The transport wagon didn't open to a village. It opened to the Black-Iron Foothills, a place where the gravity sat at a crushing 1.5x and the air tasted like frozen copper.
Matheo was shoved out of the wagon into the snow. He wasn't met by hunters, but by the Labor Master, a man named Silas who looked at the slaves the way a carpenter looks at a pile of cheap nails.
The First Month: The Animal Pen
The transition from "human" to "beast" was swift. Silas's manor overlooked the pits, and his children often stood on the balcony to watch the "animals" work.
One afternoon, Matheo was hauling a crate of raw iron past the garden. Silas's ten-year-old son, bored with his toys, began throwing sharpened stones at the passing slaves. One caught Matheo in the cheek, slicing a deep gash.
Matheo stopped, his old-world instinct making him look at the boy.
"Look down, dog!" a guard roared, slamming a wooden baton into Matheo's ribs. "You don't look at your masters!"
Matheo hit the mud. He heard the boy's high-pitched laughter. "Look, Papa! The ugly one bleeds red just like the pigs!" That night, lying in a stone shed with fifty other men, Matheo felt the wound on his face itch. Because Silas fed the slaves "Slop"—a high-protein, mana-infused mash meant to keep them productive—Matheo's healing factor had plenty of fuel. The gash closed by morning, but the scar remained in his mind. He realized then: In this world, his life was worth less than the rock he mined.
The Third Month: The Social Rot
Cruelty wasn't just at the top; it was everywhere. As winter set in, the slaves began to turn on each other. Men stole blankets from the dying. Stronger slaves forced the weaker ones to do their quotas or face a beating.
Matheo became the target of a "Capo"—a veteran slave named Brunt who worked for the guards. Brunt took half of Matheo's food every day for a month.
Matheo didn't fight back. He watched. He calculated. He allowed himself to become skin and bone, looking like the weakest link in the chain. But underneath that skeletal frame, his internal organs were hardening. His heart was becoming more efficient; his lungs were expanding to handle the thin mountain air. He was a machine disguised as a corpse.
One night, Brunt tried to take Matheo's last scrap of bread. Matheo looked up, his eyes hollow.
"Eat it," Matheo whispered, his first words in weeks. "Eat it all. You'll need the strength for what's coming."
Brunt laughed, thinking the boy had finally gone mad. He didn't notice that Matheo was the only one who didn't cough during the "Iron-Lung" outbreaks. Matheo was scavenging Star-Moss from the deep veins—a poisonous fungus that his body was slowly learning to turn into pure, raw endurance.
The Sixth Month: The Predator's Silence
By the end of the half-year, the "Business Graduate" was gone.
Matheo stood in the morning roll call. His skin was the color of lead, and his ribs were visible through his tattered rags. Silas and his son walked the line, inspecting the "stock" for the monthly merchant sale.
The boy, now eleven, stopped in front of Matheo. He raised a whip—a small, decorative one his father had bought him.
"This one is still alive?" the boy asked, bored. He lashed the whip across Matheo's chest.
Matheo didn't flinch. He didn't blink. He stood perfectly still as the blood welled up and his body immediately began the silent, invisible work of stitching the skin back together.
Matheo looked Silas's son directly in the eye. It wasn't a look of anger. It was the look of a man counting the seconds until a contract is fulfilled.
The boy's laughter died. He stepped back, a chill running down his spine. "Father... why is he looking at me like that? Make him stop."
Silas frowned, sensing something "wrong" with the slave. "He's spent too much time in the deep pits. The iron-fumes have rotted his brain. He's useless now." Silas turned to a guard. "Sell him to the next traveling merchant. I don't care about the price. Just get this ghost off my land."
As Matheo was led away in heavy iron chains, he looked back at the manor. He didn't feel sadness. He didn't feel the weight of the 1.5x gravity. He felt like a coiled spring.
Six months of torture. Six months of being treated like an animal. Six months of eating poison and sleeping in ice.
I know the guard rotations, he thought, his cold mind flashing through the data. I know the Merchant's carriage has a loose floorboard. I know the son's bedroom window is never locked because he thinks he's safe behind his father's name.