My mother did not look at me when they chained my hands.
She stood very straight, shoulders squared beneath the remnants of lace that once passed for a gown. The hem was torn and darkened with ash, as though the house fire had followed her out of the district and chosen to cling. Her gloves were still on. That detail stayed with me. Gloves in a place where roofs had collapsed and streets had split open like old wounds. Gloves meant she had decided something long before the guards arrived.
The iron bit cold into my wrists. The links were too large for me, built for men who struggled. I didn't. I didn't know yet that struggling was expected.
The guards wore rusted breastplates strapped over what used to be formal coats. Faded navy, once pressed. Buttons missing. Collars frayed. They smelled of wet metal and old perfume, as if they dressed each morning beside memories of order and pretended it still worked. One of them cleared his throat, polite about it, like this was a disagreement at a dinner table.
My father stood near the cracked wall, adjusting his neckcloth.
The building behind him groaned softly, a tired sound, the way houses do when they are no longer sure they are standing. A fracture ran from the ceiling down through the plaster, splitting a painted wreath in half. He smoothed the cloth at his throat again, careful with the knot. That was when I understood he would not meet my eyes either.
They said I started the fire.
They said I meant for people to die.
I remember the smoke. Thick, black, alive. It rolled down the hallway like a thinking thing, pushing against the walls, crawling along the ceiling before dropping low. I remember the heat on my face, the way the floorboards burned my bare feet as I ran. I remember the scream.
It wasn't someone else's.
It was my brother's.
I was twelve.
I hated sacrifice. I hated pain. I hated the way adults used both words when they meant convenience. But I couldn't just stand there and listen to a voice I loved tear itself apart inside the fire.
They did not ask me why I ran.
They did not ask me anything at all.
The cart they threw me into smelled like wet iron and old smoke. The wooden slats were warped, nails rusted through like infected bones. My legs knocked against loose chains and shattered glass as it lurched forward, but I didn't cry. Not because I was brave. Because the part of me that knew how to cry had gone quiet, as if it understood there would be no witness worth performing for.
The road out of the district was a ruin pretending to be a path. Mud filled the old cobblestones, swallowing wheels whole. On either side, the skeletons of houses leaned inward, conspiratorial. Walls split like broken teeth. Roofs caved in, sagging under years of rain that had nowhere else to go. Curtains still hung in some windows, grey with soot, stirring when the wind passed, like ghosts unsure whether they were allowed to leave.
A shattered chandelier dangled from a second-floor balcony, its crystals long gone. The iron frame swung slowly with each gust, creaking. It reminded me of something that had once been beautiful and now refused the dignity of falling.
I counted breaths. I don't know when I started doing that. Somewhere between the chains and the road, my body decided numbers were safer than thoughts.
When the cart finally stopped, the wheels sank into mud with a sound like surrender.
The iron gates rose ahead of us.
Beyond them squatted the prison.
It had once been a manor house. You could tell by the way the stone tried too hard to look impressive, by the symmetry that no longer made sense. Time had bowed the walls inward, as if the building itself were ashamed of what it now contained. Ivy strangled the cracks, thick and stubborn. Gargoyles crumbled at the corners, their faces softened by rain until they looked almost apologetic.
The front doors had been polished mahogany once. Now they were chipped, splintered, swollen with damp. They did not close properly. One hung slightly ajar, like a mouth that never quite finished speaking.
Inside, the air changed.
It smelled of piss, mold, and old blood. Not fresh blood. Blood that had learned how to linger. The guards did not speak. Their boots made a wet, squelching sound against the floor, and I realized the stone beneath us was slick with something more patient than water.
Gas lamps flickered overhead, hanging by bent rods. One buzzed loudly, like a dying insect refusing to be ignored. Its light painted everything sick-yellow, flattening faces into masks.
The cells were carved directly into the walls, narrow and deep, like burial slots. Names were scratched into the soot above the doors, some layered over others until the letters lost their edges. I wondered if people scratched harder when they believed someone might read them.
Mine was barely taller than I was.
The ceiling pressed low, close enough that I could see fingerprints smeared into the grime. The bed was stone. Someone had laid a torn strip of linen over it once, but it was yellowed and damp, clinging like a second skin. In the corner sat a bucket. I did not ask what it was for. The room answered without words.
The door clanged shut.
Sound traveled differently after that. Each noise felt trapped, forced to echo until it lost meaning.
Across from me, someone shifted.
He was older. Fifteen, maybe. Barefoot. Shirtless. His ribs jutted out sharply, like they were trying to escape him. His skin clung tight to bone, pale and slick with sweat. His hair stuck to his forehead in dark strands. But his eyes—his eyes were awake in a way that made my stomach tighten.
"You're the one from District Veil," he said.
His voice was rough, scraped thin by smoke or shouting or both.
I did not answer.
"You ran toward the fire," he continued, blinking slowly. "Why?"
I shook my head.
There were too many answers, and all of them felt illegal.
He leaned back against his wall and let out a soft chuckle. "You're too soft," he said. "You'll be dead in a week."
He did not sound cruel.
He sounded experienced.
I sat down on the stone slab. Cold surged up through me immediately, stealing heat like it had been waiting. I stared at the crack running through the wall opposite me. It reminded me of the hallway at home—the one that split clean through the plaster after the second collapse. My mother had hung a painting of lilies over it.
She said it ruined the aesthetic.
The drip started sometime after.
Water fell from the ceiling into the same corner again and again, steady as a clock. Rats skittered behind the walls, nails scratching stone. My stomach cramped. Hunger arrived without ceremony, sharp and unapologetic.
"You're shivering," the boy said eventually. "It won't help."
I hugged my knees tighter.
"First night's the hardest," he went on. "Or the second. Depends what they do to you."
"You scared?"
"No," I said, too fast.
That made him smile—not kind, not cruel. Just knowing. "Then you're dumber than you look."
Silence returned, thick and heavy.
Then something slid between the bars.
Bread. A heel, hard and stale, cracked through with mold. I stared at it.
"Take it," he said. "Don't make it weird."
I reached for it. My fingers shook. The bread tore the inside of my mouth as I chewed, but I swallowed anyway.
"…Thanks," I whispered.
He did not reply.
"If I wanted you dead," he muttered after a while, "I'd have let the mold do it."
Sometime later—hours, maybe days—the memory came.
My mother pouring tea as though it were still a ceremony. Delicate movements. Chipped porcelain cups placed carefully on a table that wobbled if you leaned too hard. Tarnished silver. Bruised fruit. My father reading a faded paper. My brother stacking sugar cubes like bricks, careful, proud of his little tower.
I tried to speak.
No one looked up.
That was the first time I noticed the silence in our house was not peace.
It was preparation.