2081 AD (After Dark)
It was Lucian's nineteenth birthday, but who would have thought he'd receive his best gift ever? The Underworld's First Trial was calling him for his birthday present, and there was no one—not even family, not even friends—to say "Happy Birthday, Lucian" or "Happy Birthday, Luci" to him.
What could he even do? He was alone. He was poor.
He'd been raised in the slums, got beaten to a pulp by his seniors, but nobody was there to help him. Nobody spoke to him. Instead, everyone just looked at him and moved toward their own destinations, their own lives, their problems that didn't include a starving orphan shivering in a doorway.
He didn't even have bread to eat today. His stomach cramped with familiar emptiness, the kind of hunger that made your vision swim and your thoughts slow. The cold October air bit through his threadbare coat—stolen from a corpse three months ago, still reeking faintly of whoever had died in it.
His consciousness began to fade as exhaustion finally claimed him. The last thing he saw before darkness took him was the cracked watch face on his wrist.
The hands clicked to exactly 12:00 AM.
Monday.
Lucian's birthday.
His first sight was blurry.
He tried to squeeze his eyes shut and open them again, but everything remained out of focus—shapes and colors bleeding together like watercolors left in the rain. He blinked harder, forcing his vision to clear through sheer stubborn will.
His hands came into focus first.
Steel chains. Heavy manacles encircled both wrists, the metal already cold enough to burn. His fingers were pale, bloodless, trembling beyond his control.
Shit... it's fucking cold.
The thought arrived with mist forming from his nose while breathing. His whole body shivered from inside out, muscles spasming, teeth chattering so hard he tasted blood where he'd bitten his tongue.
He tried to move his head to look around, assess where the hell he was, but found difficulty moving it. More steel chains wrapped around his neck, the collar tight enough to restrict but not quite strangle. The metal pressed against his throat with every swallow.
When he finally managed to turn his head, the landscape stole what little breath the cold had left him.
Vast white snow covered empty land stretching to the horizon. Nothing else. No trees. No buildings. No shelter. Just endless white beneath a gray sky that promised only more suffering.
And people.
Behind him and in front—hundreds of them. Maybe more. All wearing clothes so small it was hard to even cover their bodies enough to be safe from the cold. Thin cotton shirts torn and stained. Trousers that barely reached the knees. Bare feet leaving bloody tracks in the snow.
They moved like slaves—because that's what they were. Chained together in a long column, each person connected to the next, all trudging through the wasteland toward some unknown destination.
Where are we going? Lucian thought, trying to squeeze his hands into fists to generate warmth. The chains prevented it. The cold bit deeper.
Suddenly, from somewhere behind the column, someone started screaming.
High-pitched. Agonized. The sound of pure terror and pain.
Lucian turned his head as much as the neck chain allowed and saw a crude wooden structure—a guard post, maybe—set back from the main column. In front of it, a man in full armor was beating a child with a whip.
The boy was small. Younger than Lucian himself, maybe eleven or twelve. He'd collapsed in the snow, too weak to continue walking, and now he paid the price.
The whip rose and fell.
CRACK.
"Help me!" the child screamed, his voice breaking with desperation. "Please spare me! I didn't do anything!"
A bold voice rang out on a high note, cutting through the wind and snow.
"I told you to move, didn't I, you stupid pig!" The armored guard's voice dripped with contempt, with the casual cruelty of someone who'd done this a hundred times before. "Why didn't you move fast? HA?"
He raised his hand high in the air and started to whip the boy's back repeatedly.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Again and again and again.
"You fucking pig! You don't deserve to live! Even if one of you disappeared, nothing will happen—we still got ninety-nine other slaves for the King!"
He beat that little child until the child stopped breathing.
The screams ended abruptly. The small body went limp in the bloodstained snow, no longer twitching, no longer trying to escape. Just... still.
Dead.
The guard spat on the corpse and turned to address the column, his voice booming across the wasteland.
"Get moving, you pigs! We have to move before it gets night, or do you wanna die with him? HA?"
Nobody raised their head. Nobody made a sound. They'd learned already—speak up and you're next. Fall behind and you're next. Show weakness and you're next.
The lesson had been taught. The lesson had been learned.
The column moved systematically forward with mechanical obedience, an infinite line of suffering trudging toward no destination Lucian could see. Just... forward. Always forward. Through snow and wind and the gathering darkness.
Lucian moved his head slightly, lowering it toward where the child had just breathed his last breath, not even knowing what would be there at the end of this journey.
Or maybe it was a great choice that he died now.
I may sound harsh, Lucian thought, but it was the truth. He didn't know what would happen when they reached the King—maybe they'd get tortured day and night. Maybe they'd be worked to death in mines. Maybe something worse his imagination couldn't conjure. Isn't it better to just die now?
He looked at that child one more time as the boy's body—someone whose name he didn't know, would never know—slowly began to freeze in the snow.
And from the sky, white, pure white snow started to fall from the gray sky, covering the no-name child's body like a burial shroud.
Rest in peace...