Chapter 14: Rot in Transit

The truck jolted forward, rattling the cage so violently that I had to press my hands against the bars to steady myself. The prisoners around me grunted in discomfort, some muttering curses under their breath, others too exhausted or resigned to care. The air was thick with the scent of sweat and damp metal, each breath feeling like I was swallowing heat and filth.

Luell wrapped one hand tightly around a bar, her other gripping the floor as if it would help anchor her. She wasn't looking at me—her gaze was fixed on the thin slits of light above us, the only reminders that the outside world still existed.

The ride was rough, the truck bouncing over uneven ground, sending shudders through my bones. It wasn't like the smooth, well-kept roads of Vhassir. This was something else—wild terrain, or worse, deliberately chosen to make the journey as miserable as possible.

No one spoke at first.

The silence pressed down on us, thick and suffocating. It wasn't the same as the silence the black-masked man had forced on me, but it carried its weight, its power. The kind of quiet that only came when people were too afraid to hear their voices.

Then, a voice broke through the gloom.

"They say there's a black market for slaves in Veridion."

The words sent a slow chill up my spine.

I turned my head, searching for the speaker. It was a woman, older than me but not by much. Her face was hollowed by hunger, her cheekbones sharp beneath grime-streaked skin. Her eyes—dark, sunken—held something worse than fear. They held knowledge.

Luell shifted beside me, finally looking away from the slits of light. I didn't have to see her face to know she was listening, too.

"What kind of market?" I asked, my voice quiet but steady.

The woman exhaled, her breath shaky. "The kind that deals in people."

I frowned. "Slaves?"

She gave a slow nod, curling her knees to her chest. "Not just for labour. The nobles buy them. Mercenaries too."

That made me pause. "Why would mercenaries need slaves?"

A dry, humourless chuckle escaped her lips. "Cheap cooks, cleans, fucks, and expendable bodies on the battlefield."

I stared at her.

The words landed heavily in my chest, each one sinking deeper than the last.

"Some say the military gets them too," she continued, voice lower now like she was afraid the very walls of the truck could hear her. "For suicide missions."

Luell stiffened beside me. I could feel the tension radiating off her.

I swallowed, my throat dry. "That can't be true."

The woman shrugged, her face unreadable. "Maybe. Maybe not. But people talk and talk always starts somewhere."

I didn't know what to say to that.

Luell shifted, her fingers curling into fists. "I thought Veridion was supposed to be—" She stopped herself as if the words felt foolish in her mouth.

A place of power. A place of magic. A place where the gods walked among men. That was what the stories said.

But stories were for people who had never seen the underside of the world.

Veridion wasn't just a kingdom. It was a machine, and we were about to be fed into it.

The truck hit another bump, and my stomach twisted, but this time, it wasn't from the motion.

It was from the realisation that wherever we were going, it wasn't just a prison.

It was worse.

The truck was a coffin of heat and filth. The air was thick, weighed down by the stink of unwashed bodies, rusted metal, and stale breath—the kind of suffocating stench that seeped into your skin, into your clothes, until you weren't sure if it was the air that reeked or if you were becoming part of it. Every inhale tasted like iron and sweat, like damp rot festering in the corners of a place no one had bothered to clean.

The floor beneath me was worse. It was rough, ridged metal, the kind that scraped against the skin and left angry red marks if you shifted too much. The ridges dug into the palms of my hands when I steadied myself, a dull, biting pain that made me want to lift them, but there was nowhere better to put them. It felt like the walls and floor had been designed not just to hold us but to make us suffer in every small, dehumanising way possible.

A whimper broke the stale silence.

Then, a scream.

"Naveen!"

The name tore through the truck, raw and desperate. It was the kind of scream that ripped something open inside of you, that scraped against bone like a dull knife. Tears streamed down the woman's face, her breath shuddering as she clutched at the lifeless body beside her.

The others turned at the sound. The creatures in the opposite cage were already watching, their unblinking eyes reflecting the dim light.

It was an older woman—early twenties, maybe.

She wasn't breathing.

Her fair skin had taken on that unmistakable pallor, that lifeless stillness that couldn't be mistaken for sleep. Her auburn hair was tangled and dull, strands falling over her face like wilting leaves. Her slightly yellow eyes—a striking colour even in death—stared blankly at the ceiling as if she had been looking through the metal before her body gave out.

She had been pretty, I thought absently.

I had seen her before. She had been here longer than me, longer than most. Some had been in these cages for weeks, even months. I remembered how she had refused the food they gave her, shaking her head with a stubbornness that I hadn't understood at the time. The guards didn't always let refusal be an option. I had seen them force-feed some prisoners, shoving scraps into unwilling mouths like they were cattle being fattened for slaughter. But her—she must have fought hard enough, long enough, that they stopped trying.

And now, she was gone.

The woman beside her kept crying, shaking her, as if she could still wake her up.

"Please, please, Nayveen—"

But there was no waking up.

And soon, the guards would notice.

And they wouldn't care.

I exhaled slowly, my chest tight with something ugly and heavy. Luell's fingers twitched against the metal beside me, and when I looked at her, her expression was unreadable.

Mourning wasn't permitted here.

Even grief was something that could get you killed.

And yet, in the space of that woman's broken sobs, I realised something else.

Nayveen had chosen this.

She had chosen to go before they could take her anywhere worse.

The thought sat in my stomach like a swallowed stone.

We were all starving for something in here. Food for some. Air for others. But freedom for all of us.

Nayveen had just found hers first.