Evrin had stopped counting the hours since they'd fled the cave.
Time had a way of collapsing when you were hungry enough. When the shackles bit deep enough. When the chain dragging behind you scraped over stone and root with a sound that never quite left your skull.
The camp they'd made wasn't much. A clearing in the brush, firelight that barely pushed back the dark, and five figures arranged around it like pieces on a board.
He sat at the edge of the light with his sister pressed against his side, both of them trying to make themselves small enough to disappear. At nineteen, Evrin had learned that youth was a currency that bought you nothing but pain—old enough to be useful, young enough to be expendable. Beside him, Evris was eighteen, her frame whittled down by hunger until the firelight seemed to pass through her rather than illuminate her. The shackles around her ankles looked obscene against the fragile architecture of her legs, and without thinking, Evrin shifted his weight to take more of the chain's burden. Their captors had long ago stopped seeing them as threats.
Evrin's eyes drifted to a link in the chain that seemed to end where the metal ball was. He'd stared at that connection for days now, close enough to study the rust gathering in its grooves, close enough to hate it with a clarity that surprised him. Never close enough to reach it. The thought settled into him like a stone: if that link came free, everything changed. But chains didn't free themselves, and mercy wasn't something the world dealt in.
Across the fire, the four-armed one—Kestin, they called him—was pleading again.
"Boss, c'mon." His voice had that wheedling quality that made Evrin's teeth ache. "Let us see it again. Just one look."
Kestin, who was a Vellon, looked less like a living being and more like a small, four-armed idol that had forgotten how to obey gravity. His body was broad and tightly bound, carved in dense, chiseled layers of stone-grey skin that seemed to drink in the light rather than reflect it. Every ridge of his torso looked hammered into shape rather than grown—rough, deliberate, and muscularly gaunt.
He possessed no true head. Instead, his torso narrowed upward into a colossal, anvil-shaped crest of cracked, chitinous stone that flared out like a broken crown. Five amber embers burned in a shallow arc across its brow, casting a dim, unchanging warmth over his featureless front. Where a face should have been, centered perfectly between his shoulders, sat a single, yawning circular void. Ringed with thin, needle-sharp ridges that pointed inward like a spiked trap, the black aperture never moved, breathed, or blinked. It simply existed—a silent, staring eye that watched the world in its own terrible way.
His four arms moved with an eerie, disconnected asymmetry. The upper, longer pair extended outward, cupping two perfectly smooth, glowing golden orbs. The intense light spilled through his elongated fingers, turning the deep fractures in his palms a molten orange. Meanwhile, his lower arms draped down past his tightly tucked, hovering knees, his long, stony fingers twitching and flexing against empty air with an anxious, restrained rhythm—like a heartbeat with a stutter. He drifted in absolute silence, a perfect balance of divine serenity and subterranean horror.
'Nervous energy,' Evrin thought. 'Or maybe just excitement he couldn't quite contain.'
Marek—the human—looked exactly like what he was: ordinary. Two arms, two legs, a head with dark hair cropped short and practical. His face was weathered, lined at the corners of his eyes from squinting in harsh light, and his jaw carried the shadow of stubble he never quite bothered to shave clean. He carried a weirdly shaped silver pistol on his hip that could harness gems with unique abilities when he pulled the trigger. He kept the gems in a small pouch on his other side.
"NO, YOU IDIOTS!"
The words cracked across the camp like a whip.
Evrin felt Evris go rigid beside him. Her breathing changed. Shallower. Faster.
He wanted to tell her it was fine, that the anger wasn't aimed at them this time, but his throat had closed around the words.
Marek paced. His movements were tight, coiled, like something wound too far and ready to snap.
"Do you have any idea what we just found?"
No one answered.
'They weren't supposed to',' Evrin thought.
Marek's eyes were too bright. Feverish. The kind of brightness that came before someone did something stupid and irreversible.
"This is my—" He stopped. Corrected himself with visible effort. "Our key to success in the big boss's batch. This isn't some shiny little trinket for you to drool over."
He clutched something against his chest. Evrin couldn't see what it was from this angle, only that Marek held it the way a drowning man might hold driftwood.
"Dezcrin himself needs to see this. Not you lazy vulks."
Dezcrin.
The name settled over the camp like frost.
Evrin didn't know who that was. Didn't know what it meant. But he knew the weight of it, the way everyone went still when Marek said it, and that was enough.
Kestin dropped closer to the ground and thrust his lower arms into the air.
"Yeah. Okay, Boss.."
He went back to packing supplies as one of his upper hand orbs brightened and a mini pocket dimension portal opened in front of him. His lower hands made finger motions as if manipulating supplies nearby with just the wave of his hands and fingers. He then proceeded to drag the packed items into the portal with those same gestures.
'Vellons,' Evrin thought. 'Natural born cheats of nature.'
Then there was the tall one.
Rist.
Evrin hated looking at him.
The Vyx—that's what Marek called his kind—stood too tall, his limbs jointed in ways that didn't quite make sense. Plates of chitin wrapped his body like armor grown from the inside out, deep red flesh visible in the gaps between. At the center of his half-plated skull, a single crystal eye glimmered blue in the firelight.
Evrin had nightmares about that eye.
"But Boss…" Rist's voice had an echo to it, like he was speaking from the bottom of a well. "Can't we have one tiny, miserable, harmless little look?"
Marek lunged forward and grabbed a ridge of chitin near Rist's collar, wrenching the towering creature down until his crystal eye hovered level with Marek's face.
"NO, YOU ABSOLUTE IDIOT!"
Evrin felt his pulse spike. His hands curled into fists against his thighs, nails biting into his palms.
'Not us. Not us this time.'
Marek released Rist with a sharp twist.
The Vyx staggered back, limbs flailing in a way that would have been comical if Evrin's ribs didn't still ache from the last time those limbs had found him. Rist caught his balance and released a sound—half huff, half hiss—that resonated in his chest plates.
After that, even he went quiet.
Marek turned.
His gaze swept across the camp and landed on Evrin and Evris like a stone dropping into still water.
Evrin's breath caught.
He forced himself to meet Marek's eyes for half a second before looking down. Not too long—that was defiance. Not too short—that was guilt. Just long enough to show he was paying attention.
It was a calculation he'd learned to make without thinking.
"You two."
Evrin's stomach clenched.
"Find something to burn. And move quickly, or I'll feed you to whatever comes wandering through the brush."
The words were casual. Almost lazy.
That made them worse.
Evrin pushed himself to his feet. His legs shook—hunger, exhaustion, fear, all of it blending together into a single tremor he couldn't quite control. Evris rose beside him, her hand finding his for just a moment before they both remembered and let go.
Touching was dangerous. It gave them something to threaten.
The chain dragged behind them as they moved toward the edge of camp.
It was always there. Heavy iron links that connected the shackles around their ankles to a metal ball suspended above their heads. Rist held the ball in one hand with the kind of casual ease that made Evrin's hatred flare hot and bright in his chest.
The weight of it should have been impossible for one person to hold. Should have required both hands, a brace, something.
Rist held it like it was nothing.
"Hurry," the Vyx muttered. His crystal eye tracked them with bored indifference. "This metal ball is heavier than both of you useless things combined."
Evrin wanted to say something. Wanted to spit back some retort that would wipe that casual cruelty off Rist's face.
Instead, he ducked his head and whispered, "Yes, sir."
The words tasted like ash.
Rist snorted—a wet, resonant sound that echoed in his chest plates.
"Weaklings," he chuckled.
Evrin turned away before the Vyx could see his expression.
They gathered sticks in silence. Evris moved through the brush beside him, her hands shaking as she pulled at dry branches. Bark scraped Evrin's fingers raw, but the pain was distant. Unimportant.
Something else had begun to take root in the deepest part of his mind.
It wasn't a thought, exactly. More like a sensation. A cold, jagged thing that pressed against the inside of his skull and whispered in a voice that sounded almost like his own.
'They need to pay.'
The thought came and went like a pulse.
'All of them.'
'Every. Single. One.'
Evrin's hands stilled on a branch. His vision blurred at the edges.
He didn't know where the thought had come from. Didn't know if it was his or if it had been planted there by hunger and fear and too many nights spent wondering if tomorrow would be the day Marek decided they weren't worth feeding anymore.
It didn't matter.
The thought was there now, and it wouldn't leave.
His fingers tightened on the branch until splinters bit into his palm.
Behind them, Rist's voice drifted across the camp.
"Marek, why do we even keep them again?"
Evrin went still.
Marek's reply was lazy, distracted. He was crouched over a pile of tinder, coaxing a stubborn spark into flame.
"In case the haul gets too heavy. Or if we need bait. Same old reasons."
"Besides, Dezcrin wants his money's worth in goods. He'll demand more if we return with one of them missing."
'Bait.'
The word settled into Evrin's chest like a stone dropping into dark water.
He kept moving because stopping would mean thinking, and thinking would mean feeling the full weight of what Marek had just said. His hands moved on their own—gathering sticks, snapping dead branches, anything to keep the rhythm going. One foot in front of the other. Back toward the fire. Back toward the men who saw him as nothing more than a tool to be used and discarded.
Evris walked beside him, her breathing shallow and uneven.
She looked emptied out. Hollowed. Like something essential had been scraped away and nothing had grown back to fill the space.
But Evrin felt something else entirely.
Hatred.
It burned low and steady in his chest, a coal that refused to go out no matter how much fear tried to smother it. The heat of it spread through his ribs, into his throat, behind his eyes—a slow fire that had been building for longer than he'd realized.
He had decided something, though he couldn't remember when the decision had been made. Perhaps it had always been there, waiting for the right moment to surface.
'They would die. All of them. Marek, Rist, Kestin—every last one.'
The thought didn't frighten him. It should have. But instead it felt like the first solid thing he'd held in months.
'And then he and Evris would run.'
Somewhere far. Somewhere safe.
Maybe one of the cities near the edge of Dome One. He'd heard stories about those places. Crowded, dangerous, but anonymous. A place where two escaped slaves might disappear into the press of bodies and never be found.
Dome One was vast. Unimaginably so. Its inner reaches grew more dangerous the closer you traveled toward the Inner Domes, but even that uncertain danger seemed preferable to this.
To chains. To hunger. To the casual cruelty in Rist's voice when he called them weaklings.
They returned to the fire and sat near the edge of the light. Marek tossed them scraps—dried meat that tasted like leather, a crust of bread so hard it hurt to chew.
It wasn't enough.
It was never enough.
Evrin's stomach ached with a hollow, gnawing hunger that had become so constant he barely noticed it anymore. Beside him, Evris picked at her portion with trembling fingers.
She looked like she might break if someone touched her too hard.
Evrin leaned closer. His voice dropped to barely a whisper.
"We have to get out of here."
Evris didn't look at him. Her gaze stayed fixed on the scrap of bread in her hands.
"How?"
The question hung between them.
Evrin didn't have an answer. Not yet.
"Before they kill us," he said quietly. "Or worse."
Evris chewed slowly. Swallowed. When she finally spoke, her voice was flat. Drained.
"They're not stupid. They'll notice."
She glanced toward Rist, who still held the chain ball with casual ease.
"And that one still has the chain."
Evrin's jaw tightened.
"We're still some distance from the batch's hideout." He didn't know if that was true. Didn't know how far they'd come or how far they had left to go. But it felt true, and that was enough. "I'll figure something out."
Evris looked at him then. Her violet eyes—so much like his own—were dull in the dim light.
"Evrin…"
"Eat the rest of your food," he said. "We'll need whatever strength we can get."
She didn't argue.
They sat in silence as the fire burned low, reduced to glowing embers and thin veins of smoke that curled into the dark.
Time passed. Evrin wasn't sure how much.
Then Kestin's voice cut through the quiet.
"Boss…? Uh, Boss!"
All four of his ears shot upward, each one turning toward a different angle of the darkness.
Marek stirred. His eyes snapped open, and his hand immediately went to the object clutched against his chest.
"What is it, Kestin?"
"There's something out there." Kestin's voice had gone tight. Higher. "Something big."
Marek frowned. He wiped sleep from his eyes with his left hand.
"Are you sure it's big and not just some vulks wandering too close?"
Kestin shook his lower hand. "No way. I know what I saw. It's big, and it's fast."
Evrin's pulse quickened.
He turned his head slowly, scanning the darkness beyond the firelight.
Nothing.
Just shadows and the faint rustle of wind through the brush.
But something about the quality of the dark had changed. It felt closer now. Heavier.
Like it was watching.
Evrin's hands curled into fists against his thighs.
Beside him, Evris had gone very still.
"Evrin," she whispered.
"I know."
They waited.
The fire crackled. Embers popped and hissed.
And somewhere in the dark, something moved.