I awoke abruptly, disoriented by a blinding flash of light that seemed to consume my senses. Gradually regaining consciousness, I found myself in a cold, dimly-lit stone cell. The air was heavy with a musty odor, and the only source of light filtered in through a small, high window, casting eerie shadows on the worn stone walls. Around me, cramped within the confines of the cell, were hundreds of others like me—Asians of various ethnicities, ranging in age from what appeared to be early adolescence to late teens. There was an equal split between males and females, totaling exactly a hundred souls in that bleak and claustrophobic space.
As I gathered my bearings, trying to make sense of my surroundings, a gruff voice interrupted the silence. A bald, yellow-skinned warden with a disdainful smirk entered our midst, his eyes scanning us with a mixture of amusement and indifference.
"I've provided you with a bit of cloth to cover your 'precious' bodies," he sneered, his voice echoing off the stone walls. With a mocking laugh, he turned and left, disappearing into the shadows of the prison corridors.
Confusion and fear gripped us as we huddled against the iron bars that confined us. Similar cells stretched as far as I could see, each filled with young people like myself, captured from all corners of the world and seemingly trapped in this grim, unknown place.
"Why are there only minors in this prison? What is happening here?" My thoughts raced, struggling to comprehend the bizarre and terrifying reality unfolding before me. Just moments ago, I had been in a classroom, and now... could it be true that I had been summoned to another world? But this reality was far from any fantastical imagination—it was a stark and chilling nightmare.
Before long, the harsh voice of an armored guard shattered our uneasy silence. Clad in formidable iron armor adorned with a red plume on his helmet and a crimson aban insignia on his chest plate, he wielded a gleaming yellow-painted bronze spear with authority. This was the uniform of Count Heilop's guards, marking their dominion over this bleak territory.
The guard struck the iron bars with a force that reverberated through the cell, jolting us all awake and into line. We moved as commanded, filing out into the open under the watchful gaze of our captors.
"Wait! These are the newly summoned ones; let the Examiner inspect them," bellowed another guard, thrusting his spear threateningly towards a boy of similar age to me. Bewildered and afraid, over a hundred of us cautiously approached a peculiar white cube placed nearby.
As we tentatively placed our hands upon it, the cube revealed its judgment. For some, including myself, the cube turned a solemn gray. Others saw a chaotic swirl of colors—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple—constantly shifting and changing. And then there were those unfortunate few for whom the cube turned pitch black. It was a fateful determination that would decide our fate.
Without hesitation, the guards separated us into groups based on the cube's judgment. Those marked with black were forcibly escorted to ominous-looking laboratories. Those with the swirling colors met a more immediate and brutal end at the hands of the guards' yellow-speared violence.
"Why are you killing them?" cried out a 12-year-old boy among us, his voice trembling with a mixture of anger and fear.
"This is the order of the entire empire!" retorted a guard, his blows raining down on the boy until he lay still and silent, another casualty of this merciless regime.
"Does anyone else have questions!?" the guard demanded of us, his voice a chilling reminder of our utter helplessness.
Those of us left—no more than 80 in number—cowered in fear, bowing our heads meekly as instructed. We were then swiftly divided into five random groups. I found myself assigned to a group destined for the fields, where our grueling tasks began without delay.
In those grim times, there were those who, driven by desperation or ambition, ventured recklessly into the depths of the forest in search of agarwood, rare herbs, and precious timber. The forest, however, was no sanctuary; it was a deadly labyrinth where many perished, their bodies claimed by venomous serpents and wild beasts lurking in the underbrush. The cries of the fallen were drowned by the savage cries of nature, and the earth, ever unyielding, absorbed their blood without mercy.
Others sought their fortune in the murky waters, wading through rivers and streams in pursuit of fish, shrimp, crabs, and the elusive river pearls that shimmered like fleeting hopes. Yet, for many, the river's bounty turned to poison. Disease spread like wildfire, insidious and relentless, as bacterial infections claimed the bodies of those who thought they could conquer nature's waterways. The very water that promised sustenance became their undoing, carrying death in its currents.
Still, there were those who descended into the bowels of the earth, drawn to the mines where sunlight dared not tread. The darkness there was absolute, suffocating, as they toiled endlessly in the oppressive depths. They surrendered their bodies to the brutal demands of the slave master, offering up their labor—pounds of coal, iron, sulfur, copper, zinc, and tin—as their price for survival. But even this meager exchange was a cruel mockery. For their efforts, they were rewarded with nothing more than a handful of grain, scarcely ground, never bread—a mockery of sustenance, enough only to sustain their misery, but never their dignity. The air in the mines was thick with poison, and many fell victim to its deadly grip, their bodies broken, their souls eroded by the ceaseless torment of their existence.
This was the cruel barter of survival, where life was traded for a pittance, and death loomed at every turn, like a shadow that could never be outrun.
But fo us who chained to the crop fields, days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, as the relentless routine of our lives unfolded. From dawn till dusk, we toiled in the fields—sowing seeds, watering crops, applying fertilizer, battling pests, tending to livestock, and managing hay. A meager five-minute break at noon was our only respite. Rain or shine, under the constant threat of the guards' whips, we were pushed to the limits of endurance. Nights were spent cramped together in huts of straw, the brief hours of sleep never enough to fully rest our weary bodies.
The physical toll was evident on all of us. We grew gaunt and hollow-eyed, our once vibrant spirits dulled by exhaustion and despair. Our once thick hair thinned, and our youthful vigor faded under the relentless oppression of our captors.
We were nothing more than tools, exploited without mercy, our lives reduced to mere survival. Sundays—if one could call it that—were the only day granted to us for respite, if it could even be called rest. It was a brief, fleeting moment to cleanse our bodies, to eat something that might resemble nourishment, and to reclaim the faintest shred of dignity. The rest of the week, however, was a cycle of relentless toil. A single bowl of wheat porridge was our daily sustenance, no bread to accompany it, leaving us to scavenge for herbs, grasshoppers, silkworms, and leaves just to fill the void in our stomachs. Those of us fortunate enough to avoid the city mines still bore the weight of this existence.
Our clothes—if they could be called that—wore thin as the days dragged on, each piece a patchwork of grime and desperation. The slave master saw no need to supply us with even the most basic of comforts, such as washing powder or fresh garments. When our clothes tore, we had no choice but to wear the remnants, even though the scorching heat, the torrential rains, and the biting wind cut through our skin like sharpened blades. We had no choice but to endure, our bodies at the mercy of the elements, with no refuge in sight.
We slept in makeshift shelters, hastily constructed from dirt and straw, a feeble attempt to shield us from the unforgiving world outside. Yet, these flimsy structures offered no protection from the brutal conditions. The weather was relentless, and our hygiene was nonexistent—our bodies caked in filth, our spirits eroded by the endless misery. This was our reality, one where the very notion of hope seemed like a distant memory, fading into the darkness.
Due to the inability to bathe regularly, with only a brief window on Sundays and fewer than 20% of the slaves afforded the luxury of even this limited respite, the conditions were horrendous. Scabies ravaged their bodies, their feet swollen with calluses and covered in painful wounds, as though they had traversed the harshest of terrains, akin to a journey through the Himalayas. The hands, worn and stiff from endless labor, gradually lost all sensation, a painful reminder of the fatigue that consumed them. The bodies of many grew progressively thinner, resembling little more than skeletal frames draped in skin, a macabre testament to their suffering. Eyes became hollowed and sunken, while hair fell away in clumps, further diminishing their already diminished sense of self.
The air was thick with the sound of persistent coughing, a haunting, rasping noise that would often culminate in the spitting of blood. The slaves were plagued by an array of diseases, their weakened bodies too frail to fend off the relentless infections. For some, this suffering was not prolonged; they were claimed by illness within a week or two, their lives extinguished in the blink of an eye. The toll of their labor and deprivation was not merely physical—it was a slow, agonizing march toward death.
Yet amidst the bleak monotony, a day arrived that would alter our fate once more...
I was laboring with a shovel (or a similar tool), gathering dry leaves for composting, under the watchful eyes of two guards. Abruptly, the stillness was shattered by two piercing screams followed by a sickening thud. "I thought you died while exterminating monsters in the wastelands!?", one of the two guards watching me shouted. Startled, I spun around to witness a figure cloaked in black, adorned with crimson accents, standing amidst the fallen guards.
The man's cloak trailed down to his feet, his head wrapped in a scarf, black gloves and boots completing his attire. His face obscured by a black mask marked with a fierce red symbol, he held a bloodied knife in hand. The guards lay lifeless, deep wounds marring their chests. The man exuded an unsettling blend of mint and metallic tang, an enigma wrapped in shadow and smoke.
Turning to face me, he wiped blood from his mask with a white cloth, his gaze piercing through the gloom. Dropping a steel sword and a knight's armor, he vanished into a wisp of smoke, leaving behind only a faint scent of mint and a direction—a silent directive toward the forest.
Stunned, I hesitated for a moment before gathering the sword with trembling hands, struggling to don the knight's armor—a heavy, unfamiliar weight upon my shoulders. With resolve born of desperation, I set forth toward the forest, following the mysterious man's unspoken guidance into the unknown...