Chapter-5
Carter floated again. No breath. No sound. Just the pressure—dense, swallowing, suffocating. The darkness wasn't water this time. It was thicker, like ink turned to mud, dragging at every thought until it blurred.
He tried to move. Nothing. Tried to scream. Nothing.
No. Not this again.
The void rippled—a slow, trembling pulse that made the world feel alive in its sleep. Color bled in, dull and sickly, veins of gray and brown seeping through the black. The world was assembling itself around him again.
He felt the chains first. Cold. Rough. Wrapped too tight.
Then the smell—sweat, rust, moisture trapped in wood.
He knew this place before he even saw it.
"Oh, not again…" The thought came without sound, strangled by fear. "Not the girl. Not the chains."
But something was off this time.
This body felt wrong—heavier, coiled, dangerous. Muscles twitched beneath the skin like leashed beasts. A storm waiting under flesh.
He tried to open his eyes. He couldn't.
Someone else did.
A dim world swam into focus—iron bars, cramped shadows, the soft clink of chains shifting with breath. A moving cage. Thirty bodies jammed into a space for twenty, pressed together by exhaustion and fear.
The air was alive with whispers.
"Enemies of the Empire…"
"Not Astarian blood…"
"Not broken like us…"
Carter felt it before he understood it—the weight of those words, the quiet violence hiding behind them.
Then came the thought.
Authority sealed. Sorcery suppressed.
Not his voice. Not his thought. It slid into his mind like a knife under fingernails—cold, commanding, absolute.
"Oh god," Carter muttered inwardly, panic rising. "Back in someone else's head again. Why? Why do I keep ending up in them?"
His fear barely had time to settle when another voice spoke aloud.
"Varka," someone growled, deep and rough. "How long must we sit in filth with these Astarian vermin?"
The words stung through the air. Carter felt the response form before he understood it—something inside him, ancient and restrained, stirred.
Varka.
That was the name of this body.
Across from him, the speaker loomed—a giant of a man, all scars and clenched teeth, eyes burning faintly red in the dark. The prisoners flinched from both of them.
Varka's voice came low, calm as stone.
"Until the cart stops."
The man's jaw tightened. "If not for that ambush, Arno would still breathe. We'd be free."
Carter felt grief move in Varka's chest—quiet, deliberate, then smothered flat.
Arno died because he was weak, Varka's mind whispered. A scout who can't see death coming deserves it.
Aloud: "No time to grow a heart."
The man looked down, ashamed. Even anger couldn't survive in that tone.
Carter wanted to speak, to scream, to tell him to stop thinking like that. But the body wasn't his. He was only a passenger—trapped in the calm of a killer.
Then, a sound outside—a shriek, too deep to be human. The cart jolted violently. Prisoners gasped. Chains rattled.
The wood creaked and groaned. Light bled through the cracks in narrow lines, slicing through shadow like knives.
"What's happening?" someone whispered.
"Quiet!" a guard barked. "Just a carcass blocking the road!"
Carter's pulse spiked.
Varka tilted his head toward the slit. Through the thin beam of light, Carter saw it—something massive lying in the mud ahead.
Wings—one torn, one shattered. Flesh glistening with black ichor. Smoke curling from deep gashes.
A wyvern. Dead.
So it begins.
The thought wasn't Carter's.
"What begins?" he whispered to himself. "What's starting?"
No answer. Just stillness—and then a look. Varka and the giant exchanged a single nod. Understanding passed between them like lightning.
The guards outside cursed, busy with the carcass. No one was watching.
Varka rose.
The boards strained under his weight. The chains rasped against the floor. The other prisoners shrank from him, pressing against the walls, eyes wide.
He stepped toward the bars.
Then—
CRACK.
His forehead met iron. The sound was sickening—sharp, wet.
Carter's world went white. The pain was immediate, total—his pain. He could feel the skin split, hot blood sliding down a face that wasn't his.
CRACK.
The second impact sent a scream through his nerves. The scent of rust, blood, and sweat thickened in his throat. He tried to pull away from the feeling, but there was no body to pull with.
"Stop! Stop—please—what are you doing?!"
CRACK.
The third blow tore the world apart.
Carter couldn't tell if he was still thinking or if pain had replaced thought. It filled him, spreading through every borrowed nerve, every trembling muscle.
Blood streamed down, dripping onto the chains.
Each drop hissed where it fell.
The air filled with the smell of iron and smoke.
Then, from deep in his throat, a single word crawled out—ragged and low.
**Boil.**
The word crawled through their veins like fire.
Heat surged. Pressure built. Then—release.
The blood ignited.
Carter felt it move—boiling through veins, searing nerve endings, flooding every inch of flesh until his own consciousness screamed in silent agony.
He wanted to pass out. The body refused.
The chains began to glow.
Red.
Orange.
White.
Steam filled the air, thick with the smell of molten metal and burnt hair. The iron sagged, then fell apart in glowing ribbons.
Varka lifted his hands. The skin was blackened, cracking, steaming. His breathing was steady.
Carter felt every nerve still shrieking—but Varka stood calm, controlled, as if agony were an old companion.
The giant stared at him, eyes wide.
Varka reached forward, took the man's chains, and they split apart like wax.
Silence fell.
Only the soft hiss of cooling metal remained.
Carter could taste blood, iron, ash. He could smell his own burning flesh through Varka's senses.
He wanted to wake up. Wanted to claw his way out of this body, this nightmare.
But Varka's mind was an iron cage, and Carter was chained inside it.
The giant finally spoke, voice breaking.
**"You've damned us all, Varka."**
Varka turned, voice low, certain.
**"No. I've just opened the door."**
Outside, the guards were shouting. Torches flared. The night pressed close around them, heavy with ash and the faint, copper taste of rain.
Carter felt the shift in the air—the heartbeat before a storm.
"Freedom for men like these wasn't salvation. It was the beginning of something much worse."
And outside, the night waited—listening for what would break loose.
***