The next morning, Kael awoke before the others.
His bones ached from the cold, his back still raw from the last whipping. But in his chest, something stirred—something beyond hunger, beyond fear. Purpose.
He knelt beside the cage wall and ran his fingers across the dirt floor. A symbol etched last night had half-faded. He redrew it, more carefully this time. A circle, lines slashing through at angles, tiny loops to capture direction. He didn't know what it meant, not in words, but when he touched it again, his shard pulsed with warmth.
It remembers, Kael thought.
The glyphs came not from books—there were no books in the mines—but from flashes behind his eyes when he closed them. Dreams wrapped in smoke. Patterns that sang to something deep in his blood.
When the others stirred, Renn rolled over and yawned. "You drawing again? What's this one? 'Hope'?"
"Binding," Kael replied, brushing dust over the symbol before a patrolling guard walked past.
Renn grinned. "Maybe bind us some breakfast, yeah?"
Kael gave him a dry look. "Maybe bind your mouth shut."
The banter had become part of their rhythm now—mockery to shield from misery. But it didn't hide the bruises on their arms, the way their ribs pressed against skin, or the haunted look in Brenn's eyes when he woke screaming.
That day passed in sweat and silence. They were ordered to haul slag from the mine tunnels—black stone that bled light when struck wrong. Kael had seen a boy vaporized last week when his pickaxe hit a pulse vein.
They worked until dusk, hands bleeding, limbs trembling. No food until the Dominors decided. Sometimes they forgot. Sometimes, it was a test.
But that night, Kael whispered while they huddled in the corner.
"There's a place. Below. We'll start tomorrow."
Mira's eyes lit faintly in the dark. "What do you mean?"
"An old drainage shaft under the corpse pit. I mapped the guards' rotations. We'll have one hour every three nights to slip away and come back."
Renn sat up. "Wait—you want us to sneak out during rest?"
"I want us to survive," Kael said.
Brenn nodded once, silent but firm.
That night, they didn't sleep.
The corpse pit stank of rotting flesh and burning lime. Slaves tossed the dead in without ceremony. Kael waited until the guards grew bored and wandered to the gaming fire.
They slipped down a side channel, Mira keeping watch, Renn and Brenn hauling a false cart of waste. Kael found the drain behind a rusted iron grate. He'd scraped through the seal last week with a stolen pick tooth.
It led into blackness.
The tunnel sloped down, slick with mold and muck. They crawled on hands and knees. Rats skittered past. At one point, Brenn slipped and nearly cracked his skull. Kael caught him just in time.
Eventually, the tunnel opened into a forgotten chamber—a hollow dome of old stone, its ceiling etched with ancient sigils. No light, yet Kael's shard pulsed once, and the room responded with a faint blue shimmer.
Renn breathed out. "What is this place?"
"Sanctuary," Kael whispered.
The walls bore more glyphs—some he'd seen in dreams. Others were new. Brenn knelt near one and reached out. It flared briefly at his touch, then faded.
Kael turned to them. "We train here. Not just strength—understanding. What they stole from us."
Mira frowned. "How?"
Kael lifted a piece of chalked bone. "We start with memory."
Each night after, they returned—learning to move silently, to see patterns in guard shifts, to communicate with glances and finger taps. Kael taught them the glyphs he remembered. Some glowed, some hummed, and some sparked static in the air. Each one carved into his mind with pain and clarity.
"You ever wonder," Renn asked one night as he failed a glyph sketch for the third time, "why you see these things? Why not anyone else?"
Kael hesitated. "No. I know why."
"Yeah?"
"Because when they burned Serrel's Hollow, and my father died holding the gate, and my mother screamed as they dragged her away… I didn't cry. I listened. I remembered everything."
Renn stared at him, then nodded slowly. "Then we listen, too."
Kael looked at his three companions—each broken in different ways but still here. Still breathing.
"We're not slaves," he said. "Not anymore."
Brenn grunted something like agreement.
Mira whispered, "We're becoming something else."
Kael etched a new glyph into the stone, larger than the others. A swirl of thought and will, sharp lines crossing like blades.
He didn't know its name. But it felt like becoming.