The guards dragged him by his arms.

  Qing’s feet left smears of blood and water across the bckstone floor. His back scraped against broken tiles, his ribs ground against bone-deep bruises. One guard ughed each time he hit a wall corner, adjusting his grip only to cause more pain.

  Through the hall they went—narrow, carved like a wound through stone. Lantern-globes hummed overhead in metal sconces, their magic low and flickering. The walls sweat with heat. Mold clung to the corners in veined patterns, and the deeper they went, the heavier the air became.

  The copper ID in his gut pulsed like a second heart.

  Finally, they reached a door. Iron. Bolted. One guard smmed his fist twice, then kicked it open.

  “New meat!” he barked into the darkness. “Try not to let this one die before morning.”

  They hurled Qing through the doorway.

  He hit the floor hard, his shoulder pythons flopping uselessly as he gasped.

  The door cnged shut behind him.

  Silence.

  He y there—cold, trembling, jaw clenched against a scream that couldn’t escape. His body no longer registered where the pain began and ended. It was all pain now. He tasted iron and dirt. His eyes adjusted slowly.

  The room wasn’t empty.

  At least a dozen figures crouched or sat along the walls. Young, most of them. Muted-colored scales. Bnk eyes. Hunched like animals that had forgotten what standing upright meant. A few looked at him. Most didn’t.

  No one spoke.

  No one moved to help.

  Just when Qing began to fade again—heartbeat slowing, breath shivering out of his chest—a soft shuffle of feet neared him.

  Then a voice.

  “Still bleeding,” it said. Female. Dry and hushed, like someone not used to being heard. “He’s going to fester like that.”

  Qing turned his head slightly. Pain chased the motion.

  A girl knelt beside him. She was small, barely older than he was, if age meant anything in this pce. Her eyes were wide, amber-tinged, flickering with a strange alertness. Her scales were pale green, some blotched yellow with malnutrition.

  But what struck him most was the absence.

  She had no tail.

  Not cut off. No scar. She had simply never grown one.

  She noticed him staring.

  “I’m Nore,” she said, voice still soft. “Don’t talk. Save your voice.”

  She tore a strip from her tunic—already threadbare—and pressed it gently to the side of his face, wiping dried blood from his jaw.

  Qing flinched.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” she whispered.

  Her hand was rough from bor but moved like a feather. She cleaned his mouth, then his chin, then pressed the cloth against his gut wound. He hissed, the burn sharp and electric.

  “I know,” she said. “That card… it burns at first. It wants to root into your blood. Like a weed.”

  Qing didn’t speak. Couldn’t. But his eyes stayed open.

  Nore took something from her sleeve—a small, jagged sliver of what looked like dried meat. Brown, leathery, smaller than her pinky finger.

  She held it up.

  “They didn’t give you any, did they?”

  He shook his head. Or tried to.

  “Here.” She pced the sliver near his lips.

  He hesitated.

  Nore frowned. “It’s not poisoned, I promise. I wouldn’t waste it if it was.”

  He opened his mouth slightly, and she slipped the meat in.

  It tasted like old sweat and salt and something metallic—but it was food.

  He chewed slowly, lips trembling.

  “I don’t get a lot,” Nore said. “But I’ve been here longer. I know how to stretch it.”

  A cough echoed from the far end of the room. One of the others turned their head and spat into a corner.

  “Why’d you give him any?” someone muttered. “He won’t st the night.”

  Nore didn’t respond.

  She reached behind her and unwrapped a bundle hidden in the shadows. A length of cloth, frayed and patched dozens of times. She folded it twice and slipped it beneath Qing’s head.

  “I’m not doing this because I think you’ll survive,” she said quietly. “I’m doing it because someone did it for me once.”

  Qing tried to respond. His throat failed him. But the tears that stung his eyes had nothing to do with pain.

  “I’ll show you how to swing a pickaxe,” Nore said. “Tomorrow. If you can lift one.”

  He closed his eyes.

  But for the first time since hatching, he didn’t fall into darkness alone.

  He awoke to the sound of iron bells.

  “GET UP!”

  The door smmed open again. A different guard this time, shorter, but just as scaled and cruel. He dragged a club along the floor as he walked in, tapping it against stone in rhythm.

  “You little dung heaps know what day it is! Same as yesterday. Same as tomorrow. Work time!”

  The others began to stir. Some groaned. Others coughed. One retched bile into a corner.

  Qing tried to move. His muscles screamed in protest. His shoulder pythons hung like ropes of dead flesh. The ID card in his gut burned anew.

  Nore crouched beside him again.

  “Stay low until he passes,” she whispered. “Then crawl.”

  The guard gnced at them but didn’t stop.

  “You get one dle of grog after first quota,” he shouted. “Miss it, and your friends eat less.”

  That got everyone moving.

  They shuffled out through the door, one by one, past the guard’s sneer.

  Nore waited until the others had left. Then helped Qing up.

  “I told them you’re defective,” she said. “They won’t beat you yet. They want to see if you’re worth fixing.”

  She slung his arm over her shoulder.

  He winced but didn’t pull away.

  Together, they walked the tunnel toward the mines.

  The path downward was brutal.

  Stairwells made from chipped stone. Water dripping from cracks above. Moss in some pces. The air was hotter here, chokingly thick, and filled with the sound of tools cnging against rock.

  The mines.

  Qing had no word for how rge they were—just a sense of endlessness. Carved levels stretched downward like an inverted ziggurat. Dozens of sves—young, old, scaled, mutated—worked under the flickering light of orb-mps. The cng of metal on stone rang out like a grim song.

  Guards watched from perches, weapons at their hips. One carried a whip coiled like a sleeping serpent.

  Nore handed him a short-handled pickaxe.

  He could barely lift it.

  “It’s not about strength,” she said. “It’s rhythm. Count each swing. Exhale on the third.”

  She demonstrated.

  One—chhk.

  Two—chhk.

  Three—whoosh—CHHK!

  He mimicked her. Poorly.

  But she didn’t ugh.

  “You’ll get it,” she said. “Or you won’t. Either way, you’re not alone.”

  The hours blurred.

  Qing’s hands blistered. His back ached. The copper ID in his gut pulsed every time he strained. The pickaxe became heavier with every breath.

  At midday, a horn sounded.

  Food. One dle of grayish soup. Two bites of hard grain. Barely enough to keep him conscious.

  Still, he ate.

  Nore sat beside him.

  “Why do you help me?” he asked finally, voice barely above a whisper.

  She looked up, surprised.

  “No one asked that before.”

  “I’m not worth it.”

  “No,” she said, staring into her bowl. “You’re not. Not yet. But you’re trying. And that matters.”

  He didn’t answer.

  But in the pit of Ulipon, surrounded by blood and dirt and despair…

  A single candle had been lit.