Pain pulsed like thunder beneath his skin.

  A heartbeat—then another.

  Qing gasped awake, his mouth snapping open like he’d been drowning. His lungs pulled in air so sharp and raw it burned his throat. He coughed—each motion sent white-hot agony spiraling from the stab wound in his belly. Blood had dried in sticky streaks across his chest, now cracking and fking with every breath.

  The cold stone beneath his back was uneven. Wet. Reeking of minerals and something rotting.

  Light drifted across the floor—not natural sunlight, but pale orbs embedded in high corners of the chamber. They flickered with a bluish glow, revealing soot-stained walls, rusted hooks, and dried bloodstains spttered like forgotten flowers.

  A massive shadow blocked the light.

  It spoke with teeth and venom.

  “Still alive, are you?” the creature said. Its voice rasped like metal scraped over stone—slow, drawn-out, and contemptuous. “Pity. Was hoping the spear would finish the job. Saves effort.”

  Qing tried to lift his head.

  Standing over him was a reptilian giant—at least three times his size. Its upper body was humanoid: muscur arms lined with scars, scaled shoulders taut beneath an armored harness. But its lower half… was a coiled tail thicker than Qing’s torso, covered in emerald-green scales that shimmered beneath the artificial light.

  Its face was snake-like, the mouth splitting unnaturally wide with rows of jagged fangs. Two hood fps framed the sides of its face—fred out like a cobra preparing to strike.

  The air turned hot and stifling just from its presence.

  “You reek like unfinished meat,” the giant said. “Still raw. Still wet. No css. No control. You even hatched wrong.”

  Qing’s lips moved before he could think. “W… who—?”

  The creature’s head jerked forward.

  “SILENCE!”

  Qing flinched.

  The tail smmed the stone beside his head, cracking it like ice under a hammer.

  “You don’t speak unless you’re told to. You don’t exist unless I say so.” The giant leaned closer, yellow vertical pupils boring into Qing’s eyes. “I am your breath. Your skin. Your bones. I am your Captain. That’s what you’ll call me—when you earn the right to speak.”

  Qing’s voice caught in his throat. His snakes—his twin appendages—y limp on his back like dead things.

  “Still trying to think? Still trying to understand?” the Captain mocked, baring fangs. “That’s the problem with your type. First taste of breath and you think you’re somebody. You’re nothing. You weren’t even supposed to hatch.”

  The Captain uncoiled slightly, raising something from his belt. It glinted in the light—a ft pte of copper, etched with small grooves.

  “Do you know what this is?” he hissed. “Of course you don’t.”

  He flicked the pte through the air. It nded on Qing’s chest with a metallic cck.

  “That’s your identity card. Your ID. It will be part of your body until your body is part of the ground.”

  Qing stared at the object.

  “You were born here, worm,” the Captain said. “This town is Ulipon—Foundation Pit. No sky, no names, no families. Just work. Just orders. And just me.”

  A slow, cruel grin spread across the Captain’s scaled face.

  “You’ve probably noticed your name isn’t on that ID card.”

  Qing swallowed. The pain made it hard to breathe, let alone speak.

  “You don’t have a name,” the Captain said. “You haven’t earned one. Names are given. Names are privileges. Yours will be decided—if you survive long enough to be worth remembering.”

  He turned to a figure standing silently behind him—another snakeman, this one lean and long-necked, with slitted eyes like a lizard basking in a corpse pit. He wore a half-armor of dented iron and smiled without warmth.

  “This is Lieutenant,” the Captain said. “You’ll learn to hate him properly soon. He speaks for me when I’m doing more important things than educating crawling filth.”

  Lieutenant stepped forward, rubbing his knuckles thoughtfully. “He’s small. Weak. But not entirely dull in the eyes.”

  “I’ve seen roaches with brighter gazes,” the Captain snorted. “Hold him down.”

  Two guards emerged from the shadows—scaled, armed, brutal-faced. They seized Qing’s arms and pinned him to the cold stone.

  The Captain knelt beside him, one cwed hand pressing the copper card against the still-oozing wound in Qing’s stomach.

  “No… wait—!”

  The Captain pushed the card inward.

  SHNK.

  Qing’s body arched. The scream tore out of his throat involuntarily.

  The card sank—not like a bde, but like it merged with him. His blood sizzled where the metal touched it. A strange warmth spread outward—followed by cold crity in his skull.

  SYSTEM UPDATE

  ID CARD LINKED

  Blood-Binding Complete

  Job: [Sve – Level 1]

  Name Field: NULL

  The interface vanished as quickly as it appeared.

  Qing colpsed back onto the stone, panting.

  The Captain stood up slowly. He looked pleased.

  “Now you’re registered,” he said. “Part of the glorious Queendom’s census. Your suffering now has legal status. Isn’t that exciting?”

  Lieutenant crouched, spping Qing’s cheek lightly.

  “You get one question, worm,” he whispered. “One. Ask carefully. Then never again.”

  Qing’s lips trembled.

  There is something about being a sve and his whole scream of being free, he did not know what being a sve or being free meant to him. He is very confused but he had to ask about being free.

  “...How… how do I… become free?”

  The silence that followed was thick as tar.

  Then the Captain ughed.

  It started small—a hissed exhale. Then a full-bellied cackle, tail spping the ground like a drumbeat.

  “Did you hear that?” he roared to the others. “He wants to be free!”

  He kicked Qing hard in the ribs.

  “You hatched in chains, mongrel!”

  Another kick.

  “You think the world owes you wings?”

  Another. Then another.

  “Fool! No citizen egg, no lineage, no worth! Your destiny is to rot in service!”

  Qing curled inward, the pain like lightning across his nerves.

  The Captain leaned down until his breath fanned Qing’s bloodstained face.

  “You want to be free? Then kill a citizen. Steal their egg. Or win it in a duel. Or find a priest willing to waste a blessing on filth. And guess what?”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “None of that will ever happen.”

  He stood.

  “You were born a sve. You’ll die a sve. And if you ask me another question…”

  His tongue flicked out.

  “I’ll personally strip your skin and feed it to the hatchery serpents.”

  He snapped his fingers.

  “Strip him. Hose him down. Toss him to the crawler barracks.”

  Guards yanked Qing’s tattered remains of flesh-stained cloth. One produced a metal hose. Freezing water bsted his body, washing away blood and yolk and dignity in one foul torrent.

  As he y shivering, coughing, soaked, the Captain turned one st time.

  “Remember this, worm,” he said. “In Ulipon, you breathe because I say so. And I can change my mind.”

  Then he left.

  Only the sound of dripping water remained.