Memory returned in shards. Her body returned first. Loose, heavy, the old softness from bearing children fell away.

Fay felt herself again as she had once been. Pure in anatomy, unchaste by Radeon's pleasuring hands.

The fat man followed. The looter. The one who would not stop, dogging her through the Requiem Griefwaters.

Then the three things she forced herself to remember. Her name. A treasure. A destination.

More pieces tried to force their way in. Letting Radeon control her hand and her pace.

Fear at being led somewhere unknown. The whiteness of only salt.

Then it cut off. Pain split her skull. Something weighed on her head like a water bucket.

A small hand clung to her forehead. Child. No. Infant. She was certain.

Another set of soft flesh clamped at her neck. Fay gulped and reached up. Small feet.

This time she did not believe it. She did not entertain it, even with the suppressed squelching in her hair.

A question rose, sharp, but she strangled it before it could live. She slapped her own lips hard enough to sting.

Just a small order from Radeon, and she had already broken it. Unfollowed. Unmade.

The consequence was simple but brutal. She had lived a life that was not hers.

So she walked. In the dark, she walked on her own.

An hour. A day. Time was a drowned thing here. She did not know which.

She followed one rule because it was all she had left. Straight.

She did not let her eyes dart. She stared forward as if looking away would invite teeth into her back.

Even when she could not tell if her feet tilted left or right, even when her steps felt angled toward a fall, she kept her gaze nailed to one direction.

Then the darkness shifted. ot into light, not into safety, but into shape.

Her eyes adjusted and found walls close enough to scrape her shoulders.

A passage five adult men high. A throat. The inside of a man's mouth, lined with crooked teeth that made an arch above her.

"Fay."

The name hit her like a hook.

"I won't. I will not bed you, Radeon. Don't. Don't fucking touch me!" she roared.

She tried to run. She could not. Her legs bucked. Her body screamed to flee, but the space held her like a fist.

She flared herself up with teal flames, instinct and fury, trying to make a fire out of her own skin.

A hand snapped around her face and clamped her cheeks.

"No. Don't touch me!" she cried.

The hand forced her head, turned it, made her look.

A robe. Ropes and threads. The smell of old cloth and cold intention.

She frowned, and something in her chest dropped as recognition landed. She lifted her eyes.

Radeon's face was cold. Too cold. Disappointment sat on him like frost, clear as any wound.

"Ma. Master?" Fay managed, stunned.

He did not answer that. He reached up and took the weight from her head. It was an infant.

For one heartbeat she felt pity, thinking a child had been left on her like trash.

Then he turned the infant to face her. Its mouth and torso were merged into one. Its ribs had opened wide like a broken cage.

Hundreds of small lips puckered and kissed at the air, kissing and kissing, each one slick with phlegm and saliva that threaded down in strings.

Four small limbs reached for her with desperate little grabs. The reach was familiar.

Fay's mind betrayed her with it. Feya. Her daughter. That same reaching, that same need, that same claim.

Her stomach soured. She retched. Bile poured onto the old floor. It burned her throat.

Tears flooded her eyes until the passage swam and the crooked teeth above her blurred.

Radeon did not move to comfort her. He only watched.

He could feel it. An attack on his mind and his soul, amplifying the false sweetness and the sickening filth in her heart.

His silence was not mercy. It was judgment. This was why he kept her small. This was why he fed her crumbs of work and called it trust.

"How long did you remain there?" he asked.

Fay swallowed bile and counted in her head. Shame came first, then fear. Half a year.

'If I say it, he will hear how weak I am,' she thought.

"Just a few days, and then..." she began.

His hand cut through her words. Cold fingers caught the black of her attire and tore it away as if it was a bandage ripped from a wound.

The cloth flashed loose, then snapped back, recovering fast like it had never been touched.

But Fay felt the change anyway. The air on her skin felt the same, yet something inside her shifted and thinned.

She stared at the garment, at the black in his hand. She knew what it was. Not cloth. Status.

Her one thin claim to being his first disciple. Ripped apart by one quick lie.

Fay opened her mouth to fix it. Nothing came out in time.

Radeon had already decided. He did it anyway, cruel as a lesson carved into bone.

If she could be overwhelmed here, she could be killed somewhere worse.

He stepped back, and Fay felt the tether to him go slack.

"Pick a direction. Camp, road, anywhere. I'm done with you."

Her knees hit the ground. The old floor bit into her skin. Fay knew Radeon had read the lie as if it were written across her teeth.

She lunged for his leg, sobbing, hands clawing at his robe. His boot met her shoulder.

She flew, slid, and scraped across six meters of stone, the air punched from her chest.

"Do what you want," Radeon said.

He turned and walked into the next passage, as if she was already behind him and forgotten.

"Master... please. Please, hear me. I." Her voice cracked. "I was rattled."

Radeon only scoffed. His eyes were too practiced at weighing lives, the eyes of a man who could decide whole worlds with a blink.

Fay looked up at his face. The disgust was unbridled. It pierced her chest and left her breathing small.

She knew Radeon was not one to sway for tears. Only a miracle could save her now.

"Why lie?" he asked.

"I'm sorry," Fay choked. "I'm sorry. I was... I was too ashamed. I was a fool." Her voice broke into a wail.

Her gaze fell to the floor because she could not bear his eyes.

"Alright," Radeon said.

He nodded once and turned away.

"Please... don't abandon me, Master Radeon. Please. Please."

She scrambled after him, fingers clawing at stone, then at cloth.

She tried to grab the rope and threads at his waist, anything to hold.

Radeon shifted aside without effort, and Fay caught nothing but air.

She wiped her face with the back of her hand, smearing tears and spit.

She got her feet under her and hauled her spine straight. She stepped into his path, shaking, jaw clenched until it ached.

"I will reflect more carefully, Master. Please... I will," she said, her words breaking into a plea.

Radeon's gaze did not warm.

"I'll give you ten breaths," he said.

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