A woman passes then, naked, her shoulders hunched in sha. My gaze flickers and falters again.
Nothing stirs. Not desire, not even the old familiar ache of wanting.
I think of things that would have once lit a fire in , thoughts of bodies, of heat, of lust—yet nothing rises. Not even sha sharpens my face—only silence.
Stopping again at another railing, my arms lean against the stone, and I stare down at the street below. New faces, but the sa story. Hunger, exhaustion, and struggle.
What am I even doing? My eyes drift lower, to the stage itself—a drop of three ters. If I fell, it would hurt, but not kill . Then upward, to the bridge above, another three ters high, stretching across in tangled lines.
The highest layer I can see towers several dozen ters above, close to where the crystals burn brightest. The entire place folds in on itself, like so fever dream, a nightmare that pretends to be reality.
No. No such thoughts. I grit my teeth. Not after everything. Not after what I’ve survived. I need to return. I need to find a way back to my family. To my sister. My mother. My father.
The thought cracks open. Suddenly, without warning, a tear slips down my cheek. I turn my head, and the tear slides sideways, blurring my vision. And in that blur, I see him.
An older man, fully clothed. His face hidden by a hood, but I know. I know the wrinkles, the short mustache, the streaks of grey hair at his temples. I know the jaw as wide as my palm, the scar running across his cheek. I know it because I was the one who cut it, long ago, a knife slipping in my child’s hand in the kitchen.
This man looks like my father.
My chest tightens, but before I can move, before I can call out, he turns away. He walks on, never once looking at .
“Father?” I whisper, too quietly, his clothed silhouette already vanishing into the crowd, though he stands in sharp contrast to the mass of naked bodies. This ti, I run. Faster than I’ve ever moved. “Father!”
My scream tears out of , raw, my heart hamring against my ribs. My body is shoved from every side, crushed by a tide of flesh in this narrow passage that forms out of nowhere, as though the labyrinth itself wishes to drown .
Still, I push forward. I claw through gaps, wedge myself between limbs, crawl beneath hairy legs, my head struck again and again by knees and feet. For half a minute, I drag myself forward, choking on the dust, until finally the pressure eases enough for to rise.
I lift my eyes—and there. Higher up, on the next stage, I see him. My father. It’s actually him.
My gaze locks on him, devouring every movent, my teeth clenching so hard it’s as though I’m reliving the pain of when they took my manhood.
He should be at ho, far from this cursed place, not enslaved in a labyrinth bigger than my ho. He should not be here—yet he is. Right in front of , if only a stage upward.
Cursing under my breath, I force myself through the thinning crowd below; my body twists and writhes, every step desperate. An alley appears, narrow and dark, leading to a stairway rising to the higher stage.
Throwing myself at it, I claw upwards, my lungs starting to burn.
“Father!” My voice rips from , fury spilling out, echoing against the stone.
People turn their eyes sharply and suspiciously, but I don’t care. The walls of the alley close in, heavy, oppressive, and then I burst free onto the higher level.
There he is—twenty or thirty ters away, his hood pulled low over his head as he weaves past clothed figures, more and more of them as the crowd thickens.
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