Chapter Five: The End of Eight Years of Hell
It all happened so quickly.
The sound of approaching hooves grew louder, followed by the hurried footsteps of several men. Before Little One could make sense of what was happening, the door to the physician's lair burst open.
A group of armed men stormed inside.
Their eyes swept across the room, taking in the rows of beds, the scattered medical instruments, and the children lying helplessly upon their mattresses. Some were barely conscious, while others were too weak to do anything but stare at the intruders.
Then one of the men spotted a little girl sprawled across a hard bed.
He rushed toward her.
"My lady!"
His voice was filled with alarm as he knelt beside her. He carefully checked her breathing, then examined her frail body, his expression growing darker with every passing moment.
Another man looked around the room.
The sight before him was enough to make his blood boil.
The children were little more than skin and bones. Their faces were pale, their bodies covered in injuries, and their eyes were filled with the hopelessness of those who had endured far more suffering than anyone their age should have known.
Then his gaze fell upon Little One.
A crippled child.
One eye missing. One hand gone. Her body so frail that she looked as though the slightest breeze might carry her away.
For a moment, he stood frozen.
Then rage exploded across his face.
"That vile bastard!"
He kicked over a nearby table, sending bottles and medical instruments crashing to the floor.
"My lord will burn him alive for this!"
With that, he began tearing apart the room in a fit of fury. He overturned tables, smashed containers, and destroyed anything that stood in his way.
The other men did not stop him.
They, too, were horrified by what they had discovered.
This was no ordinary medical room. It was a place where innocent children had been subjected to unspeakable cruelty. Every instrument, every bottle, and every bed told a story of suffering.
And their young miss had been among the victims.
Little One watched from her bed, her expression unreadable.
She did not know who these men were, nor why they had come.
But one thing was clear.
The physician had captured someone he should never have touched.
Someone important enough to make these men tremble with fury at the sight of her injuries.
And by doing so, he had sealed his own fate.
For the first time in eight years, Little One felt something stir within her chest that was not pain, grief, or hatred.
It was joy.
A quiet, almost unfamiliar joy.
So this is how it ends?
Her gaze shifted toward the doorway through which the men had entered.
My suffering is finally going to end.
She had endured eight years of torment. Eight years of watching children arrive, suffer, and die. Eight years of being treated like a worthless object by a man who had never once considered her a human being.
Now, that man was going to pay.
Oh, how wonderful!
She wanted to laugh.
She wanted to scream.
She wanted to stand before the physician and watch the fear spread across his face as he finally understood that his time was over.
Most of all, she wanted to see him die with her own remaining eye.
It would not bring back her mother.
It would not bring back Enan or the girl who had promised to take her home.
It would not restore the years stolen from her or erase the countless nights she had spent wishing for death.
But perhaps, just perhaps, seeing the physician meet his end would bring a little comfort to the souls of those he had murdered.
Perhaps they could finally rest.
For the first time in years, Little One allowed herself to look forward to something.
Revenge.
---
After inspecting the room, the man who had first rushed to her side carefully lifted her into his arms.
"Quickly! Get the remaining children out of here!" he ordered. "Search the rest of this place, then burn it to the ground!"
He glanced toward the doorway, his expression hardening.
"Laobe will answer for this today."
With those words, he carried Little One out of the room.
She barely had time to understand what was happening before they emerged from the lair.
Then sunlight struck her face.
Little One flinched.
The light was painfully bright, and she instinctively tried to turn away from it. Her remaining eye watered as she struggled to adjust.
For a moment, she could not see anything clearly.
She had spent more than eight years trapped inside the physician's lair. Eight years without seeing the open sky, without feeling the warmth of sunlight on her face, without knowing whether the world beyond those walls still existed as she remembered it.
Now, the light seemed almost unbearable.
Yet she did not want to escape it.
She wanted to see.
Slowly, she opened her eye again.
The world came into focus.
The sky stretched endlessly above her, painted in shades of blue. Trees stood in the distance, their branches swaying gently in the breeze. The air carried the scent of grass and earth, so different from the stench of medicine, poison, and blood that had filled her prison.
It was beautiful.
Or perhaps she had simply forgotten what beauty looked like.
The man carried her a short distance away from the lair before carefully setting her down on the ground.
Little One remained still for a while, allowing her eye to adjust to the brightness.
Then she began observing her surroundings.
Several men had arrived on large animals with muscular bodies and long legs.
Horses.
She remembered Enan telling her about them.
The animals stood around the lair, some restless beneath their riders, while the men spread out to secure the area.
At the front stood a tall, burly man.
In his grasp was the physician.
Laobe.
The man who had tortured her for eight years.
The man who had turned her life into an endless nightmare.
He was being restrained so tightly that he could barely move. His clothes were dishevelled, and his face was pale with fear.
Little One stared at him.
For years, she had imagined this moment.
She had imagined him screaming, begging, and trembling as he finally received the punishment he deserved.
She had imagined herself standing before him, watching the life drain from his eyes.
Now, he was right there.
And for the first time, he looked small.
The tall man holding him suddenly noticed Little One's face.
His expression twisted with fury.
"Laobe! How dare you!"
His voice thundered across the clearing.
"How dare you lay a hand on our young miss?!"
The physician's face turned deathly pale.
"P-please, hear me out!" he stammered. "I didn't know she was the young miss! I found her unconscious near the slums and brought her back with me. I had no idea who she was!"
Little One almost laughed.
You bastard.
The physician had never looked so pathetic.
This was the same man who had smiled while children screamed in agony. The same man who had casually disposed of their bodies when his experiments killed them. The same man who had looked at her suffering and called it interesting.
Now, he was trembling.
His face was filled with fear and desperation, and his words tumbled out in a frantic attempt to save himself.
Little One savoured the sight.
How does it feel, Laobe?
How does it feel to be the one who cannot escape?
The burly man tightened his grip.
"You found an unconscious child and decided to kidnap her?" he roared. "You expect me to believe that you simply picked her up out of kindness?"
The physician opened his mouth, but no words came out.
The man continued, his voice growing colder with every sentence.
"Our young miss has suffered from a condition since birth. Her body is naturally weak, and she has been known to faint without warning. Yet you took her away and subjected her to your experiments!"
He pointed toward Little One.
"Look at what you've done to her!"
The physician's gaze shifted toward the girl.
For a brief moment, their eyes met.
Little One stared at him without blinking.
She had lost her left eye. Her left forearm was gone. Her body had been broken and weakened by eight years of torture.
Yet she was still alive.
And he was the one who would soon be begging for his life.
"If anything happens to our young miss," the burly man continued, "my lord will take your head himself!"
The physician's knees nearly gave way.
He finally understood the enormity of his mistake.
The girl he had treated as an ordinary child was a member of a family whose influence reached far beyond anything he could challenge.
Worse still, she was their young miss, someone they would protect at all costs.
His reputation as a respected physician meant nothing now.
His knowledge of medicine could not save him.
And his poisons, once administered, had no known cure.
He had spent years experimenting on children, convinced that he could control life and death through his creations.
Now, he had endangered the life of someone he should never have touched.
He was finished.
There was nothing he could do.
---
While the burly man continued to restrain Laobe, the others moved quickly.
They searched the lair, gathered the surviving children, and carried them outside.
There were three others besides Little One.
They were all terribly weak, their bodies reduced to little more than skin and bones. Their faces were pale, and their eyes lacked the strength to show much emotion.
Nevertheless, they were alive.
Little One watched them being placed on the ground near her.
She felt a faint sense of relief.
At least, she was not the only one who had survived.
The men then began pouring oil throughout the lair.
They spread it across the floor, over the wooden furniture, and around the rooms where the physician had conducted his experiments.
Little One watched silently.
Soon, flames began to rise.
At first, they crept along the floor in thin, flickering lines. Then they spread rapidly, devouring the furniture and climbing the walls.
Thick smoke billowed into the air.
The fire grew larger, its orange glow illuminating the surrounding trees.
Little One watched as the place that had imprisoned her for eight years began to burn.
She could almost see the memories trapped within those walls.
The screams of the children.
The physician's footsteps.
The bitter smell of medicine.
The needles.
The poisons.
The lifeless bodies carried away without ceremony.
Every painful memory seemed to rise with the smoke.
For a long time, she had believed that she would die in that place.
She had imagined herself becoming another discarded corpse, forgotten in a room where countless children had suffered before her.
Yet here she was.
Outside.
Watching her prison burn.
The flames roared higher, swallowing the building piece by piece. The roof eventually gave way, collapsing into the inferno beneath it.
The fire continued to burn for more than an hour.
By the time it finally subsided, little remained of the lair except ashes, charred wood, and the blackened remnants of the physician's instruments.
The place where eight years of her life had been stolen was gone.
Little One lowered her gaze.
She did not cry.
She had cried too much in the past.
Instead, she sat quietly, watching the last wisps of smoke drift into the sky.
It's over.
At least, that part of her nightmare was.
---
Once the fire had died down, the burly man gave the order to depart.
"We're leaving. Prepare the horses."
He glanced toward the forest.
Although the men had found themselves near the entrance of the Pathway of Ascension, he had no intention of lingering there any longer than necessary.
The forest was still dangerous, and the presence of the physician's lair had already delayed them enough.
He secured Laobe with a long rope, tying him to a horse so that the man could not escape.
The physician struggled weakly, but the restraints held firm.
He was then forced to follow the group as they prepared to leave.
Little One watched with growing anticipation.
This was it.
The physician was going to face the consequences of his actions.
She had waited eight years for this moment.
Eight years of hatred.
Eight years of suffering.
Eight years of watching the people around her die.
And now, the man responsible was being dragged away like an animal.
She could not help feeling satisfied.
Yet when she looked toward the other surviving children, her expression gradually changed.
The men had rescued their young miss.
They had found her, carried her outside, and made certain that the physician would be punished.
But they had shown little interest in the other children.
They had brought them out of the lair before burning it down, but that seemed to be the extent of their concern.
No one offered to carry them to safety.
No one examined their injuries.
No one asked whether they could walk.
The men looked at the children with pity, but their actions made their priorities clear.
The children were not the people they had come to save.
They were simply unfortunate victims who had happened to be in the same place as their young miss.
And in the men's eyes, there was little point in helping them further.
The poisons had already destroyed their bodies.
They were malnourished, severely weakened, and barely capable of standing. One of them was missing an eye and a hand.
The men believed that the children would die regardless of what they did.
Why waste time and resources on people who were already doomed?
That was the unspoken conclusion they reached.
Little One watched as the men mounted their horses.
She looked toward Laobe one last time.
The physician's face was twisted with desperation as he struggled against his restraints. He seemed to be pleading with the men, though the words were too distant for her to hear.
Then the horses began to move.
Little One tried to rise.
Her legs trembled beneath her, and she nearly fell before managing to steady herself.
She wanted to follow.
She wanted to watch the physician until he disappeared from sight.
She wanted to see him dragged away, to know that he would never return to the place where he had tortured her.
But her body would not cooperate.
Eight years of poison, starvation, and abuse had left her far too weak.
She took a few unsteady steps, then stopped.
The distance between her and the departing group continued to grow.
Finally, she could no longer make out the physician's face.
She had waited eight years to see his end, yet she would not be there to witness it.
The realization left a bitter taste in her mouth.
Still, she consoled herself with one thought.
He won't survive for long.
Whatever punishment awaited him, she was certain he would never return to torment her again.
That was enough.
For now.
---
The horses disappeared into the distance.
The sound of hooves gradually faded until all that remained was the rustling of leaves and the occasional cry of a distant bird.
Little One stood motionless for a while.
Then, at last, her strength gave out.
She collapsed onto the ground beside the other surviving children.
None of them spoke.
They were too weak, too exhausted, and too overwhelmed by everything that had happened.
The three children lay on the earth, staring blankly at the sky.
They had escaped the physician's lair.
But they were still in the Pathway of Ascension, a forest filled with monsters that grew more dangerous the deeper one ventured.
They had no food.
No shelter.
No medicine.
And no one coming back for them.
Little One did not know how far they were from the nearest town. She did not know whether any of them would survive the night, or whether a hungry beast would find them before morning.
For all she knew, they had escaped one form of death only to stumble into another.
Yet she was too tired to care.
Her body felt unbearably heavy.
The ground beneath her was hard, but after years of lying on an uncomfortable bed, even that seemed bearable.
She slowly closed her eye.
Perhaps she would wake up tomorrow.
Perhaps she would not.
For the first time in a long while, she did not have the strength to worry about it.
And so, the three children lay beneath the open sky and drifted into an exhausted sleep.
---
When Little One awoke, the world had changed again.
The sunlight was gone.
Darkness stretched across the forest, broken only by the faint glow of the stars scattered throughout the night sky.
For a moment, she lay still, uncertain of where she was.
Then she remembered.
The physician.
The men.
The burning lair.
She slowly raised her head.
Above her, the stars glittered like countless tiny jewels scattered across a vast, dark canvas.
Their light was faint, yet it was enough to make her surroundings seem less frightening.
She stared at them for a long time.
She had spent eight years beneath a roof, surrounded by walls that seemed to close in on her with every passing day.
Now, there was nothing above her but the endless sky.
It was a strange feeling.
The world seemed much larger than she remembered.
And for the first time in years, she was free to look at it.
A soft rustling came from beside her.
One of the children stirred, slowly opening their eyes. The other followed soon after, groaning as they struggled to sit up.
Little One turned toward them.
For a moment, she simply watched.
Then she released a quiet sigh of relief.
They were still alive.
All three of them.
She had grown accustomed to waking up and discovering that someone had died during the night. She had learned to expect empty beds, lifeless bodies, and the physician's indifferent footsteps.
But this time, the people beside her were breathing.
They had survived another day.
Perhaps they would survive another.
Little One looked at the two children, then toward the dark forest surrounding them.
She did not know what awaited them.
The world beyond the physician's lair was unfamiliar, and the dangers of the Pathway of Ascension were very real.
But they had one thing they had never truly possessed inside that place.
Freedom.
It was a fragile freedom, one that could disappear at any moment. They were weak, injured, and far from safety.
Still, it was theirs.
Little One slowly pushed herself upright.
Her body protested, but she ignored it.
She had survived eight years of hell.
She had watched the people she cared about die, endured pain that should have killed her, and lost almost everything she had ever possessed.
She would not allow the forest to claim her so easily.
She glanced at her two companions.
"We should find a way out," she said quietly.
Her voice was rough from disuse, but the words came out clearly.
The other children looked at her.
Neither immediately answered.
Then, slowly, one of them nodded.
The other followed.
Little One turned her gaze toward the distant darkness between the trees.
For the first time in eight years, she had a destination.
They would find civilization.
They would survive.
And perhaps, someday, she would finally return to the place where her journey had begun.
She had a promise to fulfil.
A mother waiting to be buried.
And a world she had yet to understand.
Her eight years of captivity had ended. But her journey into the unknown had only just begun.