Freedom

The next few days bled into each other, pain, hunger, dust, aching arms, the clink of the pickaxe. The song of suffering, on repeat. Huang Ke had long lost count of the years, the months, even the days. 

Yet in that dark eternity, something shifted.

A new presence.

The boy — Oliver, he said his name was. Soft voice, bright eyes, far too clean for the filth he'd been tossed into. He had been assigned to the same section of the mine as Huang Ke, and while they didn't share a cell or roof, they shared tools, silence, and now, conversation.

"Oliver," Huang Ke had muttered once, tasting the syllables like dust on his tongue. "What sort of name is that?"

"Australian," the boy said, with a grin. "From the other side of the world. I guess you're from Asia? You've got that look."

Huang Ke tried to remember. Asia? Maybe. Vietnam? Or was it China? The fog in his mind thickened every year. Names, streets, flavors, the warmth of neon in rain — all blurred now. He didn't remember what Australia looked like. He barely remembered what Earth smelled like. His thoughts were heavy, like they belonged to someone else, buried under too many years of spirit dust and lies.

But Oliver remembered.

He talked often. Cheerfully. Relentlessly. About beaches, barbecues, some animal called a kangaroo, and how he used to skateboard before "truck-kun got him."

Huang Ke's fingers twitched at that.

"A truck?" he repeated.

"Yeah," Oliver said, looking up from his pitiful meal ration. "Big rig. Came outta nowhere. Last thing I saw before I blacked out. But then there was this light, and a man walked out. Long white beard, glowing eyes and said I was special. That I had the Flame physique or something. Sounded cool, right?"

Huang Ke didn't respond. He chewed the tasteless rations slowly, stone-faced.

Because he knew that story.

He knew that man.

The white-bearded fraud, wreathed in clouds and false destiny. It had been ten years, but Huang Ke would never forget that glimmering paper crane. The lies were always the same.

The bait differed only in shape.

He looked at Oliver, all wide eyes and scabbed knuckles, smiling despite it all. The boy reminded him of who he once was, young, stupid, hopeful. Before the pickaxe. Before the contract. Before he was ground down into dirt.

He could have told him. Could have crushed that flickering light in the boy's chest with a single truth.

But he didn't.

Not yet.

Oliver's joy, false though it was, lit a corner of the mine Huang Ke had long stopped believing could be lit.

And, selfishly, he wanted to bask in it a little longer.

They talked during meal breaks, whispered between shifts, and sat side by side at the points station. Huang Ke showed him how to ration his food points, how to tie cloth over his face when the dust got too thick, and how to avoid the overseer's gaze when his hands trembled.

Mentor, friend, brother. For the first time in years, Huang Ke laughed, not much, not loud, but enough for his ribs to remember what laughter felt like.

Perhaps it was nostalgia. Perhaps it was the strange comfort of hearing Earth's words in another voice. Or perhaps… it was something softer, buried beneath scars and time.

Hope.

Small. Foolish. But there.

He still dug himself into his grave-ditch at night. Still stared up at the swirling, sickly sky, where no stars ever shone. Still hated this world, this realm, this fate.

But now, for the first time in a long while, he wasn't entirely alone.

And in this wretched place, that meant everything.

It was almost time.

After years of toil and months of careful saving, Huang Ke had finally gathered enough points, enough to leave this pit, this graveyard of souls, this place that mocked the very notion of salvation. For the first time in years, a flicker of true joy stirred in his chest. Fragile. Trembling. Real.

Today would be his last day as a slave.

Oliver, lively as ever, chattered beside him. The boy had a way of making silence impossible, of stuffing the cracks of their empty hours with endless words, stories, hopes, strange Earth slang Huang Ke could barely remember. Today was no different.

"I'm finally getting out of this hell hole," Huang Ke said softly, his voice low, not wanting to draw attention. "The points. I've saved enough."

Oliver's eyes widened, and then his grin grew. 

"You serious? That's amazing! You did it!"

Huang Ke managed a smile, small, worn, but true. 

"I'll still be stuck here, just… in nicer chains. But yes. I did it."

Oliver beamed and clapped him on the shoulder. 

"I will too eventually."

"Yeah, you will," Huang Ke said dryly, and the boy laughed.

They parted at dusk. Oliver waved, still full of spirit, speaking to the other workers like he'd never known misery. Huang Ke watched him go with something like envy. The boy was light in a world of ash. How long would that last?

He made his way out of the slums and through the thinning forest near the outskirts. The trees here were brittle, their leaves like flakes of metal. No beasts roamed these parts, they got wiped long ago. 

His "home" came into view. A shallow hollow dug into the hillside, barely wide enough to curl inside. No roof, no comfort,just dirt. It had always resembled a grave more than a shelter.

Today, it was a grave. A grave for the slave he had been.

He knelt and began digging. The soil was dry, familiar beneath his fingers. And there, where he had buried a decade's worth of stolen moments and withheld indulgences, he uncovered the sack. Bound in rags, smelling faintly of mold and blood, it held his life's earnings, stacks of point-slips, the currency of the damned.

Fifty more from today. Enough, just barely.

He clutched the sack close to his chest as he rose and began the long walk toward the town square.

The Qin Clan's administrative hall loomed at the heart of the settlement, clean and imposing, untouched by the filth of the mines. The streets were orderly, paved with jade bricks.

As Huang Ke stepped forward, guards glanced his way, wary. But when he presented the points, their expressions shifted to something close to surprise. One of the clerks, a pale man with calculating eyes, narrowed his gaze and asked in amusement. 

"Are you sure about this?"

The offer to become the clan's retainer was not supposed to be achievable. But if Huang Ke really achieved it, he could only honor it.

Huang Ke nodded.

He was guided through a side hall, where scrolls and sigils waited. The clerk recited the terms, barely concealing his disbelief.

The slave contract, sealed with blood and inked curses, was burned before him, its ash captured in a crude basin.

And when the contract burned, he felt it, the curse lifting, like a noose slackening from around his soul.

He exhaled.

Did he hate the Qin Clan? Of course he did. For the lies, for the theft of his years, for chaining him in a gilded hell.

But what could he do?

Exactly. Nothing.

He was no hero. No protagonist.

Just a tired man in a ruined world, who had survived long enough to crawl up one rung from the bottom.

If comfort was all he could buy with his broken life, then so be it.

For now… it was enough.

A new contract was brought out, thinner, cleaner. This one marked him as a retainer, a servant of the Qin Clan, not merely a slave. Free of his torture.

The ink had not yet touched the contract.

Huang Ke stood on the threshold of his second life. His hand trembled, not from fear. But from the weight of finality. He had made it. Ten years of sweat and starvation, of poison in the breath and rot in the bones. Ten years of kneeling.

And just as the brush dipped toward the scroll —

Boom.

The ground shook.