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Chapter Eleven — The Room That Starves
There were no days in the cell.
Just hours without light, and hours with it.
A torch hung in the hallway — the only marker of time. When the guards lit it, the world turned a sickly orange and shadows stretched long and crooked across the sweating stone walls. When they let it die, the cell became a mouth again — pitch black, teeth of iron, breath of rot.
Lucien sat near the far wall, where the slime didn't reach as thick and the stench of piss didn't cling as much. He had claimed his space during the first few days, when his body — though not his own — still had strength.
And in here, strength was everything.
It began the third time the food came.
A sharp clang at the iron door. The small slot at the bottom creaked open. Then — with no warning — two trays scraped across the floor, one after the other, wet with grime, spattered with something that might have been blood or mold. The smell was sharp and rotting.
On each tray: half a loaf of hard bread, maybe two strips of dried meat, a tin of gray mush that might once have been a stew.
For nearly thirty people.
The silence that followed was worse than shouting.
Then someone moved.
Then everyone did.
Lucien barely saw who struck first.
A man in the center lunged for a crust of bread — only for someone to punch him in the throat and slam his head into the wall. Another person dove for the meat, and a boy — no older than sixteen — clawed at his eyes to pull it away. Three others wrestled over the stew, kicking and snarling like animals.
Lucien didn't move.
He watched.
He listened to the sounds of bare skin on stone, the crunch of bones, the hoarse cries as people turned on each other for crumbs.
And he realized — this wasn't hunger.
It was desperation.
The kind that didn't think, didn't reason, didn't care.
It was pure instinct.
The body Lucien wore — large, broad-shouldered, dense with hard-earned muscle — kept the others from targeting him at first. They avoided the stronger ones unless desperate. The cost was too high.
But that didn't last.
Every meal became a war.
He learned quickly.
He didn't fight for the first tray. Too obvious. Too risky.
Instead, he waited for the others to fight each other down. Waited until they were bleeding, dazed, or slumped in pain. Then he struck. Clean. Efficient.
A kick to the ribs.
A shove to the temple.
A single punch to the throat.
Then he took what he could.
He hated himself for how fast he adapted. For how quickly he stopped hesitating.
There was no fairness here. No division. No peace.
There were only survivors.
And even those didn't last long.
By the second week, the cell had three fewer people.
The first had died in his sleep. Curled in the corner, chest rising slower and slower, until it didn't rise at all.
The second had his skull cracked against the wall during a food scramble. No one even looked twice.
The third… Lucien had no idea. One day, he was moving. The next, he wasn't.
Their bodies stayed in the cell for nearly a full day each time.
The smell worsened by the hour. A slick, rancid rot that twisted the stomach. No one spoke about it. No one mourned. They just scooted further from the bodies, if they could.
When the guards finally came, they didn't say a word.
They opened the door. Pulled the corpses out by the legs or arms like sacks of grain. One was missing a hand. Another left a trail of black fluid.
Lucien watched. Silent. Numb.
He hadn't spoken in weeks.
There was no point.
The only language here was violence.
And even that had its limits.
Some people had simply… stopped moving. Not from wounds. Not from sickness.
They had just given up.
Sat with their heads against the wall, waiting for nothing.
Lucien didn't blame them.
He almost envied them.
But something inside him — some sharp, raw instinct — refused to let go.
Even if he didn't understand why.
Even if he didn't know where he was, what Trial this was, or why he had been brought here in a body that wasn't his own.
Survive, it whispered.
Even if no one's coming. Even if this is it.
Survive.
Each night, he slept with his back to the wall, one eye half-open. Each morning, if it was morning, he checked his limbs to make sure they were still his.
His knuckles were bruised and cracked. His ribs ached from one bad fight. His throat was raw from breathing the filth of the cell.
But he was alive.
For now.
And that was more than he could say for the ones who lay still beside him.
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