The man standing in the doorway wore his pride like a second uniform.
He was unremarkable in every measurable way — average height, average build, hair that sat where it was told, black formal clothes pressed into submission. None of it mattered. He looked at the slaves the way someone looks at furniture they've already decided isn't worth rearranging, and when he spoke, he used the tone people reserve for creatures they've concluded can't fully understand them.
"I trust you've all gotten acquainted. Rest time is over. It's nine o'clock." A beat. "Outside. Now. Immediately."
Everyone moved.
Everyone except the boy and Emilia.
"That's Otub," Emilia said, already pulling the boy toward the door by his arm. "Head servant. He decides what we do and when."
She said it the way someone explains weather — no complaint in it, just the flat acknowledgment of a thing that exists and will continue to exist regardless of how anyone feels about it. Then she dragged him outside with the energy of someone heading somewhere fun, and the boy had no choice but to go with her.
.....
The hours that followed were a living hell.
A block of iron came down on Carolit's foot during a transfer to the weapons factory — heavy enough that the sound it made on impact was the kind that travels up through the floor and into your spine. She didn't make a sound. Somehow that was worse.
Later, Emilia nearly fell into the molten iron.
She'd been leaning too far over the edge, reaching for something, and the moment came and went in less than a second — she was there, then she was caught, then she was safe. Hover mentioned afterward, in the casual tone of someone noting a minor inconvenience, that the man who grabbed her was a legend. The boy stored the word without yet knowing what to do with it.
As for the boy himself — the only reason he made it through the day without injury was that Hover never moved more than a few steps away from him. The old man navigated the factory the way someone navigates a place they've spent a lifetime learning the dangers of, which, the boy was beginning to suspect, was exactly what had happened.
After that, the day ended without further incident. More or less.
.....
That night they returned to the room.
Carolit walked in looking as though nothing had happened to her foot, which the boy found difficult to reconcile with what he'd watched happen to it earlier. She'd eaten one of the green pills — the same kind, he realized, that he'd been forced to swallow the day before he lost consciousness.
He waited until the room had quieted, then turned to Hover.
"Grandpa. I've been wanting to ask you something."
He'd grown attached to the old man quickly — not through any particular decision, just through the simple fact that Hover had stood close to him all day and made sure things didn't go wrong. He'd done the same for Emilia. In the end, they were just children.
"Go ahead."
"The green pill they gave Carolit — I took one yesterday, right before I lost consciousness. What is it?"
Hover looked at him for a moment, then made a small sound somewhere between amusement and understanding.
"No wonder you look like a newborn." He laughed quietly, then continued. "It's a low-grade healing pill. A medicinal compound with a near-miraculous ability to repair damage. For ordinary people like us, a low-grade one is enough to treat most non-fatal injuries. For legends, on the other hand, they're essentially useless — like swallowing a pebble."
The boy considered this.
"What are legends?"
Hover blinked — caught off guard for just a moment, having briefly forgotten that the boy remembered nothing. Then it came back to him, and he settled in to explain.
"Legends are people who have crossed the boundary of what a human being is supposed to be. They've become something beyond the normal limits — people with abilities that have no business existing."
"What kind of abilities?"
The boy cut in before Hover could find his rhythm, though the old man didn't seem to mind.
"Any kind you can imagine. People who can control fire. Who can detonate objects from a distance. Who can heal, or communicate across impossible distances without a phone — things a normal person simply cannot do. They first appeared—"
The door interrupted him.
.....
Otub stood in the frame again.
This time his expression carried something it hadn't before — a particular kind of eagerness, the sort that tries to dress itself up as professionalism and doesn't quite manage it.
"Hover." The way he said the name made clear he'd already decided everything that came after it. "You've been selected again."
The old man's face shifted into something complicated. Not surprise. The expression of someone watching an outcome they'd predicted arrive on schedule.
"Fine." He stood. "I'm coming."
Before he crossed the threshold he stopped, and put his hand on the boy's shoulder. It was a heavy hand, rough, the kind built by decades of things that leave marks. He leaned down and spoke quietly — but with a weight behind the words that made them feel like they'd traveled a long way before landing.
"Stay strong, boy. Don't let anyone take what belongs to you. And when you see a way out — any way out — take it. Get out of this cursed place."
He straightened. Walked out. The door closed.
The boy looked around the room.
Every face was dark.
He turned to Emilia.
"Emilia — where did Hover go?"
Emilia's smile arrived wide and immediate and completely hollow.
"Oh, Hover's been selected for the entertainment fights — they're events where slaves with legends fight each other, it's all very — he'll be fine, he's the strongest legend alive, did you know his ability lets him fire compressed air like actual bullets? They cause damage and weaken the target on impact, which means—"
"Who are you trying to fool, Emilia?"
Carolit's voice came from the corner. Flat. Surgical.
Emilia went quiet.
Galius said nothing, but something in the set of his expression made his position on the matter clear.
"You know he might not come back tonight. And if he does, the next fight will be harder. And the one after that will be harder still. Until eventually there's a fight he didn't choose to enter, and he doesn't walk out."
Emilia looked at the floor.
The wide manufactured smile was gone. In its place was something that had been underneath it the whole time.
"Do you think I don't know that?" Her voice was quiet now. "I watched Carlos die two months ago. His fourth fight."
"Then why are you lying to yourself?"
"I'm not—"
"Accept that he might not come back. Take the boy and go to sleep. Tomorrow will be hard."
Emilia bit down on her lip until it went white, then led the boy to his bed without another word.
.....
The boy lay in the dark and turned the day over in his mind.
He hadn't known Hover long enough to know him well. But he'd known him long enough to know what it felt like to have someone stand close on purpose — to put themselves between you and the worst of a place without being asked. The possibility that this might be the last night that was true sat in his chest like something with mass.
He kept telling himself it wasn't true.
He was still trying to believe it when he heard the sound.
It came from the direction of Emilia's bed — small, muffled, carefully contained, clearly hoping no one would notice. A room that dark and that silent doesn't allow for secrets, though. There was nowhere for the sound to go.
No one slept that night.
The room filled slowly with a quiet that wasn't quiet at all — threaded through with sounds too small to name, turning the dark into something closer to a vigil.
The kind you hold when you don't yet know whether you're mourning.