Weak. Pathetic. They saw his brazenness to be first down now as an attempt for so laudation. How wrong they were. He wanted to move, but here, staring into the darkness within. That howling thing. Strength waned.
He clenched his jaw. Still, he didn't jump.
The desire to fall battled a deeper instinct. Ashman ways. Killing oneself was a disgrace, a mockery to the ash over their skin.
I don't have that, do I?
The body still did not leap.
Don't I deserve it? he asked himself. Silence.
The stones below would be sharp and the fall a short experience. The pain, only a montary sensation. And then—release. Return to the hands of the Almighty. Or… ruination.
That thought struck deeper than pain.
He staggered back. Sudden. Reflexive in the ans that it self surprised.
What if ruin waited instead of peace? n were not to take their own lives, not just ashn. The church taught these things.
"Move!"
The voice cut like a lash—because it was. A whip struck his back. Sneering pain. rrin stumbled.
"Get in there!"
The kick followed, forceful. Sending him plunging.
He was now over the edge, the feeling of the mont's weightlessness calming. It was an impression of serenity as the wind howled distant.
Then.
Eyes wide, breath locked in lungs, with heart hamring against ribs—his own drum of warning. It announced.
I'm going to die! The thought scread internally, but Gravity had pulled back. He fell frantically. Mind, in abrupt chaos as procession attempted a ntal conclusion. There was none, only the sureness and fear of imminent death.
The chain shuddered, rattling, alive in its rusting defiance. The dark rushed upward. Or was he falling downward into its mouth?
rrin, in a mont of hope, gripped the chain. Hands white, burning. The wind—colled by the froststone—whipped his face.
He wanted to live.
The chain strained. Loud, groaning under his weight.
Maybe it can hold , he thought. No, he begged.
And then—Snap.
He saw it. A glint like shard where the weld tore free. One segnt dangled, loose and blemished by that brown taint of rust. He hit the wall. Pain blood, spreading fast. Numbing, as his thoughts fell asured. And Shouts rained from above. Distant and hollow. Ti to perceive them, however, was lost.
rrin barely heard them. His mind, in the mont of flash pain, focused on another.
The chain had not snapped fully. He knew. It held him—barely. He swung, hanged against the flaring stone wall, pain surging in his limbs. But it held him.
The tal groaned.
But he remained.
The iron strained, its sound like fingers quick tapped against stone. This brought the awareness; The chain was near the edge of rupture—rrin could feel it, not in the tal, but in the silence. There was always silence before failure. A single mistake, and he would plumt into the surety of jagged stone.
What can I even do?
He held the chain. Closed his eyes.
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He did not want to die. That much he knew. But fear clouded that instinct, thick and despotic. And he trembled in its shadow. There would be no rescue. He knew this. No one ca for the forgotten.
And perhaps—he didn't deserve relief.
Tears stread, cold against his skin, salt across his lips. There was sha in that, but only a little. He was afraid. He admitted it freely to the darkness. After all, who would hear him? Down here in this blackness. Only he remained.
But
Surely… surely even the soul of a nobody had value?
He looked—he should not have—but he did.
The pit's mouth waited below, vast and still. A hungering maw. Patient. Ancient. There was sothing alive in that quiet—the knowing of sothing that had devoured before. He wanted no part in that
His thoughts thickened with dread, teeth clenched tight, body shivering in a deep, bone-cold that did not co from the air. His hands burned now. Either the froststone had lost its virtue, or he had injured himself in the strain. The chain shifted again.
Please don't snap, he whispered in thought. Please, Almighty. Don't snap.
His heart was loud now. A drumbeat behind his eyes. When would he fall? A minute? A second? There was no telling. Not from here. But the assurance lingered.
Then—quiet.
The chain settled. No tremor. No threat. A suddenness that frightened.
He felt it. Sohow. A stillness. But he dared not test it. Eyes closed. Muscles frozen. If he moved—even to look—the grace would break. That horror would kill him before the fall did.
So he remained. Blind, a thing common to Ashn. Still. Hoping the mont might pass him by.
Almighty, save .
Voices ca. Clearer now that his vision was gone. They had always been there, but with his eyes shut, the words took shape. Slaves shouted from above—curses, mockery… praises?
Praises. That word stung.
Why would they praise him?
Because he survived, he reasoned doubtfully. For all he knew, this was death. An echo of flash monts of a dying mind. Yet…what if? He couldn't help it.
What if he had survived? The voice admitted a chance of marvel from the slaves at the outco.
They did not see the chain's fragility. They saw only the result. They believed he had endured, that the iron held. But it had not. Not truly.
The silence above ended.
Another voice, commanding, cut through the air. "Get to it!"
rrin flinched.
The chains rattled.
No—He froze again. Waiting.
Silence returned. The chain obeyed, calm in the manner it could manage with its rusted state. This was enough. This was—his mark burned.
A hot needle at first. Then, a roar of fire beneath the skin. The slave brand pulsed furiously. A staggering pain.
"I said, get to it!"No doubt, a guardsman now. A voice sharp enough to cleave silence.
What could he do? Against an excubitor?
His hand shook and the pain lanced through him again. The chain rattled under the tremor. Another groan. A dangerously fervent one. rrin felt death ca now.
But he did not.
The pain burned. His body shook. And yet—the chain held. It had strained earlier. Why not now?
Slowly, deliberately, against himself, rrin opened his eyes.
He looked up. Blood tracked along his arm, dripping from his elbow, trailing the tal, slithering through it.
And there—the chain.
Bathed in pale light from a flickering lamp above, its links shone. The iron was black now. Not rusted. Not ancient. Clean and strong. The rusted patches—gone. Transford.
How had he missed that? The links looked… new.
He stared. Still clinging. Still unsure. I know what I saw, he told himself.
Old iron, decayed. Now whole. Had he been mistaken?
No. He had not.
But the chain no longer was what it had been.
Was it casted iron? Sothing reactive? rrin questioned the logic. So alloy that changed properties under stress?He didn't know. The idea held no weight. But then, neither did his knowledge of what casters did. He was guessing—grasping at shapes in thought.
So… does it an it's safe now?
Against instinct, he looked down.
The floor remained distant, but no longer void. The dark had clarified. Contours erged—stones, outcroppings, the slight ridges of hills long buried in the chasm's silence.
His arm burned. Not just pain—warning. The kind that ascended the body and reached toward the mind. He understood now: in another minute, it would be too much. Pain would beco frenzy. Frenzy would beco movent. Movent would be fatal.
And he was not ready to die.
rrin inhaled slowly, though his lungs refused fullness. Then, with trembling resolve, he reached for his waist. His fingers closed on the pickaxe.
The tool—froststone set in its spine—was cold, but dulled. No edge to it. Rusted.
Useless.
This won't hold, he thought.
He examined the weapon—not as a Ashman would, but as a slave must. No choice remained. All the tools had been like this. Chosen not for efficiency, but disposal.
He drew his arm back, breath in. The chain must not sense the motion. Each movent was a conversation. Either that or the pit.
Then he struck.
The wall flinched, dust spilling unto his face. His eyes stung. He blinked, but the grit remained.
He struck again. And again.
No thought now—just rhythm. The motion gave him sothing. Purpose suppressed pain. And sohow, through that act of labor, the heat faded. Not gradually, but all at once—replaced by an absence that wasn't quite relief.
He did not look up. He did not speak.
He worked.
Others would descend soon. He knew that. The mont of solitude would end.
But for now, rrin remained—alone in the chasm, pain and numbness—mining. Forever.
Not long later, chains rolled from the top. Slaves descended. So hanged near the walls, smashing their axes into the stone. Others went deeper. Down down, into the fog of darkness, becoming more silhouettes than n. Strange how he could see their movents in the tenebrosity. But then again, he had special eyes.
This was known too in the mountains.
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