Jyoti's feet clashed against the stone, her breath a ragged rhythm that had long since become part of her life's music. To run was to live; it was an unspoken rule. The alleys of The Pits bent and twisted like the guts of a beast, and she darted through them with the nimbleness of a rat that had stolen too many crumbs. A toppled crate here, a kicked-over bucket there—each trick she left in her wake was a breadcrumb trail of chaos meant to trip those iron-booted fools behind her.
For years, she had treated this game like a dance. They chased, she laughed, she vanished. But today the music wasn't to her taste.
A shadow fell across her escape route. She skidded to a halt, nearly colliding with the wall of shields that rose in front of her like a jagged cliff. A dozen helmets gleamed in the dim light, the guards' eyes hard and hungry. Behind her, the pounding of boots closed in.
Her heart sank. They had planned this.
"Well, well," a guard sneered as he stepped forward, his grin crooked as a broken jaw. "The rat finally ran into the trap."
Jyoti's mind raced. No gaps. No ladders. No tunnels. They had sealed every path she had ever used.
Then the crowd appeared. Pits-dwellers pressed close, their faces gray and hollow. They weren't here for her—they never were. People gathered to watch because suffering was the only entertainment left. Children peeked through legs, old men leaned on rusted pipes, and mothers held babies who would grow up knowing only this theater of cruelty.
Through the parting mass strode the man she least wanted to see.
The Head of her Residential Zone.
A broad-shouldered brute draped in ash-gray robes that were too clean for anyone in The Pits to believe he belonged here. Rings gleamed on his fingers, each one rumored to have been plucked from a corpse of someone who had dared to defy him. His face was carved into a permanent sneer, as though the air itself offended him.
"So… this is the rat that's been gnawing at my pride all these years," he hissed, voice rasping like rusted metal tearing free. His hand snapped out, iron fingers locking her chin until bones complained, dragging her face up into the lantern's glow. He studied her as if she were rot fattening in a gutter, his lip curling back. "Sepia skin… a festering wound among the pale. And you useless bastards let this stain slip through your claws again and again!"
The crowd didn't stir. They never did. In The Pits, compassion was currency no one could afford.
The Head's grip tightened, forcing her to her knees. "You've been running too long. Now, you'll crawl." He shoved her down, the rough stone cutting her palms. Laughter rippled through the guards.
Jyoti spat blood and words in equal measure. "Better to crawl free than kneel to an asshole."
The Head's eyes narrowed. His hand lashed across her face, a crack that echoed in the silence. "Remember this, lowborn filth: you don't speak. You don't breathe without my permission."
Chains clinked as they shackled her wrists and ankles. Each cuff was a brand, a declaration that she was nothing but property.
Then came the spectacle. The guards set upon her with methodical cruelty. Fists slammed into her ribs until she gagged blood, boots crashed against her spine, and iron rods bit her flesh with each strike. Her body became a canvas for their rage—blood painting the stones, teeth rattling loose. They dragged her across the jagged ground, leaving trails of red like ink from a ruptured vein. When she tried to scream, a cudgel silenced her, shattering breath into choking gasps. The Pits drank the sight greedily, the crowd's eyes glazed but locked, unable to turn away.
When her scream finally tore out—not just a cry of pain but of rage, a sound raw enough to scrape the air—it didn't vanish the way screams always did in The Pits. Usually, such sounds were swallowed by indifference. But this one lingered, threading itself through the crowd like smoke refusing to dissipate.
An old woman shifted, her lips trembling though no words came. A man clenched his fist, then lowered his face in shame. Others glanced sideways, as though startled by their own unease. Something had shifted, but none could name it.
And then—a boy. Barely eight, ribs poking through his thin shirt, eyes wide and unblinking. For the first time in his short life, his vision blurred. A tear threatened to fall.
In The Pits, no one wasted water on tears.
The Head noticed the murmur, the ripple, and his fury deepened. "Do you see?" he barked to the crowd. He yanked Jyoti upright by her hair. "This is what happens to anyone who defies order. You will starve, you will rot, you will—"
But he faltered.
Jyoti's body, limp from the beating, suddenly stiffened. She lifted her head, lips parting in a bloodied grin. A spray of crimson splattered as she spat in the Head's face. In her eyes burned not exhaustion but a feral fire, pure rage and fury—revolution incarnate, as if something had switched deep inside. The chains rattled as her arms trembled. Her small wrists pressed outward, muscles bulging where none had existed.
The iron groaned.
Gasps escaped the crowd, sharp and involuntary. Guards tightened their grips on their weapons. The Head's mocking smile twisted, then darkened into a scowl, fury flashing across his face as control threatened to slip from his grasp.
Cracks spidered along the shackles.
The Head hurled Jyoti against the wall, stone biting her back as stars flashed in her vision. From that crumpled heap she caught a glimpse of the tear‑streaked boy, and something inside her locked into place. Her eyes, once dulled by exhaustion, now burned with a violent fire—a surge of hidden strength from deep within. She stood, spitting blood, her voice ripping into the silence.
"You call this order?" she shouted, chains rattling. "You starve us, beat us, and laugh while children die! You call yourselves guards? You're cowards! Parasites! Look at them—" her voice cracked but thundered on, "—look up and see what they've made of us!"
The crowd leaned closer, breathless. It wasn't hope exactly, nor defiance, but a raw call that struck something buried. An ember flickered where none should exist in a wasteland of ash.
And then—
The shackle split.
Dark silence followed, heavy enough to smother the world.