The laughter still rang in my ears.
It had faded into the noise of the slums, lost beneath the murmur of half-starved voices and the shuffle of weary feet, but it stayed with me.
The sneer on his face. The way he shoved me back like I was nothing.
The way the people inside the gates hadn't even stopped to watch.
I had known this city would be cruel.
But knowing something and feeling it were different things.
Elara walked beside me, her steps stiff, her fists clenched at her sides. She hadn't said a word since we turned away from the gate.
Neither had I.
There was nothing to say.
We had expected rejection, expected that climbing out of the dirt wouldn't be easy.
But expectation didn't make it sting less.
The slums stretched ahead of us, endless and wretched. Crumbling buildings stacked on top of each other in unnatural ways, forming a twisted maze of rotting wood and rusted metal.
Bridges sagged under their own weight. Alleys were barely more than gaps between shacks, filled with waste, with people who had long stopped looking up.
A city of ghosts.
A place where people lived, but no one truly existed.
A place that reeked of hopelessness.
I hated it already.
But this was where we belonged.
At least, for now.
Elara finally exhaled, running a hand through her tangled hair. "We need a plan."
Her voice was even, but I could hear the edge to it.
She was angry.
Not just at the guards. Not just at the people behind the gates.
At herself.
At us.
For being too weak to fight back.
I nodded. "We need shelter first."
Her lips pressed into a thin line, but she didn't argue.
We needed somewhere to sleep, somewhere to hide. A place to disappear into the background until we found a way up.
We walked deeper into the slums, keeping to the shadows, keeping our steps light.
Because even here—**especially here—**eyes were watching.
We weren't the only ones desperate for survival.
And not everyone waited for an opportunity to strike.
We passed hunched figures sitting in the mud, wrapped in cloth so dirty it barely looked like fabric anymore.
A child—or maybe just someone too small from hunger—curled up in a doorway, his ribs pressing against his skin.
The moment our eyes met, he disappeared inside, as if even looking at us was a risk.
The air stank of sweat, filth, desperation.
Elara shuddered, rubbing at her arms. "There has to be somewhere better than this."
I scanned the buildings. Most were occupied. But further down, past a crumbling bridge, I spotted a collapsed structure, half-buried in debris.
It was abandoned.
It had to be.
I gestured toward it, and we made our way over, keeping to the sides of the street.
The inside was dark, the walls half-caved in, but it was enough.
I let out a slow breath. "This will do."
Elara wrinkled her nose but nodded.
We had slept in worse.
At least here, no one would try to slit our throats in the middle of the night.
Probably.
The moment we stepped inside, my body protested. My muscles ached, my ribs stung from the guard's shove.
But more than that—the exhaustion was sinking deeper.
It wasn't just my body that was tired.
It was my mind.
For weeks, we had been moving forward. One step after another, never stopping, never breaking.
But now, for the first time since leaving our home behind—there was nowhere left to run.
We had reached rock bottom.
And there was only one way out.
Up.
Elara sat down on a pile of cloth, stretching her legs.
She was silent for a long moment before she let out a breath and met my gaze. "We're not going to rot here, are we?"
Her voice was quiet.
Almost hesitant.
I knew what she was asking.
She had seen what this place did to people.
So had I.
The slums weren't a place where people lived.
They were a place where people waited to die.
I clenched my fists. "No."
I meant it.
She studied my face for a moment, then nodded.
I didn't know if she believed me.
But I did.
Even if we had to beg. Even if we had to starve. Even if we had to bleed for every scrap of strength.
We would not be buried here.
We would not be forgotten.
We would crawl, if we had to.
But we would rise.
And when we did—
We would burn this city down to its foundation.