1 Year 5 Months and 23 Days until the Fall of House Romulus

  The gates opened without a word.

  No clanking chains. No shouted orders. Just a slow, mechanical grind as iron parted wide enough to swallow the wagons whole. No crest marked the arch. No banner flew above. Only stone, dark, smooth, and cold as the sky hanging over it. The kind of gate that did not open for visitors. Only for arrivals.

  The wheels creaked as they passed through, the snow giving way to polished stone. Beneath them, the clatter of iron rims softened, absorbed by a courtyard so precisely laid it seemed unnatural, as if every brick had been placed under threat.

  Mikhael did not speak. No one did. The silence was heavier here. Without the wagons and the chains, this was a place made for whispers; raising a voice felt like a sin. Not the quiet of sleep or exhaustion, but something sharper, imposed, enforced. He held Lionel closer as the boy shifted weakly in his arms, barely conscious, but alive. That was all that mattered.

  Inside the walls, the world was different. The air felt thinner, not colder, but compressed, like something vast pressed down from above. The kind of pressure that bent spines and broke voices. Everything here was quiet, not because it was peaceful, but because it had been made that way.

  Snow had been cleared with meticulous care, swept away from every path and corner, leaving no trace of disorder. The buildings were not the crumbling structures Mikhael had seen in the towns. These were stone and steel, uniform and austere. Tall enough to loom, but not enough to draw attention. Functional. Ruthless.

  Slaves moved through the estate in lines. Not groups. Lines. Perfectly spaced, silent, coordinated like parts of a single machine. Men and women of all ages, all in the same dull grey uniforms, heads down, eyes averted. Their collars pulsed faintly, each marked with a seal, identical in shape, glowing with a tight, controlled light.

  They did not look afraid. They looked emptied.

  No overseers barked commands. None were needed. There were no shouts, no lashes. Only silence and movement. Discipline carved not by loyalty or respect, but by fear so deep it had turned into habit.

  Mikhael felt his chest tighten. This was no plantation. This was a factory of obedience.

  The wagons turned down a central path, flanked by thin black trees whose bare limbs held no snow at all.

  A low hum began to rise beneath the wheels, faint and steady, almost like the breath of the estate itself. Magic. Seals. Something vast beneath the surface.

  And then, ahead, they saw it.

  Romulus's manor.

  It was not gaudy. Not bright. It did not need to be.

  The structure rose on a slight rise beyond the inner yards, its black stone reflecting nothing. Wide steps climbed toward a pair of massive doors framed by carved pillars whose markings seemed to shift at the edge of Mikhael's vision. The windows were tall and narrow, like archer slits in a fortress wall. No guards stood watch. No torches burned outside. Yet he felt eyes on him all the same.

  The wagons did not head toward it.

  They turned aside, rumbling toward a lower, circular building that sat at the heart of the estate like a stone lid. Squat, windowless, its walls were smooth and seamless, broken only by a single wide entrance that yawned black and deep. Smoke did not rise from it. No sound came from within. It simply waited.

  The wagons slowed.

  They stopped in a broad circular yard before the building, hemmed in by thick walls and silent watchers. No orders were shouted. The guards only gestured. Move. Out. Now.

  The new prisoners, those who had survived the journey, were unshackled and shoved down onto the stone. Their legs shook. Their backs bowed from cold and fatigue. No one ran.

  Mikhael's boots hit the ground last. The stone was warm. He frowned. Then he saw why.

  Beneath their feet, carved into the courtyard's surface, lay an enormous seal. Its lines were subtle, threaded between the cobblestones with a hand so skilled they looked like natural cracks until you stared. Circular, layered, impossible to take in all at once. The moment Mikhael stepped fully onto it, the air changed.

  He had walked across hundreds of seals since that night: etched into collars, shackles, weapons, even into the cobbles of his village square and the planks beneath the wagon. But this one felt different. Not like an object. Not like a tool. Like a place. Like the seal itself was a presence, coiled beneath the stone, watching.

  His boot scuffed the edge of one of its lines and a pulse ran up his leg. Subtle, faint. Like stepping into a memory. He glanced around. The design was massive, too wide to see in full from where he stood. Thin lines burned faintly between the stones, curves inside curves, symbols nested inside symbols. Something about them tugged at a distant memory.

  He had seen seals like this before. Not on chains. Not in books. At temples.

  The kind his mother used to drag him to during harvest festivals, where priests in crimson robes whispered prayers into the stone and swore it listened. Back then they were just holy etchings, rituals, symbols of protection and peace. The high priests used them for healing, but only for those who could pay fortunes. A commoner could sell everything he owned for a blessing and still end up dead, just slower, from hunger instead of sickness.

  Mikhael had traced those temple lines with his fingers while Lionel wept in his lap. He had never imagined they could be used to hold something down. Or force something to its knees.

  His thoughts cut off at the sound of hooves, slow and deliberate, approaching from the manor above.

  A white carriage rolled into the courtyard from behind the manor, its wheels soundless on the polished stone. It moved with perfect grace, guided by two slaves, their clothes etched with the same sealwork that lined the ground. The windows were dark, opaque. It stopped just before the seal and went perfectly still.

  No one moved. No one stepped out. The silence stretched, growing heavier with every breath. Even the guards looked unsure. One of them shifted, then stepped forward. His armor was heavier than the others', his robe edged in red. In his hand he held a staff, black wood capped with a circular seal of iron and brass.

  He walked to the edge of the seal and struck the staff against the ground. The sound echoed like a stone dropped into a well.

  "Bow," he said.

  The seal erupted to life.

  Light tore through the courtyard as the lines between the stones ignited. Not fire. Not glow. Something heavier. Something alive. A low vibration shuddered through the stone, pulsing outward like a heartbeat. The ground began to hum. And then it pulled.

  Mikhael felt it instantly, a weight dragging against his legs, against his spine, as if gravity had doubled. Around him, the others cried out. Some collapsed outright. Others dropped to their knees in confusion, pain, terror. They did not have a choice. Their bodies folded to the stone as if the earth itself were claiming them.

  All except one.

  Mikhael stood.

  The pull gripped him just as it did the others, but it did not own him. His legs locked. His spine straightened. The pressure roared in his ears, demanding he fall. He did not.

  The guard's head snapped toward him.

  His expression twisted, not with anger, not yet, but with disbelief, as if his eyes were lying. He raised the staff again and slammed it down. The seal flared brighter.

  "I said bow!" he barked.

  The pressure surged. Mikhael's knees buckled, just a little. The stone trembled beneath his boots. The air itself seemed to weigh more now, as if it were being poured into his lungs with every breath. But still, he did not kneel. He stayed upright. Shaking, but standing.

  The guard's face tightened. His grip on the staff faltered as he stared at Mikhael, no longer as a prisoner but as a threat. His jaw clenched, his lips drawn tight as if trying to pull more power from a well already dry. Then he coughed, a harsh, ragged sound.

  He tried to stifle it with his hand, but blood spattered across his palm, and the red stone on his staff showed cracks. His breathing turned sharp and labored. His body hunched, knees shaking, not from the cold but from strain.

  The seal beneath him pulsed again, and Mikhael realized the truth.

  The power needed to force a crowd to its knees did not come from the seal alone. It came from the will behind it. And the guard had overreached.

  He lifted the staff again, hand trembling, gathering himself for one last push. His lips parted to shout, but the words never came.

  "Stop. No further."

  The voice came from the carriage. It was not loud. It did not need to be.

  The guard froze mid-motion. His arm dropped. Then his knees. He collapsed to the ground, wheezing, soaked with sweat. He looked like a man who had just finished digging his own grave.

  The carriage door opened with a soft click.

  A man stepped out. Tall. Straight-backed. Dressed in a tailored black suit, unadorned except for how precise it was. His shoes tapped lightly on the stone, every step deliberate. His hair was dark and slicked back, not a strand out of place.

  His hands were bare, save for a single ring, silver, set with a blood-red stone so clear, so perfect, it looked as if it were still burning from the forge. Around his collar, where another noble might wear a tie or chain, sat a polished red stone in a dark metal clasp. It gleamed like glass but held depth like blood, an emblem of power worn not for decoration but for recognition. No one needed to be told what it meant.

  He walked forward slowly, eyes skimming across the kneeling prisoners as if he were choosing a book from a shelf. Curiosity lit his expression, but there was no warmth in it. He was not angry. He was not impressed. He was studying.

  He passed the slumped guard without pausing and took a black book from his coat and opened it with one hand, then came to a halt just behind him.

  The guard lifted his head, shoulders quivering. "M–my Lord Romulus, I…"

  "Kill yourself," Romulus said. Calm. Thoughtful. As if giving instructions on where to place a chair.

  The guard's mouth opened, then closed. His face drained of color.

  "My Lord, please," he whispered, hands shaking. "I did not… he would not… please revoke the order, I beg you…"

  But the seals on his armor were already beginning to glow. Pale red at first. Then deeper. Thicker. The light crawled up his neck like vines, pulsing in time with the stone in Romulus's ring.

  Romulus said nothing more. He did not need to.

  The guard's breath came faster, turning ragged and wet. His hand flew to his dagger on instinct, then recoiled. Then reached again.

  "No," he whimpered, eyes wide and slick with terror. "Please…"

  Romulus did not look at him.

  The guard pulled the dagger free. The ring flared. The blade pierced his throat in one clean stroke. He dropped to the ground with a quiet thud, blood pooling fast across the stones and soaking into the lines of the seal beneath him.

  Romulus exhaled lightly, as if brushing away a speck of dust. Then he turned his gaze forward, toward the only one still standing.

  No one moved. No one spoke. The fallen guard lay motionless at the edge of the circle, his blood still warm on the stone. Romulus walked past the corpse without a glance and stepped into the center of the seal. The air folded around him, drawn tight.

  His gaze swept across the gathered prisoners, dozens of them, heads bowed, knees shaking, bodies pressed to the ground not from loyalty but from instinct. From fear.

  He raised one hand. His voice was quiet and clear.

  "Move."

  The seal flared. Not violently, just a shimmer, like breath across glass. The effect was immediate. One by one, the kneeling prisoners rose to their feet, limbs jerking as if pulled by invisible threads. Mikhael watched them stagger into line, eyes dull and unfocused.

  The seal compelled them, yes. But even without it, he could see the truth.

  They would have obeyed anyway.

  Romulus did not look at them as they moved. He looked at him.

  Slowly, with the patience of a man who knew he had all the time in the world, Romulus stepped toward Mikhael. His boots tapped lightly against the stone, each step precise, almost choreographed.

  He stopped in front of him. Close.

  Mikhael did not flinch. He did not lower his eyes. The weight pressing against his back, the thrum of the seal under his feet, none of it mattered.

  They stared at one another.

  Romulus studied him, not like a tool and not like a threat. Like a puzzle. Like a page in a book, he had not yet read.

  Then he crouched.

  His right hand lifted, the ring catching the dim light. The red stone burned faintly. His other hand rested on his knee, fingers relaxed, like a sculptor considering his work.

  "Not a slave," he said quietly, his tone almost thoughtful. "Too much contempt in those blue eyes of yours."

  He tilted his head slightly, the barest hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

  "But now you belong to me. And thus, to the Holy Messenger."

  The ring began to glow more brightly. The amulet at his collar answered, its stone lighting in unison, red answering red. His voice dropped, soft as a knife sliding home.

  "And to me… you bow."

  The seal ignited.

  It was not fire. It was not heat. It was will, an invisible command that struck not the flesh, but the nerves beneath it. Mikhael's muscles locked. His knees buckled. He tried to resist, to stay on his feet, but his body betrayed him. The weight of the seal surged up from the stone, dragging the breath from his lungs.

  He fell.

  One knee hit the ground. Then the other. Not from fear. Not by choice. His head dipped on its own.

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  Romulus exhaled, barely more than a breath.

  "As it should be."

  The seal dimmed. The red stone on his ring faded back to black. Romulus stood over Mikhael in silence for a heartbeat longer, then turned his back and walked away, his footsteps light and unhurried on the warm stone.

  The gathered prisoners didn't move. No one seemed sure they were allowed to. But the guards did. They moved with practised precision. Orders were not shouted; they were implied. One pointed left, another right. The line began to split.

  Two groups.

  Mikhael's arms trembled as he forced himself upright, still feeling the phantom weight of the seal pressed along his spine. Lionel swayed beside him, confused and weak, barely managing to stand.

  The first group, those with broader shoulders and hardened hands, were steered toward the lower fields, down a spotless stone path that sloped away from the main yard. No one explained what waited there. They didn't need to. Everyone knew what fieldwork meant.

  Lionel was among them.

  "No," Mikhael muttered, moving fast, pulling his brother back by the arm. "He stays with me."

  Two guards stepped in front of him. Prisoners, like the rest, but marked as something else. Their grey uniforms were clean, etched with intricate seals. Their faces were empty, trained into stillness.

  One of them, the taller one, looked straight at Mikhael. Not as a guard. Not as an enemy. As a man.

  He did not raise a hand. He did not shout. He leaned in, just enough that only Mikhael could hear.

  "It is better where he is going," he whispered. "Trust me. You are being sent to something worse, child."

  Mikhael froze.

  He stared into the man's eyes and saw it there, beneath the exhaustion and the obedience: compassion. Buried deep, dulled by years, but still alive. It chilled him more than all the snow outside the walls.

  He looked at Lionel. His brother clung to his wrist, barely awake, too weak to speak. Mikhael's fingers dug into his sleeve.

  "If I pull him back, they take him from me anyway, he thought. Or they hurt him for it."

  Slowly, his grip loosened. But he did not let go. Not yet.

  Then, slowly, reluctantly, painfully, he let go.

  Lionel was led away without a sound. He did not cry. He did not look back. He just walked with the others, shoulders hunched, eyes wide and dim. He was just a child. What did he know.

  Mikhael watched him until the line disappeared behind the rows of buildings.

  Then Romulus's voice rolled through the courtyard again. Not booming. Not angry. Just clear.

  "Harvester," he said, speaking to Greaves. "You have brought me something rare."

  Romulus turned, gesturing toward Mikhael with the smallest tilt of his head. "A harvest like this deserves compensation."

  He raised one hand and a servant stepped forward with a chest of blackened wood trimmed in silver. The lid opened with a faint click, revealing neat stacks of gold coins, each stamped with the imperial crest. Romulus glanced at Greaves. The harvester bowed deep, forehead nearly touching the stone.

  "I am honored, my Lord Duke," Greaves said. "It was my privilege to serve, and I hope you excuse the late shipments. The winters are tough."

  Romulus did not answer. He simply turned and walked back toward his carriage, the red stone on his ring catching the light with every step.

  Mikhael did not speak as the guards moved through the crowd, tapping shoulders, pulling people from one line into another. The broad-shouldered farmers and stronger prisoners, those who had not yet been hollowed out by the road, were driven toward an upper yard and a squat stone building whose long windows faced the fields.

  He was not sent that way.

  A hand closed around his arm. Another took the man beside him. A smaller group was split off and guided across the courtyard toward a different structure that clung closer to the manor's foundations. It was lower, heavier, half-sunk into the stone like something that had tried to crawl out of the earth and failed. No windows faced the yard, only a single door set in a frame crowded with sealwork.

  Mikhael's steps slowed. The seals around the arch were not decorative. These were precise, tight, etched in patterns he recognised from collars and shackles, but denser, as if the stone itself had been ordered to obey.

  The door opened.

  Cold air breathed out, smelling of rust and wet stone. The guards pushed them inside.

  The building beyond was nothing like the clean symmetry of the estate above. It was older. Dirtier. The walls were slick with moisture, pitted and uneven, black mold blooming where the light could not reach. Water dripped somewhere in the dark, a steady, hollow tapping that echoed through the corridor. The floor sloped in places, patched with iron plates to keep it from collapsing.

  He was led down a short flight of stairs. Each step took him deeper, beneath the polished courtyards and swept paths, into the part of the estate that was never meant to be seen.

  The chamber at the bottom opened like a wound.

  Rows of prisoners lined the room, chained at wrists and ankles, slumped over etched stone circles that glowed faintly beneath them. The seals pulsed in a slow rhythm, each beat tugging at something unseen inside their bodies. Their heads hung. Their mouths gaped. No screaming. No moaning. Just the dull rattle of breath and the scrape of chains.

  Mikhael stopped. A guard shoved him between the shoulder blades.

  The seals beneath the prisoners were not isolated. Each was part of a larger pattern, linked by thin glowing lines carved into the floor. They ran like veins across the stone, drawing everything toward a single point at the far end of the chamber.

  There, encased in a steel frame, floated a cluster of crystals. Large. Faceted. Vibrating faintly in the still air. Each one flickering with light that churned like liquid trapped inside glass.

  The light was not bright. It pulsed like breath, dimming and flaring. Each pulse matched the rhythm of the seals. A flare of light. A tremble in the prisoners' limbs. A breath stolen and fed forward.

  Mikhael stared.

  He had seen crystals like these before.

  Greaves carried one on his staff. Romulus wore them on his hand and at his throat. In the temples, priests had worn smaller versions tucked into their robes, claiming they held blessings from the Holy Messenger. He remembered them glowing faintly in the candlelight while he sat beside his mother on cold temple floors.

  Back then, it had been faith. Here, it was fuel.

  They were not symbols. They were storage.

  The Empire had built this. Built it to feed off its own people.

  Something in him cracked. The holiness of the Messenger, the gods the priests upheld, the promises of protection and guidance, all of it collapsed at once. It was not a handful of bad men doing this. It was the whole order of the world, rotten from the roots.

  "I reject it all," he thought. "No god. No Messenger. No priest will save me. I will save myself. I will burn it all to the ground."

  Yet he was forced to his knees beside an empty seal, the chain clicking into place around his ankles. A collar followed, heavy and cold, pressing against the back of his neck. The seal beneath him shimmered once in response, acknowledging the weight.

  It had not activated. Not yet. But it would. He could feel it, the hum in the stone, the low, patient hunger.

  No one spoke. No one looked at him. The air was thick with silence, broken only by the slow crackling inside the crystals. Like coals left too long in the fire, burning themselves hollow.

  There was no warning. No signal.

  One moment, Mikhael was sitting in the cold, wrists chained, collar biting at his throat. The next, the seal beneath him woke. It did not flare. It did not scream. It simply turned on and tore him open.

  It felt like a hand shoved into his chest, not cutting, not slicing, just grabbing and pulling. As if his ribs had been peeled apart and every part of him that was not blood or bone was being scraped out from inside. Again. And again. And again.

  There was no rhythm to brace against. No wave to ride. Just extraction, constant and grinding.

  He could not scream. Could not even breathe. His muscles locked, his arms shook, but he could not move. Not a twitch. Not a shiver. His body did not belong to him anymore. It belonged to the seal. The chain. The stone.

  He tried to lift his head, just a little. It took everything. His vision swam, the world narrowing to a tunnel of light and dark. His hearing dulled, as if he were underwater, or trapped somewhere deep inside his own skull.

  Distantly, he wondered if others were screaming. Dozens of them, howling and sobbing, their voices shredded and raw.

  He could not hear them clearly.

  He heard only the seal humming. Soft. Merciless.

  The Empire had built this. Built it to feed off its own people.

  Something in him cracked. The holines…

  The crystal far ahead flickered. Once. Twice. Each pulse tugged at something inside him, not flesh, not bone, something warm that still resisted. With every beat of light, he felt another piece of that warmth peel away and vanish.

  It did not stop. It did not slow. There was no sign it ever would.

  Time unraveled. It could have been hours. Days. Longer. Mikhael could not tell. The weight of the seal never truly lifted. It just kept dragging, dragging, dragging, scraping whatever was left of him toward the cluster of crystals.

  His body had long since stopped aching. Now it felt hollow, like the pain had eaten its way through and was clawing at whatever lay beneath. He tried to count his breaths. Lost track. Tried again. Lost it faster.

  He had known exhaustion before. Running through the fields until his lungs burned. Collapsing under the summer sun. Working until his limbs went numb.

  This was not that.

  This was absence.

  Ahead, the central crystal flared. Not a gentle pulse this time, but a hard, jagged spike of light. It throbbed, once, twice, brighter with each beat, the glow forcing his eyes to narrow.

  Then it shattered.

  The sound was not a crack. It was a detonation, a sharp, crushing bang that tore through the chamber. Light burst outward in a white-red wave. The floor jumped beneath him. Dust and shards of stone sprayed the air. Somewhere to his right, someone screamed, then went silent.

  The chain at his ankles snapped tight, then went slack.

  The world rang. His hearing collapsed into a high, shrill whine. The seal beneath him flared one last time, desperate, then went dark. The humming stopped. The pull vanished.

  Silence fell heavier than the noise.

  Mikhael sagged, his muscles no longer held upright by the seal's grip. His chest convulsed in a ragged breath that felt like it belonged to someone else. The crystal cluster at the far end of the room now had a gap where one of the seven had hung. Fractured glass glittered on the stone around it, still smoking faintly.

  For a long moment, no one moved.

  Then, somewhere behind him, iron bolts scraped. A latch turned with a soft, precise click.

  His cell door opened.

  He could not lift his head. Could not even turn his eyes fully. But he saw the shoes that crossed the threshold. Clean black leather. No mud, no scuffs, no dust. Wrong for this place. Wrong for this entire room.

  Not guard boots. Not Romulus's polished heels.

  Someone else.

  "Master Reaper," one of the collared guards said quietly.

  Footsteps. Unhurried. Measured.

  A man's voice followed, smooth and level, almost conversational. "So that is where it came from," he said. "That spike nearly tripped half the network."

  He walked further into Mikhael's field of view. Dark coat. Gloved hands. Eyes that swept the ruined crystal and then the boy on the seal with the same detached interest.

  The Reaper stopped in front of Mikhael's circle. The dormant lines around him caught a faint echo of red, then faded again.

  "You burned out one of my cores," he observed. Not angry. Just noting a fact. "Shattered it clean through. No warning. No preparation." A brief hum of thought. "Those take time to grow."

  Mikhael's breath rasped in and out, thin and dry. He tried to glare, but his eyelids barely twitched.

  "Can't fuss over it now," the Reaper went on. "What is broken is broken." His gaze lingered, weighing more than the seal ever had. "But you are still here. That is… interesting."

  He turned his head slightly toward the doorway.

  "Unchain him," he said. "Carefully. I want him conscious later."

  The guards moved at once. Cold fingers worked clumsy at the locks around Mikhael's ankles and wrists. The collar remained.

  The Reaper watched, then spoke again, as if deciding something in that moment.

  "Take him to B3," he said. "I want him under that section from now on."

  The words meant nothing to Mikhael.

  But the guards stiffened.

  "Yes, Master Reaper," one of them answered.

  They hauled Mikhael to his feet. His legs barely remembered how to stand. As they dragged him away from the dead seal and the broken crystal, he caught one last glimpse of the cluster at the far end of the room, now uneven, lopsided.

  "Good," he thought weakly. "Let it all break."

  Rough hands hauled him upright. His legs did not agree. His feet dragged more than walked as they pulled him out of the chamber, his head lolling, vision blurring at the edges. Stone walls slid past in a grey smear. Lantern light. Iron doors. The faint hum of other seals buried in the rock.

  Stairs.

  He felt those more than saw them. His body lurched as they dragged him down one flight, then another, the air growing colder and damper with each level. The noise of the upper halls faded behind them. Down here the sound was different. Closer. A low, constant vibration in the stone, like the building itself was breathing through its teeth.

  They hauled him through another doorway and dropped him to his knees.

  This chamber was narrower than the first, ceiling lower, the air thick and metallic, like old blood. Rows of circles were carved into the floor, tighter together, each one bound with heavier chains. The seals here were darker, lines cut deeper into the stone, the glow within them a dull, hungry red. Most of them were already lit. Not flickering. Steady. Full.

  Mikhael's thoughts didn't come in full sentences anymore. Just flashes, phrases stuck together by panic and exhaustion. "Lower. Worse. This is where they send the ones who last."

  They fastened him in place without ceremony. Ankles. Wrists. The collar scraped against the stone as they forced his head forward. The chain clicked into the floor ring with a sound that seemed too loud for the cramped room.

  No warning. No build-up.

  The seal beneath him woke.

  It felt like someone shoved a hand into his chest and started pulling again. Not cutting. Grabbing. Ripping. His ribs were a cage being pried open, every breath a theft. There was no rhythm to brace against, no wave to ride. Just constant extraction, grinding and cold.

  He could not scream. His throat locked. His jaw clenched so hard his teeth cracked against each other. His muscles seized, arms trembling, but they might as well have belonged to someone else. His body was an empty bucket the seal had every right to tip.

  The crystal brightened with each pull. Flicker. Flare. Brighter. Brighter. He blinked up once, vision swimming, and saw his own reflection warped in its surface, small and pale and already half gone.

  Time lost meaning.

  It could have been hours. It could have been days. The weight of the seal never truly lifted. When it eased, it did not feel like mercy, only like a hand loosening its grip to take a better one. His strength, his warmth, even his thoughts were scraped out of him and fed upward into the crystal until he felt hollow, like something scooped clean.

  Eventually it stopped. Not because the seal was finished. Because he was spent.

  The glow above him steadied. Not flickering like before. Full now. Satisfied.

  They fed him.

  Water. Bread. Just enough. Not for kindness. For function. Let the blood come back. Let the energy crawl slowly into his limbs again. Then the seal lit up once more.

  And again.

  And again.

  No one told him how many days passed. Time was no longer measured by sun or moon, only by the flare of the crystals and the low hum under his bones. Sometimes they skipped a day. Sometimes they did not. He stopped trying to count.

  He tried to remember Lionel's voice. He couldn't.

  Once, when the seal dimmed, he saw a body being dragged out from the far row. Limbs limp. Skin grey. Head lolling to the side. No one asked who it had been. No one wept. They just looked away.

  The guards did not react. Neither did the Reaper.

  Another prisoner was chained into the empty place before the next activation.

  Then, more light.

  More draining.

  More silence.

  He started to feel things that were not there. The shape of his fingers, the curve of his back, the floor beneath him, all of it blurred, as if his body had stopped belonging to him and now existed somewhere just out of reach. His thoughts did not wander. They fractured. A sound. A flicker. A smell. The feeling of blood crawling through his limbs when he was a child, running too fast through long grass. He felt it now, even though he was not running. Even though there was no grass. Even though he could not remember why he had ever run at all.

  Sometimes it felt like he was shrinking. His body stayed the same size, but everything inside collapsed inward, folding tighter and tighter into itself. As if the seal were trying to make him small enough to fit into something else. As if he were being reshaped from the inside. Stripped down. Hollowed.

  "I bragged I would get out of here alone, and I cannot even move my fingers properly. Some saviour. I really am a slave."

  He no longer knew how many people were in the chamber. Their sounds had become part of the stone, echoes that had forgotten where they began. Moans, sobbing, breathless gasps, all blending into one long groan, like wind pushing through cracks in a dead building. At some point he heard someone beg. Not with words, just a noise. Short. Raw. No one came. No one even looked up.

  Time bent inward. There were no moments, only stretches. He could not remember if he had slept. If he had dreamed. If he had woken. He remembered only the seal flaring back to life, again and again, and the way it felt like being chewed through bone and memory at the same time. There was no beginning to the pain anymore. No edge to it. It simply existed. Like he did. A fact.

  He tried to find words for what he felt. Pain. Emptiness. Cold. Hunger. None of them fit. They were too small. Too human. Whatever this was, it did not have a name he could remember.

  When they dragged the body away beside him, he did not look. When a new one was dropped into place, he did not flinch. He could not tell if he was still resisting, or if there was simply nothing left in him to resist with. The seal wanted more anyway. It always wanted more.

  His fingers twitched once against the chain. Barely. Almost nothing. But he felt it.

  "How easily I have given up," Mikhael thought. "How easily they broke me and made me docile. Maybe they would not even need a seal to make me bow if they told me to…"

  The thought burned.

  "No. I will not bow. Not now. Not ever. They can drain me, they can kill me, but I will not kneel for them. One chance. One. And the first I get, I will break free and burn all of this to the ground."

  He did not know how long he stayed like that, knees aching, back curved, skin clammy and tight against his bones. The seal stopped. But its echo lived in his chest like something half-dead and still breathing. He was no longer sure he would ever stand on his own again. Not without the collar. Not without being pulled.

  The world felt heavy and distant and far away. He was not sure if he had moved. Or blinked. Or breathed.

  Maybe that was for the best.

  Shoes.

  Click. Click. Click.

  Not hurried. Not careful. Just familiar.

  The Reaper crouched beside him, close enough for Mikhael to see the lines in his face and the gleam of the crystal ring on his hand.

  "A shame," he said softly, like he was talking to a corpse he liked. "Such a valuable piece being pulled from me. You were efficient, boy. Clean. Like wine from a bottle that never stopped pouring. I will miss that."

  "Good," Mikhael thought. "Choke on the memory."

  The Reaper's gaze slid down to the collar at Mikhael's neck. His hand closed around the latch and snapped it open with a careless jerk. Cold iron slipped away and hit the floor with a dull clink.

  For a heartbeat, Mikhael almost expected to feel different. Lighter. Free.

  Nothing changed. The weight was still there. Just deeper.

  "You are going to the Duke now," the Reaper said. "I imagine you will be treated differently there."

  His tone stayed smooth, almost bored. Only his eyes betrayed anything, a faint glint of interest when he looked Mikhael over.

  "But I do hope I get to see you again."

  "You will," Mikhael thought, the words slow and heavy in his skull. "But not like you think."

  The Reaper stood and stepped back. A soldier entered, not collared, not hollow-eyed, but a real guard in polished leather. He grabbed Mikhael by the arm and hauled him upright.

  Mikhael's legs moved. That surprised him more than the collar coming off.

  "Still mine," he realised. "They didn't take everything."

  His knees trembled, but they didn't fold. Not completely. The room tilted at the edges of his vision as they dragged him toward the door. The hum of the seals faded behind him, replaced by the slow scrape of his own boots on stone.

  He looked back once. Just once.

  Someone else was already being chained where he had been. The new prisoner's head hung low. He didn't ask who Mikhael was. He didn't look at him. He just knelt when they pushed his shoulders down.

  "Readjust the crystal before draining him," the Reaper said, already turning away. "This one cannot bear it."

  Mikhael watched the man's hand move, watched him point almost lazily at the new victim.

  "Just work to you," Mikhael thought. "We are just weights to hang on your seals."

  The chamber swallowed the new screams without changing. It went on without Mikhael exactly as it had before he came. Exactly as it would if he died on the next step.

  "A mistake letting me go," he told himself, clinging to the thought like a handhold. "I will make sure to use this well."

  He took one last look at the rows of bent backs and the man being chained in his place.

  "I will come for you," he thought. "As long as I breathe, I will try to save you."

  The door closed behind him.