The guards tossed Reerie into a wagon parked in the alley—another prison, with iron bars and chains fastened to the floor.
The door slammed shut.
She rushed to the bars, her small hands gripping the cold metal, watching as the guards went back to the shack.
More sounds of violence echoed out. Denny's voice—now weaker, fading: "You... you can't..."
"We can. And we will." The scarred guard's voice was blunt. "You're a deserter, Denny. We checked the records. You fled King Adam's army six years ago. That's a hanging crime. And hiding fugitive slaves? That's another one."
A pause. Then, in a lower tone: "Two nooses' worth of crimes. But we'll save the rope. One axe does the job just as well."
"She's not... she's a child..."
"She's the property of the slavers' guild. And you took her. You should've kept quiet, Denny. Should've stayed small and hidden like the other rats in the slums."
The scarred guard appeared in the doorway, wiping blood from his knuckles.
"Take him to the holding cells. The execution is set for three days from now. Public square, dawn. His Majesty wants to be there personally—to make an example of deserters who think they can be heroes."
More struggling. Boots scraping on wood. Denny was dragged out between two guards, his feet barely holding him up.
They pulled him past the wagon.
Reerie pressed her face against the bars.
Denny's eyes met hers—swollen, bloodshot, but still aware. Still seeing.
His mouth moved. She thought he said her name.
Reerie.
Then they pulled him around the corner, and he was gone.
The wagon jolted into motion, wheels creaking. The shack—her shelter, her roof, her warmth—vanished into the maze of slum alleys.
Inside the cage, Reerie hugged her knees to her chest.
The chains on her wrists clinked softly.
Three days went by in a cell.
Stone walls. No windows. The darkness was only interrupted by thin beams of light seeping in from under the door.
They provided her with water once a day—a ladle pushed through the bars, sometimes hitting her face if she wasn't quick enough to drink.
Food was given once. A bowl of something grey and half-rotten that made her stomach churn. She ate it anyway. Survival had become instinct.
Other prisoners were around her in the larger holding area—men and women, thieves, debtors, and murderers, all waiting for their fate. They didn't talk to her. Hardly glanced at her. A child in chains was nothing special in King Adam's dungeons.
She slept in short bursts, waking up at every noise.
When she did manage to sleep, she dreamed.
Kilifay's blood spreading in the mud.
The soldier's sword pulling back, dripping red.
Denny's face as the guards took her away.
XXX
On the third morning, they came for her.
"Get up, runt."
Rough hands seized her arms, pulling her to her feet. Her legs almost gave way—three days of sitting had left them weak and unsteady.
They dragged her down a corridor lit by torches, up stone stairs that seemed to go on forever, until finally—
Daylight.
Grey and sickly, but daylight.
And noise.
The roar of a crowd, hundreds of voices merging into something that sounded like hunger.
The square was enormous.
Cobblestones spread out in all directions, filled with people—men, women, children, beggars, merchants, and nobles all crowded together. The air was thick with the scent of sweat, smoke, and something else—excitement, anticipation, bloodlust.
Vendors weaved through the throng, selling meat pies and ale. Execution days felt like celebrations. Entertainment. A break from the harshness of everyday life.
In the center of the square, the scaffold loomed like a dark tooth against the grey sky.
Dark wood, smoothed by the elements and use. Ropes hung from the crossbeam, but today they were tied up—unused. Today's method was quicker.
The executioner stood next to a large block, his axe resting on it. The blade shone even in the dim light, sharp enough to catch the little sunlight that broke through the clouds.
Drums beat a slow, steady rhythm. Each thump resonated through the square, through Reerie's chest, matching the frantic pace of her heart.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Like the heartbeat of the world. Like death counting down.
The guards pulled Reerie through the crowd.
People turned to stare—some curious, some indifferent, some grinning as if they had heard a good joke.
"Is that her?"
"Runaway slave, I heard."
Laughter. Someone spat near her feet.
They brought her to the front of the execution area—a roped-off space just below the scaffold, close enough to see everything.
Two guards forced her to kneel.
Her chains were fastened to an iron ring set into the cobblestones, pulled tight so she couldn't run, couldn't even stand.
She knelt in the mud left by yesterday's rain and looked up at the scaffold.
"Watch," one guard muttered, tightening the chains. "His Majesty's orders. You get a front-row seat to what happens when someone tries to steal from the crown."
The drums grew louder.
They brought Denny out flanked by two guards.
The crowd erupted in cheers.
He walked—no need for dragging, he still had some pride left—but his steps were shaky. Three days in a cell had taken a toll that the beating hadn't.
His face was a mess of purple and yellow bruises. His jaw was misaligned, likely broken. His lip was split and healed unevenly. Blood was crusted beneath his nose and in his hair.
Yet he stood tall.
Even now. Even at the end.
That arrogance, that pride, that refusal to submit—it remained, deep within.
His boots thudded on the scaffold steps like tombstones being placed.
The crowd howled. Rotten fruit flew through the air, splattering against the scaffold rails. A cabbage struck Denny's shoulder and burst. He didn't flinch.
Somewhere a dog barked.
Somewhere a child laughed.
This was a theater. This was justice. This was King Adam's empire on display.
Denny reached the top of the scaffold.
The guards positioned him next to the block—a waist-high piece of wood, smooth and darkened with old blood.
His eyes scanned the crowd.
And found hers.
For a brief moment—just a moment—everything else faded away. The noise, the drums, the crowd's hunger.
Just those grey eyes meeting her dark ones.
She wished for him to smile. To say something witty. To be the loud, bold man who had filled the shack with tales and bravado.
But there was nothing in his eyes but regret.
Raw. Helpless. Endless.
His lips moved. She couldn't hear over the drums and the crowd, but she could read his lips: "I'm sorry, kid."
Reerie felt the chains digging into her wrists as she lunged forward, trying to stand and reach him—
The guards pushed her back down, the chains tightening and cutting into her wrists until they bled.
She opened her mouth to scream his name—the first word she had spoken since whispering Reerie a month ago—
But no sound came out.
Her voice was lost. Taken by fear. Trapped in her throat like chains around her neck.
She could only silently mouth it: Denny.
His name. The only thing she could offer him.
She thought he saw her.
The guards forced him to kneel.
They bent him over the block.
His head lay on the blood-stained wood, neck exposed.
The executioner lifted his axe.
Sunlight—weak and grey, but present—caught the blade's edge like oil.
The drums reached a peak.
The crowd held its breath.
In that final moment, Denny's gaze remained on hers.
Not fearful. Not defiant.
Just... sorry.
The blade fell.
The world broke apart.
Sound—a wet, horrific noise that would haunt Reerie's nightmares forever—then silence.
The crowd erupted.
Cheering. Screaming. Applause as if this were a play, as if Denny were an actor taking a bow.
Reerie's mouth opened in a scream that had no voice.
Her body thrashed against the chains, fingers clawing at the mud until her nails cracked and bled. She fought with all her strength—every muscle, every breath, every desperate part of her—but the chains held.
They always held.
She screamed silently until her throat burned.
Until her voice was reduced to a broken rasp.
Until all that emerged was a soundless ruin.
The drums cried out in triumph.
Blood pooled at the edge of the scaffold, dripping between the boards, dark and thick.
The executioner wiped his blade with a rag, methodical and uninterested.
Vendors began calling out again, selling their goods. The show was over. Time to eat, drink, and go home.
Reerie collapsed forward, her forehead against the mud, chains tugging at her wrists.
Kilifay.
Denny.
Everyone who had shown her kindness. Everyone who had cared.
Dead.
XXX
High above the square, on a red velvet-covered platform, King Adam watched.
His throne was positioned for the perfect view — not too close to smell the blood, but near enough to see everything clearly. To see the girl fall into the mud. To see her silent, broken scream.
His crown reflected the little light available, glinting like a predator's tooth.
He leaned forward slightly, fingers steepled under his chin.
"Twice now," he murmured, to no one.
First, the raid at Gobifrakan. His soldiers had noticed a child who slipped into the city during the arrival of the slave column — lost in the chaos, deemed unimportant. Worth barely ten gold.
Then this. Found again, hidden by a deserter, captured. And now, as she watched her protector die at the block, she still fought. Still struggling against chains she had no hope of breaking.
Most children broke after the first trauma.
He observed her in the mud for a long moment. Then he signaled one of his personal retinue — not the city watch — and the man approached.
"The girl," King Adam instructed. "She's interesting. Pardon her. Give her citizen papers. Place her somewhere in the middle of a city and leave her." He paused, his gaze still on the mud below. "There will come a day when I need someone who can escape death itself. And I want to know if she can do it."
King Adam chuckled to himself.
The guard's brow shifted — just slightly, the controlled confusion of a man who had learned not to question and was finding that discipline tested. "Yes, Your Majesty," he replied. And nothing more.
"That is all."
He leaned back in his throne as the guards moved toward the girl in the mud.
He did not yet know what she was. He only knew she was still alive, and that was worth watching.
The guard stepped down from the platform, carrying orders.
In the square below, the crowd started to scatter. The executions for the day were over. The scaffold would remain vacant until the next day's criminals arrived.
Vendors were closing their stalls. The executioner cleaned his block. City workers brought buckets and mops to wash the blood from the cobblestones before it set too deep.
Just another morning in Sumeiyash. Just another death in a country built on such events.
Reerie stayed kneeling, chains weighing heavily on her bleeding wrists, gazing at the blood gathering at the edge of the scaffold.
She was unaware a king had been observing.
Unaware her destiny had just been determined—not with chains this time, but with something far more sinister.
All she understood was this:
Kili was gone.
Denny was gone.
And somewhere deep within her chest, something broke—a final, silent fracture that would never, ever heal.
As the sun weakly emerged from behind the clouds, guards arrived.
Different guards. Not the city watch. These ones wore the crown's colors—crimson and gold.
They released her from her chains.
She didn't resist when they helped her to stand.
She remained silent as they took her away from the blood-stained square, through streets that merged into grey and stone.
Her feet moved on their own. One step. Another. Another.
She was just six years old.
But everyone who cared for her had died.
And everyone she loved had bled.
The crown's guards guided her toward the main district, leading her to a future she couldn't envision and didn't desire.
Behind her, workers cleaned Denny's blood from the cobblestones.
Above her, King Adam grinned from his velvet throne.
And within her, where hope once resided, there was only darkness now.
Cold.
Empty.
Silent as a grave.