The days after my mother's death did not move forward—they sank. Time folded into itself, each hour indistinguishable from the next, as if the world had decided to punish me by refusing to progress. The house felt wrong without her. Too quiet. Too empty. Every object carried her absence like a wound that refused to close. The corner where she used to sit, the utensils she washed every evening, the faint echo of her voice calling Blue's name—everything haunted me.
I did not allow myself to cry for long. Grief was a luxury I could not afford. Hunger did not care that my mother was dead. Bills did not pause out of respect. Survival demanded movement, even when my soul wanted to lie beside her memory and rot.
Blue was gone. Whether taken by circumstance or swallowed by the city, I didn't know—but his absence was another weight pressing into my ribs. I carried guilt like a second spine: guilt that I was alive, guilt that I was breathing while everything else had been stripped from me.
That was when Lbow returned.
He didn't arrive with noise or authority. He stood at the threshold of my ruin like someone afraid to disturb a corpse. His eyes searched my face, then the house, then the floor—as if he already knew there was nothing left to salvage. He didn't speak for a long moment, and strangely, I was grateful. Words would have cracked me open.
"I can help," he said finally. Not as a savior. Not as a benefactor. As a friend who knew I was drowning.
I wanted to refuse. Pride clawed at my throat, whispering that I should endure alone, that accepting help would finish what grief had started. But pride does not feed an empty stomach. Pride does not resurrect the dead.
So I nodded.
Walking beside Lbow into City Three felt like walking into another universe—one I had once belonged to but was now forbidden from touching. The boulevards gleamed under artificial suns, towers of glass and gold rising like monuments to excess. The air smelled clean, perfumed, untouched by decay. It mocked the rot of City One, mocked everything I had lost.
I remembered being here as a child, when my father was still alive. When our name opened doors instead of closing them. Now, every step reminded me that I no longer belonged. I felt eyes on me—not curiosity, but assessment. Judgment. I was tolerated only because I walked beside Lbow.
He spoke of his father, of influence and opportunity, of stability. I listened without interruption. Gratitude warred with bitterness inside me. I hated that my future depended on another man's generosity. I hated that the system had reduced me to this—standing quietly, hoping to be spared complete erasure.
The meeting with his father stripped away any remaining illusion.
The man sat surrounded by wealth so dense it felt suffocating. Every surface shone, every object screamed permanence. He looked at me the way one looks at dirt on polished shoes—with irritation, not anger. I was not worth anger.
Lbow tried. I will give him that. He spoke of me as a companion, as an aide, as someone worthy of proximity. His father didn't even let him finish.
"He is not one of us."
The words were precise. Surgical. They cut without effort.
I stood there, spine straight, jaw locked, forcing myself not to react. Years ago, I would have argued. Now, I understood the futility. In his world, bloodlines mattered more than merit, wealth more than loss.
When he finally offered me a position, it was not mercy. It was convenience. Staff. Invisible labor. Survival with no dignity attached.
"I accept," I said, my voice steady even as something inside me fractured.
Lbow looked at me with shame, but I didn't let him apologize. This wasn't his failure. It was the world's.
Moving into the estate was not an arrival—it was an erasure. My quarters were small, stripped of identity, placed far from the rooms where luxury breathed freely. I woke before dawn. I worked until my hands burned and my back bent. Floors I scrubbed reflected lives I would never touch. Trays I carried held food I would never taste.
I watched my own reflection blur in polished silver, and I barely recognized the boy staring back. Not the student. Not the dreamer. Just another body sustaining someone else's excess.
Still, Lbow did not abandon me. In stolen moments, he spoke to me as he always had. We studied together when no one was watching. We shared silence thick with memory. Yet even then, the divide was undeniable. He could leave. I could not. He belonged. I served.
And through all of it, Rimora lingered in my thoughts like a quiet flame.
She came when she could—never loudly, never openly. Sometimes with food. Sometimes with words folded into scraps of paper. She spoke of endurance, of meaning, of not letting the world decide my worth. Her presence reminded me that I was still human, still seen.
But survival is a cage. No matter how kind the bars are, they still confine.
At night, when the servants' halls fell silent, I lay awake thinking of Blue. Of my mother. Of everything that had been taken without consent. Grief no longer softened me—it sharpened me. Each order I obeyed became fuel. Each humiliation etched itself into memory.
They believed I was broken.
They were wrong.
I endured because I had to. But endurance is not surrender. Something was forming inside me—slow, deliberate, unstoppable. When the time came, I would no longer carry their trays or clean their floors.
I would carry truth.
And truth, once unleashed, does not ask permission to destroy.