He sat on the cracked threshold, a piece of stale bread hard as wood in his trembling hands. His stomach had stopped cramping days ago; now, there was just a constant, hollow ache.
He took a small, hesitant bite. *"Inflation has skyrocketed. Even this miserable bread is a luxury now. If this keeps up, I'm going to starve to death,"* he thought.
A narrow beam of sunlight leaked through a hole in the rotting roof above him, catching his eye.
*"I need to fix this roof too,"* his thoughts drifted, chewing slowly. *"If things don't change, I'll never be able to pay off my parents' debts. If only I had a brother, maybe we could have pulled through this together. Though... only one of us would have been allowed to live. Still, maybe he would have been better than me."*
The thought broke as iron bells began to chime.
Heavy, dull clanks echoed down the alley. A procession of robed figures marched into view, dragging an iron-barred cage over the cobblestones. Their voices chanted in grim, mechanical unison:
"The time has come to save humanity. The time for sacrifice is upon us."
The boy froze, watching them from the shadows of his doorway. *"Wait, it's the A-Branch's turn for the sacrifice, isn't it? I wonder whose life is going to be ripped away this time. Thank the gods I am an only child. If I had a brother, one of us would have definitely been offered to the Demon King."*
But the procession didn't pass by. The iron cage rolled to a halt. Right in front of his house.
Across the street, neighbors watched with dead, indifferent eyes, going about their day. The street emptied in seconds, leaving him completely exposed. Two men detached from the group, heavy iron shackles swinging from their grips.
"There... there must be some mistake!" the boy stammered, stumbling back. "I am my parents' only son!"
Before the words could fully leave his mouth, the men grabbed him. They violently twisted his arms behind his back and locked the cold steel around his wrists.
"Why isn't anyone listening?!" he thrashed and screamed as they dragged him ruthlessly toward the cage. "I am an only child! How can you do this?!"
They tossed him inside. The iron door clanged shut. Gripping the cold bars of the small window, he screamed into the apathetic street, "Will someone please tell me why this is happening to me?!"
A man stepped out from the rear of the procession. He wore extravagantly expensive silks, heavy gold jewelry gleaming around his neck. The nobleman leaned in close to the window and whispered, "How incredibly fortunate you are, boy. To be sacrificed for the sake of humanity. May your soul find peace."
With that, the wealthy man turned and walked away.
The cart lurched forward. Desperate, the boy clung to the bars, looking back at his crumbling house one last time.
Then, his breath stopped.
Standing in the doorway, talking to the silk-clad nobleman, was his father. The nobleman handed over a heavy, clinking leather pouch. His father weighed it in his hand, a wide, greedy smile stretching across his face, as if he had just won the ultimate lottery.
"Father?!"
The word barely made it past his lips. He watched his father count the blood money as a foul, sickeningly sweet gas hissed into the cage from a vent below. Before his mind could even process the heartbreak, his vision blacked out.
He woke to the smell of rust and rotting meat.
"We need to rip out all his nails first," a gruff voice echoed in the damp stone cellar. "Make sure he bleeds from every single pore. That's the only way to quickly quench the Demon King's thirst."
The boy's eyes snapped open. He was strapped tightly to a heavy iron chair. Two massive torturers stood over him, their heavy leather aprons completely drenched in dried, blackened blood. They gripped wicked, rusted tools in their hands.
"You made a grave mistake waking up, kid," one of them sneered, stepping closer. "Now, you're going to feel a pain beyond human comprehension. You're about to learn that there is no place for the weak in this world. Your kind is destined for nothing but pain, suffering, and betrayal."
Without another word, the torturers set to work. They clamped down and brutally tore the nails from his fingers.
He shrieked—a raw, agonizing sound that felt as if his very soul was being ripped from his flesh. He screamed until his vocal cords tore and his throat bled, leaving him with nothing but a silent, choked rasp. When they were finally done, his hands were ruined, raw flesh exposed and bleeding profusely.
They unbuckled his limp body and dragged him back outside.
The air was wrong here—a suffocating, unnatural twilight, as if day and night were warring in the same sky. The cart carried his broken body, the air growing thick with a repulsive, rotting stench. Finally, they ground to a halt at the edge of a colossal, bottomless abyss.
The executioners didn't hesitate. They hauled him out by his bleeding limbs and hurled him directly into the gaping pit.
As he fell into the endless dark, the agony was so immense his body could no longer process it. The wind roared past his battered face, and his mind screamed into the void.
*"Hoping for humanity in this ruthless world is nothing but a lie,"* he thought. *"There is no place for compassion here. People just wear the cloak of 'humanity' to slaughter others and save themselves."*
The dark swallowed him deeper.
*"So this is my end. If only I had one more chance... If only I could tear off their masks and show them the true, ugly face of their precious humanity. If only I could purge this world of the demons. If only I had power. If only... If only....
(Author's note : Welcome to all the new readers If you like the dark world of " The shadow of vessel" don't forget to save it in your library. My full effort will be to update a new chapter every day. If you like this help drop your Power Stones! Thank you for reading! )