Early in the fog-heavy morning, two military men dragged a cuffed prisoner along a mountain road. His uniform was stark white with a single black stripe running from shoulder to ankle, the fabric soaked with dew. He stumbled as they pulled him forward.
They stopped before a massive fifty-foot metal wall stretched between the mountains, an iron barrier swallowing the entire pass. One of the soldiers walked to a guard standing beside the tower gate while the other tightened his grip on the prisoner's arms.
After a brief exchange, the guard climbed the tower and the soldier returned. He jabbed his finger toward the words carved across the gate:
SUN KINGDOM MILITARY BASE
"This is your home for the week," he said.
While the prisoner read the words, the other soldier punched him hard in the stomach. The prisoner folded with a groan. Both men burst into laughter.
"He can't even handle a baby punch," one of them mocked. "Let's see how he survives in here."
The gates groaned open, and the three of them walked inside.
On either side of the long road, tents clustered around training pools, running tracks, archery fields, spear-throwing ranges, sword-practice yards, and countless other facilities typical of a military base. The air carried the sharp tang of metal and sweat.
After half an hour of walking, they reached a colossal building so wide its ends vanished into the mist. From its silhouette, it seemed nearly 100 meter tall, stretching miles in both directions. Seven broad stone steps led to an enormous entrance door.
Military men stood scattered across the grounds, archers holding drawn bows, others gripping spears, and several pairs sparring with swords. More soldiers patrolled the perimeters. When they noticed the cuffed man, all training halted. Silence rippled outward as every eye turned toward him.
An elderly man emerged from the entrance, older than all the others, his uniform the same yet carried with an authority that eclipsed them all. He stopped at the topmost step and studied the prisoner.
"What are you, son?" he asked.
"I am a criminal."
A murmur of surprise swept across the soldiers, but the old man reacted differently. He let out a loud, amused chuckle.
He descended the steps until he stood in front of the prisoner.
"I ask that question to everyone who walks in here," he said, looking directly into the man's eyes. "Most reply, 'My name is this' or 'I work there' or some other useless thing. Every time, my boys teach them the answer. And my boys make sure they write the answer on the ground... with their blood."
He stepped down the final step.
"You," he said in a colder voice, still locking eyes with the prisoner, "are the first one who answered correctly."
He turned and climbed back to the top step.
"Maybe you are a king outside that gate. But once you step inside, nothing matters. Your status, your wealth, your pride, everything is left behind. Only your uniform matters here. And as long as you wear that one," he said, gesturing to the black-striped white clothes, "you are simply a toy for our entertainment."
He smiled faintly over his shoulder. "I like you, son. Now tell me, what did you do?"
"I stole a credit card. An alpha-rank card. From a businessman. But I didn't use it. I returned it two days later."
Laughter exploded from the gathered soldiers, echoing against the fog. But the old man lifted his hand, and the entire crowd went silent.
"An alpha card, returned?" he said in a deep, commanding voice. "Just the card metal could have made you filthy rich. Instead of selling it, you returned it and got caught. What an idiot."
He pointed to the two soldiers. "Take him inside. We should teach him how a criminal should be."
They grinned at each other, wicked and eager, until the old man barked, "Did you not understand when I said I like him?"
The grins vanished. Trembling, they grabbed the prisoner more tightly and hurried inside.
The interior was a vast dim hall connected to two narrow hallways. Torches lined the walls, yet even the countless flames failed to light the space fully. The entire building seemed carved out of the shadows, the very definition of dimly lit.
The only bright thing was the enormous painting on the floor, a white elephant with wide white wings stretching across the tiles.
The men stopped at the center of the hall.
As the prisoner studied the painting, one soldier asked the other, "Where do we take him?"
"To the Right Colonel first."
They turned right and dragged him down the hallway.
Rooms lined both sides of the corridor, each visible through narrow glass windows. Many rooms held four or five single beds with posters of naked women plastered across the walls. Some held only one bed and a sofa. A few looked lavish, furnished far beyond the rest. In one luxurious room, a naked woman sat in a corner, her back marked with fresh bite marks and bruises.
After ten minutes of walking, a powerful old man approached from the opposite direction. He looked as strong as the first commander, his presence heavy and commanding.
He lifted an eyebrow.
One soldier quickly said, "Lieutenant General told us to teach him how a criminal should be. And he said, he likes him."
The old man smiled thinly and examined the prisoner from head to toe.
"Hmmm… They are having fun on the upper floors," he said. "So… take him straight to the top floor."
He pulled out a large ring of keys. Squinting, he brought them close to his eyes and slowly searched through the set. Finally he separated one key and returned the rest to his pocket.
The key bore the code V222.
He handed it to one of the soldiers and continued walking down the hall without another word.
They continued until they reached a massive elevator at the far right end of the building. It was wide enough to hold twenty men with room to spare. There were no walls, no doors, nothing to separate the platform from the open corridor except a crude gate of metal bars.
The gate rattled loosely on its hinges, its bars bent in every direction as though twisted by brute force rather than crafted by hands. Several bars were missing entirely, leaving gaps wide enough for a grown man to step through.
The soldiers stepped in carelessly but the prisoner hesitated for a second making them pull him forcibly. Immediately the floor below them rustled and they started going up.
They did not pause for the loud moans echoing from the lower floors, nor for the cries and groans of men and women drifting from the middle levels. They ignored the pounding music thundering through the upper floors as well. Floor after floor, they climbed until the elevator ended at a solid metal wall sealing off the topmost level.
One of the soldiers unlocked the heavy door, and the three of them stepped inside.
Beyond the metal barrier stretched a hallway similar in structure to the one below, but everything here was smaller, tighter, colder. The rooms on either side were barely one-third the size of the quarters downstairs. Each cell had a narrow rectangular slit carved into the back wall, the only source of light. Instead of brick fronts, the cells were enclosed with barred walls and steel doors.
Each door had a small metal flap just a foot above the floor, and bent iron bars above it shaped the cell numbers, beginning from V400.
Inside each cramped room, a thick concrete block supported a cot, forming a crude bed. A toilet crouched in the back corner, with a small sink mounted to its right on the wall. But because of the heavy fog outside, only the faintest trace of sunlight seeped through the slits. Nearly every cell lay drowned in darkness, the hallway itself barely lit.
Almost every cell contained at least one prisoner, men and women alike, wearing the same white uniform as the cuffed man, though most of theirs were torn or soaked in dried blood. Some were gaunt, skeleton-thin. Some lay covered in bruises and gashes. Others had swollen faces or twisted limbs. Several women's clothes were ripped across their chests, their skin marked with dark bruises or splattered with blood. One cell even held a charred skeleton sprawled across the bed.
As they walked through the dim corridor, the cuffed man watched in silence yet sweat dripped down his temples. The soldiers, noticing it, snickered.
They stopped at an empty cell marked V222.
One soldier unlocked the door. The other shoved the prisoner inside so hard he slipped and hit the floor. They laughed loudly, stepped in, removed his cuffs, kicked him brutally in the stomach, and walked out.
While one soldier locked the door, the other leaned forward and peeked into the opposite cell.
A cold sweat burst down his neck. He shivered violently.
Curious, the second soldier turned and peered inside as well.
A man sat on the floor, his back resting against the sidewall. Only the outline of his body was visible in the faint, dying light. But his eyes, those hungry, burning eyes filled with pure bloodlust glowed in the darkness.
The moment the soldiers saw them, their bodies froze. Then they began trembling uncontrollably. Violently. As if their legs no longer obeyed them.
The man in the cell widened his eyes.
The soldiers shook harder, looking like frightened children dancing against their will.
Then the man blinked.
The spell broke.
Both soldiers darted down the hallway in a panic, clattering noisily back toward the stairs, desperate to escape whatever lurked inside that cell.