The carriage moved like a slow coffin.
Wood creaked. Chains whispered. Outside, wheels rumbled over the road and the heavy breaths of the horned beasts pushed in through the cracks in the boards.
Inside, there was only the sound of two people trying not to think.
Rae sat with his back against one wall, knees bent, wrists bound in front of him. Across from him the girl rested in her chains, spine against the boards, collar chain dropping to the iron ring that held her to the floor.
Dust floated in the thin shafts of light that slipped through the slits near the roof. Every time the wheels hit a rut the dust shivered and settled again.
Rae stared at his hands.
The rope had dug a raw groove across his skin. Purple stains clung to his fingers, sunk into the dry cracks. When he rubbed his thumb over them, they did not come away.
He tried not to think of the taste that came with that colour. The sharp sourness. The warmth that spread through his chest. The way his legs had felt a little stronger after each handful, his thoughts a little clearer.
He tried not to think about the fact that those had been the best parts of his days.
The girl watched him through half lowered eyes. Her collar chain rang gently every time the carriage rocked.
For a long time, they did not speak again.
Words in her tongue still sat clumsy on his tongue. And there was something heavy in the air here that made every sound feel like it needed to be earned.
The day stretched.
Outside, shouts rose now and then. A driver cursing a beast. A guard calling for a flask. The dull smack of a whip, distant and impatient.
The light through the slits grew more golden. The smell of dust changed, picking up a faint edge of boiled grain and old meat.
As evening approached. The carriage slowed. The wheels complained as they rolled over an uneven patch and then stopped. Voices came closer. Feet thudded around them.
The bar on the door lifted with a scrape. Locks clicked, one by one. The door opened a handspan.
Heat and the smell of smoke slid in with the guard.
It was the same man who had dragged Rae to the carriage. Thick shoulders. Small eyes that always seemed half asleep, unless he was looking at the box.
He stepped inside, ducking his head, and for a moment his bulk filled the door. A small cloth bag dangled from his hand.
His gaze went first to Rae.
Contempt flickered there, thin and easy, like someone looking at a stray dog that had tried to bite.
Then his eyes moved to the girl.
The contempt thinned into something sharper. A touch of respect and discomfort, like a man who has put his hand too close to a fire once and has not forgotten.
He did not speak to either of them.
He untied the little bag and shook two berries into his palm. Their skins were a shade lighter than the ones from the village, purple shot through with thin pale veins where the light caught them.
He held one out to Rae.
Rae's mouth betrayed him.
His tongue scraped over his teeth. Saliva gathered. His stomach, empty since midday, curled tight and hopeful.
He hated himself for it, even as his fingers closed around the berry.
He lifted it, crushed it between his teeth, and let the sour juice spill across his tongue.
Warmth flickered in his chest. His tired limbs loosened a fraction. The dull ache in his back drew in, like an animal curling around itself.
It hit harder than the village berries. Cleaner. Sharper. Stronger.
The guard turned to the girl.
The second berry sat in his palm, small and dark.
"Open," he said.
She looked at him.
Her eyes did not move to his hand. They stayed on his face, flat and distant, as if he were a wall with a voice.
"I said open," he repeated, irritation roughening his tone.
He tried to press the berry against her mouth.
Her head turned away, slow and precise, the chain on her collar ringing as she moved.
The berry smeared juice against her cheek and fell to the floor, rolling once before it stopped near the ring that held her.
The guard's jaw tightened.
"Still refusing," he muttered. "Keep this up and you will die before we reach the city. Then all this trouble is for nothing."
He looked down at her for a moment longer, as if weighing the cost of forcing it down her throat. Something he had been told, some order given in a different tent on a different night, tugged his hand back.
He clicked his tongue, annoyed at the situation, and stepped out.
The door closed. Locks turned. The bar dropped.
For a while there was only the thick smell of old wood and Rae's chewing.
His body drank the warmth with greedy gratitude. It slid into his muscles and smoothed the little tremors.
The girl watched the purple smear drying on the plank by her knee.
The door opened again.
The guard returned with a wooden bowl. Steam climbed from it, carrying the smell of thin soup. Floating on the grey surface Rae saw slivers of something that might have been grain or meat.
The guard crouched by the girl, suddenly careful.
He set the bowl down within the short reach of her hands, then stepped back out of the arc of her arms and legs before he straightened.
"Eat," he said. "You are worth more breathing."
She did not look at him.
She reached, chains clinking, took the bowl, and drank. Her throat moved in long pulls. Not a drop spilled.
Only when the bowl was empty did she lift her eyes.
The guard had already turned away. He left without another word. The door closed behind him and the world shrank again.
For a time, there was only the tiny click of the bowl settling against the floor as she pushed it aside.
Then she looked at Rae.
"I cannot believe you eat that," she said.
Her voice was not loud, but it was very clear in the small space.
Rae blinked.
He licked a last trace of purple from his teeth, suddenly ashamed of how thoroughly he had cleaned them.
"It food is bad?" he asked, fumbling, the words stumbling into each other.
Her lips twitched. Not quite a smile. Not quite a sneer.
"You really are not from these lands," she said. "They throw anything in your bowl and you still call it food."
Rae frowned.
"In village," he said slowly, "they give same berries. Every morning. Fever gone. Legs stronger. Head less… cloud." He tapped his
temple, searching for the right word and finding none.
"They say medicine," he added. "Help recover. Make slave work."
"Yes," the girl said. "They always call it medicine at the start."
Her gaze moved to his fingers, to the deep purple stains.
"At the beginning they give only the dark ones," she went on. "Like that. Heavy purple, almost black. They tell you it will burn the
sickness, clear your head, give you strength. And it does, a little. You wake easier. You carry the mud without falling quite so fast. You think, at least there is this one kindness in all the filth."
Her eyes cooled.
"Then the mornings without it feel colder," she said softly. "Your tongue waits for the sour taste. Your hands remember the warmth in your chest. Work feels twice as heavy if the berry is late. You start
looking toward the basket before you look toward the water barrel."
Rae's throat clenched.
He remembered the way his eyes had searched for the basket each dawn, before they had even opened fully.
"At first," she said, "if you anger a guard and they skip your share, you curse them under your breath and sleep it off. After some days,
if they skip you, your whole body starts to shake. Your thoughts crawl. You
would trade your bowl of grain just to lick the stain from someone else's
fingers."
Her voice did not rise. It grew quieter, each word settling like a stone.
"When they see that," she said, "they smile. They say, you are recovering well, you can work harder. They change the berries. The purple is not so dark. A little lighter. A little sweeter. They say the whiter berries
are better medicine."
Her fingers shifted on the chain.
"You eat them," she went on. "Of course you eat them.
By then your tongue is already theirs. The new ones make your blood feel like fire
and silk together. Your arms stop aching. You can lift more. You can walk longer. You start to dream of that taste even when you sleep shackled in the
mud."
She lifted her eyes to his, and in them he saw not pity but an old, clean anger.
"The paler the berry," she said, "the deeper the hook. One day they give you one that is almost white. Just a blush of colour, like snow stepped on once. You swallow it, and from that day your body does not remember
how to live without it. If they do not bring it, you curl on the floor and beg them to. You forget that you hate them. You only remember that your veins feel
empty."
She let out a slow breath.
"That is the loop they like most," she said. "They beat you. They starve you. They drip sweetness into your mouth and call it healing. You labour for them to stop the pain, and you labour for them to earn another
handful. Even if the chains on your ankles were cut, the string in your throat would pull you back. They do not need iron, once the berry reaches your bones."
Rae stared at his hands.
The purple on his skin looked darker now, almost black.
His stomach twisted, but not from hunger.
"They gave me every morning," he whispered. The words came out crooked. "I happy. I think, at least something good. I think, maybe people not all bad."
He saw the old woman at the slaver's place, the way she had pressed the berries into his palm with her wrinkled hand. He had felt grateful to her.
She had probably felt grateful to herself.
His jaw clenched.
Heat rose up his throat and into his skull, different from the borrowed warmth of the fruit. This heat burned.
"Those bastards," he said.
The language faltered. The anger did not.
"Nothing right since I fall here," he went on. "Every time I think there is good thing, I find knife inside. They give me work, but chain
on it. They give me food, but trap inside. They give me road, but only to cage."
His breathing thickened.
He pressed his fists into the floor.
"I want them suffer," he said.
The words came out low. They shook, not because he doubted them, but because there were too many inside him, fighting to get out.
"I want every hand that give berry, every hand that use whip, feel what they give," he said, his voice roughening. "I want skin on
their backs open until you can see bone. I want their bones pulled out one by
one and ground into dust. I want their mouths filled with mud so they claw for
breath like we claw for mercy. I want them thrown into pits of boiling filth, pulled out before they die, thrown back in, again and again, until they know there is no end."
His fingers curled so tight that his nails bit his palm. Blood pulsed in his temples.
"I want their nights full of the same screams they bought from us," he said. "I want their children to wake hearing those sounds and know it is the price for calling chains a kindness."
The carriage was very small.
The air felt heavy, pressed down by his words.
The girl watched him.
She had seen many kinds of fury. The wild thrashing of men in their first week of chains. The dull emptiness after too many beatings. The cold calculations of nobles who ordered a killing the way they ordered new
cloth.
This was something else.
Rae's hate was clumsy. His words stumbled. But the thing inside them was pure. It was not the cheap wrath of someone whose meal had been taken. It was the deep rage of someone who had discovered that even the few thin threads of comfort he had been allowed were part of the rope around his
neck.
A corner of her mouth moved.
"Good," she said softly. "Now you sound a little more like this land."
He looked up, breath still ragged.
"This land is not a place of gentle balance," she said. "It is a place where kindness is a mask and mercy is sold by weight. Men like them call this order. They call it law. We call it what it is."
She shifted her shoulders, the chains grinding on iron.
"If I ever walk out of these chains," she said, "I will burn their law to ash."
Rae stared at her.
Her words were not loud, but the way she said burn made his skin prickle.
"You… can kill them?" he asked.
He knew now that she was not just another slave. There was something in her blood that made grown men tie rags to wheels and sleep beside wood.
She met his gaze.
"If I am not bound," she said, "these merchants and their guards are dust. It is not difficult."
There was no boast in her tone. It was as if she were talking about tipping over a bowl.
"Then we break chains," Rae said.
He dragged breath in through his teeth, forced his thoughts away from images of boiling pits and broken bones, and let them settle on metal instead.
He had spent his life staring at other kinds of iron. On the Ring, locks had been magnetic fields and safety protocols, not hinges and
keys. But the mind that had watched numbers and stress lines was the same mind that now traced the pattern of the girl's chains.
"Show me," he said.
She frowned slightly.
"Show what?"
"Chains," he said. "How fixed. Where bite."
There was a faint pause, as if no one had ever asked her that.
Then she shifted, turning as much as the collar would allow, so he could see.
Iron circled her ankles, joined by links to the ring in the floor. Her wrists were bound with another loop, chain from them to a bolt in
the wall. The collar sat against her throat, a short length of chain dropping to the floor ring.
The design was crude. Strength through weight more than craft. But even crude things had seams.
Rae slid closer, dragging his own ankle chain. He ignored the guard's rule about staying out of reach of her limbs. If she killed him now, it would still be better than dying by inches on the road.
He leaned in until he could see the join of iron and wood at the floor ring.
The ring had been driven through the board into a brace below. They had not meant it to move. But wood shifted with time and road.
His fingers brushed the edge.
There. A hair's breath of give, where the iron did not sit flush.
He shifted his gaze to her ankle irons.
The lock was simple, a plate and bar. No keyhole on his side. But the plate had been hammered in haste. One edge curled up a fraction where the blacksmith's temper had not held.
He looked at the chain between his own ankles. The links were narrower there. Designed for walking, not for holding fury.
On the Ring, he had broken emergency seals by finding the stress point and hitting it in the right direction with the right rhythm. This was no different. Only the tools had changed.
He looked up at her.
"I need you trust me," he said.
Her brows lifted.
"You want me to trust a stranger with purple hands," she said calmly, "while we sit in the belly of my enemy's wagon."
"Yes," he said.
Her eyes searched his face.
She saw no saint there. Only a boy who had fallen from a sky she did not know, beaten half senseless, fed on the merchants' poison, and still somehow trying to break the thing that held him.
"Very well," she said. "Try."
He nodded once.
"Lean weight to back," he said. "On collar. Pull chain tight."
She shifted, pressing her shoulders into the wall. The collar chain straightened, links grinding.
Rae planted his heels against the floor ring, set the short length of his own chain across the joint where iron met wood, then looped the rope on his wrists around a link so he could pull in a better angle.
He breathed out, slow.
Then he pulled.
Pain flared in his wrists. The rope bit deeper. His shoulders screamed. The carriage wood groaned around them.
Nothing happened.
He gritted his teeth.
Again.
He rocked his weight, using the sway of the moving carriage to add force. Every time the wheels hit a crack, he pulled. The chain rasped. His skin tore. Warm wetness slid under the rope.
Minutes blurred. His breath turned ragged. His arms shook.
The girl watched him without speaking.
Then there was a sound.
Not loud. Just a quiet, tired crack, like old wood sighing.
The floor ring shifted a fraction.
Rae sucked in air.
Again.
He closed his eyes and stopped thinking of what it looked like. He thought of stress lines and failure points. He thought of overloaded
beams and tired bolts. He thought of the way one wrong tremor could send an entire corridor's worth of panels dropping from the ceiling.
He pulled with everything the berry had given him and everything his rage had added on top.
The board around the ring split.
The ring lurched, tearing free of whatever brace had held it below. For a moment her collar chain hung loose, attached to a piece of wood instead of the whole carriage.
The girl's eyes changed.
She surged forward.
The small square of board that had come up with the ring slammed into the floor as the chain reached its limit, but the important thing was that the ring was no longer sunk into anything solid.
Rae grabbed it with both hands.
"Hold still," he rasped.
He twisted the ring, forcing the broken wood to turn with it, widening the gap.
"Kick," he said.
She drew her legs up as far as the ankle chain allowed and stamped down with both feet on the cracked plank beside the ring.
The wood gave way.
In one messy tearing movement the floor around the ring broke open, leaving a jagged hole big enough to push the iron through.
The collar chain slid free of the board.
For the first time since he had seen her, there was slack in the metal that circled her throat.
She closed her eyes for the length of one breath.
When she opened them, they burned brighter.
"Wrists next," Rae said.
The wrist irons had no such helpful board, but the plate's curled edge gave him purchase. With the added slack from the collar, she could twist her arms enough for him to get both feet against the plate and shove.
He braced and pushed. She pulled in the opposite direction, tendons standing out in her neck.
The metal screamed and bent.
One more shove and the plate snapped. The bar sprang out. The iron around her wrists loosened.
She pulled one hand free, then the other, skin raw and torn where it scraped the metal.
For a heartbeat they just stared at each other.
He had expected her to surge to her feet at once. Instead she reached first for the chain at her ankles, testing its give, feeling the
weight and angle.
"You too," she said without looking up. "If you stay chained you will die when they come for me."
She was right.
Between them, with bleeding hands and shaking arms, they bent the weakest link on his ankle chain enough that it snapped with a dull sound like a bone giving up.
Iron fell to the floor.
Rae almost wept from the simple feeling of his ankles separating.
The girl stood.
The short lengths of chain still dragged from her collar and ankles, but they were no longer roots in the board. They were just metal.
She rolled her shoulders. Bones cracked in her back. She tilted her head side to side, loosening her neck.
In the dim light of the carriage, she suddenly looked larger.
"Stay close to the floor," she said. "When the door opens, do not stand in front of it. People who stand in front of doors die."
Rae swallowed and nodded.
He crawled to the side, pressing his back to the wall near the hinges.
The girl walked to the door.
Her bare feet were quiet on the boards.
She laid her palm flat against the wood.
For a moment nothing happened.
Then the air in the carriage changed.
It thickened, as if someone had poured hot sand into it. Rae's ears rang. The little hairs on his arms stood up. The chain on her collar began to vibrate, the links humming softly.
A faint glow rose around her hand. Not bright, not like lightning. More like the light you see when you close your eyes after staring at the sun. Gold and red together, spilling from somewhere under her skin.
It spread up her arm. Across her shoulders. Down her spine.
The pressure in the air increased.
Rae's breathing grew shallow. His body remembered the way the world had twisted when the Ring had fired, the way space had bent. This was not the same. That had been cold and clean. This was hot and heavy, the weight of a furnace crammed into the shape of a girl.
Outside, a guard shouted something about stew and dice.
The girl drew back her fist.
She did not scream. She did not roar.
She simply punched the door.
The wood did not crack in splinters. It did not burst outward like in cheap tavern stories.
It sagged.
Where her fist landed the grain went soft, darkening in a circle. Smoke rose in a thin line. The iron bands around it glowed dull red, then brightened.
The next heartbeat, the middle of the door lost the idea of being solid.
It folded like wax in a flame.
The locks warped. The bar above it bowed. Light from outside poured in through the sagging hole, harsh and wide.
The nearest guard had just enough time to turn his head.
He saw a hand of bare flesh push through melting wood and glowing iron, fingers closing on the door's edge.
Then the door was not a door any more.
It fell outward as a heavy slab of half liquid metal and charred wood.
It hit the ground and sank a finger width into the packed earth, hissing.
The guard stumbled back, eyes wide, hand fumbling for his blade.
He did not get it clear of the scabbard.
The girl stepped through the gap, chain dragging, eyes blazing.
She moved like someone who had imagined this step a thousand times.
Her fist caught the guard in the chest. Rae heard ribs break. He saw a brief flare of light under her knuckles, as if something inside
the man had been set alight for a breath.
The guard flew back and hit the side of a nearby cart. The wood bent around his shape. Smoke curled from under his armour, and the smell of burnt leather and flesh slid into the air.
The other guards froze for a heartbeat.
They had orbited this carriage for days like nervous planets around a star they did not want to see up close. They had tied rags on
its wheels, muttered little words, spat at the ground.
Now the thing they had feared was walking out.
One man shouted.
That broke the stillness.
Blades came free. Bows creaked. Someone blew the bone whistle and its thin scream knifed through the chaos, calling for order where no order could fit.
The girl walked into them.
She did not waste movement.
A sword swung at her neck. She stepped into it instead of away, her hand snapping up to catch the flat of the blade. Metal hissed where her skin touched it. The sword went soft as if the air around her hand had turned to a kiln.
She twisted.
The guard's own blade bent like reed and wrapped around his arm. He screamed as the heated metal bit into his flesh and vanished under his skin.
She planted her barefoot in his stomach. There was another crack of breaking bone. He folded around her heel, then flew backwards, crashing into two more men and taking them down in a tangle.
Another guard lunged with a spear.
She caught the shaft near the head and squeezed.
The wood blackened under her fingers. Cracks raced down its length. A moment later it snapped with a sharp report. The broken tip went flying, trailing sparks.
She stepped past him as he stared at the empty haft and laid her palm gently against his face.
For a heartbeat he looked almost relieved.
Then the side of his head smoked. Skin blistered. His eyes rolled white. He fell without a sound.
Around them the caravan erupted.
The horned beasts bellowed, huge bodies tossing, hooves tearing at the dirt. The wagons rocked as drivers fought for control. Slaves in their chains stared, mouths open, some shrinking back, some staring with sudden wild hope.
Talan and Daro stumbled from the shelter of another wagon, cloaks half on, eyes darting.
"What happened?" Daro shouted. "The locks, the locks were all secured, I felt them with my own hands."
Talan did not answer.
His gaze was on the girl.
He had seen her once in a different yard, collar newly fixed, a faint pressure in the air when the slaver had loosened the iron for a
breath. He had bought her with the same expression he wore now.
Calculating. Afraid.
"Kill her," he snapped. "Now. Before she gathers herself."
Three guards moved as one at his order, fanning out.
Rae slid out of the carriage behind the girl, keeping low.
The air outside felt too big after the cramped box. The sky was a wide bruised purple. The setting sun threw long shadows across the road. Fires had been lit further back, stew pots hanging, the smell of food clashing
with the stench of burnt flesh.
He stayed near the wheel, using its bulk as cover.
The girl stepped forward to meet the three men.
They thought her chains would slow her.
They were wrong.
She let the first man come in close, his sword arm cutting a clean line. She moved her head just enough that the blade sang past her cheek, close enough that it sliced a stray lock of her hair.
Her hand snapped up and closed on his forearm.
Steam rose.
He screamed, opening his fingers. The sword fell. She snatched it from the air and turned, the broken chain on her ankle ringing.
The second guard saw his own reflection in the blade for one frightened instant.
Then the metal, still hot from her touch, slid into his chest.
The third man hesitated.
For one breath he saw not a thin chained girl but a figure wreathed in shimmering air, tan skin lit from within, hair gone the colour of
burning straw. Her eyes were not wild. They were steady and bright, like the
heart of a forge.
That breath cost him.
She stepped in, shoulder against his, and drove her elbow into his ribs. He folded. Her knee came up into his face. Teeth flew. He
crumpled to the dirt, blood pouring.
Two more guards tried to circle behind her.
Rae moved without thinking.
He had no weapon. His hands were numb from pulling iron.
His ankle still dragged a half broken length of chain.
He grabbed the loose end.
When the nearest guard rushed past the wheel, Rae swung the chain low, catching the man's shins.
The guard's feet tangled. He pitched forward, surprise written wide on his face.
The girl was already turning.
Her fist dropped like a hammer.
The back of the man's neck met her knuckles. Something inside crunched. He lay still.
Talan saw Rae then.
"You," he hissed.
He fumbled for something under his robe. A small rod shaped like a short baton, carved with cramped symbols.
Rae's gut twisted.
He did not know what it was, but he had seen the way Talan looked at the guarded carriage. Anything the man pulled out now would not be good for anyone near it.
Before Talan could lift the rod, the girl's gaze flicked to him.
Her eyes narrowed.
For the first time since she stepped out, emotion filled her face. Not just anger. Contempt.
"You think you can hold a Marak in a wooden box and call it safety," she said.
Her voice cut through the noise around them.
Talan froze.
Talan heard the name. Marak. The old clan spoken of in the inn, the bloodline that had once ruled this region with a power that came from somewhere beyond ordinary flesh.
"You bought me like cattle," she said. "You tied me in your cheap iron and slept easy because your coins had changed hands."
She took one step toward him.
The air between them shivered.
"You thought chains and papers would make me less than I was born," she said. "You were wrong."
Rae saw it then, under the dirt and hunger. The way she held her head. The way her words did not ask for anything. This was not the voice of someone who begged. This was the voice of someone who had grown up
with servants who never said no.
Talan took one step back.
The rod in his hand trembled.
"Stay away," he said. "Your family is gone. Your name is worth only what I paid for it."
"You are mistaken," she said.
Her smile did not reach her eyes.
She lifted her hand.
Flame did not leap from her fingers. There was no grand gesture. Just heat, suddenly so intense that the air between them rippled.
Talan flinched.
The small rod in his hand blackened. The symbols carved into it melted into an ugly smear. He dropped it with a cry as it scorched his palm.
"Your safety was built on my silence," she said. "You should have killed me when you put this collar on. Instead you locked me up and hoped I would forget what my name means."
She took another step.
Daro grabbed Talan's sleeve.
"Run," he hissed.
Talan did.
They turned and fled, stumbling between the wagons, shouting for the drivers to cut the beasts loose and save the goods.
Behind them, the girl laughed.
It was not a pleasant sound.
It was not mad either.
It was the short, bitter laugh of someone who had been held down so long that the first breath of air burned.
She let them go.
There were easier targets.
She turned back to the guards, to the ropes that held the horned beasts, to the chains on the line of slaves.
Wherever she walked, order broke.
Ropes caught fire just from her brushing past them. Harness leather smoked and snapped. The great beasts, freed, bolted, pulling wagons sideways, tipping crates, trampling tents.
She did not slaughter the slaves' line. Her hand never landed on the iron around their necks. But every guard that moved toward the chained was burned or broken.
Rae watched.
His body shook from strain and from something else.
She did not move like the fighters in the Ring's simulation feeds. There was no neat form, no polished pattern. She moved like a storm forced into a human shape. Every step was heavy with intent. Every strike
landed where it would break more than bone.
Grell tried to reach the guarded carriage in the chaos, face set, whip in hand.
Rae saw him.
For a moment their eyes met across the torn camp.
Grell read something there. He saw not a helpless slave but the same boy who had tried to pull the road out from under his wheel.
He hesitated.
That was when the girl's shadow fell over him.
Rae did not see what she did.
He saw Grell swing the whip once.
He saw her raise her arm and catch the leather, the braided strands charring in her grip.
He heard Grell roar.
Then smoke rose between them, and when it cleared Grell was on his knees, staring at his hands as if they belonged to someone else. His whip lay on the ground, a blackened coil.
She left him breathing.
It was almost worse than if she had killed him.
The fight did not last long.
Men who had only ever whipped chained backs were not ready to stand against someone who melted iron with a touch. Some ran. Some lay still. Some groveled in the dirt and begged.
The girl ignored the pleas.
She walked to the slave chain.
Her eyes softened.
"Back," she said. "All of you. Move away from the iron."
They shuffled, stumbling as far as the collar chains allowed, eyes wide.
She laid her palm upon the first collar ring.
Heat flowed.
The lock sagged open. The ring fell to the ground.
The man inside stared, hands clutching his own throat as if he did not trust empty air.
One by one she moved along the line, breaking collars. The smell of burnt metal and old sweat rose.
Rae stood near the shattered door of the carriage, breathing hard. Blood from his wrists had soaked into the rope and dried there, stiff.
He looked at her.
Her eyes were no longer embers. They were a pair of small suns, fierce and clear. Her skin glowed with a light that did not come from the sky. Her hair, once dull and tangled, now caught the dusk like a field of pale
fire.
She was smiling.
It was not a soft smile. It was sharp, almost painful to look at. It was the smile of someone who had carried a mountain on their shoulders and finally let it fall.
Watching her, something in Rae's chest moved.
He had seen freedom before, in the small ways people on the Ring used their off duty hours. A stolen nap. A joke passed under asupervisor's nose. He had told himself he was free when he chose his own study shifts, when he tweaked a schedule to give himself an extra hour by a viewport.
Those things felt small now.
This was freedom.
Not just the absence of chains on skin, but the breaking of the hand that had put them there. The sudden, wild opening from a narrow box to a wide, terrifying sky.
As he watched her walk through the wreck of the caravan, burning every piece of order that had been used to hold her, Rae felt something inside him crack and never settle back the same way.
It felt like the first time he had looked out at the Ring's core and realised that time itself could be bent. It felt like when numbers on
a screen had stopped being just numbers and had turned into the shape of a
path.
Except this time there were no consoles, no equations.
There was only a girl wreathed in heat and the echo of his
own anger.
A thought rose in him, slow and bright.
Freedom is not given. It is taken.
It is not a soft word. It is a sharp one. It is the moment when a hand that has always obeyed finally refuses to move, and instead curls into a fist.
It is a road that runs against every chain. Once you see it, you cannot pretend you do not know where it lies.
In the edge of that realisation, Rae felt a strange joy.
It hurt. It was born of blood and burnt flesh and screams. But it was joy all the same.
I want this, he thought.
Not just for one night on a broken road. Not just for this caravan. Always.
He wanted to tear out every hidden rope that called itself kindness. He wanted to break every pattern that turned people into tools. He wanted to walk without someone else counting his steps.
He did not have the words of this land to name what was happening in his heart.
If there had been a word, it would have sounded like a path unfolding. Like a vow.
He pressed his bleeding hands together, feeling the sting.
The girl turned then and looked back at him.
For a moment their eyes met.
In hers he saw a long, old hatred, and under it a sliver of something else. Recognition, perhaps. Not of who he was, but of what had just been born in him.
"Come," she said. "This place will only draw more vultures. If you want to live, you walk now."
Rae stepped down from the shattered carriage.
He left the broken chains lying in the dust.
Behind him the guarded box that had held the most valuable things in the caravan sagged in on itself, its door a melted scar, its iron bands black and twisted.
A little further along the line, the second heavy carriage still smelled of smoke and iron from the battle. Inside, in the dimness beyond the doorway, he recognised the shapes from that first day. Iron rings. Coiled chains.
And the low chest banded with dark metal, half pulled from its place by the chaos.
His suit.
On the Ring it had been a second skin. Here it was a broken shell, glass spiderwebbed, core dead. Useless to these people. Still his.
He hesitated only a heartbeat.
Then he slipped through the ruined doorway.
The air inside was hot and close. Ash floated where dust had been. He stumbled to the chest and kicked at the warped latch until it
gave.
The lid groaned open.
Dull metal greeted him. The suit lay inside in twisted pieces, piled without care. The cracked helmet. The scorched chest section. The arm brace with its dead lights. A tangle of cables and plates that had once
been the most advanced thing he had ever touched.
Seeing it hurt.
It was like looking at the body of a friend.
He could not carry it all.
His hands moved on their own, choosing.
He took the helmet, even with its shattered visor. He took the arm brace with its dead interface ports. Under the top layer he saw the core housing, heavy and scorched. The actual core was long gone, but some stubborn part of him could not leave the empty shell.
He dragged it out, teeth gritted at the weight.
A torn blanket lay crumpled nearby. He wrapped the pieces roughly, binding them with frayed rope until they formed one awkward bundle that he could hug against his chest.
For a moment he stood there in the ruined belly of the carriage, breath loud in the small space, the weight of two worlds in his arms.
Then he turned and climbed back out into the open air.
He stepped down from the shattered carriage.
Ahead, the road ran into the deepening dusk.
He walked toward it, shoulder by shoulder with the girl whose name the merchants had tried to buy, the bundle of dead metal held tight against his ribs.
With every step he took away from the wreckage, the feeling in his chest grew clearer.
He would not forget this.
He would not forgive.
And whatever this world chose to call its rules, he would spend every breath he had left testing how far they could bend before they broke.
Rae shifted the bundle in his arms.
"Your name," he said, words slow and heavy. "What is?"
She watched the road ahead for a breath, then answered.
"Cynthia."
The name was simple, but it landed in him like a hammer on hot metal.
"Cyn… thia."