Chapter Text
Cold. Warm. Damp.
It was always the same. Always there. A companion that clung to him like mold on stone. The cold pressed in from every corner of the cell, soaking into his bones until he forgot what normal warmth felt like. The walls were slick, always sweating, always dripping, always carrying that smell of rot and old metal. The air was cold too, sharp enough that when he breathed too deeply it stung all the way down his throat. He didn’t like it, but he understood it. The cold didn’t lie. The cold didn’t pretend to be anything else.
He missed the warm kind of warmth. The real kind. His brother’s warmth. Sea-scented warmth. His brother smelled like the sea—clean, fresh, carried by a gentle breeze that used to drift between them when they slept curled together. His brother smelled like safety, like comfort, like something that could chase nightmares back into shadows. That warmth was gone now, carried far away, maybe heading back to the place he called home. Maybe safe. Maybe almost safe.
They didn’t know. They only knew that the warmth was not here.
Sometimes the thing felt angry. Bitter. Envious that he was still stuck here in this damp box while his sea-smelling litter mate ran free. The thought of that escape made something acidic climb up his throat. A hot sting, then something cold and hollow right behind it. But then another feeling always rose up too—happiness. A strange trembling kind of happiness that hurt. It hurt because it meant his pack mate survived. It hurt because that safety was not his.
He missed the shared warmth most of all. The way they used to press against each other under thin blankets, creating their own small shelter in the dark. The comfort. The small pieces of quiet. The shared safety. Now he was alone. And the warmth that remained now came from different things.
Pain was warm, in its own way.
The warmth leaked from his body every time something struck him, every time the bad ladies cut or scraped or burned him. Each wound dripped its own heat down his skin. Blood was warm. Strange. He didn’t hate it. The pain hurt, but it wasn’t the worst thing he knew. The hands were worse. The hands and the touches. Those made his skin crawl in a way that bleeding never could.
He still missed the warmth he had with his pack mate. But he was starting to learn to like this new warmth too. A different warmth. A sharper one. Something that reminded him he was still alive even when they tried to make him feel like a thing.
Then—
“Where is it!?”
The thing perked up. Ears—if he still thought of them as ears—twitched to the voice. Someone new. Another one? The ladies in armor, the Amazons, were getting bolder now. They were shouting more. Running more. Becoming more frantic. He paid attention because it was useful to pay attention. Their fear was useful. Their voices were useful. Everything they did was useful.
He lifted his hand and fiddled with the old rusted collar locked around his neck. He could take it off any time. The metal was weak. The clasp barely held. But he didn’t remove it. Not yet. Not because he couldn’t. Because he didn’t want to. Because it meant something. Because it tied him to something he couldn’t remember clearly anymore.
He wore nothing else besides the filthy rags wrapped around his torso to hide his privates. Those rags were stolen. Torn from laundry piles when no one looked. The ladies used to dress him up in shiny things, metal pieces and fabrics that served no purpose. He threw them away. They weren’t his. The collar was the only thing that stayed.
They called themselves “Saro” from time to time. A word. A name. He didn’t know if he liked the sound of it. He didn’t know if it belonged to him. Sometimes he wondered if the Matriarch—the Moon Matriarch, the one who birthed him—still remembered calling him that. Or if she forgot he existed. Or if she wished she forgot.
He wasn’t sure which one hurt more.
The cold dripped down the wall beside him. He traced it absently with a dirty finger. He liked tracking things. Following trails. Even water trails. Even mold patterns. It kept the mind steady.
He shifted his weight. Bones cracked. Skin split at places where healing had gone wrong. Scars upon scars. The damp air made them itch. He did not scratch. He simply felt. Feeling was important. Feeling meant he was still here. Still inside this flesh. Still grounded enough to know what he was becoming.
There were footsteps outside the bars. He heard them before they turned the corner. He knew their weight distribution. He knew that step pattern. Too heavy. Too rushed. A lady in armor running. A scent of unease drifting behind her. He tilted his head, pressing an ear to the cold wall.
More footsteps. Two. No—three.
He inhaled. Slow. Quiet.
Sweat. Leather. Steel.
Fear.
Yes. Definitely fear.
The Amazons didn’t fear often. They didn’t show it even when they did. But he could smell the tension. Smell the adrenaline. It was bitter. It burned faintly in his nose. It made the corners of his mouth twitch upward in something close to a smile.
He liked when they were afraid.
Fear made them sloppy. Made them predictable. Made them prey.
He curled his fingers around the collar again, rubbing at the rusted edge until flakes came off under his nail. The collar buzzed faintly, as though remembering its old purpose. Shock him. Jolt him. Tame him. Hurt him. Make him behave. It rarely worked now. The wires were broken inside. The battery had long since dulled.
But they didn’t know that.
He wanted them to keep thinking it worked. It was useful for them to think he was still contained.
The voices grew louder again.
“Check the western hall!”
“Watch the shadows—don’t split up!”
“It’s still here!”
It.
They always said it.
Never “he.”
Saro styles himself as a "he" but gender norms or identifications matter less in this place.
Sometimes he felt nothing about that. Other times he felt something dark and twisting under his ribs. Being called an it made some parts of him angry. Other parts found it right. Fitting. He didn’t know which parts to trust anymore.
He curled his legs against his chest, bones jutting sharply, and rested his chin on his knees. His hair hung over his face, long and knotted, hiding his eyes. He liked the feeling of being hidden even when he wasn’t. Darkness was comfortable. Darkness made things easier. Moonlight was rare, Sunlight was scorching, his eyes having gotten used to the dark for so long, anything that's brighter than a torch makes him tear up.
He remembered his pack mate again. The warmth. The sea-scent. The sleepy breathing against his back. The way they used to share warmth when the nights were too cold and the screams were too loud. He wondered if his pack mate still remembered that. Wondered if his pack mate thought of him. Wondered if his pack mate believed he was dead.
Sometimes, he hoped his brother thought he was dead. It was safer that way. It was better to be a memory than a burden.
But then he remembered the look they shared just before they were split apart. His brother’s eyes wild, panicked, desperate to reach him. And he remembered reaching back. He remembered the fingers slipping apart.
The anger returned. Burning. Eating at him from the inside.
He swallowed it down. Let it settle. Let it smolder. Anger was good fuel. But too much fire made him sloppy. He needed to stay sharp. Needed to stay right.
Another shout:
“It’s not in the cages! Locks are intact—how!?”
They still didn’t understand. They didn’t understand that locks didn’t matter. That cages didn’t matter. That walls and doors and chains didn’t matter. Metal is strong but with the right force it will bend, and break. Locks are tricky but most snap with the right snapping motion. Saro still lurked in the dungeons from time to time, maybe sleep in his old cell, often over the spot where his pack mate slumbered when they were still together. He knew they'll find a chain strong enough to bind him, so he learned how their chains and locks worked.
He learned because he had nothing else.
He learned because learning was the only weapon he had before he turned his hands into weapons too.
The thing shifted again, crawling his fingers across the stone floor. The cold seeped into his skin. He didn’t mind.
The footsteps passed, then doubled back. More voices. They sound like panic, lost maybe?
Good.
They should panic.
He lifted his head slowly, letting the dim torchlight reflect off his eyes. The pupils narrowed to slits. He didn’t know when that started happening. He didn’t care. It helped him see better.
“The Blood trail ended here, he's close!?” another voice yelled, further down the hall.
He smiled again, small and sharp.
Here.
He was here.
They just didn’t look close enough.
He listened for the click of armor plates, for the faint clatter of weapons. When none came, he drew the rag tighter around his torso, then loosened it again. He didn’t like wearing things, but the cold air made the wounds open faster if he didn’t cover at least a little skin. He needed to stay functional.
He pressed his palm to the wall and dragged it down until his nails scraped stone. The sound was soft, but it echoed in his mind. A reminder. A grounding act. The roughness kept him focused.
He whispered something to himself. Not words. Not language. Just sounds. Little hums. Little breaths. Like the noises animals made in deep burrows.
The name “Saro” drifted across his thoughts again. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe because he was lonely, He was Saro but at the same time he didn't feel like Saro. Saro hated eating flesh, "Saro" relished in consuming it. "Saro" could escape but instead he stayed while Saro would've ran long ago. It was hard to think whether he was Saro or "Saro"
He wondered if the Moon Matriarch remembered that name. Wondered if she ever spoke it out loud. Wondered what she would think if she saw what her abandoned thing had become.
Wondered if she would still call him her son.
“There he is! FIRE!”
The shout came first, sharp and panicked, followed by the bite of metal. A stinging impact tore through his left side—small, fast, hot. A projectile. It burned inside the muscle, but the pain only forced a growl out of him, low and vibrating through his ribs. He didn’t fall. He didn’t stagger. He simply shifted his weight back, inching deeper into the darkness.
The corpse—what was left of it—was still clamped between his teeth. He dragged it with him, the dead weight scraping along the floor. When the shadows thickened enough, he slipped backward and hauled the body up into the ventilation shaft, limbs folding unnaturally to make space for both him and the carcass. Metal groaned softly as he disappeared into the vents, flattening himself against the cold steel while the bad ladies fired blindly upward.
Projectiles punched through the grate and ricocheted around him, but they missed. They always missed when he wanted them to.
He could smell them. The new ones. Their scent wasn’t seasoned, not like the older Amazons. Their sweat carried the sour note of fear that only fresh recruits had when thrown into live hunts. The bad ladies must be running low. Running out of bodies to throw at him. The newer ones smelled different—cleaner, younger, not yet rotten with fear or bitterness. They didn’t know the hallways as the old ones did. They didn’t know all the places he liked to hide. They didn’t know how fast he moved in tight spaces. The new queen must be running out of pawns if she was sending these ones in first. He didn’t like the new queen. Too loud. Too careless. Too desperate. She made the hunts uneven, sent too many bodies at once, ruined the patterns he’d learned over the past weeks.
Not that ever complained, more people, more game. Although it was hard to play hide and Seek when the hallways were cramped with dead bodies.
He tightened his jaw around the corpse’s shoulder and pulled it further inside the shaft until he found a pocket of darkness where he could crouch. He dropped the body beside him. Pieces fell off. It didn’t matter. The smell was strong enough to for him to find it later.
He didn’t lurk this close to the outer barracks before. He preferred his territory—old storage rooms, forgotten halls, narrow crawl spaces the Amazons never checked because they assumed things like him couldn’t fit. He never lurked too far from his territory normally. No reason to. Plenty of prey wandered into his space.
He knew every crack of this place. Every loose board. Every rusted hinge. Every blind turn. He blocked paths with bodies or debris. Bent iron bars. Broke locks. Learned every mistake they made. Learned every blind corner. Learned the way the lights flickered in certain corridors because the wiring was old or where to blow out torches in less modernized areas. Learned which guards got tired first. Which ones hid their fear. Which ones looked over their shoulders even when they pretended not to.
But if the new queen started dragging her warriors deeper into their sanctum, he’d need to stretch farther out. Expand the hunt. Clear new ground. Establish new choke points. He didn’t mind. A bigger hunting ground meant more places to stalk from.
He needed a steady supply of food. The bodies didn’t stay fresh for long, and he didn’t like eating meat that had gone cold and stiff.
Still, none of them would escape. He made sure of that weeks ago. He had already claimed every exit, marked every entrance, memorized every routine. The Amazons could run deeper into their sanctum, but they would only trap themselves in narrower halls, darker spaces, tighter corners.
He listened to their breathing from hallways away. He could hear every gasp, every sharp inhale, every muttered curse. He could sense their heartbeats. It buzzed in his head like insects. He liked that sound. It told him where they were without seeing them.
But hunting wasn’t fun if he finished too quickly.
He wanted to play with them.
The Amazons used to play with him.
It's no fun if they stop now.
Another shout came from below.
“Fuck, I need eyes on him! You two get ove—”
The officer didn’t finish her order.
He moved.
He dropped out of the vent without warning, landing behind her with a heavy crack of metal venting giving way. His weight slammed into her back before she could spin around. Landing straight on the officer’s shoulders. Bones shattered under his feet. His claws—hardened fingers sharpened by months of scraping against stone—sank into the base of her skull. His other hand gripped her jaw. One twist. One fast pull. Then opening his jaw in an angle that no human should be capable of doing, before snapping his jaws and razor, bone-breaking teeth into her skull. Biting, clenching until he heard the familiar crack like an egg.
Her skull split.
The sound was wet, almost dull. He felt bone fragments scrape against his knuckles as half her brain tumbled out and splattered across the floor. Warm. Fresh. He tasted iron as some of the matter smeared across his lips. He didn’t lick it off. He only held her head for a moment, watching her body spasm without control. Spitting out brain tissue onto the floor, he was hungry but no less keen on losing any more of his sanity.
The younger Amazons froze, eyes wide. Seeing their officer fall so fast in such a grotesque must've been a shocking first experience with death. Their weapons clattered against their armor as they hesitated, stunned. He liked that too—the stillness before screaming started. He held onto that quiet moment. He smiled at them. A big, wide smile. Too many teeth. Teeth stained red. Teeth still busy chewing. A pleased rumble vibrated in his throat—a purr.
Another successful kill.
He liked when kills went cleanly. Officer ladies were always the loudest. Their shouting ruined a quiet hunt. They barked orders. They pushed the others into tighter formations. They made it harder for him to pick off stragglers. Sometimes, made the prey scatter too early. He preferred the quiet ones. They were more predictable. This one was quiet now. Much better.
The projectiles came next—arrows at first, slicing the air. Then a strange series of cracks. Metal sparks burst against the walls.
Bullets.
They never used bullets before.
He dropped the officer’s corpse and hunched low, darting between the scattered shots. The sound was loud, echoing violently through the hall. They were trying something new. Something desperate. Maybe they had found a stash of mortal weapons. Maybe the queen was running out of toys to send. If there was one thing he found amusing was amazonian Pride, pride in their ancient weaponry. If they're equipping their warriors with mortal weapons, things must be really dire in their source of supplies.
Good. He never liked bullets, harder to pull out than arrows.
He moved fast, grabbing the officer’s body by the ankle. He swung her like a club—not for damage, but for distraction. Her corpse slammed into two Amazons, knocking them off their feet. He liked the way their armor clattered as they fell. It sounded like a warning bell breaking.
The youngest Amazon barely had time to react before he was already beneath the next swing. A sword cut the air just above his head. He felt the wind of it brush his hair. If the lady hadn’t shouted, she might have hit him.
As her arm reached its highest point, he surged forward, pressing into her blind spot, driving his sharpened fingers into her exposed side. The flesh parted easily, the blood spewing soon after. His hand found her waist. Skin, armor, fabric—it didn’t matter. His fingers curled. Sharp nails dug deep into the soft place under her ribs. He felt a muscle tear. The ribs cracked around his knuckles. She screamed—a raw, short sound that choked off when he pushed deeper. He found something hard and curved under his fingers. He hooked around it and pulled.
The snap was loud.
He pulled harder, relishing in her desperate attempts to claws his hand out of her guts.
The sound that came next was wet. Too wet. The lady’s body jerked. Her mouth opened and closed like she was trying to speak through the blood filling her throat.
Tearing out a tangle of organs, he didn’t bother identifying, three ribs, half a lung in one motion.
He stepped back. Her body folded like a broken puppet, collapsing at his feet. Her blood puddled under her knees. He didn’t stay to watch her die. He didn’t need to. She wasn’t interesting anymore.
He turned to the next one.
The two Amazons knocked down by the officer’s corpse scrambled to stand. One reached for her sword. The other crawled backward, eyes wide, leaving streaks of blood from some scrape on her knee. He tilted his head at them. They reminded him of the early days. Back when the ladies were still used to winning. Back when they thought fear was beneath them.
He moved through them fast.
He lunged before the first one finished lifting her blade. She got the sword halfway up, but he grabbed her wrist and twisted. Bones popped. The sword clattered from her hand. She screamed. He pushed her into the wall and drove his forehead into her nose. Cartilage snapped. Blood sprayed across his cheek.
The other girl stuttered something—maybe a prayer, maybe a plea—and tried to run. He didn’t like when they tried to run too early. It ruined the pacing. It turned a hunt into a scramble. He leapt, landing on her back, driving her face-down into the floor. Her teeth cracked on impact. She writhed under him, kicking wildly.
He punched her head once. Twice. Her body went limp on the third blow. Gouging out her eyes, he cut her throat open and shoved them inside. For good measure, of course.
One Amazon tried to reload her gun, hands slipping. He reached her before she could aim. His palm slammed into her face, forcing her head into the stone wall. Her skull cracked against it. He didn’t stop until he felt bone crumble.
She tried to crawl.
He stepped on her hand and kept going.
Two more Amazons rushed him. He let them. Let them believe they had a chance.
The first swung an axe. He tilted his head just enough for the blade to miss by an inch, then slammed his forehead into hers. Something cracked. She fell backward, dazed. He grabbed her jaw and snapped it sideways with one quick twist.
The second lady screamed and charged. He sidestepped, letting her momentum carry her forward. Then he drove his elbow into her spine. Hard. She dropped instantly, legs twitching.
He crouched beside her. Watched her gasp for breath. Watched her reach for her fallen blade. He took the blade first, snapped it in half over his knee, and shoved the broken end through her throat.
Another tried to flee. The sound of retreating footsteps always irritated him. Reinforcements, already? He grabbed her braid, yanked her backward, and let her fall onto her back. She tried to lift her sword. He stepped on her wrist, crushing bone, then tore her throat open with his nails. He left her choking on blood.
The rest didn’t last long. The hall filled with wet sounds—tearing flesh, snapping bones, desperate screams that echoed too loudly. His breathing stayed even. Calm. Focused. The kill felt natural. Automatic. Like a routine he had practiced until perfection.
When the last Amazon stopped moving, he crouched over one of the corpses. He didn’t eat yet. Not hungry. He simply watched the light fade from her eyes. He tracked the way her pupils shook. He followed her last breath, a little homage for being the last one to be picked off.
He wiped the blood on the officer’s discarded armor plate, then let the metal clatter to the floor. He sniffed the air again. More Amazons coming. Farther down
the hall. Running. They sounded frantic.
He supposed it's a good thing.
There would be more fun soon.
He stepped over the bodies and lifted his head slightly. There was a faint sound above him—air shifting in the vents. He could return there if he wanted. Hide again. Stalk from above. He liked the high places. The vents carried sound better. He could crawl across entire hallways without being seen. He could drop onto prey when they least expected it.
He flicked blood from his fingertips. The droplets hit the wall and streaked downward. He didn’t bother cleaning the rest off. He didn’t mind being covered in it. Blood made the Amazons nervous or anxious, it shouldn't, they've been killing and playing with people longer than he has.
He moved back into the shadows, dragging one of the corpses with him. Not to eat. Not yet. Just to lure the next group closer. The smell would pull them in. They always checked their fallen sisters. It was inevitable.
As he was about to take stock of his kills—count the bodies, sniff the blood trails, see how fresh each spill was—he tilted his head to the right. A reflex. A twitch. An instinct that had saved him more times than he could number. The movement was just in time. A spear sliced past his skull, close enough that he felt the air split against his cheek. The tip clipped a strand of his hair and embedded itself in the wall behind him.
If it hit dead center, it might have pierced his head clean through. He wondered, briefly, if it would have killed him.
Probably not.
But it would have been annoying. Healing head wounds always pulled at his vision. It made things blurry and made him hungrier after.
He clicked his tongue and bent down, picking up the closest thing to a weapon he had—the severed rib piece he tore off from the Amazon he gutted earlier. The bone was slick with blood, curved just right, still warm. It fit in his hand as it belonged there.
They lunged at him with another spear. He parried the thrust with the rib bone, the sound of bone-on-metal cracking sharp in the hallway. The Amazon pushed forward, trying to overpower him. She was strong. They usually were. But strength didn’t matter if the mind was slow.
He grabbed the half-lung he tore from her sister’s chest earlier—still wet, still dripping—and hurled it into her face.
She shrieked, stumbling back, blinded by the red smear across her eyes. She scraped at her face frantically, bits of tissue sticking to her lashes. He moved before she even cleared her vision.
His hand clamped on her jaw. Not her chin—her mouth. Fingers digging into the soft part of her mouth, thumb pushing against the inside of her cheek, tearing gum and skin. She tried to scream. He pulled. Hard. The flesh tore open with a ripping sound, her cheek splitting from the inside out like a blooming flower as his thumb punched through the muscle. Blood spilled over his hand in thick ropes.
Her scream broke into choking gargles when he sliced upward, using his nails like hooks. He dug until he felt the thin cords in her throat, then snapped them with a twist of his fingers. Her voice stopped instantly. She collapsed, mouth hanging open at an unnatural angle, tongue dangling from the torn cavity.
He dropped her. She hit the floor in a twitching heap.
He didn’t even finish admiring the kill before something rammed into his back.
A spear.
A full spear, driven deep enough that the point burst through the front of his chest. The metal scraped bone on its way out, tearing through muscle and lung tissue. His body lurched forward with a sickening jerk. The pain was bright, white, cracking. It came in a wave that forced a screech from his throat—high and animalistic.
Hands grabbed the spear shaft from behind, yanking him back, dragging him across the blood-slick floor. His limbs scraped against stone. His ribs ground against the embedded weapon, tearing more flesh every time the lady pulled. He snarled, thrashing, claws scraping everywhere he could reach.
They slammed him into the wall hard enough that the air punched out of his lungs. Another spear drove through his abdomen, pinning him to the stone. The point burst out through his back, leaving a hole his blood poured through in thick, dark droplets. The wall behind him cracked under the pressure.
He screeched, body bucking wildly.
He clawed.
Reached.
Grabbed.
Something soft.
A face.
His fingers found the cheek, then the eye. He shoved his thumb into the socket, digging until he felt the round shape burst under the pressure. The Amazon shrieked, falling to her knees, hands clawing at her ruined face. He grabbed again—her nose this time—and tore. The cartilage came free with a wet rip. Blood sprayed against his arm. She fell onto all fours, screaming in a pitch closer to an injured animal than a warrior.
Another body rushed him. His leg lashed out. His foot collided with the Amazon’s knee. The joint bent backward until the bone punched through the back of her skin, tearing it open like paper. She collapsed instantly, shrieking, the limb twisted in a way no body should bend.
He thrashed harder. His body tore at the spears, skin stretching around the wounds like fabric ripping under strain. But another weight crashed into him—bigger than the rest. A strong body slammed him deeper into the wall, crushing the spear further into his abdomen.
His vision wavered.
Red filing into his vision.
His hands clawed at the air, at her armor, at anything he could tear. But she held him firmly, arm braced across his chest, body pinning him with unnatural strength.
“You’ve caused us enough trouble, dog.”
Her voice was calm. Too calm.
It annoyed him.
“You and that sea-spawn.”
His breath came ragged, hot against her face. Blood dripped from his lips onto her armor. She leaned in closer. Close enough that he could see every tiny detail of her expression. The hatred. The disgust. And something else—something like admiration.
He growled, low, deep, eyes glowing red and silver. A flash of the moon, a flash of the sea, flickering in the dark.
“You’re a fighter,” she said, voice thick with something twisted. “The Queen will love breaking that spirit.”
He glared. He is not afraid of the new queen, Saro has killed a queen before. His fondest memory was Him and his pack mate tearing her limb and flesh then sharing a laugh afterwards. He longs to do that again, his packmate sharing a kill, maybe Saro can share his game. He has many bodies to share.
The Amazon leaned even closer, her breath warm against his skin.
“It’s a shame the sea-spawn isn’t here to see it,” she murmured. “Not with him after the King’s thunderbolt.”
His body tensed at that.
The King’s what?
His pack mate?
Chasing something so big?
So dangerous?
He hated that thought, he should be home, safe. He...Percy needs Saro, not safe out there alone.
“Then again—”
She drove her knee into his groin. A sharp burst of agony shot through his entire lower body.
He flinched, a dark memory flitting his senses
His breath stuttered.
“—he doesn’t need to see what I’m going to do,” she whispered.
And then she kissed him.
A twisted, affectionate obsession.
A wrong kind of fondness.
An obsessed kind of touch, all too familiar but one he could easily use to his advantage.
Her blood mixed with the blood already on his lips. She didn’t flinch or grimace even as her tongue licked the blood of her sisters off his lips. She pressed harder. Admiring him. Admiring the monster they made.
He let her.
He softened his body.
Let the strength bleed out for one second.
Gave her the look of something trapped.
Submission. Fake. Carefully crafted submission.
She took the bait instantly.
Her grip slackened—just enough.
Only when her mouth pressed deeper, when her teeth grazed his lower lip, when her arrogance grew to confidence—did he spring the trap.
Saro ripped his left hand free.
The skin tore around the embedded spear shaft, opening the wound wider. His blood splattered across the wall. He didn’t feel it. Didn’t care. His hand shot up, claws aimed for the Amazon’s throat, but instead of slicing—
He grabbed.
He grabbed the back of her neck, right where the nape met the skull. He dug his claws into that soft spot, pushing through the first layer of flesh. She gasped, trying to pull back from the kiss, only to find his hands keeping her lips locked on, confusion drifting into fear flashing in her eyes.
He didn’t give her time to speak.
His claws went deeper.
Through skin, muscle, nerve, and tendon.
He stopped only when he felt the hard texture of bone.
The Amazon’s eyes widened.
Her breath hitched.
Her grip slipped, desperately trying to break away.
Saro smiled with bloodied teeth.
He squeezed—
These Amazons used to scare him once. Back when he was small, when his bones were softer, when his skin bruised at every touch, when the light hurt his eyes and every sound felt like thunder. Back when they dragged him by the hair. Back when they pushed him into the pit. Back when they held him down and carved shapes into him for training. Back when they put him in the iron cage and waited to see if he would cry.
He did, back then.
A long time ago.
Before something cracked open inside him and didn’t close again.
They did these things so many times. Again and again. Pain, cold, darkness, hunger, more pain. He had dreaded whenever they began. Dreaded when the footsteps stopped outside his cell. Dreaded when the keys jangled. Dreaded when the door opened. Dreaded when they smiled.
But now—
Now as he bites off her tongue, still warm, still writhing inside his mouth as she tries to scream into the kiss she forced on him—
He’s starting to understand the appeal.
The texture of the tongue is strange. Soft at first, then chewy, then stringy when he severs it with the last snap of his teeth. Her scream turns into a choking gurgle as blood fills her mouth. Her eyes go wide with agony, her body thrashing. Saro keeps her pressed against the wall with his claws buried deep in the back of her neck.
He muffles her screams by keeping their mouths connected. It’s not affection. Not for him. It’s containment. It’s control. It’s making sure she doesn’t alert more ladies too quickly, not until he decides he’s ready.
Her tongue slaps against the inside of his cheek. He spits half of it out. The other half he swallows on instinct, because he needs the energy, because eating is eating and this one tastes like old metal and fear.
He keeps going.
And going.
And going.
He bites the top of her lip first. The skin splits easily. He tears it off with a quick jerk of his head, chewing it enough to get it out of his mouth before dropping it. Then he bites off the bottom lip. More blood. Hotter this time. It drenches his chin. It runs down her neck in a red sheet.
He doesn’t stop.
He sinks his teeth into her cheek. Not the soft center—he goes for the hinge. The meaty part. His teeth grind against her molars. He digs until he feels the cheek rip open like wet paper. His jaw wrenches sideways, tearing a chunk of flesh free. Her face sags on one side, the bone visible through the shredded meat.
Her screams hit a higher pitch, raw and animalistic. Her hands claw at him uselessly. Her nails scrape his skin but don’t pierce. Her legs kick against the wall.
He plucks her teeth next, using his own like tongs. He clamps down on one of her front teeth, biting hard enough to crack the enamel, then ripping it straight out of the socket. Blood gushes into his mouth. He spits the tooth out. It clatters on the floor.
He takes another.
And another.
He feels the roots snap each time. A wet pop. A crunch. A small jolt as the tooth comes free. He spits all of them out, letting them scatter across the floor like tiny discarded stones.
He gnaws on her gums next. The texture is different. Tougher than he expected. He tears at them until he reaches bone—smooth and cold, a sharp contrast to the hot mess around it.
Her face is falling apart. Literally. What was once symmetrical, human, recognizable—now it’s nothing but mush. Torn flesh, shattered bone, empty sockets where teeth used to be. Bite marks everywhere. Claw marks too, from where he held her in place.
Before long, the entire front half of her face is gone. Nothing left but gore and bone fragments. Her eyes roll back. choking on her own blood. the body convulses once—twice—stops.
Saro whines.
Low and frustrated.
She died too fast.
He could have done more. He wanted to try different angles. Maybe rip the jaw completely off. Maybe open the skull. Maybe see how long it would take before she passed out if he worked slower. But she bled out too quickly. She didn’t fight hard enough. She didn’t give him time.
He growls softly. A disappointed sound. Then he shoves her off him. She drops to the ground like a sack of meat, landing beside her sisters. Her mangled corpse falls on top of the Amazon whose eye he gouged earlier. Their blood pools together on the floor.
Saro exhales sharply and finally pulls the two spears out of his torso.
One.
Then the other.
Each one comes out with a gush of blood and tissue. The holes left behind throb painfully. Fresh air touches the exposed insides of his abdomen, making his muscles twitch. He presses a hand over the larger wound and hisses as his body tries to pull the skin closed.
He licks at his wounds next. Not out of comfort. Out of necessity. Tasting his own blood is uncomfortable at time but would be a huge waste of sustenance, especially with water so scarce since his break out. He licks the blood on his claws too, cleaning them enough to grip properly. He eats the remaining flesh stuck to his face, chewing mechanically, swallowing only the edible parts. The bits of her brain tissue he spits out. He doesn’t like the texture. Too soft. Too strange. And if he eats too much brain matter, he gets headaches and starts to feel wrong in ways he can’t name.
He may be feral, but he doesn’t want to go fully mad.
He yawns when he’s done. A long stretch that makes several bones crack into place. His arms arch above his head. His spine pops. He stretches his legs like a cat waking up from a nap—slow, deliberate, loosening the tension in his shoulders.
Then he takes stock of his carnage.
He steps around the bodies carefully, sniffing each one, nudging them with his foot, flipping some over to make sure they’re truly dead. He checks their armor for weapons he can use later. Bows. Arrows. A few knives. He pockets what he can. Not because he needs them—but because the Amazons don’t need them anymore.
He drags each corpse by an arm or a leg into a corner of the hall. He stacks them neatly. A pile of limbs, torsos, heads. Blood-soaked hair tangled together. Armor clinking softly. He sorts them by usefulness—meat, bones, cloth, metal. He will eventually bring all of this back to his nest, add it to the rest of his trophies, while some will be eaten later.
Before he does, he has one more thing to take care of.
He looks for the final prey he left alive. There should be one more. He knows she’s still here. The scent of her fear is thick and heavy in the air, sharp enough that even the dried blood on his face cannot drown it out. It's hard to describe what fear smells like. He can hear her whimpering, trying to swallow her own sobs. He can hear the uneven thud-thud-thud of her heartbeat, fast and stuttering like a rabbit cornered by a wolf.
He tilts his head, listening.
There—
To the right.
A wet, bubbling cough gives her away. “G-glurg.” It sounds less like a word and more like her own lungs drowning her.
He follows the sound until he sees her.
It’s the lady he mauled during his thrashing earlier, the one whose nose and eye he tore away when they pinned him to the wall. She is crawling desperately across the blood-slick stone, dragging herself with one arm while her broken leg dangles uselessly behind her. Half of her face is gone—skin peeled, muscle torn, one eye socket empty except for the shredded nerves hanging from it. Her remaining eye dangles on her cheek like a pendulum, swinging each time she moves.
She is doing a good job for someone who should be unconscious.
He respects the effort, even if a little.
He approaches slowly.
Not to prolong it, he's already has his fill tonight.
Sometimes, the thing named Saro enjoyed the games. Relished in torturing or mangling them just to see how long they could keep fighting. Yearned in hearing their screams echo off the walls. Sometimes preferred the feeling of fear in the air more than the taste of blood.
But not always.
Sometimes—like now—he felt a small, strange tug inside his chest. A quiet sound that wasn’t quite pity, but something adjacent to it. Not enough to stop the death, but enough to make him pause.
The whimpering girl is young.
Still older than him—everyone here is older than him—but maybe no older than nineteen. Her armor barely fits her, too large at the shoulders, too loose at the wrists, as though someone forced her into a role she wasn’t fully ready for. It is a shame she is Amazon.
She could’ve done many things.
Seen many things.
Lived many things.
Instead her face is gone and her body is broken and she will die on this floor.
“Cry?” Saro rasps.
The sound grates against his throat like stone against rusted metal. It has been a long time since he last used his voice. The last time he spoke was when he begged for death. Begged for release. Begged for his mama.
He remembers the way his voice cracked, remembers the way they laughed at him for it. Remembers how the sound of his own begging made something inside him curl up and rot until the rot, which strangled into roots, which grew into the thing he is today.
He crouches on all fours, letting his weight shift forward, letting his claws click gently against the ground as he approaches her.
She tries to crawl faster when he nears. Her fingers slip in her own blood. She leaves streaks of red on the floor. The gurgling in her throat worsens as she tries to breathe around the blood filling her mouth.
He reaches her.
She freezes instantly, paralyzed by terror.
Saro places a clawed hand gently on the remains of her cheek. What used to be her cheek. The flesh is torn, raw, hot from fever and blood. Her skin twitches beneath his touch. She sobs, loud and ugly, her remaining eye rolling wildly in her head.
She is terrified, any rational mind would be, Amazon or not.
But Saro’s smile is soft, it's small and wrong in all aspects.
He hums. Toneless until a rhythm and distorted melody form, and he begins to sing.
A sound that shouldn’t exist in a place like this. A lullaby. Old, familiar, learned long before the pain and the cages. A tune his matriarch used to sing to her younger hunters during long nights when the moon was high and the woods were restless. A tune meant to soothe, to quiet the restless beasts of the forest. She never sang it to him but he did listen when he was allowed near.
He misses them. Even if they were mean to him. Even if they pushed him harder than his small body could handle. Even if they likely were glad to be rid of him.
He still misses them.
The broken Amazon girl stares at him, confused, terrified, trembling violently. Tears spill down her face, mixing with the blood dripping from her ruined eye socket.
The thing named Saro smiles wider.
“Sleep now,” he murmurs.
A quiet, almost tender whisper.
Then he buries his thumb into her remaining eye.
The resistance lasts only a heartbeat.
The orb bursts with a wet pop.
Warm fluid runs over his hand.
Her body arches off the ground violently, back bending, limbs flailing.
She doesn’t scream. She can’t. Her mouth is too torn to form the sound, she squirms, she tries to crawl away but her mangled leg snags on a cracked tile.
She makes a wet, strangled noise instead—half gargle, half gasp. Her leg kicking wildly. Her fingers claw weakly at the floor. Blood pours down her face like a waterfall, thick and heavy and fast. The eye socket collapses under the pressure of his thumb, bone cracking outward.
He pushes deeper until he feels the thin separation of bone; his thumb hits the softer matter behind the eye.
she stops moving.
Her body spasms once.
Twice.
Then nothing.
Silence.
He pulls his thumb out slowly.
The sound is wet, Long, and dragging.
He watches as more blood drips from the ruined hole where her eyes used to be. Her face is nothing but mangled meat now. No features left. Nothing left to identify her as one of the ladies who once walked proudly through these halls.
He wipes his thumb on her armor. He could lick it but he doesn't like the taste of ocular matter.
He presses two fingers to her neck, checking.
No pulse.
Dead.
He nods once.
Satisfied.
He sits back on his haunches, studying her body for a long moment. Young.
Too young for this fate, so was he once. Fate rarely discriminates and neither does he, not really.
Still—it is over quickly.
A mercy, compared to what he could have done.
He stands, stretching again. His wounds pull, skin tugging around the ripped flesh. The spear hole in his abdomen leaks blood slowly, but not enough to worry him. His body will fix it eventually. His bones already feel less fragile than before. His muscles twitch in irregular patterns, new ones forming beneath his skin in ways he doesn’t fully understand.
He steps over her corpse and moves to the entrance of the hall.
There is blood everywhere.
The walls are smeared with it.
The floor is slick.
The air is thick.
He breathes it all in.
The stink of iron, warmth of fresh blood, cold of old wounds, sound of dripping, and the silence of death.
It feels familiar. Comforting.
This hall was fully claimed
Another addition to his hunting grounds.
He walks slowly down the corridor, passing the bodies he left earlier. Some are missing limbs. Some are shredded beyond recognition. Some he crushed with brute force. Some he opened up with claws. Some he tore apart with his teeth.
Each kill is different, deliberate. It was hard at first, but eventually he did learn the ways to properly butcher a human body for the most vital parts for later consumption. Though it is biased towards females, not for the general gender or sex, merely because Amazons are generally all female. He doubts he'll ever eat any males or females outside this place; there are plenty of monsters already out there hunting for them.
He stops at the nearest corpse-one many whose jaw he ripped off.
He grabs her by the arm and drags her toward the body pile he made earlier.
One after another, he collects them.
Dragging.
Stacking.
Organizing.
Cleaning the hunting grounds and sectioning off the spoils.
He doesn’t know why he does it; he could just bring them as is or leave the lesser game behind.
He just knows he should.
Once he finishes, he stands before the pile of Amazons, neatly arranged—some folded, some stacked, some placed as though waiting for burial. He tilts his head, examining his work. The bones shine through some of the torn flesh. The entrails glisten faintly in the dim light.
He feels something like pride.
He touches the top of the pile, running his claws lightly across the bloodied armor. The sound is soft, metallic. Almost peaceful.
With the hunt over it was best that he return back to the next.
The halls were quiet by the time Saro made his way back to his nest. Quiet in a way only mass death could create. The torches had burned low; their fires hissed in shallow breaths, struggling against the thick, heavy air. The ground squelched beneath his feet in places where blood pooled deep enough to splash. He tracked footprints without caring. Some belonged to the Amazons who had tried to escape during the first hours of his breach.
Most belonged to him. All of them led toward the center of the dungeon level where the bodies lay in heaps — the result of his hours of hunting. When the dungeons were eventually cleared of any life, he moved onto the upper levels. He never killed any of the other male prisoners, not that they were any left by the time of his incursion, most having died in a scorched earth move by the remaining guards the moment they realized this level was lost to him.
By now, his arms were full. He carried two Amazons slung over his shoulders, one by the waist, the other by the ankles. Both swung limply with the rhythm of his steps. Two more he dragged behind him by their hair or armor straps, leaving streaks of blood and patches of scraped flesh behind. Their armor clinked against the stone every few paces. Their limbs bumped against corners. Their heads rolled slightly from side to side with each sharp turn he made.
He didn’t hurry. There was no rush. This level, and the three levels above and below, were his. Every Amazon who mattered or ever tried to put a proper defense was either dead or dying, and those left alive were trapped deeper inside, scared enough to stay hidden, too wounded to fight back, or clever enough to know stepping into the halls was suicide. No one followed him. No one tried to stop him. No one dared. Although on some occasions they would scatter some scouts to search for food or him, like today.
His cell waited for him, familiar even after all these months. The doors had been broken open when he escaped the first time, splintered locks and metal bent outward from when he rammed it. The Amazons had never cleaned it, even after his packmate escaped. They tried to reuse the cell, but nothing lasted near it. He made sure of that. Anyone meant to guard it died within a day. Some within an hour. When he eventually came out of hiding and began the aggressive expansion of his hunting grounds, they abandoned it, which made it his.
He stepped inside.
The air was thick with the old scent of iron, damp stone, rotten straw, and dried blood caked into the corners. It felt right. Safe. Proper. The shadows clung to the walls like old friends, and the darkness settled around him as if welcoming him home. He shifted the weight on his shoulders and let one body fall onto the floor next to the old straw bed that he and his littermate once shared. The Amazons never replaced it. That too made it his.
He lowered the other corpse onto the floor beside the straw, then dragged the last two in behind him. The scraping sound echoed across the small room. A limb hit the doorframe hard enough to pop a shoulder joint out. He ignored it. Warm blood still dripped from the fresh kills, leaving red trails in places where older blood had turned nearly black. It blended perfectly.
He didn’t plan to keep the bodies in his nest. They didn’t belong here. This room was for memories, treasured things, and pieces of the past he still clung to without understanding why. This was where the sea-scented warmth once slept. They pressed their shoulders together to stay warm when the moon dipped low. Where he curled against someone who did not hurt him. Where he whispered to someone who whispered back.
He didn’t want corpses in this room. Especially not the new ones. They had a different place.
Saro turned left, toward the connected cell next door. The one the Amazons once used to store equipment. He had repurposed it. The door hung crookedly on one hinge. He pushed it with his foot and it swung open slowly, creaking loud enough to echo down the hall. A stale, thick wave of decay rolled out, clinging to his nose and skin like old oil. He inhaled deeply. Familiar. Comforting. Home in its own way.
Inside was his collection.
He had shaped it carefully over time. The cell was not large, but he had made it work. He had sorted the bodies into sections. Not neatly — he didn’t have the patience for clean lines or straight piles — but with purpose. The right-hand corner held the heavy decayed ones, bodies that had been taken weeks or months ago, bones poking through the thin skin like jagged teeth. Likely the first Kills he's made are under pile.
Some were nothing but skeletons with scraps of flesh still clinging to them. Some were days old, bloated, discolored, stiff in places where the rot hadn’t reached yet. A few skulls sat on top of the others, arranged in a loose cluster like a circle watching the door.
The left side held the fresher kills. Those who died recently. Limbs still flexible. Skin still warm. Blood still bright and thick. He stacked them carefully, one atop the other, making sure the broken limbs didn’t bend the wrong way and spoil the pile. He knew where each one came from, who each one had been, how each one died. He remembered the sounds they made. The expressions they wore. He remembered their last breaths.
In the center of the cell was his favorite pile. Not the largest and not the oldest, but the one he visited most often. These were the Amazons who put up the best fights. The ones who survived long enough to amuse him. The ones who screamed in interesting ways. The ones who tried clever tricks or fought with skill or snarled back at him. He kept them in the middle, stacked carefully, almost reverently. The armor of the topmost corpse gleamed faintly in the torchlight even through the blood smears.
Saro entered the corpse room carrying one of the Amazons over his shoulder. He paused at the threshold, assessing the space. There was enough room to add more to the center pile. He shifted the body, grabbed it by the shoulders, and tossed it onto the stack, letting the limbs fall in whatever direction gravity wanted. One arm bent backward. A leg landed across another corpse’s chest. The head flopped limp, mouth hanging open.
He placed the second one beside it, adjusting its angle so it balanced without rolling. He tugged its hair to the side so the blood dripping from the scalp wouldn’t stain a different group. He didn’t know why he cared. He just did. Organization mattered, even in chaos. Even in death.
The third corpse he dragged to the older pile on the right. This one was already starting to stiffen; its neck wouldn’t bend the way he wanted. He snapped it sideways with a quick jerk and pushed it deeper into the mound of older dead, nestling it between two skeletons that had fused together by rot and time. The smell coming from that corner was thick, humid, almost sweet.
The bodies there had begun to liquefy in places. Some were sticky to the touch. Some left residue on his claws that hardened like glue. He liked that pile for different reasons. It was history. Proof of time passing. Proof that he had lived here long enough to leave a mark no one could ever erase.
The final body he saved for the left pile. Fresh. Warm enough that when he dropped it, blood pooled quickly around the torso and soaked into the dirt floor. He bent down, sniffing the corpse, checking for still-beating hearts out of habit. None. The spine was broken. The ribs caved in. He approved.
When he finished sorting, he wiped his bloody hands on his thighs out of habit. It didn’t make them clean. Nothing ever really made anything clean in this place. But the motion was familiar and grounding. He stepped back, examining the room, taking in the arrangement he built. It wasn’t orderly by normal standards. It wasn’t clean or symmetrical. It wasn’t even sane. But it made sense to him. It followed logic he lived by. A logic of memory, instinct, experience, and habit.
The dried corpse cluster on the right.
The fresh pile on the left.
The centerpiece of best kills in the middle.
All separated.
All sorted.
All his.
Satisfied, he left the room and returned to his nest.
He settled onto the old straw bed, ignoring how the dried blood made it stiff and scratchy. He curled onto his side, one arm draped across his abdomen where the spear wound still throbbed. His fingers brushed the old grooves in the stone floor where he and his littermate once scratched patterns together. He traced the familiar shapes automatically, remembering hands on his shoulders as someone whispered to him that it would be okay. Remembering the warmth that wasn’t blood but real warmth. The kind he couldn’t recreate no matter how much he tried.
His eyes closed. Not fully. Never fully. Just enough that the world dimmed. His ears twitched, listening for intruders. No footsteps. No breathing. No Amazon voices. Just the quiet settling of bodies cooling in the next room and the gentle dripping of blood finding its way down the stone wall.
His wounds pulsed. His muscles twitched. His bones ached. None of it mattered. He licked the remaining blood from his lips and exhaled slowly. The air was cold enough to sting but familiar enough that he leaned into it.
His body still thrummed with leftover adrenaline. His wounds itched from the pulling and stretching. The dried blood cracked on his skin when he moved. It bothered him, not because of cleanliness, but because it felt wrong on his fur-less body, clinging too tightly, stiffening in places that restricted certain stretches. It felt like wearing armor he didn’t ask for.
He needed to clean. Not like the ladies cleaned. Not with buckets and cloths and warm water. They had scrubbed him that way once. Scrubbed him until his skin reddened and stung. He never understood why they bothered if he was going to be bloodied and used the next day anyway. He preferred the way he learned on his own.
He lowered himself to all fours and began grooming.
It started with his arms. He raised one, bent his head, and ran his tongue along the length of it, scraping away the layers of blood that didn’t belong to him. The taste was metallic, sharp, and familiar. He didn’t swallow everything. Some clumps he spat out onto the straw, flicking his tongue in irritation when bits clung to his teeth. His saliva cleared large patches of skin easily, leaving behind pale streaks where his natural warmth lingered.
He moved systematically. Arm. Wrist. Elbow. The underside of his forearm where a spear had glanced earlier. He licked until the dried flakes loosened and rolled off. He worked until his own scent began to overpower the others again. His smell mattered. It created boundaries. It told the world where he belonged.
Once both arms were clean enough, he bent further and pulled one leg up, folding it at an angle most humans would not manage. He cleaned the thigh first, dragging his tongue up from knee to hip, collecting grime and blood in long strokes. Then the calf. Then his ankle. He paused to remove a shard of someone’s tooth stuck between two tendons. He plucked it out with his claws and tossed it aside.
He switched legs. The motion had rhythm. Familiar. Not comforting exactly, but grounding. His movements were patient, steady, almost mechanical. He didn’t rush. Rushing left things undone. Undone meant exposed. Exposed meant vulnerable. Vulnerable meant dead.
He leaned back and inspected his torso next. His abdomen was still leaking a little around the spear wound. He pressed two fingers to the edges, feeling how the flesh responded. Still soft, still torn, but closing slowly. He cleaned around it, careful not to push dirt into the open tissue. He licked until his tongue burned from the taste of blood. He scraped away dried flakes, flattening his hand over his sternum to loosen any remaining bits.
His face required the most work. It always did after a hunt. He leaned forward and wiped his cheek with the side of his wrist, loosening the crust forming along his jawline. Then he ran his tongue over the back of his hand and used that moisture to scrub the edges of his lips, cleaning off the dark stains left from biting into the Amazon’s face. Bits of flesh clung stubbornly to the corner of his mouth. He peeled them off with his teeth.
His hair hung in unruly clumps, damp from sweat and blood. He dragged his claws through it, pulling out tangles and streaks of dried gore. A few pieces resisted and came away with strands of hair. He didn’t mind. It would grow back. Everything grew back eventually.
His tailbone — though not a real tail, just an odd extension of bone and nerve the Amazons called a deformity — twitched as he stretched backward, licking along the top ridge of his spine. He stopped at places where he couldn’t reach and scraped the dried blood off using the rough surface of the wall. Stone left scratches on his skin. They didn’t bother him.
By the time he finished, most of the foreign blood was gone. Only his scent remained — warm, sharp, animalistic, unmistakably his. The air around him shifted as his natural smell began to dominate the room again, replacing the messy mixture of Amazon fear and death.
Cleaning wasn’t a luxury. Remove what wasn’t his. Keep what was. Reset the body. Reset the mind. Reset the den.
He sat back on his heels and studied his claws. They were cleaner now, though still tinted faintly pink. He dragged each one across the straw to sharpen them. The sound was a low scraping, repetitive and soothing. He sharpened them until they clicked slightly with each flex. Better. Ready for more fights, should they come.
Once satisfied, he turned his attention to the walls.
Scenting the den mattered. More than the cleaning and the piles next door. This was his territory. This cell was where he curled when the world felt too loud, the place where he hid when he needed to remember things he didn’t understand, where warmth once slept beside him. The place where he whispered stories and names under his breath.
He needed to mark it daily. To maintain his claim lest a rat or some other creature try and take it.
He reopened one of his scabbed-over scratches with a quick rake of his claws. Fresh blood welled up instantly, dripping down his forearm in warm trails. He didn’t flinch.
He dragged his hand across the nearest wall, smearing the fresh blood in rough, wide strokes. The stone drank it in, darkening as the streaks dried. He painted long lines, jagged shapes, overlapping marks that had no pattern except the one he instinctively understood. They weren’t symbols. They weren’t words. They were scent. Territory. Warning.
He moved along the perimeter of the room, marking each section. Above the straw bed. Near the door. Along the cracks in the wall where cold air slipped through. Over the old scratches he and his litter mate once made. Over the newer ones carved during his rage. The old faded stains blended with the new ones, creating layers of scent, time, memory, and possession.
He continued until the cell smelled entirely like him — metallic, sharp, animalistic, and earthy. Anyone entering would know instantly. Anyone stepping inside would feel the weight of it pressing over their skin. Anyone approaching would sense it and understand this place belonged to something dangerous.
Satisfied, he stepped back.
The room felt right now. Balanced. Marked. Alive in its own strange way.
He returned to the straw bed, grabbing the edges and fluffing it with both hands. The straw crackled beneath his fingers as he rearranged it, creating a shallow dip in the center where his body could curl comfortably. He shook out the old, stiffened patches of blood-soaked straw and replaced them with fresher pieces from a pile he kept hidden beneath a loose stone. He didn’t know why he saved some straw over others. He just did. Some smelled nicer. Some felt softer. Some held old memories he didn’t want to lose.
He piled the good straw at the center, pushing it into a small nest shape. He circled around it once, twice, three times, checking the feel beneath his feet. He pressed it down, rolled his shoulders, flicked stray pieces away, then circled again. Only then did he lower himself carefully into the center.
He curled into himself, folding his legs beneath his chest, pulling his arms close, tucking his head against his knees. His spine curved naturally, a posture learned from long years in cages too small for stretching. It stayed with him even now, even when he had all the space he wanted. He felt safest this way. Small but coiled. Resting but ready.
He nuzzled into the straw, rubbing his cheek against it until his scent blended fully with the bed. His breathing slowed. His eyes half-lidded. The pain in his abdomen throbbed softly, a steady pulse that felt more like a heartbeat than a wound. His claws flexed once, gripping the straw, then relaxed.
The room was quiet, the corpses next door were still, and the halls outside were empty.
As he drifted toward sleep, he felt the faintest memory of warmth — sea-scented, soft, gentle — brushing against his spine. A ghost of something he once had but could not name. It flickered through him like a passing breeze. He clutched the straw tighter, trying to hold onto it, but the memory slipped away.
Saro slept, curled like a wild cat, his breathing evened out, body softened, and eyes closed as he went quietly into the good night. Whilst on the upper levels, through the windows, the moon shone over a bloodied hallway, and in the sky, a chariot of silver raced ever closer to the fortress. All the while Saro slumbered, oblivious to his matriarch travelling ever closer by the hour.