The truck had stopped.
No one came.
No orders. No guards barking commands. There was no sound of boots crunching the dirt.
Nothing.
The quite stretched, thick as oil, coating everything in an unbearable stillness. My breathing slowed, straining to hear past the pounding of my heartbeat. The air inside the cage felt suffocating like it had grown heavier, pressing down on my chest, making each inhale feel shallow, and incomplete.
Then—movement.
Not from outside. From inside.
There was a rustle of fabric as prisoners shifted uneasily. A sharp inhale was cut off too quickly as if someone had realised too late that breathing too loudly might shatter the fragile silence.
Then the whispers started.
"Why have we stopped?"
"Is this it?"
"No. Veridion's still too far—"
"Then why—?"
No one had an answer. But the fear was settling into us now, curling around our limbs, threading its way into our bones. The kind of fear that came not from what you knew, but from what you didn't.
And then—something else.
A sound.
Not from us.
From them.
The creatures in the other cage.
I had grown used to their silence. Their slow, sluggish movements, the way they lay limp in the shadows, conserving whatever strength they had left. But now?
Now they were waking up.
A low, rhythmic clicking echoed through the space. Soft at first, like the tapping of fingernails against wood, but layered—overlapping, growing. One, then two, then all of them.
Click-click-click-click.
Not random. Not meaningless. A language of its own. A message.
And they weren't just making noise.
They were moving.
A shape uncurled from the far end of the cage, rising slowly, too smoothly. Its limbs unfolded in jerking, unnatural motions, like a marionette with frayed strings. Another shifted, its taloned fingers flexing, curling into the filth-streaked floor.
Then, the worst part.
They weren't cowering.
They weren't shrinking back in fear, not like the prisoners were, pressing themselves against the bars, breathing shallowly with an effort to stay unnoticed.
No—these creatures were listening.
Their eyeless heads tilted toward the barred openings of the cage, toward the wind outside, toward something beyond the truck.
Waiting.
A shudder rolled through me. My pulse hammered against my skull. I clenched my fists, nails digging into my palms, trying to force my breath to steady.
Something was out there.
Something that had stopped this truck.
Something that even they had noticed first.
And whatever it was…
It wasn't coming for us.
Not yet.
A shift in the air—a scent carried on the wind.
At first, it's faint. A whisper of something metallic. But then it hits, thick and suffocating, pouring into my lungs like smoke.
Blood.
The stench coils around me and sinks into my skin. It's fresh, but beneath it, there's something worse—rot. Old, festering. Like wounds that were never cleaned.
The others murmur, hushed voices laced with panic. Why have we stopped? What's waiting outside?
But the creatures in the other cage react first.
Their clicking grows frantic—a rising, feverish chorus. Some of them press against the bars, trembling, trying to shrink away. But others…
They smile.
Or at least, they do something that mimics it—teeth too sharp, too numerous, glinting in the low lantern light. My skin prickles. They know something we don't.
And then—
The truck doors groan open.
A gust of cold air slithers in, but it's not relief—it's wrong. The light shifts, swallowed by the figures that glide inside.
I freeze.
At first, they seem human. But then I notice—they don't walk.
They glide.
Their movements are too smooth, too silent. Their feet never quite touch the ground, yet I still hear the faintest scraping, like something being dragged beneath them.
They don't breathe.
The air thickens, pressing against my ribs. I can't move. I can't even swallow. My pulse pounds against my skull as they draw closer. Their masks are expressionless, smooth and pale as if no real face exists beneath.
Their armour is dark, warped, and uneven like the metal was once melted and forced back into place. The edges are jagged, sharp enough to cut on sight. The joints bend wrong. They don't shift their weight. Don't breathe. They are still.
Until something else steps forward.
A figure wrapped in veils.
At first, it looks like fabric—dark, flowing, moving even when there is no wind. But then the veils shift and something stirs beneath them.
Not cloth.
Not fabric.
Something alive.
A sleeve lifts and a hand emerges.
Long. Thin. Wrong.
Each finger is too stretched, bending at too many joints. The skin is pale, grey-blue, slick like something pulled fresh from a carcass. The nails are black and cracked at the edges.
The hand moves.
A slow, deliberate motion. Beckoning.
And the guards obey.
A hand shoots forward, snatching the nearest prisoner. A woman is barely able to stand. She doesn't fight. Doesn't scream. Just sags in their grip like a broken doll dragged toward the open doors without hesitation.
Another prisoner stirs—and tries to scramble back.
A boot slams down on their ankle.
Crunch.
Their scream is instant, sharp, piercing the suffocating quiet. They clutch their leg, their foot twisted at an unnatural angle. They are dragged anyway.
It's fast. Too fast.
Hands grabbing. Voices murmuring. Some prisoners don't resist, others thrash uselessly.
Lyra is stiff beside me, her breath sharp, hands trembling but clenched into fists.
And then—
A pause.
One of the masked guards tilts their head. Their gaze lands on Nayveen.
The body.
She hasn't moved. Hasn't breathed.
But they don't take her.
A voice rises from the veiled figure.
It is not human.
Not deep. Not high. Not even sound.
It presses into the air, vibrating in my skull like something ancient, crawling, whispering beneath my skin.
"Leave her."
The guards don't hesitate. They move on.
And Nayveen is left to rot.
That should be a relief.
But it isn't.
It's worse.
Worse because they don't even see her as a person.
She isn't even worth the effort to dispose of.
Not even to clear the space.
She is nothing.
And if we're not careful, we will be, too.
The ones taken are forced into a line outside.
Some shake. Some don't react at all.
The creatures behind us keep clicking.
The air is colder now.
And the smell of blood?
It's still getting stronger.
The night air is thick with something worse than smoke—something wet, something cloying, something that crawls down my throat and makes my stomach knot.
I stumble as I'm forced forward, feet sinking into something soft—not dirt.
The moment my boots land, the stench slams into me.
Blood.
So much blood.
It clings to the earth in thick, glistening pools, fresh and dark, like the ground itself has been fed with it. Torn flesh, shredded sinew, bones stripped raw, and organs spilt open like rotting fruit. Some still twitch, nerves misfiring long after their owners have been reduced to nothing but offerings to some unseen god.
A sacrifice.
That's what this is.
That's what all of them were.
A lump rises in my throat, bile burning the back of my tongue as I fight to keep down whatever's left in my stomach. But my body betrays me. The iron tang of gore, piss, and burnt hair crashes into my senses, and my stomach lurches. I bend forward, retching hard enough to make my ribs ache, but nothing comes up—just dry heaves that feel like they're pulling something loose inside me.
I clutch my stomach, breath shuddering, but then—
I see him.
The Black Masked Man.
Standing in the middle of it all.
Still. Unmoving. Soaked.
His armour is no longer just black—it is drenched, dripping with thick rivulets of blood, his mask speckled with viscera. Chunks of bone and brain matter cling to it, smeared across the smooth surface like an artist's brushstrokes. His presence is a void—a shadow among the carnage, a thing that does not belong to the living.
Then—a scream.
Desperate. Broken.
A woman stumbles forward, hands outstretched.
"Take me!" she sobs. "Punish me instead! I was wrong—I was wrong, please!"
She falls to her knees, grasping at the hem of his blood-soaked cloak. Tears carve tracks through the grime on her face, her shoulders shaking violently.
He does not look at her.
He does not acknowledge her.
Instead, he moves. A single, casual step forward.
The child at his feet—no older than three—whimpers. Small. Helpless. Unaware.
Then—
Crack.
A boot comes down.
Hard.
A wet, sickening pop as the skull gives way.
The woman's scream is unlike anything I've ever heard. It tears through the air, an unholy wail, the kind that curdles the blood and burrows into the marrow of your bones. She reaches, hands trembling, fingers curling as if she could somehow put the pieces of her child back together—but there is nothing left to save.
She sobs, breath hitching as if the act of inhaling is physically painful. But the man in the mask?
He does not pause.
He does not spare the corpse a second glance.
He only moves on.
And as he walks, I notice something new in his grip.
A blade.
Obsidian, dark and jagged, its edges wickedly sharp, glinting with fresh blood.
A man is tied down nearby—restrained, his arms pulled taut, body rigid with terror. He thrashes, trying to jerk away as one of the slavers looms over him, speaking in a low, demanding tone.
Interrogation.
I don't know what he did to deserve it, but it doesn't matter.
Not when the masked man steps forward.
Not when he lifts the blade.
Not when he presses it beneath the man's fingernail and starts cutting.
The scream that follows is raw. Animalistic.
The nail peels away, a slow, agonising process, flesh separating from flesh, blood welling in thick beads before spilling freely. The slaver keeps asking questions, but the victim is too lost in agony to answer.
I force myself to look away.
To think—to make sense of all this horror, of this nightmare unfolding around me.
Why?
Why is this happening?
Why this level of butchery?
I barely have time to let the thought settle before I hear a voice, deadpan and dripping with sarcasm.
"Shame. She would've sold well, that one."
I turn, my pulse spiking in my throat.
The captain.
He stands by the truck doors, looking at Nayveen's lifeless body with passing amusement as if appraising livestock. Then, without another word, he shuts the doors, sealing away the corpse-like one might close the lid on a forgotten crate of spoiled goods.
I swallow.
But it does nothing to rid the bile burning in my throat.
The captain strides past me toward the lineup of prisoners, moving with the ease of a man who has done this a thousand times before.
And that's when I realised—
This isn't some small operation.
This is something far bigger.
I look past the immediate horror, past the blood and the screaming, and I see it.
The scale of it.
Hundreds of prisoners. At least two hundred, their bodies ragged and skeletal, some still bound in iron shackles, others standing in line, their faces hollowed by starvation and hopelessness.
The dead—easily thirty, maybe more—piled like discarded waste.
The guards? Too many to count.
This isn't a slaver's caravan.
It's a machine.
A cold, calculated system of human suffering, where life is measured by how much it can be sold for, and death is just another inconvenience.
I don't know where we are.
I don't know what's waiting for us.
But one thing is clear.
This is not just about profit.
This is about power.
And whatever force is behind this?
It's far bigger than any of us.