Dawn never reached the slums.
The first sound that broke the endless night was not birdsong, but the wet, ragged, and hollow coughs of the slaves.
It came from every corner, every alley, rising together into a chorus that greeted the pale light seeping through the cracks above.
The air itself was heavy, thick with soot and the sour stench of burning refuse.
The boy opened his eyes.
He did not gasp or stretch or shiver. He simply woke the same way a machine starts again after being shut down.
Around him, bodies stirred, thin silhouettes in the dimness. Some still breathed. Others didn't. No one checked which were which.
The chain at his neck shifted as he sat up. It clinked softly as it tightened around his neck.
His black hair stuck to his face, stiff with sweat and grime. The faint glow of his crimson eyes caught the dying firelight from a nearby barrel.
He waited for the whip.
And it came, as always.
A sharp crack that sliced through the air and through the morning haze.
Someone screamed. Then the overseer's voice, deep and cruelly casual "Get up, Filthy rats. You think dying gets you rest here? Move."
The shuffling began, feet dragging against the mud-caked floor.
The boy rose, following the pull of the chain that connected him to the others. He didn't look at their faces. There was no need to in here faces were things that changed too often to remember.
Outside, the world was gray.
The sky above the slums was a veil of smoke and dust, a second ceiling pressing down on them. Far beyond it, the golden spires of the upper city glimmered faintly like another world entirely.
Their light reached the slums but gave no warmth, only mocking shimmer on the puddles of stagnant water below.
They marched through the alleyways, a procession of living corpses.
Children, elders, women, all with chains biting into their skin. The air was full of the iron scent of blood and the low murmur of hunger.
A woman stumbled ahead of him, one hand clutching her swollen belly.
A bald guard sighed not with pity, but with disgust.
"Keep moving rat," he said coldly, "Unless you prefer not moving at all."
Her knees buckled. She tried to stand, but the chain dragged her down again and accidentally made her spill some dirt on the bald guards boots.
The bald guard's expression hardened "Disgusting wench" and without hesitation, his boot struck her ribs once, twice, a dull, sickening sound echoing through the narrow alley.
"You think you're allowed to rest?" he muttered, each word like a blow. "You think you have the right to feel exhausted huh?"
The woman cried out, her voice fragile and raw.
"Please… stop… please, it hurts… I have a child… please…"
Nobody reacted except one young man with white hair and eyes of burning azure, his sense of justice still burning, still clawing for a chance to act.
He wanted to do something,anything and yet his body refused him. The heavy chains bit into his skin, and the rough, calloused hands of other slaves held him back.
"Kid… that poor woman...she's not gonna make it anyway," whispered an older slave beside him. "Even if you stop the guard, she's not gonna live long.... I've seen her cough blood for weeks now… you'll only die for nothing."
The young man's hands trembled. His jaw tightened.
"But how can we just stand by....and do nothing?...This..this isn't.."
His words broke halfway, tangled between fury and despair and in the end, he stood frozen, justice burning behind his eyes but shackled by reality. Like the woman he too had a life to protect, after all.
The woman's trembling hand pressed against her stomach as if trying to shield the life inside.
Tears rolled on her dirty cheeks "Have mercy please.." She sobbed.
But mercy was not a word known in this place.
The bald guard did not stop.
Until she stopped moving.
No matter what they were feeling or what they wished to do, the others didn't look nor stop, they didn't dare to.
The chain kept pulling, and so they followed.
No matter how much their heart broke with each step.
----
Their path led to the Scrap Fields, a vast wasteland of twisted metal and shattered stone, where the remnants of old wars were dumped.
Machines that once roared across battlefields now lay in pieces, their shells hollow, their power cores long dead, the slaves dug through them daily, searching for parts that could still be melted down or sold.
Work began with another crack of the whip.
And then, silence except for the clang of metal, the scraping of shovels, and the dull rhythm of suffering.
The boy bent down, his thin fingers clawing at the dirt. Every motion split his skin a little more, and the blood mixed with the rust until both were the same color.
He didn't pause to wipe it away. Pain was just the body's way of saying it still existed, A language he had long forgotten how to speak.
Beside him, a small girl coughed violently, her tiny shoulders shaking.
"Stop it," whispered an older slave. "You'll get us all beaten." The girl tried, bit her lip, and kept digging. Blood stained the corner of her mouth.
When the overseer passed by, his whip brushed lazily across her back, not out of anger, but boredom. She didn't cry out, not anymore.
Hours passed. Time had no meaning here, only exhaustion.
The sky above never brightened, and the air never cleared. When someone fell, the others stepped over them, too weak to care.
By midday, three bodies lay still near the edge of the field. No one dragged them away. The rats would or men hungrier than rats.
At the edge of the pit, smoke rose from a mound of burning trash. The stench was thick and oily, coating every breath.
The boy worked close to it, his eyes watering from the smoke yet his face refused to show any emotion.
Almost unable to.
When the overseers weren't watching, some of the slaves scavenged. A bent spoon. A piece of cloth. A few burnt grains of rice hidden in the dirt.
The boy never searched. He had nothing to hide food in, and no reason to eat it later. If he starved, the chain would pull a little bit less tighter around his neck and that was mercy, in a way.
Evening came without sunset only the dimming of the already dim light. The overseers began to gather the workers, counting them with lazy eyes.
A man tried to run once, long ago. His bones still hung from the fence as a reminder.
The boy had seen them every day since he could walk. He no longer remembered the man's face, only the way the ribs looked when the crows came.
And soon a drop of water fell. Then another.
The sky groaned above the slums, heavy and gray it was the kind that promised days, maybe weeks, of unending rain.
The season had returned, when the skies wept more than the people below… and yet somehow, even the rain felt cleaner than the tears shed in this place yet ironically it made digging even more useless.
"Back inside!"
The order cracked like thunder.
They marched again, back through the alleys. The puddles were thicker now, black with oil. The boy's reflection shimmered for a moment before the surface rippled and swallowed it whole.
Soon, they reached back where they came from, a large structure built from rotting wood that seemed to hold itself together only out of spite. Every plank groaned, every nail rusted, as if the whole thing longed to collapse and be freed from its misery.
This was their cage.
At its entrance stood a single metal door that was out of place amidst the decay. It gleamed faintly beneath the gray light, forged from some strange alloy that whispered of strange power beyond the slums.
One by one, the slaves were herded inside. The guards waited at the threshold, silent and watchful.
And when the last soul crossed through… the metal door slammed shut on its own
---
Dinner was a metal bowl passed from hand to hand, thin soup made from whatever could be boiled without killing outright.
He took his portion, drank it slowly. The taste was ash and salt. Someone beside him retched and vomited.
The boy finished the bowl, licking the last drop from the rim. Hunger was a constant ache that never dulled, only deepened.
Later, when the chains were locked to the wall and the torches died, the slum fell into silence. A silence filled not with peace, but the weight of countless heartbeats refusing to stop.
He lay down in the corner, his knees drawn to his chest. The dampness soaked through the thin fabric of his rags, chilling him to the bone.
He stared at the ceiling or what was left of it and watched the faint flicker of lightning far above, where the sky laid.
It was said that the people there rode beasts born of their will, that they could split mountains and command storms through their desire.
The boy had seen one once, a shadow passing overhead, wings wide enough to blot out the sun.
While the boy was lost in thought, suddenly somewhere far outside, a baby's cry pierced through the rain something faint and fragile.
A sound far too innocent for a place like this.
Faces turned. The faintest spark of disbelief and devastation flickered among the slaves.
"By Verna…" whispered a middle-aged woman, her voice trembling. "T-The woman… she was still able to give birth…"
For a moment, the cage stirred, a breath of life among the dead.
The young man with azure eyes stumbled forward, immediately and panickedly started slamming his bruised hands against the iron door, his humane instincts overriding his reason.
"Open it!" he shouted. "Open the doors! There's a child out there! There not gonna last long in this kind of rain!"
The guards didn't even spare him a glance,
Their gaze mingled with the rain merciless and cold.
Only the bald one looked at the young man though seemed to be only out of mockery.
Minutes crawled by.
The crying continued thinner now, weaker.
Maybe it was the young man's raw and relentless cries echoing through the pit that shattered something inside them.His voice, hoarse and desperate, clawed at whatever scraps of humanity still clung to their hollow chests.
At times like these they would only grieve in silence but his pleading made that silence unbearable.
And so the same desperation broke their voice. One by one, the slaves began to shout, their queit voices trembling with rage and grief slowly growing louder.
"Please! Have mercy!" Begged by a elderly woman.
"Misters please!" Sobbed by a young girl.
"You monsters! Do something!" Shouted angrily by a middle-aged man.
Yet not one voice was answered.
Minutes passed and the rain was rising, almost reaching the cheeks of the small life that laid on the ground.
The young man's hands bled as he clawed at the steel door. The metal glowed faintly with tiny runes appearing, pulsing like a living thing.
He didn't noticed and he didn't stop. Couldn't stop.
"Open it you fucking demons!" he cried, each desperate grunt breaking into a sob.
Then came the glow brighter and angrier.
A flash of light, a deafening crack.
His scream tore through their cage as his arm was torn apart in a burst of burning light.
He fell, clutching the stump, his blood painting the dirt.
Horrified no one dared to utter a word nor even move.
And then the panic came.
"Cloth! Someone give me a spare of cloth, we need to bandage his wound before he bleeds out!" someone shouted, their voice cracking.
The noise spread like a sickness. Chains rattled. Bodies shifted. The air filled with the stench of sweat and fear.
"Shut up! You'll make it worse!"
"Move! He's losing it!"
"No, don't look at them, just stay down!"
"gods, he's gonna get us all killed—"
"Let him scream! He's dead anyway!"
Some younger slaves backed away, their eyes glassy with terror. A young girl hid, clutching her ragged sleeve as if it could make her disappear. The older ones just stared faces hollow and resigned watching like people who'd already buried themselves long ago.
And still, the young man's desperate shouting tore through the chaos, around him, the slaves were a mess. Some wanted to help. Some wanted to hide and some just wanted him to shut up before the guards came.
The baby's cry had grown faint… too faint.
A short moment and then another.
Then, mercifully at last, it finally stopped.
The boy sat in silence, his gaze drifting over the faces around him. Some were crumbling beneath the weight of despair, their cries breaking like glass. Others stood frozen, their gasps lost in the chaos. The boy with azure eyes, his mangled arm still bleeding did not cry for himself. His sorrow seemed to have been reserved for the fragile spark of life that had just been extinguished.
And then there were those who felt nothing at all, their indifference colder than death itself.
But the boy did not flinch. He simply stared ahead, hollow and calm, for the world had long since run out of ways to surprise him.
And in that silence, that terrible, hollow silence the rain began to fall harder, drowning out the quiet sobs of those still living.
And a bit later, almost mockingly the door slowly opened.
A guard with a scar on his lips said in a straight faced mocking tone "Wel, what are you rats waiting around for? The door is open now isn't?"
"You!" the young man spat, voice ragged with pain. Blood slicked his stump as he pushed himself upright, a raw rage for murder burning in his eyes. He lurched forward as if to tackle the guards, every movement a knife of agony.
Hands grabbed him rough but steady from behind. Fellow slaves hauled him down, pinning his shoulders to the filthy floor. One whispered fiercely into his ear, palms pressed tight against his chest "Stop...just stop it..."
The guards watched with bored disinterest. The bald one flicked a speck of mud from his boot and smiled as if watching a dog learn a foolish trick. The young man strained against the binds until his breath came in sharp, broken bursts, and the pool of his blood widened on the dirt but the murder in his eyes only seemed to deepen.
A elderly woman spoke, her voice soft and grim, "Such poor souls… let's bury them together ,it's the least we can do." She looked at the guards pleadingly "May we please?"
A guard snickered. "Hmm sure, you know what? Were feeling kind of merciful today. Go on then, do your thing, rats."
The other guards watched in morbid amusement, their expressions twisting into smirks under the dim torchlight.
Some went out, some stayed behind out of fear of what the guards migth potentially do.
And some just didn't care.
With trembling hands, the slaves found a peacefull area and laid the mother and her child, the two frail bodies, bound by suffering even in death.
No words were spoken. No prayers were said. Only the quiet scrape of their fingers against the dirt as they buried them, inch by inch, with the fragile care of those who had nothing left to give except their grief.
The rain began to fall soon after, soft and cold, washing the dirt from their hands and from the tiny face that would never wake again.
And in this hell maybe...that was a good thing.