Leon woke to the feeling of something cold pressed against his forehead. For a moment, he was back in the mud-slick trenches of a warzone, fevered soldiers all around him, their bodies trembling with the rattle of death in their lungs. His hands moved reflexively to treat a wound that wasn't there, grasping at the damp, rotten straw beneath him.
But this wasn't a warzone, not the one he knew, at least. This was the cell—a place where men died just as often, though no one bothered to call it war.
His body ached. Not in the distant, nagging way it had in the past few days, but in a deep, visceral way that told him something was wrong. His muscles twitched, spasming involuntarily, and his head swam with a dull, persistent throbbing. Hunger gnawed at his insides like a rabid dog, chewing through flesh and bone.
The cell was quiet. Too quiet.
Leon's eyes flicked open, his vision blurred by the dim, gray light filtering through the high, narrow window at the top of the cell. It wasn't enough to see clearly, but he could make out the shapes of the other prisoners, huddled in corners, their ragged breaths the only sound in the suffocating air.
Something had changed.
Leon shifted, forcing himself upright, ignoring the screaming protests of his limbs. The weight of the iron collar around his neck felt heavier than usual, dragging his head down as if it wanted to pull him into the dirt. His wrists were raw from the chains, skin peeled back, revealing the tender, exposed flesh beneath. The sores had started to fester—he could feel the heat radiating from them, a telltale sign of infection.
He knew what came next. If the wounds didn't kill him, the fever would.
But not today. He wouldn't let it. He couldn't.
The soft shuffle of footsteps drew his attention to the far corner of the cell, where a small, hunched figure moved through the shadows. It was one of the older prisoners—an emaciated man with skin stretched tight over his bones, his eyes hollow, his mouth a thin line. He had been here longer than any of them, too far gone to remember his own name.
Leon watched as the old man crept closer, his movements slow and deliberate. He was carrying something—a bundle of rags, cradled in his arms like a sickly child. The man's eyes darted around the room, nervous, watchful, as if he expected something to leap from the shadows and tear him apart.
The bundle wasn't rags.
Leon's stomach churned as the realization hit him. The smell, faint but unmistakable, drifted toward him on the stale air—coppery, rancid. The man wasn't carrying rags. He was carrying meat.
Human meat.
Leon's chest tightened, bile rising in his throat as he watched the old man tear a chunk from the bundle with his teeth, gnawing at it with desperate hunger. The soft, wet sound of flesh ripping filled the silence of the cell, and for a moment, Leon thought he might retch.
The man wasn't the first. In a place like this, hunger drove men to madness. Leon had seen it before, in warzones where food was scarce and bodies were plentiful. He had treated soldiers who had gone weeks without proper rations, their minds unraveling as they turned on their own in desperation.
Here, there was no pretense of morality. No honor, no dignity. Just survival. And for the old man, that meant carving a meal from the dead.
Leon's hands clenched into fists, the chains clinking softly as he forced himself to look away. There was no use in fighting the horror of it. This world—this wretched, unforgiving place—had stripped them all of their humanity long ago.
A sharp, guttural cough tore through the cell, shattering the tense silence. Leon's eyes snapped to the source of the noise—a prisoner, sprawled out near the middle of the room, his body trembling with violent shudders. The man's chest heaved with the effort of breathing, each gasp wet and ragged, his skin a sickly shade of gray. He had been like this for days, slowly rotting from the inside out, the infection spreading through his blood like poison.
Leon knew the signs. He had seen them enough times. The fever was rising, the body shutting down, the mind slipping away into delirium. The man was dying.
But that wasn't what worried Leon.
What worried him was the way the other prisoners were watching. Their eyes, once glazed over with exhaustion and despair, now gleamed with something darker—hunger. They weren't waiting for the man to die out of pity. They were waiting for a meal.
Leon's heart raced, his breath coming in short, shallow bursts. He couldn't let it happen. Not like this. The man deserved better than to be torn apart by starving animals.
But what could he do? He was just as weak, just as broken as the rest of them. His body was failing him, his mind clouded by pain and fever. There was no strength left in him to fight.
The man let out another sharp, hacking cough, his body convulsing, blood splattering the dirt beneath him. Leon's eyes locked onto the dying prisoner, his mind racing. He didn't have much time. If he couldn't save the man, at least he could give him some dignity in death.
Leon pushed himself to his feet, the weight of the chains nearly dragging him back down. His vision swam, but he forced himself forward, one step at a time, his legs trembling beneath him. He ignored the curious stares of the other prisoners, their dark, hollow eyes tracking his every movement.
He knelt beside the man, his hands moving instinctively to check the pulse, the breathing. It was faint, erratic. The man's eyes were glazed over, his lips cracked and dry, flecks of blood staining his chin. Leon had seen it before—this wasn't just sickness. It was the end.
"I'm sorry," Leon whispered, his voice hoarse, barely audible over the sound of the man's labored breaths. He didn't know why he said it—perhaps to offer some semblance of comfort, or maybe to convince himself that this was all still real.
The man didn't respond. He was too far gone.
Leon's hand moved to the man's throat, his fingers tracing the outline of the artery beneath the skin. He applied pressure—just enough to cut off the blood flow, to speed up what was already inevitable. The man's body twitched, his eyes fluttering, but the end came quickly. A mercy, Leon told himself. A mercy in a world that had none.
He stood, swaying on his feet as the room seemed to tilt around him. The other prisoners watched in silence, their eyes gleaming in the dim light, their hunger palpable. Leon turned away, unable to stomach the thought of what would come next.
He couldn't save them. He couldn't even save himself.
But as the darkness closed in around him once more, one thought lingered in his mind, burning brighter than the pain, the hunger, the despair.
He would survive.
No matter the cost.