Wretched Star

CHAPTER THREE: THE ONES WHO WATCH

We woke before the fire.

We slept after the blood dried.

That was the rhythm.

There was no sun in The Throat—just the flickering glow of molten ore and the red strips of artificial light that pulsed along the walls like veins in a corpse.

I had learned to sleep with my eyes open.

Sometimes you didn’t get a second chance to open them again.

The metal floor hissed under our feet as we moved in line, heads low, collars humming.

I was nine now.

No taller. Just colder.

The crawlspace had changed since Dog disappeared.

The guards were more aggressive, more impatient.

As if they feared what we might become.

The other kids whispered sometimes, when they thought no one was listening.

They said I was cursed.

That the guards shocked me harder, starved me longer.

That I hadn’t spoken a word in a month.

They were right.

That day, we were assigned to Section Dredge—a collapsed forge tunnel with enough smoke to suffocate your thoughts. They said to clear the wreckage.

They didn’t say how.

They never do.

We moved like insects under the flicker of half-dead lights.

Wires hung like roots from above, and ash fell like snow.

That’s when I first saw him—Korril.

Half his body was buried under slag and steel.

One arm. One eye. Still breathing.

Everyone else ignored him. Too weak, they said. A ghost.

But I stopped.

He looked at me through the smoke and didn’t speak.

He didn’t have to.

That was the first time someone saw me.

I pulled the pipe off his chest.

He didn’t thank me. Just stood.

And from that moment on, we were never far apart.

Later that night, in the feeding chamber—a hollow square pit with broken chairs and rusted trays—we sat near the wall.

Korril whispered without looking:

“You didn’t have to help me.”

“I know,” I said.

He nodded. That was all he needed.

She came next.

Rilka.

The overseer with the voice like broken glass.

She towered over us on two stilted legs, her exoskeletal arms draped in a dark crimson robe.

But the thing we all feared most?

Her whip.

She named it Mercy.

And no one ever received it.

She descended into the pit with a group of new guards that night.

A girl had refused to work. Young. Sick.

They dragged her into the middle of the chamber. Threw her down like garbage.

Rilka didn’t speak. Just smiled.

Then flicked Mercy once.

The whip curled midair, singing. The hooks embedded in the girl’s shoulder.

She screamed.

Again. And again.

Until the floor was painted.

Korril looked away.

I didn’t.

Because I wasn’t watching her die.

I was watching Rilka.

Memorizing her movement. Her rhythm. The angle of her wrist.

Not because I wanted to fight her.

But because I knew someday—I would.

That night, I scratched something into the wall of my cell.

With a bone shard I’d hidden in my boot.

Not a word.

A name.

Vorrak.

I carved it where no one could see.

Because if I ever forgot, the walls would remind me.

In the weeks that followed, we were assigned to new cells and tighter shifts.

The guards became more violent. Something was changing in the upper tiers.

We didn’t know what.

Until we met Shal Vox.

They dumped him into the crawlspace without ceremony—just another body.

But he wasn’t like the others.

He was old. Not weak, just… still.

Albino skin. Cyber-scarring across his jaw. Blind, but his head turned toward every noise with perfect timing.

He didn’t eat for the first three days.

Didn’t speak for five.

Then one night, while the others slept and the guards rotated above, I saw him carving symbols into the floor with his nail.

Strange, curved lines. Symbols I didn’t understand.

“What are those?” I asked.

He didn’t turn.

“Reminders,” he said. “Of what the stars looked like before the gods turned their backs.”

I didn’t understand him.

But something about the way he spoke stuck in my ribs.

Like a splinter I couldn’t pull out.

In the fourth week, the heat vents ruptured.

A boy died screaming, boiled alive under a burst of pressurized plasma.

Shal Vox didn’t move.

Didn’t flinch.

Then later, in the feeding pit, he whispered:

“The weak are dying too slowly. The strong are watching too long.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means something is about to break.”

That night, a new human girl arrived in our cell block. Amber eyes. White hair.

Kida.

She didn’t speak to anyone. Didn’t ask questions.

By the next shift, she’d already stolen a metal shard, carved it into a blade, and hidden it in the seam of her boot.

She saw me watching.

“What?” she snapped.

“That’s the wrong seam,” I replied.

She blinked.

Smiled.

Changed it.

We didn’t become friends.

We just stopped being alone.

Three days later, a quake hit The Throat. One of the upper bridges collapsed.

Slaves and guards both fell into the darkness.

Kida and I got trapped behind a sealed bulkhead.

No food. No light.

We waited for death.

She spoke first.

“We’ll die down here, you know.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“You’re not scared?”

I looked at her.

“I’ve already died once.”

The vent system above us cracked. Heat bled through.

But the door opened.

And when it did, Commander Yeshik Drahl stepped through.

Tall. Pale-blue skin. Obsidian armor.

Eyes like glass knives.

He didn’t look at Kida.

Only me.

“You. Come.”