After the first thread of sunlight broke through, when that dim light began seeping through the eroded cracks in the walls, people woke one after another not out of eagerness, nor in hope of a better day, but because their bodies had learned to wake in fear of being late.
They rose in a heavy silence.
They washed with cold water closer to mud than to anything clean, scrubbing their deformed skin as if trying to erase what they had become. Then they sat in short rows, consuming their daily rations dry pieces with mold creeping along the edges, tasting of rot and dampness. They chewed slowly, not out of enjoyment, but because they knew those few bites had to last in their stomachs until evening.
A new day of servitude.
But this morning was not like the others.
When they stepped into the courtyard, they found him there.
Elya.
He was not seated upon his throne as usual. Instead, he stood at the very heart of the light itself, as though the sun had chosen him above all others. With a brief gesture, he summoned them, and they gathered unusually in a tense silence.
One of them whispered, barely audible,
"What is he planning this time…?"
He did not make them wait long. From behind him, he brought forth that strange fruit. Its skin was dark, black with a hint of violet, as if it had absorbed the night itself. He chose the ripest one the darkest and slowly raised it before their eyes… then bit into it.
The sound of the bite was clear.
Deliberate.
Its dark juice seeped between his fingers, glistening under the light like fresh blood.
Something ugly stirred in their chests.
'Is he mocking us?'
'Look at him… while we toil and starve, he eats as he pleases…'
'Is this just to remind us who holds power?'
It wasn't hunger alone that ignited them it was humiliation.
Elya suddenly raised his gaze toward them, his eyes gleaming with an inhuman coldness.
He shouted, and they all flinched.
"I suppose your mouths are watering, aren't they?"
Silence.
"Do you think you deserve it?"
He stepped closer, his voice lowering but striking harder.
"No… that doesn't really matter. I'm the one who brought it. I'm the one who took the risk. So I deserve it more than you."
They knew he was mocking them. What was worse he wasn't even trying to hide it.
He smiled. A small, twisted smile.
"But… perhaps, for your miserable lives, I'll add a new flavor."
They exchanged uneasy glances.
"All that rotten food you've grown used to… it doesn't suit my taste. So, I want you to bring soil from outside."
Some of them froze.
Outside.
"I don't care if a corpse moves and tears your limbs apart, or if a parasite slips into your bones. I don't care if you lose your eyes or your skin. All I want… is for you to bring soil inside and place it into the pits that haven't been fixed yet."
He paused, then added with a mocking tone,
"And perhaps I'll teach you something about farming… if you prove yourselves worthy."
They wanted to object. They wanted to scream. They wanted to tell him that the land had not grown anything for ages that the soil there was as dead as everything else. But they knew the price.
The price of a word.
So they swallowed their protest, just as they swallowed their wretched food, and buried it in their chests.
They moved quickly.
And in that movement, there was something unsettling a small advantage granted to them by the darkness. Bodies with multiple parts, extra limbs, protruding bones, cracked skin, additional eyes fluttering in unnatural places. Deformities… yet useful. Some were stronger, some faster, some capable of enduring pain beyond what any human should.
They walked toward the distant rivers they had never dared approach. The water appeared still but they knew it concealed something far worse than stillness.
They saw animals drinking freely from it.
They saw weak, grotesque creatures feeding on corpses by the banks, without fear.
Everything there lived by the law of the wild.
A cruel freedom… but freedom nonetheless.
As for them, nothing remained but obedience.
After half a day, they returned carrying handful after handful of soil. Some of it teemed with thin, worm-like parasites that coiled around their fingers and silently sucked their blood. They screamed when the creatures latched onto their skin, then tore them off with their nails or crushed them against stones.
Blood mixed with soil.
But they did not stop.
They filled the pits, one after another.
Their backs bent.
Their breaths turned into sharp wheezes in their chests.
"I'm almost certain… he just wants to exhaust us. He wants to watch us break."
No one answered.
When they finished, they lined up in a long row a distorted line of uneven bodies, with incomplete features. All of them waiting for their daily rations.
Hunger gnawed at them.
But something else was growing.
Envy.
Some saw that others had received a larger piece.
A firmer piece.
Less rotten.
It became unbearable.
They could not revolt against their leader…
But they could turn against one another.
And so the first spark ignited.
Two men fought.
One was tall and thin, his eyes sunken like empty pits.
The other had a long, sharp nose like a crow's beak.
It began with a shove.
Then a punch.
Then a kick.
Days of suppressed violence erupted all at once.
Screams, curses, the sound of bones grinding against each other.
People stepped back slightly but no one intervened.
It was not a fair fight.
It was an explosion.
They kept striking until one of them collapsed. The man with the long nose fell to the ground, his eye open, his body still.
Dead.
A heavy silence followed.
Then, without hesitation, the other man bent down, took his ration… and devoured it greedily, like a beast that had just claimed its victory.
No one cried.
No one protested.
Selina saw it all.
She saw how so little had become enough for them to kill one another.
She saw how they had turned into shadows fighting over crumbs.
And she felt something break inside her.
But when she raised her eyes… she realized that Elya had seen it too.
His smile never left his face.
It widened.
As if the scene had been expected.
As if this was exactly what he wanted.
He stepped forward slowly, the sound of his shoe against the ground enough to tear through the whispers. The line opened before him instinctively, as if some unseen force pushed them aside.
Fear returned.
All of them fell silent.
All except one.
That man whose hunger had exhausted him more than his fear.
He shouted, his voice hoarse but steady, "You! You're the cause of this!"
The air froze.
"You make us work every day without rest… and then you give us this?!"
"Are you some kind of sadist who enjoys seeing us like this?!"
"Damn you… and your stupid authority!"
Everyone looked at him as if he had just sentenced himself to death.
As for Elya… he smiled.
That calm smile that never promised forgiveness.
He approached him, slowly.
Reached out, and lifted the man's face by his chin.
"You think I enjoy it?"
His voice was low, almost intimate.
Then he began to press.
Slowly.
"Aaaah…!"
The bones of the man's face cracked beneath his fingers.
The man screamed, tried to pull away, tried to beg.
"Stop… please… I didn't mean it… it's just hunger… hunger got to me… forgive me!"
His eyes filled with tears.
"I think… I'll send you somewhere you'll never be hungry again."
Then…
With his bare fist.
One strike.
The head burst like an overripe fruit. Blood and fragments of bone scattered, and the scream fell silent forever.
Some stepped back. Others trembled.
As for Elya, he slowly wiped the blood from his hand, then turned away.
As if nothing had happened.
In that moment, everyone remembered what it meant to resist him.
They remembered why they feared him.
As for Selina, she realized more than ever that Elya was not a leader.
Not merely a tyrant.
But a fanatic madman…
who smiles whenever something inside a human soul breaks.
...
The next day, Elya gave them no time to process what had happened.
With the first thread of light, his voice cut through the stillness of dawn:
"To the fields."
They weren't truly fields.
Just pits filled with soil brought from land defiled by darkness land that had absorbed the flesh of corpses and drunk blood that had not yet dried.
He ordered them to water the soil.
To till it.
To plant the seeds he kept in a black leather pouch, never telling them where it came from.
They exchanged glances.
No one believed not deep down, not even in their most naive corner that such corrupted soil could grow anything.
That land hadn't produced a single plant for many long years.
It was dead.
But they obeyed.
They dug with crude tools sometimes with their fingers.
They watered the earth with water carried from the river, despite their fear of what lived within it.
They planted the seeds, one after another, as if burying a hope that did not wish to be reborn.
A day passed.
Then another.
Then another.
They worked…
and worked…
and worked…
Until the days blurred together.
They forgot how to count.
Forgot when they had begun.
Forgot even why they were doing it.
Sweat mixed with soil.
Nails broke.
Their already deformed skin cracked further.
And still… they continued.
Then, on a heavy morning, something happened that no one expected.
One of them suddenly stopped, carrying a bucket of water.
"Look…"
At first, they thought he was hallucinating.
But then they saw it.
Small cracks in the soil…
then dark tips breaking through the surface slowly, like fingers rising from a grave.
The plants had sprouted.
They were not green.
Not vibrant.
But black.
A glossy black, tinged with deep blue, as if the night itself had taken the form of flowers.
Their petals were long, curling around thin stems that stretched high.
And at the center of each flower… a strange curve.
A curve that resembled… a smile.
It wasn't entirely clear.
But it was enough to make the stomach tighten.
Then someone whispered,
"Is it… smiling?"
No one answered.
The sight was confusing.
Terrifying.
But before anyone could move, Elya cut through their ranks with confident steps.
He stopped before one of the flowers and leaned slightly to examine it.
"It's truly strange…"
He reached out and touched one of the petals, without fear.
"It doesn't resemble any species I know. It seems this world truly holds many things…"
He fell silent for a moment.
Then added,
"But first… let's make sure."
He turned.
Walked toward the gate, and disappeared for a few brief moments.
He returned… dragging a corpse.
No one asked where it came from.
Perhaps from outside.
Perhaps from yesterday.
He tossed it carelessly into the center of the field.
At first… nothing happened.
Then…
The soil trembled.
The stems quivered.
The flowers suddenly bent toward the corpse.
Then they lunged.
They didn't move like plants.
They moved like starving animals.
Stems coiled around limbs.
Petals clamped down on flesh.
They heard tearing.
Chewing.
The sound of flesh being ripped and crushed.
Someone screamed. Others backed away.
But Elya remained still, watching.
The flowers shuddered as they devoured.
They drank the blood.
The corpse shrank gradually until nothing remained but white bones, which fell to the ground like worthless scraps.
Then…
They stilled.
And after a few moments, their stems began to swell.
From between the black petals, small fruits emerged.
Dark fruit darker than before.
Gleaming… as if dripping with stolen life.
And beneath them, smaller seeds fell.
New copies.
Offspring.
Elya stepped forward, plucked one of the fruits, turned it between his fingers… then bit into it.
His lips parted into a satisfied smile.
Then he turned to them, and threw some of the fruits toward them.
They rolled along the ground at their feet.
"Take them."
Silence.
"This is your reward."
No one reached out immediately.
They knew what they had seen.
They knew what those plants had eaten.
But hunger… was stronger.
One of them picked up a fruit, looked at it, hesitated… then bit.
His eyes widened.
The taste wasn't rotten.
It wasn't bitter.
It was… filling.
Heavy.
As if it filled the body unnaturally fast.
Hands followed.
And within minutes, the fruits were being devoured just as the plants had devoured the corpse.
They did not know and no one told them that what had nourished the soil was not their sweat.
Not their effort.
But their misery.
Their fear.
Their repeated breaking.
But what truly fed it…
Was flesh.
The blood soaked into the soil.
The remnants of death intertwined with the roots.
And so, without realizing it, the source of their long-term sustenance became…
A constant reminder that they were only one step away from becoming fertilizer themselves.
As for Elya, he stood watching them eat, remembering that in this world…
Life grows only upon corpses.