The wind on Demon Pirates Island never felt gentle.
It howled.
It scraped across the jagged cliffs and broken stone like something alive, carrying with it the salt of the sea and the faint, lingering scent of blood that never quite faded from the air. Even when the sky was clear, even when the waves below seemed calm, the island itself remained harsh...unforgiving in a way that settled deep into the bones of those trapped upon it.
For the children...
It was worse.
There was no softness here.
No warmth.
Only survival.
Jin Yue was eleven that year.
And he had already learned how to endure.
The makeshift shelter they called home was nothing more than a half-collapsed wooden structure near the lower ridge of the island. The demon pirates did not care where the captives slept, as long as they could still work the next day. Straw had been thrown into a corner, uneven and rough, barely enough to cushion the cold ground beneath it.
But to them...
It was enough.
