Aren couldn’t cry.

  He tried—his lungs strained, his tiny mouth opened, but no sound came. Just the choking gasp of a newborn struggling to breathe. The world around him was noise and shadow, the air thick with smoke and dust. Somewhere nearby, someone screamed. Not the high-pitched cry of panic, but a dry, raspy wail—exhausted and empty.

  Cold arms wrapped around him. Rough, calloused hands. Not the gentle touch of a nurse or mother. He felt motion—being carried, jostled, shielded. Then a voice. It didn’t speak to him directly. It muttered curses under its breath in a language Aren didn’t fully recognize, but somehow… understood.

  The woman carrying him coughed harshly and ducked behind what felt like a stone wall, her back pressing against it. He could feel her chest rising and falling erratically as she struggled to breathe. He heard others now—footsteps, clinking chains, shouting in guttural tones.

  He wanted to look, to see more, but his newborn body was weak. The world tilted and spun. Darkness pressed at the edges of his mind, but Aren forced himself to stay awake.

  Then he remembered.

  The hospital. Kaito. The black liquid.

  His heart would’ve raced, but it was too small, too fragile. Instead, the memory sparked something deeper. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He had died. There was no doubt about that.

  And yet…

  Another scream tore through the air, this one closer. The woman holding him muttered something—a plea or a prayer—and crouched lower. Aren finally managed to move his head, just slightly. Enough to glimpse the world around him.

  It was hell.

  Stone buildings stood in partial ruin, as if a war had torn through them years ago and no one had bothered to clean up. Fires burned in barrels. Men and women, barely clothed and caked in grime, huddled in corners or shuffled along with dead eyes and shackled feet.

  The woman holding him—his mother, he realized—was no exception. Her clothes were little more than rags. Scars lined her arms, some old, some fresh. A collar sat around her neck, faintly glowing with crimson runes.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Aren wasn’t just reborn.

  He was born into slavery.

  The weight of it hit him harder than the pain of death. He had no power here. No voice. Not even the strength to stand. He was a baby again. And worse—born into chains.

  The next few hours blurred together.

  He drifted in and out of sleep, plagued by flickers of memory and confusion. His mother—if she was truly his mother—carried him through tight corridors lit by flickering lanterns. Other slaves occasionally glanced their way but said nothing. Some carried stones. Others pushed carts. No one looked up for long.

  Eventually, they reached a small alcove carved into the rock, blocked off by wooden slats and old crates. She ducked inside and set him down on a bundle of straw and torn cloth. It wasn’t comfort. It was survival.

  She knelt beside him, eyes hollow. “You’re quiet,” she murmured, brushing a finger across his forehead. “That’s good. Quiet ones live longer here.”

  Her voice was soft, with an accent Aren didn’t recognize. But she spoke in fluent words he could understand. Either it was luck… or something else.

  “You won’t have a name until the overseers give you one,” she whispered. “But I’ll call you Aren. Just between us.”

  Aren blinked.

  Did she know?

  No—impossible. It had to be coincidence. And yet the way she looked at him, her eyes almost too knowing, made his chest tighten.

  His body would need time to grow. His mind, though—it was already awake.

  He listened. He learned. The days passed slowly. Time was marked by the flickering of torchlight, the clang of metal, and the harsh barks of the guards. They called it the Pit. A slave mine buried beneath the ruins of an ancient city.

  They never spoke of the surface.

  Never mentioned the world above.

  But Aren could sense it—this wasn’t Earth. The sky he glimpsed through cracks wasn’t the same. The air tasted different. And sometimes, deep in the silence of night, he heard something move in the dark—something inhuman.

  He wasn’t the only strange one here.

  Sometimes, a faint warmth pulsed beneath his skin. Not fire, not magic—something gentler. Subtle. Once, when his mother coughed blood, the warmth rose again. He didn’t understand it, but the next day, her breath came easier.

  She called it a miracle.

  Aren called it… dangerous.

  Whatever it was, it couldn’t be trusted. Not yet. Not until he knew more.

  Weeks passed.

  He grew faster than a normal child—stronger, more aware. Not enough to walk, but enough to crawl, to observe. The guards never noticed. To them, he was just another child born to die in the pits.

  But Aren had no intention of dying again.

  He began to piece together the structure of the Pit. The slaves were divided by labor, gender, and use. Some dug. Some carried. Some… entertained. The overseers were all demons—horned, tall, eyes like molten gold. They spoke a harsh dialect Aren didn’t recognize, but their tone made everything clear.

  Disobedience meant death.

  Hope was currency here—and no one could afford it.

  Still, there were whispers. Rumors. A “surface.” A “king.” A “world beyond the ashes.” But every time Aren tried to listen closer, someone would shut it down. People were too afraid to even speak of the truth.

  Whatever ruled this world—it wasn’t just cruel.

  It had already won.

  And that terrified him more than anything.

  He wasn’t ready to fight.

  Not yet.

  But Aren swore, quietly, in the straw and dust of that dark alcove, that he wouldn’t be just another forgotten name in the dirt.

  He wasn’t a hero.

  He wasn’t chosen.

  He was Aren.

  And he would survive.