Before the sun turned cruel and the chains wrapped around his soul, Kael knew joy. As a child, he ran through fields of wheat taller than himself, barefoot and laughing, chasing dragonflies with his sister. His mother would call him in at dusk, a warm bowl of broth waiting by the fire. His father's hands were rough, but kind hands that lifted him onto strong shoulders and made the world seem smaller, safer.
That world ended in fire.
They came at night—bandits with no flags, no cause, only hunger and bloodlust. They stormed his village like a wave, cutting down men, stealing women, burning everything that once gave Kael reason to smile. He remembered the screams, the smoke, the way his mother's hand slipped from his. He remembered his father's roar as he fought three men alone to buy them time.
Kael never saw them again.
He ran until his legs gave out, collapsed in a forest, and woke up bound, in a cart filled with the captured. They called it a farm. It was a cage with fields. A place where names were forgotten and replaced with numbers. He was thirteen.
Now he was twenty-two.
The sun punished, not warmed. It loomed high above the cotton fields, beating down like an overseer that never tired, never blinked. Dust clung to Kael's sweat-soaked skin as he dragged his sack through another endless row of brittle plants. His fingers, calloused and cracked, bled through the rough stems, but he didn't slow down. He never did.
Every step, every handful of cotton, was for her.
Nalaya.
She was the only thing that made this life bearable—the last thread that kept him from becoming like the others, hollow and blind. Her belly was full with their child, and though her body weakened by the day, her spirit hadn't yet broken. Not like his had. Not completely.
He turned his head slightly, just enough to glance past the rows toward the shaded corner of the women's camp. She was there, hunched against the wall, cradling her swollen belly, fanning herself with a dirty scrap of cloth. Even from this distance, he could see the tremble in her hands. The cruel sun had drained her, and yet she looked up and smiled. Soft. Brave.
Kael almost dropped the cotton.
A whip cracked.
"Back to it, slave!" a voice barked. The overseer. Gorrin.
Kael said nothing. Just bowed his head and returned to the cotton. His shoulders were broad, hardened by years of punishment, but his heart, what remained of it, was brittle as ash. Every night, they made him fight in the pit. And not just fight or kill. His own kind. Other men with eyes like his. Men who used to pray beside him, eat stale bread beside him, weep silently in the night beside him.
Kill or be killed, they told him. And if he refused?
Nalaya would be sold—or worse.
The pit wasn't just a place. It was a ritual. They bathed the fighters in mud and oil to make them shine under the firelight, dressed them in scraps to show off every wound. Crowds of masters and soldiers shouted bets as the gates creaked open. And Kael stepped out, face blank, eyes dead, because that's what they expected. Because if he hesitated, Nalaya would pay the price.
He remembered one night in particular. His opponent had been barely eighteen. A boy from a nearby district, eyes still filled with hope. Kael had whispered, "Make it quick," before driving his knee into the boy's gut, then twisting his arm until the snap echoed like thunder. The crowd roared.
That night, he vomited behind the barracks. Nalaya held him until he stopped shaking.
"You're not a monster," she had said softly.
"Then why do I feel like one?"
She kissed his forehead. "Because you still have a soul."
Now, standing in the field, Kael clung to that memory like a lifeline.
The air grew still. Something shifted. The bell clanged. Work was done.
Kael straightened, joints popping, his sack barely half full. It didn't matter. He was worth more in the pit.
He started walking back when a scream rang out.
Not pain.
Labor.
He froze. Nalaya.
He dropped the sack and ran, ignoring the shouted curses of the guards. He reached the tent, heart pounding like a war drum. Inside, she was laid out on the dirt floor, legs trembling, face soaked with sweat.
"Kael..." she whispered.
He dropped to his knees, took her hand. "I'm here. I'm here. Breathe. You're strong. You've always been strong."
She smiled weakly. "Our son... he's coming."
He wiped her brow with the hem of his shirt. Her hands trembled, and her breath came shallow. The room smelled of iron and soil.
A shadow filled the tent. Gorrin.
"You're not supposed to be here," he said, voice flat. "She's slowing down production. If she dies, it's her own fault."
Kael stood. Slowly. Eyes burning.
"She's in labor. She needs water. A healer."
Gorrin laughed. "She's a slave. She needs to deliver the brat and die quietly."
Kael's fists clenched. Nalaya squeezed his hand.
"No... not here... not like this," she whispered. "Promise me you won't die for me."
Tears blurred Kael's vision. He nodded. He lied.
Minutes stretched like lifetimes. Nalaya screamed, then whimpered. Blood pooled beneath her. Kael held her as she grew still, whispering her name like a prayer.
Their son never cried. Nalaya never opened her eyes again.
Something in Kael cracked. The sound was louder than any scream he'd ever heard.
Gorrin turned to leave.
Kael followed.
He tackled the overseer outside the tent. Broke his nose. Snapped his jaw. Gorrin screamed, but no one came. Kael's fists fell like hammers. By the time the guards arrived, it was too late. The man who had mocked his wife now lay in a pool of his own blood.
Kael ran.
Through the camp. Past the fields. Into the hills.
With a bounty on his head.
With grief burning hotter than the sun ever could.
And a promise buried with two bodies in the dirt.
He didn't stop running until his legs gave out and darkness claimed the sky. He found a stream, dropped to his knees, and wept. He washed Nalaya's dried blood from his skin and cursed the gods he no longer believed in.
He stared at his reflection in the water—hollow eyes, sunken cheeks, a beast molded by cruelty. But in those eyes, beneath all the ruin, burned one thing: purpose.
He would make them pay.
Every one of them.
Even if it meant becoming what they feared most.