7.5 The Soft Cage

We were halfway to the Eastern Gate when the command fractured.

The path to the stone dungeons was paved in dark, uneven cobbles, slick with the eternal damp of the city’s roots. The air here grew colder, sticking to the back of my throat with the smell of wet earth, unwashed bodies, and the iron tang of old chains. The walls on either side rose high and windowless, blotting out the sunset, turning the alley into a throat waiting to swallow us.

The guards walked with the heavy, rhythmic gait of men delivering a burden to a grave. They didn't speak. They didn't need to. The stone around us spoke for them.

You are ending.

I kept my head down, staring at my own bare feet moving against the slime-slicked stones. I had accepted the stone cell. It was a punishment I understood. It fit the shape of my life until now. Rough, cold, and inevitable. It was the place where things like me, unwanted, nameless things were supposed to go.

Then, a voice cut through the gloom.

"Halt."

It wasn't a shout. It was a word spoken with the quiet, terrifying weight of the high courts.

A figure stepped from the shadow of a sub-archway. He wore robes dyed a deep indigo that seemed to drink the torchlight, refusing to reflect it back. He held a spirit slate in one hand and a jade token in the other. He didn't look at the guards. He didn't look at the damp walls. He looked only at the slate, treating the damp alleyway as if it were merely another line in his ledger.

"Transfer of custody," he said.

The head guard frowned, his hand resting instinctively on the hilt of his weapon. I felt the tension spike, a physical pressure in the air. The violence of the sword clashing against the violence of the brush.

"My orders come from the Chief Examiner," the guard rumbled. "This subject goes to the Isolation Annex. He is a danger to the walls."

"Your orders are old," the official replied, tapping the slate with a long, manicured fingernail. "The Isolation Annex is for confirmed threats. Violent beasts. Heretics who scream. This subject is..."

He paused, finally looking up. His eyes swept over me. I felt a sudden, cold violation. He wasn't looking at a boy; he was looking at a rare artefact, checking for cracks, calculating the price.

"...unconfirmed."

"He broke the arrays," the guard argued, stepping forward, his voice vibrating in the narrow space. "He ate the sound."

"He failed to interact with them," the official corrected. "There is a distinction. If we place him in a suppression cell, and he is not a cultivator, the weight of the air could crush his organs. The loss of a unique vessel would be... troublesome for the records."

The guard hesitated. I saw his grip on the weapon loosen.

A chill went through me that had nothing to do with the damp air. They weren't debating my life; they were debating my value as a secret. They didn't want to break me because they hadn't finished reading me yet. I wasn't a prisoner to be punished; I was a scroll they couldn't open.

"Where does he go?" the guard asked.

"The Annex of Quiet Reflection."

I looked up then. The name sounded gentle. It sounded like a temple or a home. I didn't know yet that gentleness is often the most efficient form of chains.

They didn't arrest me.

Arrest implied guilt. Guilt required a crime. To charge a man, you had to name his sin. To name his sin, you had to name him. And they had no name for what I was.

Instead, they moved me.

The order was folded into language so bland it sounded like they were shipping a sack of grain. For the sake of safety.

For the sake of clarity.

I wasn't asked. I was told.

We turned away from the heavy stone of the Eastern Gate and moved toward the city’s heart. The environment changed rapidly, disorienting me. The dark cobbles gave way to smooth, interlocking tiles that felt unnaturally flat beneath my feet. The air grew lighter, smelling of ozone and expensive incense that scrubbed away the stink of the lower city. The frantic energy of the streets faded into a hushed, respectful silence that pressed against my ears.

The Annex of Quiet Reflection sat apart from the city’s living flow.

It wasn't a prison. There were no bars, no chains. It was a compound of white walls and curved roofs, designed to look like a retreat for weary scholars.

It had windows that let in filtered sunlight. It had gardens pruned to within an inch of their life, where every pebble seemed to have been placed by a strict master. The gravel paths were raked into swirling patterns that looked like frozen water. I was afraid to step on them. I was afraid my footprint would be the only messy thing in this entire world.

I slowed down as soon as we crossed the threshold. The air felt heavy here, not with pressure, but with expectation. It carried an unspoken instruction to be still. To be clean. To be orderly.

"Why here?" I asked, looking at the high, white walls that surrounded the garden. They were too white. They looked like bone.

"Because the stone cells were for rejection," Mistress replied softly. "This is for retention."

I frowned, watching a koi fish swim in a pond that was perfectly circular. Even the water didn't dare to splash. "That sounds worse."

"It is," she said. "Rejection implies they want you gone. Retention implies they want to know what you are worth."

The attendants who guided us inside were senior enough to hide their disgust better than the juniors. They wore soft slippers that made no sound. They didn't walk too close to me. They didn't walk too far. Their spacing shifted constantly, a nervous dance, as if they couldn't decide how safe it was to be near a hole in the world. I could feel their eyes sliding off me, trying to pin me down and failing.

A servant approached with a tray of tea. Her hands trembled slightly as she offered it to me.

I reached for the cup.

I tried to be gentle. But as my fingers brushed the porcelain, I felt a strange slippage. For a heartbeat, the cup felt like it wasn't there, or like I wasn't there. It was a flaw in the sensation of touch. The steam swirled in a pattern that defied the wind, curving away from my skin. Then I grasped it.

The servant pulled back quickly, eyes wide, as if she had just fed a tiger from her palm. She retreated without turning her back, terrified that I might do something or nothing that she couldn't explain.

They spoke to me politely. They avoided speaking about me.

That was the change. In the cells, I would have been a thing. Here, I was a guest who could never leave.

The chamber assigned to me was spacious, clean, and terrifyingly empty. Nothing personal. Nothing symbolic. The walls were inlaid with patterns of silver and jade that caught the light and twisted it.

I could feel the hum coming off the walls. It made the hairs on my arms stand up. It wasn't warmth; it was observation.

The watching eyes disguise themselves as care.

I set my bundle down on the low table and looked around. The room smelt of nothing. Not dust, not flowers, not soap. Just absolute, sterile emptiness. I felt dirty just standing in it. My burlap clothes, my unwashed skin—I was a stain on their perfect canvas.

"This is temporary," I said. It wasn't quite a question. It was a plea to the heavens.

"For now," Mistress agreed.

I sat, hands resting on my knees. My posture was careful and contained. I felt that if I moved too fast, I might break the expensive silence of the room. I felt that if I breathed too loudly, the walls would count it against me.

I looked at the window. The view showed a single, perfect plum tree. It was beautiful, but it looked too perfect. I stared at the roots. I could see the faint scarring of grafts and the unnatural straightness of the trunk. It was a living thing that had been tortured into beauty. Like me? No, they hadn't started on me yet.

"They changed their minds," I said after a moment. "On the road."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because they are afraid," she said.

"Of me?" I looked at her, my chest tight. The idea that these powerful men in their silk robes were afraid of me felt absurd. I was nothing.

She shook her head. "Of uncertainty. If they put you in a dungeon, they define you as a criminal. Criminals are simple. You execute them, or you release them. If they put you in a palace, they define you as a guest. Guests are simple. You honour them, or you bribe them. Here, you are neither."

She walked to the wall and ran a hand over the silver inlay. It buzzed faintly against her palm. I saw her fingers trace the lines of the formation, reading it like braille.

"You are a record waiting to be identified," she finished.

That was worse.

I understood hunger. I understood pain. Those were simple, animal things. I didn't understand being a figure in a story no one knew how to write. I felt like I was fading, dissolving into the white walls.

"What do I do, Mistress?" I whispered.

"You exist," she said. "That is what is breaking them."

She went silent then. She tilted her head slightly, her eyes losing focus on the room and drifting to the stone walls.

I watched her. I knew she was listening to something I couldn't hear.

The silence stretched. It wasn't empty silence. It was the heavy, pressurised silence of a storm holding its breath. I imagined the people in the towers around us—the scholars, the priests, the generals—all arguing over the boy who broke their machines. I imagined them dissecting me with words, cutting me open with theories to see what colour my soul was.

I saw Mistress’s expression shift. A flicker of amusement. Then disdain.

She was hearing them panic.

Night fell over the Annex. The filtered light in the garden faded, replaced by the soft glow of moss lanterns. The silence grew heavier, pressing against my eardrums.

I lay on the sleeping mat, staring at the ceiling. I hadn't touched the tea. I hadn't moved the bundle. I felt that if I ate their food or slept in their bed, I would be agreeing to be their prisoner.

"Mistress?" I asked into the dark.

"I am here."

"If they decide I'm a demon," I said slowly, "will they kill me?"

"Yes."

"If they decide I'm a god?"

"They will enslave you. Worship is just another form of ownership."

"And if they decide I'm broken?"

"They will study you until you are gone."

My stomach twisted. The options were a triangle of doom. There was no door that led to me just being me. There was no option where I was just a boy who wanted to be left alone.

"Then I have to be something else," I murmured.

"No," Mistress corrected. "You have to be nothing. That is the only thing they cannot grasp."

I turned on my side, curling inward. I tried to make myself small. I tried to disappear into the emptiness of the room. I tried to be the nothing she wanted me to be.

But I could feel the walls watching me. I could feel the silver inlay pulsing like a slow heartbeat, measuring my breath, counting the moments of my sleep. It felt like sleeping inside a giant, mechanical eye.

They were looking for a pattern.