The whip cracked through the frigid air with the sound of breaking bone.

Tarvek flinched at the noise, his emaciated body hunching instinctively even though the strike wasn't meant for him.

Not this time.

The demon beside him, a hulking creature whose name he had never learned, collapsed forward onto the black ice.

Blood, dark and viscous in the eternal twilight of the pit, pooled beneath where the whip had flayed open his back.

The wound was deep enough to expose muscle and bone, the flesh peeling away in a grotesque spiral pattern.

"Get up," the overseer snarled, his voice carrying the casual cruelty of someone who'd delivered this command ten thousand times and would deliver it ten thousand more.

"The quota doesn't care if you're dying. Move, or I'll make sure you wish you had."

The fallen demon tried. His arms shook as he pushed against the ice, muscles straining with effort that should have been simple but had become impossible through months, maybe years, of starvation and labor.

He managed to get one knee under himself before collapsing again, his breath coming in wet, rattling gasps.

The overseer raised his whip again.

Tarvek looked away. He'd learned that lesson early.

Watch the beatings too long, and you became the next target.

The overseers liked an audience, but they liked punishing witnesses even more.

It was a game to them. Everything was a game when you held the whip and your victims had no strength left to fight back.

Around them, the slave pit stretched in all directions from what looked like a colossal sized beast made the whole.

The walls were black ice, smooth and impossibly steep, rising at least two thousand meters to the surface.

The bottom, where Tarvek and hundreds of other slaves worked, was divided into sections. Mining zones where demons hacked away at the ice and crystal deposits. Processing areas where the extracted materials were sorted, sized, and loaded onto carts.

Guard stations where overseers watched from elevated platforms.

The pit was a mile across at its widest point. Tarvek knew because he'd been forced to haul materials from one end to the other enough times to count his steps. Sixteen thousand, two hundred and forty-three steps from the western wall to the eastern loading zone.

He'd memorized that number because numbers were safe. Numbers didn't scream when the whips came down.

There were levels carved into the walls at regular intervals, creating a descending spiral that allowed carts to be pushed up and materials to be transported down. Each level had its own set of horrors.

The upper levels were reserved for the "healthy" slaves, those who could still swing a pickaxe without collapsing. The middle levels housed the processing stations and punishment squares where disobedient slaves were made into examples.

The bottom level, where Tarvek worked, was where they sent the ones who were too broken to be useful anywhere else. The forgotten. The dying. The ones who would never see the surface again.

The whip cracked a second time. Then a third. The fallen demon had stopped trying to rise. His body jerked with each impact, blood spraying across the ice in artistic patterns that would have been beautiful if they weren't proof of suffering.

"Pathetic," the overseer muttered, finally lowering his whip. "Leave him. He'll be dead by morning, and we can toss the corpse in the render pit with the others."

The overseer turned his attention to the other slaves in the immediate area, his eyes scanning for the next victim.

Tarvek forced himself to keep chipping at the ice, his movements mechanical, his mind empty of everything except the rhythm of labor.

Chip, chip, chip.

Don't look up. Don't make eye contact. Don't exist.

The pickaxe in his hands was a crude thing, poorly balanced and dulled from constant use. Every swing sent jolts of pain through his arms and shoulders, but pain was normal now.

Pain was just another part of the environment, like the cold that seeped into bones and the hunger that gnawed at empty stomachs.

Around him, other slaves worked in similar silence.

Some were humanoid, others bestial, a few were creatures Tarvek couldn't even name. Floor 24 was home to dozens of demon races, and Pho's slave pits held representatives of nearly all of them.

The Deathfrost Demon didn't discriminate. He enslaved anyone who couldn't pay their debts, anyone who crossed him, anyone who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The only thing they all had in common was the brands burned into their flesh.

Magical marks that prevented them from using their abilities. The brands hurt constantly, a dull ache that intensified into agony if you tried to resist or flee.

Tarvek had seen demons try to claw their own brands off. It never worked.

Chip, chip, chip.

His pickaxe struck crystal instead of ice, and a small shard broke free. It glowed white faintly, no larger than his thumb.

Tarvek quickly grabbed it and placed it in the collection sack at his waist before the overseers could notice.

Withholding even a fragment was grounds for a beating, but every slave learned to hide one or two pieces.

Those who would be found without crystals during random searches, would be beaten severely. But it was better to "find" a hidden crystal and surrender it than to face punishment for failing to meet the daily requirement.

Something caught Tarvek's attention from the corner of his eye.

Not the overseers. They moved with purpose, with authority. This movement was different. Subtle.

It made his survival instincts, dulled as they were, suddenly flare to life.

He glanced up, careful not to turn his head too obviously, and saw nothing.

Just shadows cast by the faint magical lights that illuminated the pit.

Chip, chip, chip.

But the feeling didn't go away. Something was watching. Something was there, moving through the shadows with a silence that even the overseers' whips couldn't match.

Tarvek risked another glance, this time toward the area where the sensation felt strongest. For just a moment, less than a heartbeat, he saw them.

Yellow eyes.

Glowing in the darkness like twin flames, fixed on him with an intensity that made his blood run cold.

Not the dull, bored gaze of an overseer looking for a victim.

Not the desperate, broken stare of a fellow slave.

These were predator's eyes.

The eyes of something that had seen him and marked him and was deciding whether he was worth killing.

Then they were gone, and Tarvek wondered if he'd imagined them.

Starvation did that sometimes. Made you see things that weren't there. Made you hear voices in the wind and feel hands on your shoulders when you were alone.

Chip, chip, chip.

"You!"

Tarvek's heart seized. The overseer's voice, directed at him. He didn't look up. Didn't stop working. Maybe if he pretended he hadn't heard…

The whip caught him across the shoulders, the impact driving him to his knees.

Pain exploded through his back, white-hot and all-consuming, and Tarvek bit down on his tongue to keep from screaming. Screaming only made it worse. Screaming gave them satisfaction.

"Did you not hear me, worm?" The overseer's boots appeared in Tarvek's limited field of vision, black leather stained with blood from countless previous beatings. "Or are you too stupid to understand simple commands?"

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