The sun had risen long ago, but it never touched this place.
It hung somewhere above the tangled canopy like a ghost—pale, disinterested—its light filtered into gray, stifled strands that fell through the branches like limp hair. Below, in the rotted basin of the forest clearing, Ravian lay face-down in the dirt, half-buried beneath the broken outline of Niaz's body.
Flies had begun to gather.
They moved in confident spirals, drawn by the blood that oozed from Niaz's ruptured lip, by the bruised pulp of his back where the chain had caved in flesh and shattered ribs. A smear of brown-red crusted across his jaw, one eye half-lidded, frozen mid-blink. His mouth hung ajar, teeth chipped, tongue black at the edges.
No one touched him. Not the children. Not the men. Not Ravian.
They all just left the corpse where it fell.
Ravian hadn't moved in hours. Not since the last blow, not since Niaz's final scream died wet in his throat. Something had happened in that moment—some crack, deep and internal. Not loud, not theatrical. Just a quiet snap, like ice beneath a boot, and something inside him folded. Not from grief. Not yet. That came later.
First came the stillness.
His limbs had stopped responding. There was no more pain, not really. Pain required energy. Thought. Identity. But Ravian wasn't sure he had a body anymore. He felt like a hole in the world. A gap in the shape of a child.
His cheek pressed against the dirt. His tongue was dry, swollen, too big for his mouth. He tried to blink, but his eyes burned like scalded stone.
Niaz's blood had dried against his arm. It flaked when he shifted, and the sound of it—tiny crusts of death cracking—was the loudest thing in the clearing.
He wanted to cry. But not for Niaz. That confused him.
Why wasn't he crying?
Because it wasn't real?
Because Niaz wasn't special?
Because this wasn't new?
A shadow passed overhead. One of the men—maybe the one who had held the chain. Maybe not. It didn't matter. They were all the same—eyes dull, mouths smirking, hands always twitching near leather belts or iron tools. He didn't speak to Ravian. He didn't even look. He just kicked Niaz's leg once to check for movement, then turned away.
That was death. That was it.
No fanfare. No sobbing farewell. No last breath with meaning. No one shouting "no!" as if the universe might stop.
Just a kick. A limp leg. Flies.
And silence.
The world should've screamed. Ravian thought it might. But it didn't. The forest didn't weep for Niaz. The dirt didn't open to swallow his shame. There was no divine thunder. No revenge.
There was only Ravian. Breathing. Barely.
And that was worse.
Because now, Niaz was gone.
And Ravian was still here.
Alone.
Alive.
Unchanged.
But not really.
The memory of the beating played itself again. Not like a flashback. There was no drama in it. It came quietly, like a fever dream rising through the fog. One moment Ravian was blank, the next he was there again—watching.
The chain came down.
A crack.
The scream.
Ravian didn't flinch. Not even in the memory. He watched it happen like someone studying an insect caught in a jar. Methodical. Detached. Not because he didn't care—but because caring had already failed him.
Niaz had screamed for someone. Maybe for Ravian. Maybe for no one. It hadn't mattered. Ravian hadn't moved.
He had tried.
Hadn't he?
Hadn't he crawled?
Hadn't he whispered?
But it hadn't changed anything.
The pain came back in that moment—not his own, but remembered pain. Niaz's pain. Not the bruises or the bone breaks or the blood. No. The real pain. The fear. The kind that lived in the whites of his eyes. The sound of his breath between screams, the rattling, broken sobs that didn't sound like a boy anymore.
Ravian remembered that sound. Not the scream. The gasp. The kind you make when you realize you're about to die and no one is coming to stop it.
He remembered it.
Because he was still making it.
Eventually, the men made them move again.
Someone shouted.
Children scrambled.
Ravian didn't.
Hands grabbed his shoulders. They yanked him upright like lifting a sack of rot. His body flopped, limbs like wet cloth, but he didn't scream. His throat was too dry. He didn't resist. Resistance required a future. A goal. And Ravian had none.
They dragged him toward the pit.
Not a metaphorical one. A literal pit. Dug by the first group of boys two weeks ago. A trench filled with water, mud, human waste, blood, and sometimes corpses. Today, it held only stagnant water, dark and still. The stench made even the guards cough.
"You think death makes you soft?" one of the men sneered, holding Ravian upright by the collar. "This place eats death for breakfast."
He shoved Ravian into the water.
Cold. Sludge. His skin stung as the filth touched the lash wounds on his back. His mouth filled with muck. He didn't struggle. He let the weight carry him down until the water closed over his head. Silence again. Thick. Dull. Distant.
There was a moment—maybe three seconds—where he thought about letting it happen.
Just not breathing.
Just letting the rot crawl inside and take him.
It would be so easy.
But then his body spasmed. A reflex.
His lungs screamed.
He kicked.
Broke the surface, coughing, gagging, heaving filth from his gut. The men laughed. A few threw rocks into the water. One hit his shoulder. Another struck his temple. His vision blinked.
But he didn't sink again.
He couldn't.
Because something new had replaced the pain.
Something black.
That night, when they chained him to the post again, his hands were shaking—not from fear, not from cold, but from something worse.
Thought.
He had thought again.
He had asked himself a question he hadn't asked in days.
"Why?"
Why Niaz?
Why not me?
Why did I watch?
Why didn't I move?
Why did I crawl?
Why did I stop?
Why did I even try?
But no answers came.
Only an image.
Niaz's final breath. How his chest stuttered. The way the blood clung to his teeth. How his eye rolled.
Ravian stared at the dirt all night. He didn't sleep. He didn't weep. He waited.
For morning.
For orders.
For another body.
Because that was all they were now.
Bodies.
The next day, they made the boys carry Niaz.
Not bury.
Just carry.
To the far edge of the forest where the dead were dumped.
A pile.
Already there were three others.
No names. No rituals. Just children thrown like trash. Arms and legs sticking out at angles, eyes still open. One had no jaw. Another had both hands missing.
Niaz was the fourth.
Ravian didn't cry.
He held the boy's legs while another boy held his shoulders. Niaz's head lolled. Blood dripped from his ear. His foot was cold and stiff in Ravian's hands. His skin had already begun to pale into that strange, waxy nothingness.
When they dropped him onto the pile, his body thudded like wet meat.
And that was it.
That was the end of Niaz.
Ravian stood there, staring down.
Not in mourning.
In realization.
Niaz had never belonged to him.
Not really.
Not like family.
Not like a friend.
He was just… proximity. The closest warmth in a frozen pit.
But warmth was a lie here.
Everything melted eventually.
Everything died.
And now, Ravian knew that too.
Knew it the way a body knows pain.
The way a corpse remembers breath.
He walked back to camp in silence.
He didn't look at the other boys.
They didn't look at him.
There were no words left between them.
Only distance.
And dirt.
And flies.