The same dim orange glow leaked from the rusted lanterns overhead.
Drips echoed from the ceiling, each one splashing against the cracked stone floor.
The air reeked of rot and mold.
Old blood stains crusted the prison walls.
Time meant nothing here.
Only hunger.
Only silence.
Footsteps echoed down the corridor.
Chains rattled.
Then came the clang of wheels—grinding against uneven stone.
The food cart.
Two men dragged it forward. One laughed with a mouth full of rotten teeth. The other chewed something dry, eyes dull and disinterested.
One by one, cell doors creaked open.
Wooden bowls were tossed in without care. Some rolled. Some spilled.
Children lunged for them like animals.
Some cried as they ate.
Some didn't speak at all.
In one of the deeper cells… a bowl landed at Alex's feet.
He stared at it.
A few grains of rice.
A dry sliver of meat, if it even was that.
Just enough to mock him.
From across the bars, the same plump man leaned against the wall, arms folded.
His belly jiggled with a smug chuckle.
"Eat up, little hero," he sneered. "This is how you break a rebel."
His voice was thick. Oily.
"Starve the will before it can think. Works every time."
He laughed and walked off.
"Even the brave ones crawl eventually. You'll be crawling too."
Alex didn't answer.
Didn't blink.
He sat beside the bowl, arms around his knees.
Calm.
Silent.
Not defeated—just… distant.
Other children stole glances at him.
Some pitied him.
Others were too afraid.
But Alex was noticing something else from the moment he was captured here, as if the environment around him didn't bother him.
He didn't know how he was able to do it, but it was remarkable.
He wasn't thinking about food.
Not even the man's voice lingered in his mind.
His eyes drifted elsewhere—past the rusted bars, past the gloom.
Back to sunlit rooftops.
To a small room filled with the smell of bread.
To Elias.
The man who raised him.
The man who disappeared the night the sky cracked.
Alex closed his eyes.
Elias… where are you?
He remembered the roar.
The hooded figure in black.
The city breaking like glass.
He didn't want revenge.
He wanted Elias's hand.That calm voice.The one that always said, "You're not alone."
Now there was nothing.
Just bars.
Just silence.
And the Mark on his arm.
The Hollow's Bargain.
A pact made in desperation.
It shimmered faintly beneath his skin, suppressed by the glyph beneath the floor.
But today…
It flickered.
Only for a breath.
A ripple passed through the cell.
The Chainbind pulse.
And the Hollow's Mark… twitched.
Not much.
But enough.
Alex's eyes sharpened.
It's weakening.
He had felt it before.
Yesterday.
Now again.
The main glyph—Tier 3—was unstable.
The others on the walls held strong.
But this one?
This one faltered.
A flaw.
A thread he could pull.
One mistake. Just one… and I run.
He didn't touch the food.
He didn't move.
He waited.
Observed.
Learned.
The prison thought he was broken.
But Alex was still watching.
Still planning.
Still waiting to escape.
The world moved.
Alex didn't.
Not at first.
He kept his eyes half-lidded, his breathing shallow, steady—sleep-like.
But every sound?
He logged it. In his mind.
Every creak of boots against stone.
Every jingle of keys.
Every barked order or wheezing breath of a tired guard.
Routine.
That's what it was.
The prison moved like a wheel. Predictable. Clockwork.
And every clock had a weak tick.
Alex had started noticing them three days ago.
Guard rotations weren't random. Not really.
First shift: stern, disciplined, moved in pairs. Stayed for four hours.
Second shift: lazier. One had a limp. Another chewed
constantly—loudly.
Third shift: the quietest. They came late. Left late. Always dimmed the torches by accident or laziness.
Third shift was the key.
He'd timed it: a 14-minute gap between the end of second shift and the beginning of the next inspection.
Fourteen minutes.
That was when the glyph pulsed the weakest.
Tonight, he tested it again.
He rolled slowly onto his side, resting his cheek against the cold stone.
The floor glyph was right beneath him, etched deep into the earth—thin lines crawling outward like a spiderweb of suppression.
He counted the seconds.
One hundred and twenty…
One hundred and thirty-five…
One hundred and fifty...
There.
Dim.
A flicker.
Barely a second and a half—but it dimmed.
A heartbeat later, the mark on his arm shimmered.
Not visibly.
Not to anyone else.
But he felt it.
Like a twitch beneath his skin.
Like it knew.
Like it wanted out.
The Hollow's Bargain… it remembers.
He swallowed.
Could it be thinking? Waiting for him to act?
Back in Caelum, it had reacted on instinct. Back then, it saved him.
But now, it watched. Quiet. Dormant.
Or maybe… cautious.
Alex shifted his weight slightly, keeping the blanket over his body to hide the motion.
He pressed his fingertips gently to the stone.
The glyph flared faintly—then flickered again.
He counted again.
2.6 seconds.
Same as before.
That was the window.
Not long.
But enough.
If he moved fast, if he hit the pulse between transitions…
He could slip through before the suppression locked back down.
He exhaled.
Silent. Still.
Around him, the others snored, whimpered, or lay wide-eyed in the dark.
No one knew.
No one saw what he saw.
He curled tighter around himself, eyes shut.
But in his mind, gears turned.
He didn't need brute force. He didn't need a miracle.
He just needed one mistake from them.
One open door.
One late shift.
One flicker of a glyph.
And he would run.
He mouthed the words into the dark, lips barely moving:
"Tomorrow."
A pause.
"I run."
A cough echoed from the cell to Alex's left.
Wet. Weak. No one answered it.
He sat up slowly, back against the wall, knees drawn close to his chest. His breath formed mist in the cold.
Across the hallway, a boy no older than nine stared into the void. Wide eyes. Sunken cheeks. The same one who reminded Alex of Kairo.
That boy hadn't spoken once since arriving.
Alex had counted.
28 hours.
28 hours without words, tears, or resistance.
Just silence.
All around him, it was the same.
Children curled like husks, eyes hollowed by fear and exhaustion. Some older, some barely more than toddlers.
All broken in different ways.
He'd overheard a girl humming the same three notes for hours, lips bloodied from chewing them raw.
Another boy used a piece of bone to carve tally marks into his palm.
Alex clenched his fists.
He wanted to scream.
To tell them to move. To resist. To do anything but sit there and wait.
But he didn't.
He couldn't.
Because he was still in chains too.
Still watching, still learning, still hoping the flicker in his mark meant something more than false hope.
His gaze drifted down to his forearm.
The Hollow's Bargain Mark—a jagged, ink-black script woven like thorns—lay quiet beneath his skin. Muted.
The glyph of the chainbind Mark etched from ceiling to floor, kept it that way.
Usually.
He remembered the first time it had moved on it.
Back when the cultist tried to gut him.
The Mark had reacted before Alex had even formed a thought.
A blur of shadow. A snap of bone.
And then silence.
Now, it barely stirred.
As if it was… waiting.
Or calculating.
Alex didn't know how the Mark worked—not really. The bargain hadn't come with a guide.
But he was starting to believe it wasn't mindless.
It didn't act unless it chose to.
Which meant it was watching, same as him.
Was that what it wanted?
A plan?
An opening?
A moment to cut loose?
He touched it lightly.
Felt the faint hum.
No heat. No sound.
Just pressure—like something massive pressing against a locked door.
He whispered under his breath.
"I'm not ready to die here."
The Mark didn't respond.
Of course not.
But as Alex leaned back again and shut his eyes…
He felt it.
The barest shift under his skin.
Like the Mark had heard.
And agreed.
The floor was cold against Alex's cheek.
He lay there still, feigning sleep like the rest, his breathing soft and even. But his eyes were open—just barely. Watching.
The glyph etched beneath him was faint in the dark, like the outline of an old scar. It pulsed every few minutes, a deep thrum that made the chains on his wrists buzz with dull ache.
He'd been counting the cycles.
Tracking the timing.
And waiting.
Another pulse came—he didn't flinch.
Then… it happened.
A flicker.
Just a moment, but real. The glow in the Mark dipped lower than usual—like a breath stuttering in a dying man's chest.
Alex's heart skipped.
He focused, measuring silently.
One. Two. Two-point-six.
The glyph's light returned to full strength with a lazy pulse.
But in that flicker—during those 2.6 seconds—he had felt it.
A loosening.
The Mark on his arm stirred, threads of shadow just beneath the skin, like ink swirling in water. It didn't lash out. Didn't burn. But it moved. Slightly. Almost like… it was stretching in a dream.
It was the first time since his capture that it had done anything.
He exhaled slowly.
That's the window.
The moment between the third shift's rotation and the fourth inspection. Fourteen minutes of overlap, and inside that, a single breath's worth of freedom when the Chainbind's hold waned.
It wasn't enough time to escape through force.
But it was enough to try something.
Enough for the Mark to awaken.
He pulled back from the glyph and curled onto his side, facing the wall.
His fingers trembled—not from fear, but anticipation. His thoughts ran like a storm behind his eyes, possibilities branching, collapsing, forming again.
The chains. The wall. T
he torch shadows. The chewing guard. The limp. The timing.
A plan, small and fragile, began to form.
He didn't know if it would work.
Didn't even know if the Mark would help.
But he had to try.
No one was coming to save him. Not Kairo. Not the Warden. Not the gods. Just the whisper of something ancient inked into his soul… and his own two hands.
His lips moved, breathless in the dark.
"Soon, very soon" he whispered, the weight in his voice sharper than steel.