BWAAAAAAHHHP.
The mournful wail of the bone horn shattered the predawn hush, ripping Raine from sleep like a blade drawn through silk. His eyes snapped open. Breath staggered. Cold sweat clung to his skin like a second layer, and he wiped it away with a trembling hand.
The dream was already gone—drifting off the edge of memory like smoke in wind.
Just a dream.
A knock rattled the wooden door. Not polite. Not rhythmic. Urgent.
Raine sat up fast. Muscles cramped from the stone floor beneath his mat seized in protest, but he swung his legs over the edge anyway. Pain was familiar. Endurable. He rose, joints clicking softly—flesh used to long days of labor.
The door creaked open.
A figure stood in the threshold—looming, broad-shouldered, clad in heavy bone armor. Pale and cracked, it gleamed dully in the torchlight outside, as if the bones themselves remembered who they had belonged to.
Even at five-foot-ten, Raine felt small. The man's shadow stretched long, and the jagged helm he wore masked any trace of humanity beneath.
"Are you Number 256?"
Raine swallowed the knot forming in his throat. "Yeah. I am."
No reply. The man reached into his cloak. Fingers, calloused and blackened at the knuckles, drew out a small folded paper—white, too clean for this place.
He didn't hand it over right away. Just... held it.
Long enough for Raine to feel it.
The tension behind the silence.
The man's head tilted slightly, like he was listening for something distant and unseen. Then, in a single motion, he pressed the note into Raine's hand.
The touch lingered—two heartbeats too long.
"Rip it up after you've read it," the guard said. Then, lower—barely audible beneath his breath, "Hope's a dangerous thing in this place. Don't let it kill you."
Without another word, he turned and vanished into the corridor's gloom.
Raine stood still.
Heart pounding, fingers clenched around the paper.
Is this a setup?
The thought came quick. Logical. His gut knew better than to trust anything handed to him in silence.
He stared at the door. The corridor beyond had gone still again—silent but watching.
Part of him wanted to burn the note. Pretend it never existed.
Instead, he closed the door behind him. Sat. Carefully unfolded the paper.
We're breaking out tonight.
We both work in the Ossuaries today, so we'll talk more there.
– Elara
The words struck like ice water.
Breaking out?
His voice barely cracked the silence.
It was absurd. Stupid. Insane. Escape wasn't just a dream—it was a death sentence. The Bone Spur Sect kept spirit-bound iron along the walls. Watchers on every corner. Runners were flayed. Flayed and fed to the dogs.
No one escaped.
No one.
Raine was seventeen. A slave since ten.
He barely remembered his family—hazy echoes of laughter and warmth smothered by time and blood. They'd died in the Bleeding Frontier, torn apart by Nightborn beasts.
He should've died too.
But he hadn't.
The ones who found him didn't offer mercy. They saw a boy with strong legs and scared eyes, and they sold him like cattle.
The first years had been the worst. Hunger that gnawed the belly until it stopped hurting. The whip across his back. Sleepless nights spent with his arms chained above him.
Eventually, he stopped imagining freedom.
Stopped resisting.
Stopped dreaming.
Except when he dreamed of her.
Elara was the one thread keeping Raine tethered to life in this place. He didn't see her often, but when he did, the weight on his chest lifted—just slightly. Her presence carved space in a suffocating world.
She was beautiful.
Sharper than steel.
Brighter than fire.
And he loved her.
He'd never said it. Not once. Not even in the quiet moments they shared behind the tunnels, where no eyes could follow. Love had no place here. It didn't survive in chains.
But now—
She wanted to escape with him.
The thought struck him like lightning.
His heart stumbled, tripped, tried to find its pace again.
He hadn't seen the outside in years. Did the sky still look like he remembered? Was it even blue anymore? Did the wind still carry scents that didn't reek of ash and rust?
A dozen questions flooded his mind, each louder than the last—
But one memory rose above the rest, sharp and cold.
I can't be late again.
Last time, it had been five lashes.
By the third, his back had gone numb.
By the fifth, his vision blackened.
He'd thought he would die, and part of him had hoped he would.
He moved fast.
Ragged clothes thrown over a frame too thin for seventeen. The corridor greeted him with its stale rot—walls slick with condensation, flickering torches casting pale halos on the stone.
Before he stepped out fully, he paused. Looked back at the cramped space. The cold slab he called a bed. The corner where he stashed a scrap of cloth Elara once gave him.
Maybe this'll be the last time I ever see this room.
The thought felt foreign. Like it belonged to someone else.
He shut the door behind him and disappeared into the current of bodies.
The corridors were alive now—filled with the slow, silent shuffle of the broken. Exhausted slaves moved in tired synchronicity, heads down, shoulders bent, every motion observed by bone-armored guards.
First of the month.
He remembered.
That meant he was in the spirit iron mines.
His stomach coiled like a tightened rope.
Spirit iron was worth more than any life down here. A rare metal used to forge weapons capable of draining Qi from the living. Dangerous. Unstable. Just touching it too long burned the skin. Breathing around it too deeply could stop your heart.
Only slaves were sent to extract it.
The moment he stepped past the threshold into the mines, the air thickened. Dust clung to his skin, slipped into his mouth, and settled deep in his chest. It tasted like burnt iron and bone marrow. The tunnels hummed with misery.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
The rhythm of pickaxes striking stone echoed through the dark.
Every few minutes, the cough of someone too far gone broke the beat.
Every hour, the thud of a body hitting the dirt floor.
No one turned to look.
No one helped.
They weren't allowed to.
Raine's eyes caught on a man slumped against a wall, face gray and motionless. Fingers twitching faintly.
Alive. But not for long.
No one stopped.
By the end of the shift, he'd be gone—dragged out or buried in.
And tomorrow, someone else would swing the same pickaxe.
Another death.
Another silence.
Nothing changed.
Near the entrance, a pile of rusted tools lay in a broken heap—shovels, picks, coils of snapped rope. The kind left behind by those who went to work and never returned.
Raine's grip on his pickaxe tightened.
He'd endured this life for years. Accepted it. Grown numb to it.
But Elara's words still burned behind his eyes.
We're breaking out tonight.
A question surfaced—soft, quiet, dangerous.
Is this really all there is?
He shoved the thought away.
And kept swinging.
The bone horn's wail returned—long and low, echoing through the rock like a funeral bell.
First shift was over.
Raine's arms sagged. His knees gave.
He dropped, landing hard on the packed dirt, the pickaxe slipping from limp fingers.
His breath came in short bursts. Blisters bloomed raw across his palms. Ten hours. No rest. Sweat stung his eyes. His muscles trembled with the hollow ache that came only after too many days just like this.
Stillness, when it finally came, felt almost sacred.
The ground was cold beneath him. Damp, but grounding.
He closed his eyes. Just for a moment.
Then he forced himself upright. The day wasn't done. Not yet.
The mess hall reeked of boiled meat and root vegetables—the same indistinct sludge they were given every day. Beast scraps. Carrots. Maybe potatoes. Enough to keep them moving. Nothing more.
Raine reached for a tray with a half-dead hand.
And froze.
Arms wrapped around him from behind—familiar, calloused, steady. Warm.
His breath caught.
When she let go, he turned. He already knew who it was.
Elara.
Short and slender, her long white hair stuck to her face with sweat and dust. Pink eyes met his—clear, sharp, alive.
Even caked in grime, she looked like light in a room full of smoke.
His arms ached, but he took both trays anyway, and they made their way to the far corner—out of reach from the other slaves and the ears that watched them too closely.
They ate in silence, the clatter of metal on metal filling in the spaces between them.
Then Elara spoke, voice low.
"So… did you get my note?"
Raine exhaled, staring into his tray. "Yeah. I got it."
A pause.
"But why risk something like this?" he asked. "Why now? And that guard—does he know?"
Elara didn't answer right away. Her fingers clenched around the spoon, her grip tightening until her knuckles went pale.
"You think I don't understand the risk?" she said, not looking at him. "You think I don't know what they'll do if we get caught?"
Her voice wavered—but only for a second. When she looked up, her eyes burned with something fierce and unsaid.
"But staying here is worse."
She slammed both hands on the table. Trays jumped.
"Every day, I wonder if I'll wake up. Every day, I wonder if you will." Her voice cracked, but she kept going. "Is this what we're waiting for? To die in a pit like animals? Is that enough for you?"
Raine didn't answer. He couldn't.
He remembered the three men who had tried to escape when he was younger. The way their bodies had hung on the outer wall for days—skin blackening, bones exposed to the wind.
He had learned not to think about freedom. It made surviving easier.
But looking at Elara now, he saw it—
The tremble in her hands.
The thinness in her frame.
She didn't have time left.
And if she was going to throw herself into the fire...
Could he really let her go alone?
Raine inhaled—slow, steady.
Then nodded.
"…Alright."
Elara's eyes widened. Her breath caught in her throat.
"I'm in," he said.
He looked her in the eyes.
"What's the plan?"