came in pairs cloaked, masked, voices like dry ink.
They carried scrolls that bloomed faintly, and every time one scroll is opened or unrolled, the room shakes with runes crawling alongside the walls, forming different questions, commands, and pain.
Uzo was the first person to be tested after a long while, after removing the mute magic, they made him read incantations written in living ink.
Every time Uzo tried to read, the letters scrambled themselves into pathways of nonsense even the paper caught fire at different occasions, the incantations at different pops out an abstract head and screams aloud.
"This bastard is a word corrupter," one of them said.
"No," another murmured, "he undoes it."
When they tried to carve a false name into his skin, the air folded inward. The room fell silent.
The sound disappeared just silence that makes you feel like heartbeat racing like winter waterfall.
Then came the massive shockwave.
Runes shattered like glass.
The iron cage behind him cracked open.
And for seven heartbeats, Uzo's eyes turned thick black, not with darkness, but with everything missing from light.
The wordgulars fled, bleeding from their noses, words choking in their throats.
Later, they came for Ronnie.
He didn't see what they did to her only heard it. The sound of chains, the rhythm of fists, her muffled cries beneath the hum of ritual chants, which they called it
"Purification."
When they returned her, she was pale, trembling, and hollow-eyed, but her gaze burned harder than before.
"They think I broke?," she spoke faintly once, voice trembling. "But shadows don't break, they spread."
That night, when everyone slept, she asked,
"What are you, Uzo?"
He wanted to tell her he didn't know what he was that even his silence frightened even him. That every word in this world obeyed a system, and he was the first rule it couldn't explain.
Instead, he said,
"I think I'm what happens when words forget how to believe."
A week later, the fortress prepared for an inspection by a Prodigy of the House of Mystery a young war-mage named Taren Valencia. They said he could trap lies inside glass spheres and make them confess.
He arrived with some soldiers and a voice that bent the torches when he spoke.
Aftet inspecting the fortress, he got towards where Uzos cell was, when he stood before Uzo's cell, the air thickened immediately.
"So you are the Nameless?," he said, smiling. "You and I are going to find out what silence owes you."
He reached through the bars, chanting an ancient phrase that dripped with authority which he did to other inmates that were alive.
Uzo's chains reacted, glowing bright red then black then it disappeared in thin air.
Taren's smile faded.
"What did you do, bastard nameless?"
"You'll die in this place bastard, I'll make sure of it,"
"The only way to live is to let us carry out the experiments and Extractione in peace,"
"Look at that bitch over there, she's alive because our exploitations were effective".
The Bitch he spoke of was Ronnie.
This time Taren spoke different ancient words but this time the world folded around them folded mysteriously.
Sounds disappeared, light shifted backwards, the air grew thinner and thinner, the walls screamed in written syllables.
Uzo stood, eyes cold and unreadable, as the stone itself began to crack beneath his feet.
Taren tried to speak another spell Uzo's voice overlapped it, absorbing it mid-syllable, throwing it back like a mirror.
"Your tongue betrays you bastard," Uzo spoke faintly.
Taren staggered, blood running from his ears, his runes burning out one by one.
At the time when Uzo stepped forward, each step left no sound but made the air thicker and heavier.
He struck once not with a blade, but with silence that hit like thunder.
Taren's spell broke. His own True Name recoiled, burning itself into his chest like a curse, he collapsed, twitching, unable to speak.
The soldiers fled, but their words were dying on their lips before they even reached the air.
When the smoke cleared, Uzo found Ronnie clutching a broken chain.
The wax seal in his pocket pulsed again this time faintly warm, as if it remembered something.
They didn't speak to themselves as they escaped into the tunnels. Words had caused enough pain for one night.
Only the silence between them felt alive like a promise waiting to be written.