Lothar von Finsterherz stood with the female inquisitor in an empty training box behind the prison block. Concrete floor, a metal grate overhead, two cameras in opposite corners. The air stank of sweat, bleach, and something sour, like an old locker room. Two guards waited by the door, silent, watching the way people watch a job being done.
The inquisitor rarely lectured, but today there were bones to lay out.
“Every word costs you,” Wilt said. “Your vocal cords. The picture in your head. And the meaning you pour into it. If you don’t know what you’re trying to do, the word either fails or twists. Understand.”
The young man nodded. His throat was already dry.
Wilt pointed at the man they had brought in.
A prisoner in a gray tunic. Plastic restraints on his wrists, magnetic rings at his ankles. The prisoner watched from under his brow but did not thrash. The face belonged to someone who had seen plenty and grown tired of fear.
“This one,” Wilt said. “I asked for a volunteer. You train on him.”
The young man stared from her to the prisoner.
“Asked,” Lothar rasped. “Did he agree.”
The female inquisitor didn’t blink.
“This isn’t the kind of world where people agree,” Wilt said. “Go on. You remember the word.”
Finsterherz swallowed. Something inside resisted. Not pity, not really. Fear. The Lord Dragon knew what the word could do, and there was no rewinding afterward.
“Bandesh,” Lothar muttered.
“Louder,” Wilt said. “No whispering. This is not a prayer. This is a strike.”
He drew a breath and pulled himself together. A clean image. Not death. Not pain. Just stop, like a command yanked through the body for a handful of seconds.
He lifted his chin.
“Bandesh.”
The prisoner jerked, froze for a heartbeat, then moved again, as if shaking water off skin.
“That was it,” Wilt cut in, before relief could settle. “That was a flinch. The lock did not take. Again.”
The young man tried again.
Again.
Again.
Each attempt burned worse, like hot air dragged through the throat. The idea of freeze blurred. Anger crept in, and anger ruined the shape of it.
On the third day, a new prisoner. On the fifth, another.
Attempts came by the dozen. Sometimes it took, a second or two of true stillness, like someone had switched a person off. Sometimes nothing happened. Sometimes the prisoner dropped to his knees, clawed at his throat, and wheezed like he was being strangled.
The female inquisitor watched without warmth.
“Don’t feel sorry,” Wilt said. “Pity softens your voice. Softens your intent. You’re not a god and you’re not an executioner. You’re a tool. A tool has to work.”
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
The Lord Dragon hated her for that. The young man hated himself too.
Then the thing he feared finally arrived.
One of the prisoners froze and did not come back.
The word left Lothar and the man locked in place. Eyes open. Breathing. Not blinking. Not falling. Just standing there like a doll.
For a moment Lothar almost felt relief. It worked. Then a minute passed. Two. The man still stood.
“Inquisitor,” came out of him, and his voice broke.
Wilt stepped close, studied the prisoner’s face, snapped her fingers in front of the eyes.
Nothing.
“Say it again,” Wilt ordered.
“Why,” came out sharp, close to shouting. “Why.”
“To lift it,” Norcutt said. “Lift it.”
He tried. Pain sliced through his throat. The word came out thin, scraped raw.
Nothing happened.
The inquisitor struck the prisoner across the cheek. Then the shoulder. The body stayed upright, blank and breathing.
“Too late,” the female inquisitor said evenly. “You burned it.”
Lothar’s stomach dropped.
“What now.”
“Now he gets zeroed,” Wilt said. “He does not come back.”
The meaning landed without explanation. This place did not use that word to frighten people. This place used it to solve problems.
The next week brought more problems.
Five prisoners.
Five times the Lord Dragon misjudged it. Attempts to stop came too late. The pressure did not ease.
“Either you learn to control it,” Norcutt said, “or it controls you. One day the word comes out at the wrong person, in the wrong place.”
Then someone different arrived.
The new arrival came in calm, too calm. No eyes on the floor. No trembling. The face belonged to a man who did not believe in miracles.
“Bandesh,” Finsterherz said.
Nothing.
A blink, then a crooked smile.
“That’s it,” the prisoner asked. “Go again.”
Cold irritation slid through him. More force. More meaning. Not freeze now, but refusal. You will not move.
“Bandesh.”
A step forward, like a joke. The guards tensed.
Wilt lifted a hand.
“Enough. Take him out.”
Finsterherz stood there breathing hard.
“Why doesn’t it work.”
“Because there’s nothing in him,” Norcutt said. “Or he’s already broken. We have plenty of those. And because you’re still weak. Your word doesn’t cut yet. It scratches.”
The youth lost his voice completely. All that came out was a rasp. The inquisitor gave him a tincture and demanded silence for a full day.
A week later, training settled into what counted as normal. Stasis could hold a person for ten or fifteen seconds, sometimes half a minute, then release. No vegetables. No zeroing.
But every time his throat burned like a coal on the tongue. After a single word, the Lord Dragon had to sit and breathe like after a fight. The lesson finally held. Words were not for throwing.
While the training dragged on, Thomos and Goodman dug through the colony.
They moved through blocks, storage, mess halls, and the mines. They spoke to anyone still capable of speaking. They checked lists, shifts, cameras, routes.
Evenings brought them back exhausted and angry. Goodman most of all. Prisons had never sat well with Goodman, and here there was no pretense, no polite mask of necessity.
The prisoners’ lives were hell.
Mine shifts ran twelve hours. The air was heavy, dust thick enough to taste, vibrations in the bones. People were driven like livestock. When someone fell, nobody helped. Bodies got dragged aside. Food was slop. The clinic was theater. Penalties came for everything. A look. A word. A cough. Being too slow.
No wonder they wanted out.
The only question was how.
Then the guards came into focus.
Not the powered armor contractors, not Minton’s hired muscle. The locals. The ones with keys, cameras, schedules. The ones who could open a door without making it obvious. The ones who could look away if the price was right.
Wilt wrote names on a sheet, short and clean, no commentary.
These were the people Minton had on the ground.
-
Hugo Ranke, senior officer for Block A. Speaks quietly, but everyone listens. Loves order, loves being feared.
-
Sandor Becker, shift commander. Always chewing tobacco. Friendly with half the guard staff.
-
Marek Jordan, controls gates and passes. Polite like a clerk. Empty eyes.
-
Felix Dorn, manages lists and work assignments. Knows too much about everyone.
-
Grace Holton, med block. Officially a medic, in practice she decides who makes it to morning.
-
Peter Voss, surveillance and recordings. The one who can accidentally erase a minute of footage.
-
Remy Kalt, warehouse and rations. The kind of man people cling to when they want to live a little better than the rest.
That evening, once his voice came back, the female inquisitor spoke without softening.
“These are the ones who make a riot possible. Not the prisoners. Prisoners are force. Doors get opened by someone else.”
Lothar sat with a hand at his throat and nodded.
His thoughts went back to the chains inside.
He was a prisoner too. Not Block A, not the mines. A private cell built out of bone and breath.
And if the wrong mistake came, the result would be the same. Zeroed. No office. No paperwork. Just because it would be easier for everyone around him.