The child couldn't even summon a tear anymore. His eyes stayed dry, glassy, like something inside had finally dried up along with everything else.
For several days, he had been completely alone in the house. No mother to cook food. No father to call him for dinner. The silence was so thick it pressed against his ears.
He never knocked on a neighbor's door. Never asked for help. He knew what would happen if he did: Gorak's men would come for them next. Another family erased because of him. So he stayed inside the empty walls, becoming part of the dust.
The little food his parents had stocked before the nightmare started—he rationed it like a treasure. A few biscuits broken into tiny pieces. Half a packet of rice. A single can of beans he opened with shaking hands and ate cold, one spoonful a day. He made it last. Survival was math now.
Until Gorak's men found the hiding spots.
They ransacked the kitchen, the cupboards, even under the loose floorboard where he'd tucked the last packet of noodles. They took it all. Laughed while they did it. Left the shelves bare and the boy staring at nothing.
Now he hadn't eaten properly in days.
Only scraps: a moldy bread crust pulled from a neighbor's dustbin at night when no one was watching. A bruised tomato someone had thrown away. He chewed slowly, forcing it down even when his stomach twisted in protest.
Water was worse.
They had cut everything—electricity, water supply, gas. The taps ran dry. The toilet stopped flushing. The house turned into a tomb of silence and stink.
At first he went to the small park nearby. There was a public tap there, he quenchs his thrust by drinking that water. But Gorak's men found him. They waited until he cupped his hands under the stream, then shoved him aside, twisted the valve shut, and left him sprawled in the dirt. After that, the tap never ran again when he was near.
So he scavenged.
A neighbor's leaking garden pipe—he crouched under the hedge at dawn, licking drops straight from the rusty joint until his tongue bled from the metal.
The school fountain after getting beaten up by gorak, when no one was looking—he filled an old plastic bottle in seconds and ran.
Once, desperate, he knelt at the edge of the open gutter behind the house. The water was black and thick with oil and rot. He tore a piece of his already filthy shirt, used it like a filter, squeezed the liquid through the cloth into his mouth. It tasted like death and diesel. But it was wet.
Gorak's men saw him do it.
They didn't stop him.
They just watched, smirking, then walked away.
They wanted him alive—just barely.
The smell came next. Unwashed skin, sour sweat, the sour-metallic reek of gutter water on his breath. His clothes hung off him, stiff with grime. Hair matted. Skin cracked.
People noticed.
In the street, mothers pulled their children to the other side. Shopkeepers turned their backs when he passed. No one asked why a child was gulping from a gutter in broad daylight. No one offered a glass, a word, any help.
They judged instead.
"Dirty kid."
"Probably a beggar."
"His parents must not care."
"Stay away—he'll make you sick."
They didn't know his name.
Didn't know his family was gone.
Didn't know a man named Gorak had turned his life into a slow, deliberate starvation.
They just saw filth.
And kept their distance.
The boy didn't blame them.
He had stopped expecting anything from anyone a long time ago.
He simply kept moving—searching for the next drop, the next scrap, the next breath—because stopping meant letting Gorak hurt his family.
No electricity meant no phone, no flickering screen, no escape into pixels or sounds.
Just endless silence in the house.
All day, the boy sat slumped at the entrance gate.
Blank eyes fixed on the gate.
Waiting.
Knowing Gorak's men would come.
Drag him away again.
Every single day, the ritual repeated.
They'd burst through the gate at dawn, haul him kicking or limp into the van.
Force him into Eternal Ascendancy.
Make him attend "school" like a ghost in the machine.
Then, after classes, the same men waiting at logout.
Yanking him back to the real world's hell.
Though he survived.
Beatings layered on starvation had hollowed his body completely.
His body too frail, too broken, to even produce a tear.
He took it all now without a flicker.
No cries. No winces. Face a mask of dead stone.
Gorak watched, fury boiling over.
The boy still wasn't breaking even after getting beaten up by his four men.
"You all!" he roared, pointing at Mory, the principal, the staff cowering in their bows. "Go there and beat him too."
In his mind: Let's see if the filth cracks or not, when his own teachers turn on him. He has to break... right?
Stunned silence.
Shock rippled through them—eyes wide, breaths caught.
They wanted to spit curses, to scream at his monstrosity.
But the words died unspoken.