The tunnels smelled of damp earth and something older, like stone that had forgotten the taste of sunlight. Nara's fingers scraped along the rough wall, tracing the faint carvings that only appeared when she stood at exactly the right distance. The glow was weaker tonight, barely a whisper of light, but it was there.
Tunnel survey progress: 23%Anomalous energy signature detected. EXP gain multiplier: x4.7
The notification flickered and died before she could truly register the number. The siphon took its share instantly, leaving her counter at a flat, mocking zero. Still, the spike had happened. She had felt it — that brief, impossible lift before the System clawed everything back.
She kept digging.
A soft scuff of bare feet on dirt behind her made her freeze. Not Kael. His steps were too deliberate, too clean. This was someone who had learned to move quietly because noise meant pain.
"Dort," she said without turning.
He stepped into the weak light of her makeshift torch — a rag-wrapped stick soaked in the cheap oil Kael had provided. Seventeen years old, thin as a winter reed, with eyes that still carried the kind of softness most people lost after their first dozen deaths. His tunic hung loose on narrow shoulders, stained with berry juice and dirt that never quite washed out.
"You shouldn't be down here," Nara muttered, resuming her slow scrape along the wall. "If an overseer follows—"
"I was careful," Dort whispered. His voice cracked slightly, the way it did when he was trying to sound braver than he felt. "I waited until the shift change. They're watching the east rows tonight."
Nara paused. She turned her head just enough to study him. His hands were fidgeting with the hem of his tunic — a nervous habit she had catalogued months ago. "They're always watching."
"Not like this." Dort swallowed. "They've been watching you, Nara. More than usual. The tall one — the one with the scar on his cheek — he's been noting your breaks. How long you spend near the tree line. Even when Kael isn't around."
She felt a cold thread pull tight in her chest. She hadn't noticed. That was dangerous. Sloppy. She had been too focused on the spikes in the tunnels, on the way the ground seemed to lean toward her when she touched the carved symbols.
"How do you know?" she asked, voice low and flat.
Dort gave a small, sheepish shrug. "Because I've been watching the overseers watch you."
The admission hung in the damp air between them. He looked embarrassed, as if confessing to something childish. But there was no shame in it — only the quiet practicality of someone who had survived seventeen years in a cage by noticing everything.
Nara set her digging tool down — a sharpened stone Kael had allowed her to keep — and wiped her dirty hands on her thighs. "Seventeen years," she said, almost to herself. "And you still have time to watch other people's watchers."
He smiled, faint and crooked. It didn't reach his eyes, but it was real. "What else is there to do? The berries don't talk back. The barrier doesn't change. But you…" He trailed off, glancing toward the tunnel ceiling as if it might collapse on them for speaking too openly. "You're different."
Nara didn't answer right away. She crouched, scooping a handful of loose dirt and letting it sift through her fingers. Soil displacement: +0.000002 EXP The notification was tiny, barely worth the siphon. But every decimal counted when you were building a crack.
Dort shifted closer. His bare feet left faint prints in the soft earth. "I was born here, you know. Right in the shed. My mother respawned three times during labor. The System didn't even bother giving me a proper class when I turned ten. Just 'Unassigned Labor Unit.' No skills. No path. Nothing."
He said it without bitterness. That was what made it worse. Not hopeless — Dort had never been hopeless. Just… bounded. His world ended at the blue light on the horizon. He hoped in small, survivable doses: that the overseer would skip him during punishment rounds, that the berries would be sweet this season instead of bitter and dry, that the nights would stay mild enough that sleeping on straw didn't leave his joints screaming.
"I watch the barrier sometimes," he continued softly. "Most people look at it like it's a wall. Like it's the end of everything. But you…" He met her eyes in the flickering torchlight. "You look at it like it's a door."
Nara's fingers tightened around the handful of dirt. She let it fall.
"It is a door," she said.
Dort's brow furrowed. "For who?"
She didn't answer.
The silence stretched. Somewhere far above, the faint sound of night insects drifted down through cracks in the earth. The tunnels felt alive in a way the fields never did — older, listening. She wondered if Mags had known about them. If the old woman's riddles had been pointing here all along.
Dort cleared his throat. "You should be careful, Nara. Whatever you're doing with the Traveller… it's making people nervous. The overseers talk when they think no one's listening. They say Grelt's been meeting with outsiders more often. Selling contracts. Moving people around like pieces on a board."
He paused, then added with that small, crooked smile again, "I don't want them to move you. You're the only one who makes the days feel… longer. Like there's more to count than just berries."
Nara looked at him then — really looked. At the dirt under his fingernails, the way his shoulders curved inward as if trying to take up less space in the world, the faint scar on his left forearm from the time an overseer had caught him sharing extra water with a younger slave. He was kind in the only way Zone 0 allowed: quietly, without expecting anything back. He had never asked her why she kept trying to cross the barrier. Never begged her to stop. He just… watched. And remembered.
The math in her head ran unbidden.
Seventeen years. Roughly six thousand two hundred days of labor. Average daily berry harvest for someone his size and age: about eight thousand seven hundred. Lifetime total before siphon: over fifty-four million berries. The System took almost everything. Grelt and his unseen masters had profited maybe five or six EXP from Dort's entire existence.
An insulting number. A rounding error in the grand ledger of the world.
Yet here he was, risking a whipping or worse just to warn her.
She opened her mouth to say something — anything that wasn't cold calculation — when the sound of boots echoed from the tunnel entrance.
Heavy. Purposeful. Two sets.
Dort's eyes widened. "I should go—"
Too late.
The torchlight from above spilled down the crude ramp they had dug days earlier. Two overseers appeared at the mouth of the tunnel, batons already drawn. Their faces were hard, professional. The kind of men who had long stopped seeing slaves as people.
"Labor Unit Dort-17," the taller one barked. "You're being transferred. Collect nothing. Move."
Dort froze. His mouth opened, closed. "Transferred? But — I didn't—"
"Grelt sold your contract to the eastern labor pool," the second overseer said flatly. "Effective immediately. Night transport leaves at full dark. Don't make this difficult."
Nara stood very still. Her mind catalogued every detail: the way the first overseer's grip tightened on his baton, the faint smell of cheap ale on their breath, the way Dort's shoulders slumped as if the news had physically weighted him down.
This wasn't about her. Not tonight.
Dort looked at her. His eyes were wide, shining with something that wasn't quite fear — more like disbelief. Like the world had shifted under his feet and he still expected it to settle back into place.
"Nara…" he started.
The taller overseer grabbed his arm and yanked him toward the ramp. Dort stumbled but didn't resist. He never did. That was his way — small hopes, small resistances, never enough to break the cage.
As they dragged him up, he twisted his head for one last look back.
She was standing exactly where she had been. Hands at her sides. Face blank. Only her left fist was clenched so tightly that the nails bit into her palm, splitting the skin in four perfect crescents. Warm blood welled up, but she didn't flinch.
Dort's lips moved. She couldn't hear the words over the overseers' boots, but she read them anyway.
Be careful.
Then he was gone. The tunnel swallowed their footsteps. The torchlight faded. Silence rushed back in, thick and heavy.
Nara remained motionless for a long count of ten.
Labor Unit transferred. Ownership record updated. The System notification was clinical. Impersonal. As if Dort had never been more than a line in a ledger.
She opened her fist slowly. Blood dripped onto the tunnel floor. Minor laceration detected. No performance penalty.
Useless. Everything the System offered was useless.
She looked at the faint carvings on the wall. They had stopped glowing the moment the overseers appeared. The ground felt colder now. Less remembering. More empty.
Dort was gone. Sold like surplus stock. Moved to another field, another cage, another set of rows where the berries would taste exactly the same and the barrier would still kill him if he tried to cross.
She had done nothing.
No clever calculation. No distraction. No desperate bargain with Kael or Grelt. She had simply stood there and watched him vanish.
The spite in her chest burned hotter than the pain in her hand.
She picked up her digging tool and drove it into the earth with more force than necessary. Dirt flew. Soil displacement: +0.000003 EXP The multiplier felt higher here, closer to the carvings. The System was giving her crumbs again.
Good.
She would take every crumb.
And when the time came — when the cracks widened enough — she would remember exactly who had been sold and who had done the selling.
The tunnels waited.
So did she.