Damned Lands

The barracks buzzes with quiet tension. The kind that comes after the storm—after the damage has already been done. Quiet but deadly.

Luke sits at the edge of a bunk, shadows playing across his face as the cold blue lights above flicker with mechanical rhythm.

Across from him, Caelan finally speaks. His voice is hoarse, like it had been forced to stay silent for far too long.

 "After they took you away..."

Each word feels heavy, dragged up from deep places he tried to bury. Luke doesn't interrupt. He listens—shoulders still, gaze steady, breathing slow. Because Caelan is not just explaining. He's surviving it again.

"We were all scattered. Even after everything… we were just pieces to be moved."

Luke clenches his mechanical hand without thinking. There's a sharp click as the claws retract, metal edges grinding softly into their sockets.

Caelan continues.

 "They took us to a room—white tiles, freezing steel benches, and this chemical mist that burned your throat. Called it a decontamination zone. But it felt like we 

were livestock—filthy things they didn't want contaminating their precious facility."

He hesitates, eyes flicking to the floor.

"The noble... Singnet. He could barely stand, but still tried to act like royalty. The gray-haired boy? Didn't speak once. When the lights flickered—he vanished. I don't even know where he ended up. Or if he's even alive."

Luke remains still, letting the silence fill in the blanks.

 "Then they split us. Separated. Didn't care who we were or what we'd survived. I got thrown in here. Haven't left since."

Caelan finally turns his eyes back toward Luke.

 "They gave us nothing. No updates. I was then escorted here, food and water delivered by that window that opens only twice a day to deliver our needs. I haven't seen Mira or Elarin. But judging by the layout... they must be in the other barracks. Girls' wing. Same treatment, I'd bet."

His voice falters.

 "That's all I know."

His eyes lower. Dark circles etched beneath them like permanent shadows.

Luke exhales, slow and controlled.

 A week. A week of silence, control, and cold hands. No answers. No names. Just doors that shut, and doors that never open again.

He finally places a hand on Caelan's shoulder—metal fingers cold but firm.

"I'm glad you made it. I'll find the others, I swear it. But you've earned your rest."

Caelan doesn't respond with words.

But the tension in his body eases, just slightly. Enough to prove he heard. Enough to mean he still believes.

_____

Just as Luke shifts to rise from the bunk, a low hiss vibrates through the walls.

A voice—flat, emotionless, and metallic—crackles from hidden speakers embedded in the ceiling:

"ATTENTION. BE ADVISED. TOMORROW WE WILL HAVE AN ASSEMBLY. YOU WILL BE SUBJECTED TO PHYSICAL TESTS. THIS WILL HAPPEN 0600 HOURS SHARP. IF EVEN ONE PERSON IS LATE, THEIR ENTIRE BUNKER WILL SUFFER THE SAME CONSEQUENCES. THAT IS ALL."

The room stills.

No chatter. No reaction.

Just silence—and a tension that grips the air like frost.

Luke stares up at the ceiling, blinking slowly.

 The irony… I just got here. And already the next trial unfolds. It's not coincidence. They've been waiting for me. For this moment.

He lets out a long breath, lowering himself back onto the mattress.

Then, he turns toward Caelan, who's already sitting upright again—alert and focused as ever.

"I'll wake the room," Luke says. "But just in case I oversleep... help me. Get everyone moving before 0600. We've already walked through hell. It'd be stupid to go back just because someone missed a clock."

Caelan nods.

"Agreed," he mutters. His eyes shift toward the dim lights above. "I'll be up."

Luke trusts that answer more than anything else in the room.

He'll be up before me. I know it...

A quiet memory crawls back into Luke's mind:

Training days. Grey skies and cold showers. Waking up before the sun to condition his body and shape his will. Not for glory. Not for power. But because failure was never an option in the household he came from.

 Be worthy of your name, his father once said. But my name never mattered… not to the ones who made the rules.

Luke sighs and finds a bed beside Caelan's—close enough to act fast if needed.

He glances once around the room.

Eyes. Watching. Calculating. Wary.

They're like Caelan, he thinks. All of them. Just trying to survive. Just trying to believe they're not the next experiment.

Sliding under the thin blanket, he nestles into the stiff mattress, still clothed. Every 

movement of metal and skin feels foreign.

Then, just as sleep begins to claim him, a thought cuts through the fog.

Pride, huh?

A smirk tugs at his lips.

 How anticlimactic. Me—a man who was stripped of pride, torn down to bone and guilt—is now in a place ruled by it.

His mind drifts.

Back to the memory. The throne room not of marble, but of madness. That godly entity. Seven thrones—each forged from something utterly alien.

Each throne… tied to a Sin.

Each Sin… bound to a power.

He remembers Pride's throne best—gleaming, radiant, impossible to ignore. But there were others:

Lust, with a throne of writhing limbs and ever-shifting shape.

Wrath, forged in cracked obsidian, fire flickering in its core.

Envy, smooth jade, reflecting not the sitter—but their desire.

Sloth, a throne of roots and ash, unmoving but pulsing with unseen power.

Gluttony, made of open mouths—some still moving, some still whispering.

Greed, polished gold wrapped in chains and mirror shards.

And Pride—his own.

A lion's throne, golden and grandiose high-backed and luminous. Silent, tall, patient. As if it didn't want a single blemish on it and taller than the others not wanting to lose even one bit. 

Were the others like me? Did they wake up with voices? Were they chosen? Thrown here? Did they lose the original person's names too...?

He doesn't know when it happens.

But at some point—between thoughts of sin and thrones, of Caelan's worn eyes and metallic orders—Luke finally drifts into sleep.

A fragile rest.

The kind born from exhaustion, not peace.

Tomorrow, they'll call it a test.

But Luke knows better.

Tomorrow… they'll be measured. Judged. Pushed.

And those who can't keep up?

Will be discarded.