𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐈𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐀 𝐒𝐔𝐂𝐂𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘. 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐈𝐒 𝐀 𝐑𝐔𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍.
It's the beginning of a new age when Jaylah Imperatrix seemingly returns from the dead to reclaim her throne. And in perfect timing.
In her absence, evil has be...
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Act 1 Chapter 73 ALEXANDER
Every bone in Alexander's body screamed for mercy as he worked the crank around in another rhythmic circle. The constant up-and-down movement of his shoulders ached from the beating he'd apparently received yesterday. When he awoke that morning in the same dark shed to change into his day uniform, he'd seen the horrific splatter of black and blue across his chest and stomach. It was a miracle he was not internally bleeding. Well, as it seemed so far.
The area around his right eye was painful and slightly swollen to the touch, so it was safe to assume his punishment was literally written all over his face. It shouldn't have been an embarrassment when all the others were in the same collars as him. But their unmarked faces made him feel even lower. That was why he kept his head down and eyes trained solely on the bunches of grapes falling into the machine that would crush them into pulp.
A voice to his left hissed, "Alexei."
Turning slightly enough that the overseer two stories above could not object, Alexander wiped the sweat on his forehead dripping from the ends of his hair and plastered a smile on his face at the old nickname. "Kyuwa." His old friend's tanned, grinning face was the most pleasant sight he could have gotten in the dim, creamy factory, but any of the normal joy Alexander would have gotten from seeing him again was robbed by the collars around both their necks.
"We thought we saw you get brought in last night," he went on, his Navrikan altered by a Tilanic accent. Kyuwa Soga had fled his motherland with his parents during the Toffsturn Jinsu tragedy, in which one of the largest factories in the city exploded, setting hundreds of kilometers ablaze with noxious gas. With nowhere else to go, the weak survivors crossed the sea to Navrika. But that meant when the Red War was over, they were taken as war slaves too.
As if sensing the darkness of Alexander's thoughts, Kyuwa's smile fell. "We heard him beating the living daylights out of you, too. That eye looks nasty." His hand paused from where it was plucking new grapes from the vine, pausing in the space between them as if to bring his hand to Alexander's face to inspect it closer. The workers were forced to always keep a distance for all fifteen hours of the workday. Even that time when a young girl got her arm caught and crushed in the very machine he was operating now.
"Much appreciated."
"I could soak in how bad you look for ages, but enough about that." His voice dropped even lower, barely audible over the multitude of other machines in the place. "How'd you make your great escape? Everyone talked about it for months. There were even some copycats, but none of them actually made it out."
"The family was furious," said the quiet blonde girl working to discard the stems across from Kyuwa. Alexander thought her name was...Milyena? "It was excellent."
Looking down to force the new batch of grape bunches into the machine's jaws, Alexander caught a glance of the jagged scars on top of his knuckles. The place he smashed it in the night he ran away to be free of the cuff that chained him to his cot. If he thought about it, he could still feel a phantom pain there.
