"You useless sacks of meat. Move faster. Do you want to starve tonight?"
The lumberyard fell quiet except for the scrape of blades against timber. The man on the podium snarled and cracked the whip in his hand, enjoying the way the workers flinched even though he hadn't struck yet.
They hated him. Every one of them. The thought cut sharp and loud in the silence: if hitting the quota was so important, why was he shouting from a podium instead of picking up an axe? No one said it. Words like that had a way of turning into rope around your neck.
The overseer spat toward the ground. "Pathetic. You'll never make the numbers like this. No work, no food. Simple as that."
Muted curses stuck behind clenched teeth. Chests heaving. Eyes down. Splinters and sweat were shared more freely than bread.
Then a voice cut through all of it.
"Overseer."
Sharp. Female. Dead calm.
The entire yard froze like prey catching the scent of a predator. Even the overseer stiffened.
He turned slowly. Green uniform. Boots striking the dirt with measured rhythm. A woman, barely taller than him but carrying more weight in a single step than all his shouts combined. His face drained of color.
She stopped in front of him. Her eyes were hard, her tone harder. "Why isn't the quota met."
He choked once, then bent himself forward as though bowing would lessen what was coming. "We are trying—"
She narrowed her eyes. "Speak clearly. Excuses belong to the dead."
His mouth flapped once before the lies fell out. "The workers, Commander. Sluggish. I whip them but—"
The words cut off when her hand clamped around the back of his neck.
Every sound in the lumberyard evaporated. The workers turned away, pale, their fists clenched at their sides.
The overseer gasped like a caught animal as she lifted him. His boots left the ground. His hands clawed at her wrist. Face shifting from red to purple. No sound except a faint wheeze before silence.
For a moment, the only movement was the overseer's legs, kicking at the empty air. Then nothing. His body sagged. Pupils glassy.
She dropped him.
He hit the ground with a thud, coughing and retching, clutching at his throat like he had been flayed open there. She looked down at him as if a stain had spread on her boots.
Her boot drove into his abdomen. He curled up and squealed.
"Meet the target before nightfall. Fail, and I'll do more than squeeze. Do you understand."
His head bobbed frantically, tears mixing with spit. She turned without waiting for more and walked away. The sound of her boots was the closest thing to a verdict.
The workers snapped their eyes back to their logs, hands moving with new speed, even though their shoulders trembled.
Alain was one of them, his planer moving in steady strokes. He had been silent, but his mind was not. His jaw worked as if he were biting on steel.
So this was what the old man had meant by strength. The words he'd heard before waking here were no longer rumor. They were elemental.
The balance had shifted over centuries until the world itself felt inverted. Women held the whip, men bent their backs until they broke. Power was currency, and who held it had changed.
Alain did not care about the politics. What mattered had been revenge. His life had been nothing but a length of rope leading toward that single noose. The hero. His enemy.
But five hundred years had passed. Too much time. No graves remained. No markers. No flesh to break or burn. History had scrubbed it all, leaving not even a hint. His vendetta had rotted under the weight of years.
He ground his teeth hard until he tasted copper in his mouth. The rage had nowhere to go, seething against his ribs, searching for release.
He wrestled it inward. Purpose, not indulgence. The old anger could no longer guide him. Instead, he had another task: demons, their descendants, their shadow. He needed his strength back, all of it, and none of that would happen chained to logs and overseers.
Escape was the one word left.
He replayed the whisper from the man he had spoken to in the lodging the night before. A chance. Maybe. He would think on it later.
"Hey, you."
The voice cut through his thoughts. Not harsh like the commander's, but sharp enough to snap his head around.
A girl in white uniform strode toward him. Red hair in the air like a small fire. Smiling. Smiling too much.
"I'm glad. You're awake."
The words hit him with the awkwardness of a joke missed in timing. He took a step back.
He searched her face. Memory offered nothing. She was a stranger. Yet her tone was soaked in familiarity, like they shared something he had forgotten.
Suspicion prickled. His mind replayed what the old man muttered when Alain had woken up in this broken age: girls had saved him. Girls, not men.
Maybe this one.
"Did you save me."
"Yes. Of course." Her nod was quick, her smile unshakable. Like saving him was no heavier than plucking a weed.
His tension bled away. He exhaled, though his eyes did not leave her. Gratitude was foreign to his tongue, but fairness kept it from silence.
"Thank you. I lived because of you."
She brushed it off like it was nothing. "It's fine. You needed help. But how did you end up collapsed out there, in that state."
Alain paused. His lips parted as if to speak, but his thoughts pressed harder than his voice.
He could tell her part of the truth. Or none of it. One choice held risk, the other mockery.
His teeth clicked once before he answered.
"That depends on what you believe."