Weight. Absolute. Crushing. It came back first.
Then — pain. Dull and aching all over his body, sharp and flaring in his shoulder and leg with every deep breath. The air was stale, heavy, thick with dust, blood, and smoke.
Kain tried to move.
His body answered with another wave of pain and a monstrous pressure from above. He was trapped, buried under the wreckage of the arena. Around him — silence. But not the kind that's dead. Muffled. Through the layers of dust and debris came distorted, distant sounds.
He lay with his cheek pressed to stone — rough, coarse. Cold… familiar. Too familiar.
Panic began to creep under his skin. The feeling of being trapped was unbearable. Helplessness. Darkness. Every breath an effort. He'd felt this before.
And then, the darkness behind his eyelids shifted — into memory...
...first came the cold, seeping into his bones. Then — pain in his cramped muscles and a phantom wound in his skull. Kain opened his eyes.
The world was blurred, distorted. Above him — rough stone, and in the distance, the dim, flickering light of torches. He was lying on something hard and filthy. Around him — shadows. The clank of metal. Voices in a language he didn't understand.
Where was he?
Who was he?
His head was a ringing void. Not a single thought, only the animal fear. He was like a newborn, thrown into a hostile world.
He tried to sit up. His body barely obeyed. Someone coughed nearby. Kain flinched, instinctively recoiling, and brushed against a shadow — a man sitting by the wall.
The man hissed with rage. Emaciated, hollow-eyed, dressed in the same filthy sackcloth. He rose, swinging a bony arm at Kain.
Kain didn't think. He didn't feel fear. His body acted on its own. Reflex.
A grab. A twist. A snap.
The body hit the stone. He struck again. And again. A third time...
Kain sat over the corpse. His hands trembled. They were covered in blood.
He didn't understand what had happened. Didn't want to. It… just happened. As if someone else had moved inside him.
Around him, the slaves froze, staring at him with horror — and something like expectation.
The silence shattered under the shouts of the overseers. They were running toward him, whips and clubs in hand. They saw the body. They saw him, sitting atop it. No one asked what had happened. The guilty one was clear.
The blows rained down like a storm. The pain was blinding, deafening. He fell, but the beating didn't stop. His body instinctively tried to curl up, to protect itself, but they kept hitting him, venting their rage and power on a slave who dared to kill another piece of property.
They dragged him away, scraping across the filthy floor. Threw him to his knees before someone in charge — snarling with malice. His arms were twisted behind his back until his joints cracked. He heard only a harsh, scraping sound...
Something sharp, unbearably hot, touched the skin of his neck. The pain exploded through his mind like a white flash. He screamed — a wild, animal cry, raw with terror.
His voice was drowned in the clatter of chains and the coarse laughter of the overseers.
Through the fog of agony, he heard the shouted numbers, like a sentence:
— Sixteen! Nineteen! Fourteen! Remember it, scum! That's your new name!
They threw him into the darkest, dampest corner of the mine. He lay there, trembling from pain and shock. His neck burned with a brand.
And inside — there was only fear. And absolute loneliness.
In the present, Kain breathed heavily under the rubble. The pressure of stone — just like then. The darkness — the same. He was trapped again.
Alone again.
He'd fallen deep below the arena, into the unknown. Ko'ona's scream — the last thing he'd heard before falling — now felt infinitely distant, like light from a dead star.
Hopelessness surged.
Why fight? Maybe he should just close his eyes? Let death take him?
Just like he almost did back then...
Dadan.
The name surfaced from the depths of memory, like a lifeline.
…Kain was lying against the mine wall. Beaten. Shivering from cold and hunger. He'd just been punished — for dropping his pickaxe.
He closed his eyes. Wanted to disappear. To stop existing.
A shadow fell across his face. He flinched, bracing for another blow.
But a wooden bowl with cloudy water was set beside him.
He opened his eyes.
An old man. Wrinkled, gray-haired, with a dusty beard. Silent. Watching.
Kain pulled away, eyeing him with distrust and anger.
The old man sat by the wall, turning his back to him. Started gnawing on a hard crust. He didn't look. Didn't expect gratitude. He just stayed.
Then he stood up.
— Drink, boy. Even dust clings to life.
And left.
He came back every day. For a month.
No words. No questions. A bowl of water. Sometimes broth. He sat nearby. Just… was there.
At first, Kain didn't believe. Then he got angry. Wanted to smash the bowl, throw it away. But — he drank. Ate. Because his body demanded it.
And day by day, in dust and darkness, something began to change.
He started waiting.
For footsteps. For the silhouette. For silence filled with presence.
The old man never asked. But his silence was like a shield.
One day, Kain broke.
— Why?
The old man calmly replied:
— What you did was wrong. But down here, the line between beast and man is thin. I just choose to be a man.
Silence.
— What's your name, boy?
Kain blinked. The answer slipped out without thought:
— Sixteen… nineteen… fourteen.
The old man smiled. Gently, without mockery.
— That's a brand. A mark. But what was your name before?
Before?
Kain frowned, trying to peer past the wall of emptiness in his head. But there was nothing. Only darkness. And the fall.
— I… — his voice trembled. — I don't know.
Tears welled up. Not from pain. From the void.
The old man nodded.
— That happens.
He paused. Then met his gaze:
— But even without a past — you need a name. Not a number. A name.
Kain raised his head, blinking away the wetness. He didn't understand. Why? What difference did it make what he was called, if he was going to die here anyway?
The old man looked at him calmly. Stubbornly.
— I had a son. His name was Kain. He died. Before I was brought here.
He reached out. Touched Kain's shoulder gently. Almost like a father.
— Take his name. Let it be yours.
Kain froze.
A name. Not his. But right.
As if something inside stirred.
It was the first sound in this world that didn't bring pain.
He looked at Dadan. And for the first time in a long time, there was no fear in his eyes. No emptiness. Only… something alive.
— Kain, — he whispered. — My name is Kain.
He didn't know why he said it.
But that name became a shield. A beginning.
Like a breath after suffocation. Like light breaking through a crack in the rubble.
The old man nodded. Got up. Left — as always, without looking back.
But in his step, there was no more resignation.
And Kain remained. Sitting, hugging himself. And for the first time, he allowed himself not just to survive.
But to be.
To listen. To breathe. To live.
And in the present, beneath the collapsed arena, in the suffocating dark, he clenched his teeth.
— I will survive. I promised.