The Thread
BWAAAAAAHHHP.
The bone horn's mournful wail shattered the predawn hush, ripping Raine from sleep like a blade through silk.
His eyes snapped open. Breath caught. Cold sweat clung to him like a second skin. He wiped it away with a shaking 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 too fast. Cramped muscles seized in protest, but he moved anyway. Pain was expected. Endurable. He swung his legs over the side of the mat, joints popping as he rose from the stone floor.
The door creaked open.
A figure loomed in the threshold—broad-shouldered, draped in bone-plated armor that caught the torchlight with a dull gleam. Pale and cracked, the plating seemed to remember who it had once belonged to.
Even at five-foot-ten, Raine felt small. The man's shadow reached long across the floor. The jagged helm masked everything human beneath.
"Are you Number 256?"
Raine swallowed the knot rising in his throat. "Yeah. I am."
No reply.
The man reached into his cloak. Fingers, blackened at the knuckles, drew out a folded piece of paper—white and far too clean for this place.
He didn't hand it over. Just held it.
Long enough for Raine to feel the silence shift.
The weight behind it.
The man's head tilted slightly, as if listening for something far away. Then, in one motion, he pressed the note into Raine's hand.
The contact lingered—two heartbeats too long.
"Rip it up after you've read it," the guard said. Then, lower, just above a breath:
"Hope's a dangerous thing in this place. Don't let it kill you."
Without another word, he turned and disappeared into the corridor's gloom.
Raine stood still.
Heart pounding. Fingers clenched around the paper.
Is this a setup?
The thought came quick. Too quick. His gut warned him—nothing handed to a slave in silence meant good.
He stared at the door. The corridor beyond was still again—silent, but watching.
Part of him wanted to burn the note. Pretend it had never existed.
Instead, he shut the door, sat, and 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 hit like cold iron.
Breaking out?
He whispered it aloud, but the word barely touched the silence.
Absurd. Suicidal. Escape wasn't a dream—it was a death sentence. Spirit-bound iron lined the walls. Watchers on every corner. Runners were flayed and fed to nightborn beast.
No one escaped.
No one.
Raine was seventeen. A slave since ten.
His family—just fog and static now. Laughing faces turned to blood-slick stone. 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 strong legs and scared eyes. He was sold the same day.
The first years were the worst. Hunger that gnawed until the belly went silent. The whip. The ceiling above his chained wrists.
Eventually, he stopped imagining freedom.
Stopped resisting.
Stopped dreaming.
Except when he dreamed of her.
Elara was the one thread still anchoring him to breath. He rarely saw her, but when he did, the weight on his chest lifted—just slightly. Her presence made space in a place that crushed everything else.
She was quiet. Unyielding. Bright, even in filth.
And he loved her.
He'd never said it. Not once. Not even in the dark corners behind the tunnels where eyes didn't follow.
Love didn't live here. It didn't survive in chains.
But now—
She wanted to escape with him.
The thought lit his nerves like wire catching flame.
His heart stumbled. Tried to find its rhythm again.
The outside...
Did the sky still look the same? Did the wind carry anything that didn't reek of rust and ash?
Questions rose like a tide—louder, faster. But one memory broke through, hard and cold:
I can't be late again.
Last time, it had been five lashes.
By the third, his back went numb.
By the fifth, his vision went dark.
He'd thought he would die.
Part of him had hoped he would.
He moved fast.
Ragged clothes over a body too thin for seventeen. The corridor greeted him with its usual rot—wet walls, flickering torches, stone sweating sickness.
At the threshold, he paused.
One last look.
The cold slab he called a bed. The corner where he'd hidden a scrap of cloth Elara once gave him.
Maybe this is the last time I ever see this room.
The thought didn't feel like his. It felt like it belonged to someone freer.
He shut the door behind him—softly—and stepped into the current of bodies.
The corridors were alive now—filled with the slow, silent shuffle of the broken. Slaves moved in tired synchronicity. Heads down. Shoulders bent. Every motion watched by bone-armored guards.
First of the month.
Raine remembered.
That meant the spirit iron mines.
His stomach coiled tight.
Spirit iron was worth more than any life down here. A rare metal used to forge weapons that drained Qi from the living. Dangerous. Unstable. Too much contact burned the skin. Breathing it in too long could stop your heart.
Only slaves were sent to extract it.
The moment he stepped past the threshold, the air changed. Thicker. Grittier. Dust clung to his skin, slipped into his mouth, settled deep in his lungs. It tasted like burnt iron and bone marrow.
The tunnels hummed with misery.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
Pickaxes striking stone. A rhythm older than memory.
Now and then, a wet cough broke the beat.
Every hour, the thud of a body hitting dirt.
No one looked.
No one helped.
They weren't allowed to.
Raine's eyes caught on a man slumped against the wall. Gray face. 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.
Tomorrow, someone else would swing the same pickaxe.
Another death. Another silence.
Nothing changed.
Near the entrance, a heap of rusted tools sat abandoned—shovels, picks, coils of snapped rope.
Left behind by those who went in and never came out.
Raine's grip tightened.
He'd endured this life for years. Accepted it. Let it hollow him out.
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 it down.
And kept swinging.
The bone horn's wail returned—long, low, echoing through the rock like a funeral bell.
First shift was over.
Raine's arms dropped. His knees buckled.
He collapsed onto packed dirt, the pickaxe slipping from raw, blistered hands.
Breath came in shallow bursts. Ten hours. No rest. Sweat stung his eyes. His muscles trembled with that familiar, hollow ache—the kind that lived in the bones after too many days just like this.
Stillness, when it came, felt almost sacred.
The ground was cold beneath him. Damp. Real.
He closed his eyes. Just for a moment.
Then forced himself up.
The day wasn't done. Not yet.
The mess hall reeked of boiled meat and root vegetables—the same gray sludge they were served every day. Beast scraps. Carrots. Maybe potatoes. Just 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 hitched.
She let go, and he turned.
He already knew.
Elara.
Short. Slender. Her white hair clung to her face with sweat and dust. Pink eyes met his—clear, sharp, alive.
Even caked in grime, she looked like light trying to survive in smoke.
His arms ached, but he took both trays anyway. Together, they made their way to the far corner—out of reach of the guards and the eyes that watched too closely.
They ate in silence. Metal clinked against metal, filling the space between words.
Then Elara spoke, voice low.
"So… did you get my note?"
Raine stared into his tray. "Yeah. I got it."
A pause.
"But why now?" he asked. "And the guard—does he know?"
She didn't answer right away. Her fingers tightened around the spoon until her knuckles paled.
"You think I don't understand the risk?" she said, still not looking at him. "You think I don't know what happens if we get caught?"
Her voice wavered—but only once. When she met his eyes, they burned. Not with fear. With fire.
"But staying here is worse."
She slammed her hands down 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 didn't stop.
"Is this it? Is this what we're waiting for? To die in a pit like animals?" She leaned closer, the words barely above a whisper. "Is that enough for you?"
Raine said nothing.
He remembered the bodies—three men who tried to run. Left hanging on the outer wall for days. Skin blackened. Bones split by wind.
He'd learned to stop thinking about freedom. It made surviving easier.
But looking at Elara now—
The tremble in her fingers. The thinness in her cheeks.
She didn't have time.
And if she was going to throw herself into the fire...
He couldn't let her go alone.
Raine inhaled. Slow. Steady.
Then nodded.
"…Alright."
Elara blinked. Her breath caught—but she didn't speak.
"I'm in," he said.
He met her eyes.
"What's the plan?"