The horse-drawn carriage rattles onward, leaving behind the comforting tapestry of velvet wheat and swaying oats as Minh and Joon-soo arrive at another, more desolate place, a landscape stripped of farmers and the rhythmic hum of agricultural life.
In this gray, silent expanse, Minh observes rows of houses that look less like homes and more like stone caskets: rectangular, cold, and arranged in precision clusters of two closely spaced units that suggest a life of rigid, unyielding geometry. A short distance from these rows, figures who mirror the stone-faced guards from their transport march with mechanical consistency, but beside their sturdy barracks stand rows of wooden houses, some gleaming with fresh timber while others sag in advanced stages of rot and neglect. They are led toward a specific cluster of six houses facing each other, a grim formation anchored by a small brick house with a red tiled roof and gray walls that serves as the singular point of utility for the entire group. Around them, the figures moving through the mud are dressed exactly like Minh and Joon-soo, their identical rags marking them as members of the same doomed fraternity.
Joon-soo scans the horizon, his eyes darting around, around, around, and around as the horrifying familiarity of the scene begins to sink into his bones until he finally recognizes the pattern of a military labor camp. Minh recognizes them too, noting the way the architecture is designed to suppress the soul and maximize surveillance over the body.
The carriage comes to a jarring halt as it passes the row of houses, the iron-bound door swinging open with a screech of unlubricated hinges as the guard signals for them to dismount. Minh and Joon-soo step out into the dust, followed by the others, yet a heavy, unnatural silence hangs over the group that visibly annoys Joon-soo, who expects at least a whimper of protest against this clinical abduction.
They, along with the other Earth teenagers gathered from the same language blocks of their home planet, are herded inside the stone husks where they find only piles of damp, prickling straw for beds and a foul smell that clings to the back of the throat like oil.
The bathing area and latrine, that small brick house in the center with its mocking red tiled roof, stands as the only destination for their basic needs.
Minh immediately runs toward the bath, his body finally buckling under the mounting stress and the processed sludge they called rations during the journey. While he disappears inside, Joon-soo remains outside to pace the perimeter, his boots crunching rhythmically against the dirt. He sees the same Earth teenagers he expects to find, but the ones who have been enslaved for a significant duration are different. They possess eyes like a thousand yards deep—hollow voids of trauma that reflect nothing but the surrounding gray stone.
"Look at Minh, man. One week of eating synthesized garbage and a few close calls, and he's sprinting for the stalls like his life depends on it. I get it, really, but the guy's gotta toughen up if we're actually gonna make it out of this sector in one piece. I'm out here playing sentry while he's having a domestic crisis in the latrine. Seriously, if he spends any more time in there, I'm gonna start charging him for security detail."
Joon-soo clicks his tongue in a mix of pity and fear, carefully avoiding the haunting gazes of the others as if their hopelessness might be contagious.
"But then you look at these kids—the ones who've been here since the first wave—and it just hits different. It's like their souls checked out months ago and forgot to tell their bodies. You try to catch an eye, maybe offer a nod or something, and there's just... nothing. Just a thousand-yard stare that makes you wonder if that's the final evolution for all of us. Honestly, it creeps me out more than the guards do. It's like looking into a black hole where a person used to be, and I swear, if I look too long, I can feel that same emptiness starting to itch at the back of my own head."
That night, the camp is a chorus of restless shifting as Minh and Joon-soo toss and turn on their straw pallets, the sharp stalks piercing through their thin clothing. Minh finds a coarse piece of cloth to wrap around his torso to relieve the incessant itching of the straw and the filth, and Joon-soo, desperate for any comfort, asks for a piece too.
Outside, the structure reveals itself as a formidable pentagonal fortification constructed of thick timber and heavy stone, featuring a jagged outer wall lined with outward-facing spikes designed to impale anyone foolish enough to dream of flight.
At its heart lies the Central Courtyard, a kill-zone patrolled by War Mages who pace along the Mage-Walks, elevated stone catwalks that allow them to look down upon the captives like gods watching ants. Specialized architectural features support the grim functions of the camp, including the windowless "Cant" Echo-Chamber for the rhythmic shouting of Battle-Cant, a stone Binding Altar for the sealing of souls, and a narrow, dark corridor intended to "strip of identity" through sensory deprivation.
In the morning, they are stood before an officer of the Palantine, while a few Earthlings standing next to Joon-soo whisper that the men in charge are all third sons of nobles who came here because the eldest brother claimed the land and the second brother took the church. The officer stands before them in ornate, golden plate armor, featuring a breastplate that catches the morning light with a blinding, polished finish and a full left arm guard that suggests he expects to lead from the front. A prominent crimson sash drapes diagonally across his chest from the right shoulder to his left hip, secured at the waist by a circular golden medallion that glitters with etched heraldry. The sash ends in a long, vertical fabric tail featuring a gold-fringed border that brushes against his greaves, and his left arm guard is a masterpiece of segmented plating at the shoulder and elbow for maximum mobility.
The officer steps forward, his posture rigid and his chin held high, as if he were addressing a royal court rather than a gathering of the broken. He introduces himself with a flourish, his voice echoing with a pride that seems entirely unnecessary for an audience of slaves.
"Pray, cast your eyes upon the illustrious lineage of the Aguilar bloodline, for I am not merely your keeper, but the hand of providence itself. I hold the rank of the Red Star, an O-1 of the High Command, known to my peers and betters alike as Aspirant. You would do well to remember that name, for it shall be the last mark of civility you encounter in this life."
He boasts loudly of his standing before pointing a gloved finger at each person, his movements deliberate and mocking as he explains the supposed "honor" of their arrival.
"Do not look so bewildered, you wretched lot. You are not here by some cruel twist of fate, but by the divine ledger of history. You are the inheritors of a blood-debt, the wretched fruit of a seed planted five centuries past. Your ancestors swore fealty to the Great Demon King, a pact of shadow and service that was never fully rendered. I am simply the debt-collector, come to harvest the interest on a five-hundred-year-old sin. You shall toil until the ledger is clean, or until your bones join the dust of your forebears."
Joon-soo listens with a furrowed brow, a cold knot tightening in his chest.
Listen to this guy. Aguilar? Does he seriously think naming his great-great-granddaddy makes kidnapping us any less of a joke? He's standing there acting like he's in some epic fantasy movie, but he's basically just a glorified debt collector with a fancy glove.
If my ancestors really served a Demon King five hundred years ago, they clearly didn't get any cool perks for it, because all I've got to show for my lineage is a bad back and a front-row seat to this clown's monologue. He's trying to sell us a fairy tale so we don't realize we're just fuel for his ego.
Minh's mind races through the linguistic and cultural implications, his eyes darting between the officer and the dirt beneath his feet.
"Five hundred years... the linguistic persistence required to maintain that specific narrative is staggering. He's using this vengeful rhetoric as a socio-political anchor... If they've kept this grudge alive for half a millennium, it means their entire culture is built on the foundation of a debt that can never actually be paid. We're not just prisoners; we're the living props in a five-hundred-year-old reenactment."
After delivering this historical indictment, the officer's face contorts, though he never loses the practiced grace of a high-born lord. He begins to curse the people of Earth, calling them vile, rotten, and unworthy of the air they breathe, spewing a torrent of vitriolic insults while still maintaining a dignified and theatrical demeanor, as if he is performing on a stage.
"Verily, I look upon you and I see not men, but the very dregs of the abyss, a collection of souls so blackened by the stain of your fathers' treachery that the very earth recoils at your touch! How the heavens have suffered your existence this long is a mystery that beggars the mind. You are the rot in the garden, the salt in the well, a generation of vipers birthed from a lineage of cowards!"
"May the light of the Creator find no path to your wretched hearts, for you are nothing but walking corpses, breathing air that by all rights belongs to the pious. You are a plague, a blemish upon the tapestry of creation, and it is a holy mercy that I do not strike you down where you stand and return your filth to the mud!"
"Do you not feel the weight of your own insignificance? It is an affront to the Divine that I, an Aguilar, should even have to cast my shadow upon such wretched, unwashed heathens. You represent the very zenith of spiritual decay, a brood of faithless parasites who have forgotten the meaning of sacrifice."
"Every breath you draw is a theft from the righteous, every heartbeat a rhythmic thrum of rebellion against the natural order. It galls me to the very marrow of my bones that the stars must look down upon your pathetic forms, yet even the lowliest beast of the field possesses more dignity than the lot of you combined, for at least the beast knows its place in the Master's design."
"I pray that as you toil, the bitterness of the soil reminds you of the wormwood in your souls. May your hands blister and bleed as a meager penance for the centuries of indolence your kind has enjoyed while the debt of the Demon King remained unpaid. You are the chaff that shall be winnowed, the dross that must be purged by the fires of labor. I look into your eyes and I see only the flickering embers of a dying race, a guttering flame that deserves nothing but to be extinguished by the heel of my boot. Begone from my sight, you festering sores upon the world, and seek what little salvation can be found in the agony of the plow!"
Suddenly, he becomes so furious—or perhaps merely bored—that he makes Minh, Joon-soo, and the other Earthlings march to a distant corner of the camp to plow a field. It is a pointless exercise in torment, as he specifically chooses a patch of earth that is still a long way from the proper planting season.
"Is this part of the official curriculum at 'Tyrant University,' or is he just having a really bad hair day? I mean, the transition from 'pious nobleman' to 'human salt-shaker' was impressively smooth. I can't tell if he's genuinely convinced we're cosmic garbage or if he just practiced that monologue in a mirror to see how many medieval adjectives he could fit into one breath. Does he have a specialized 'Theology of Trash' class where they teach you how to insult someone's soul while keeping your lace cuffs clean? Either way, his self-righteous anger is getting us a one-way ticket to a dirt field that's basically as hard as concrete. He's not even mad at us; he's just mad he has to breathe the same oxygen as the 'vipers.'"
Under the officer's watchful, disgusted eye, they are forced to break their backs against the barren, stubborn soil, dragging rusted plows through land that has no intention of yielding.