It's crowded.
Too crowded.
But not like the city streets I've read about in the stolen scraps of books—the kind with merchants shouting and horses dragging carts, people brushing shoulders with complaints and laughter.
No, this crowd is different. It's the kind where people breathe down your neck because there's nowhere else to stand. Where elbows bruise ribs, and backs bend low, and there's never enough air to go around. A press of bodies all soaked in the same filth, working the same hell.
No one speaks unless ordered to. Talking invites attention. Attention invites punishment. So we work, and sweat, and dig—until bones creak like old timbers and fingers rot beneath torn gloves.
THUNK.
The sound again. An axe hitting wet earth. Over and over. Not to build. Not to cut wood. Just to break the ground, to bleed the land dry for ore we'll never see used.
I was born here—so they say. There was no sky that day. Just smoke from the furnaces and screaming.
They told me my mother was executed within the hour of giving birth. No one ever told me why. It didn't matter. Mothers don't last long here.
My father?
A rapist bastard. Drunk out of his mind and rotting in another cell block.
That was the first thing I was told when I could understand words. They told me once. They didn't need to say it again.
I was six—maybe—when they gave me a shovel half my size. The handle was splintered, and the blade was rusted, but it didn't matter. They pointed to the pit and said, "Start digging."
I never stopped.
As I grew, so did the weight on my back. Longer hours. Harder tasks. Less food. Children like me didn't get special treatment. We were the punishment. Born from sin, raised in chains. The rules of the nation were clear:
The sins of the parent fall to the child.
Justice through bloodline.
Some cried. Some resisted but I didn't.
I just worked. Not because I believed in it but because I didn't know anything else.
I don't know how old I am now. Thirteen? Sixteen? Maybe twenty. Time here isn't measured in years, only in lashes, broken tools, and the weight of your calluses.
No one gave me a name. They just barked numbers and shouted slurs.
Names are for people who'll be remembered. Here, we are meant to vanish.
Just then-
A scream first, sharp and ragged like a man coughing up fire. Then a crash. Metal against stone. A crack in the wall.
Somehow, someone brought the high wall down.
The gates trembled. The air filled with a new scent—one I hadn't smelled before.
Freedom.
The first man to run was shot in the chest. He didn't stop. The second made it five paces before his head exploded like fruit but still, they ran.
And I... I ran too.
Not toward a future. Not toward a plan. Just... away. Away from this graveyard of the living.
Boots thundered behind me. Voices shouting as gunshots split the air.
Then—
CRACK.
It pained like lightning bursting from my spine. I hit the ground face-first. Mouth was full of mud and my arms are twitching.Chest heaving like it forgot how to breathe.
Warmth spread down my back. Then slowly it turned cold. I knew what it was so I didn't panic. I'd seen it happen too many times to others.
Then came the voices.
"Hah! That's the kid, isn't it?"
"No way. He tried to run?"
Guess we'll break in the next one tomorrow."
They laughed.
I don't know why but that hurt more than the bullet. Maybe because I had let myself believe—just once—that I was more than a body.
I wanted to scream. Not in pain, not in fury but in betrayal.
They raised me. Not with love—but with routine, commands and beatings.They saw me day after day. Watched me bleed. Watched me grow.
And in the end, I was just another broken tool.
I lay there, cheek buried in the cold mud, and stared into nothing.
Is this where it ends?
I wanted so little.
I never asked for comfort. Never dreamed of riches. All I wanted was to see a sky without smoke. To breathe air that didn't taste like ash. To walk in a direction of my own choosing. To not wake up already defeated.
"Is that... too much?"
If there is a god, then he is cruel. If there are many, then they are cowards because none of them reached down for me. Not when I begged and not now, when I'm dying.
But even as the numbness sets in, even as my lungs flutter like broken wings, one thing burns brighter than everything else:
I still want to live.
Not as property. Not as punishment. Not in a cage.
Just... live in freedom. I want to survive.
But my body is growing cold. My heart beat is stopping and I feel painfully peaceful.
Is this death?