The day passed quietly in the cell.
He remained anchored to the corner of the cage, his back pressed against the cold wall, his eyes locked on the empty space in front of him.
Occasionally, a solitary tear would track through the dirt on his face, carving a path of salt and grief, but his expression remained as stagnant as the air in the dungeon.
A guard eventually slid a bowl of lumpy mashed potatoes under the bars.
The bowl sat there, steam rising and then vanishing, until the food grew cold and a skin formed over the top.
The night was as hollow as he was, unable to sleep, didn't try to anyway.
By the next afternoon, a different guard arrived to collect the waste. He looked at the untouched bowl, then at the motionless figure in the corner.
With a grunt of annoyance, the guard skipped the cell, leaving the food where it lay and moving on to the next prisoner.
By the end of the third day, the air in the small space had soured. The guard returned, his boots echoing with an aggressive clip. He stared at the three untouched bowls, and kicked the bars with the toe of his iron boot.
"If you wish to die, there are faster ways," the guard spat. "Don't confuse our intervention for mercy, we only neutralized the threat you brought to our gates. You will pay for what you are, make no mistake. But that's not for me to decide."
He stepped closer, his shadow falling over the Wanderer. "Now eat. Or I’ll force it down your throat."
The threats were just noise, distant and meaningless, his mind was blank, not even whispers of the Spiral’s hunger stayed.
The anti-magic chains took away his inner void, leaving mere whispers.
The numbness of the third night was sliced by a familiar voice.
"You just going to sit there?"
He kept his eyes fixed on the stone floor, but his pupils dilated.
"You aren't real," he rasped. The words were glass moving up his dry throat. "You’re... gone."
"So what?" Myre replied.
The merchant manifested slowly, leaning against the opposite wall.
He looked exactly as he had that first time they met, dressed in his traveling robes, untouched by the steel that had ended him. Beside him, Logan appeared, his arms crossed as he leaned against the iron bars.
"You killed us," Logan said, his voice flat, yet devoid of the heat it carried. "The least you could do is make a meaning out of it."
He finally looked up, his gaze hollowed out by exhaustion. He looked through the bars at the ghosts of his own making. "I have no purpose," he whispered.
"Then find one," Myre interrupted, his voice sharp, cutting off the Wanderer’s descent into self-pity.
He shouted back at them, punching the floor.
"Why would I? The world seems a better place without my existence. I am a pilgrim of ruin."
Myre stepped closer to the bars. "The world is indifferent to your guilt. It doesn't care if you sit here and rot. But we were real once, even if your mind turned us into something else. If you stay here and die in this cage, then our deaths really were for nothing."
Logan grunted, gesturing to the untouched bowl of food. "Eat the damn potatoes. You can't find a reason to live on an empty stomach, and you certainly won't find one staring at a wall."
The Wanderer looked at the two of them.
"I don't know how to be anything else," he admitted.
"Then be a man who survives," Myre said, his image beginning to flicker like a dying flame. "Survive Draemir. Survive the poisoning."
“No one will help you,” Logan said. “So help yourself.”
Logan and Myre’s images began to merge into one as they stepped towards him, voices overlapping, “ by any means…you need you to become stronger.”
They began to fade into the version of himself from the visions, it reached out a hand “ live”
He looked at his other version with doubt, pausing for a moment then, slowly raised his own hand. “So be it.”
A voice came from the cell beside him. “ Hey crazy guy! Shut up, I'm trying to sleep.”
He turned his head towards the voice, then back to his reflection, it was gone, but the determination didn't.
The Wanderer forced down the last of the congealed food, the cold mass sitting heavy in his stomach like a stone. It was fuel, nothing more. Then he slept without dreams.
When the sun rose, the cell was no longer a tomb. He spent the early hours stretching his limbs, punching and kicking the stale air until his blood began to pump again.
When the guard arrived, he found the prisoner balanced precariously on a single hand, his body straight and disciplined.
The guard let out a short laugh. "Looking lively today, huh?"
The Wanderer flipped back onto his feet, his breathing steady. "When am I going to meet someone higher?"
The guard chuckled, leaning against the bars. "I wouldn't be so eager if I were you."
"Would rotting in this cell change the outcome?" the Wanderer countered.
The guard shrugged, the jangle of keys echoing in the corridor. "By all means. Let’s go."
He was led to an office thick with the smell of old parchment and cold iron. An officer sat behind a desk buried in paperwork, his pen scratching incessantly. He didn't look up as they entered.
"The plagued man from four days ago, sir," the guard announced with a sharp salute.
"Sell him to the arena’s pit," the officer said.
"Don't mention the plague. The pit-master will try to lower the price if he thinks the meat is spoiled."
The guard reached for the Wanderer’s arm to take him away, but he pulled back, looking at the officer. "Hold on."
The officer finally paused, his pen hovering over a sheet.
"I'm healed," the Wanderer said, his voice carrying a newfound strength. "The patches are gone. I can use magic. Surely that is more useful to you than a pittance from a pit-master."
The officer set the papers aside, his eyes lingered on the blue stone binding the prisoner's wrists. "Those lovely bracelets you’re wearing are suppressing your magic. Can you even handle yourself without them, or will you turn back into a ticking bomb?"
The Wanderer hesitated for a moment, imagining the hunger within.
"Remove them," the officer commanded the guard. "Let us see."
The moment the anti-magic chains fell away, the Spiral’s hunger returned. It roared through his veins, demanding to consume, to feed. His body jerked, his muscles seizing as he fought to keep the void from swallowing his senses. But through the struggle, a singular voice echoed in the back of his mind: *Survive.*
He gritted his teeth, forcing the hunger into a corner of his consciousness until his breathing leveled. He stood tall, his eyes clear.
"Good enough," the officer remarked. "Those are expensive chains, we only have a few to go around. Take him to the Mad Dog. Dismissed."
The guard led him out of the dungeon and into the heart of Draemir.
The city was a landscape of brutal energy. Great gladiator arenas roared with the sound of clashing steel and the screams of the crowd. Taverns spilled over with mercenaries, their laughter as sharp as the blades they carried. Recruiters stood on every corner, shouting promises of blood-soaked glory to anyone willing to join. Even the markets were devoid of silk and spices. They traded only in blackened iron, whetstones, and leather.
Draemir was not a place of peace.
He didn't seek peace anyway.