As a Prisoner

The time had come, and the sun was already disappearing behind the mountains.

Four Solvar soldiers escorted Nino out of the fortress and along a narrow road climbing the northern slope. The Noctrium chains remained fastened around his wrists and ankles, now connected by shorter links that restricted his steps. None of them seemed willing to find out whether they would actually be enough to restrain him.

The mining district lay far from Solvar's more populated areas. As they advanced, the stone buildings gave way to warehouses, tracks, and large wooden structures built against the mountainside. Carts loaded with ore descended along parallel paths while workers rotated shifts to keep production running through the night.

The council hadn't exaggerated. Everything operated without interruption.

Some of the extracted material was sent directly to the fortifications destroyed by the Colossus. Nino could see carts leaving the area one after another, loaded with stone and ore.

One of the guards shoved him from behind.

"Keep moving."

Nino looked at him. The man immediately pulled his hand away, then tried to hide his retreat by hardening his expression.

"You're no Hero here. For the next twenty-four hours, you'll work like everyone else."

Nino resumed walking.

They passed through a reinforced wooden gate and reached the mine's main entrance. Dozens of people worked throughout the area. Some pushed carts along the tracks, while others sorted ore under the supervision of armed men. Most wore thick clothes covered in dust, and many bore marks around their wrists left by chains.

They were all prisoners. Perhaps some were criminals. Perhaps others were there because of debts. Nino didn't know. For most of his life, he wouldn't have cared either.

A supervisor approached carrying a pickaxe. He was a broad man with a short beard and a whip coiled around his waist. He handed the tool to Nino.

"Lower sector. You'll break stone, haul ore, and do whatever you're told until your time is up."

Nino took the pickaxe. The man looked at the chains around his arms.

"And don't think being a Hero earns you special treatment. Slow down, and you'll get the same encouragement as any other prisoner."

His hand touched the whip. Nino lowered his eyes to the shackles around his wrists. For several seconds, no one spoke. Then he pulled his wrists apart.

CRACK.

The links snapped. A piece of chain struck the stone floor with a metallic clang. Nino lifted one leg and pulled against the chain around his ankles.

CRACK.

The second set fell away, and silence spread around them.

Workers stopped. One soldier reached for his weapon. Another took a step back. The supervisor remained frozen, his fingers still resting on the whip. Nino handed him the broken chains.

"You can keep these."

Then he walked past him. No one tried to stop him. He entered the mine of his own free will.

The air became harder to breathe as he descended.

The wide entrance soon narrowed into a network of tunnels supported by wooden beams and pillars carved from the rock itself. Lanterns fixed to the walls illuminated the path at uneven intervals, while tracks ran through the corridors, carrying carts filled with stone toward the surface.

The sound of pickaxes was everywhere. Metal against rock. Again. And again.

Nino was given another tool in the lower sector and placed in front of a partially excavated wall. He didn't argue. He raised the pickaxe and swung.

The stone split open.

With the second strike, a larger section of the wall collapsed. Several nearby workers stopped to watch him.

Nino continued.

He barely needed to use any Pulse. Even weakened by the poison and his injuries, his physical strength was enough to accomplish in minutes what would take others hours.

That was exactly why they had put him there. The King's voice still lingered in his mind.

Those memories aren't yours.

Nino struck the wall again.

They're mine.

The stone cracked apart.

You're my son.

Another strike. A fracture spread across the surface in front of him. Nino stopped. For several seconds, he kept both hands resting on the handle of the pickaxe.

Who was he? It should have been a simple question to answer. But it wasn't. Zero had been created. The memories he believed belonged to his childhood belonged to another man. Some of his memories had been implanted. Others altered. His fears, his loyalty, even the admiration he had once felt for the King had all been deliberately cultivated.

He didn't know where the manipulation ended and his own choices began. He didn't even know how much of his past had ever truly existed.

"Hey."

Nino raised his head.

A young man stood beside him holding an empty cart. He looked to be a little over twenty, though the dirt and exhaustion made it difficult to tell for certain. His dark hair had been cut unevenly, and he had the thin frame of someone who had spent far too long receiving less food than he needed.

"You gonna leave all that there?"

Nino looked down. A large pile of stone had already accumulated at his feet.

"Take it."

The young man began loading the pieces into the cart. Nino returned to work.

"Are you really him?"

"..."

"The Hero of Mezi."

"..."

"I heard the guards talking."

"Then why did you ask?"

The young man gave a short laugh.

"Actually, I saw you a few days ago. I just wanted to see if you'd answer."

Nino struck the wall again.

"And you did."

"Unfortunately."

The young man smiled and continued filling the cart.

For a while, they worked without another word. Once the cart was full, he disappeared down the tunnel. A few minutes later, he returned with it empty.

"What's your name?" Nino asked.

The young man looked surprised.

"Why do you want to know?"

"You look familiar."

He laughed before answering.

"My name's Tenshi."

Nino heard the name and raised his pickaxe again.

"And you?" the young man asked. "Do you have a name?"

Nino stopped for a fraction of a second.

"I thought you already knew."

"Zero? Or the Hero of Mezi?"

The pickaxe remained suspended.

"That's what they call you, isn't it? Those aren't names."

Nino lowered the tool.

"They used to."

The young man waited for him to continue. He didn't.

"Then what should I call you?"

Nino gave no answer. The work continued.

Hours began to lose their meaning inside the mountain. There was no sky to mark the passage of time, only occasional changes of guards and carts traveling up and down the tunnels.

The young man kept returning. Eventually, they started talking again.

Nino learned that he wasn't from Solvar. He had been brought from a region near the old trade routes between the Four Nations. He had been separated from his family during a prisoner transfer.

"Your parents?" Nino asked.

"My father died years ago, and my mother was taken to another Nation."

Nino's pickaxe struck the stone.

"Where did they take her?"

"Lumeris."

Nino stopped.

"The Third Nation?"

"At least that's what I heard. They took an entire group in that direction."

The young man pushed a piece of stone into the cart.

"I tried to stay with her. They wouldn't let me."

There was something about the story. Something familiar. Nino studied him more closely.

"Just the two of you?"

The young man hesitated.

"No."

Nino waited.

"I have a sister."

His hand tightened around the handle of the pickaxe.

"Where is she?"

"I don't know." His voice grew quieter. "We were separated when you attacked our village."

Nino didn't move. For several seconds, the sounds of the mine seemed distant: pickaxes, carts, voices. Everything continued around him, but all he could see was the young man standing in front of him.

"You're Alicia's brother?"

The young man answered.

"I am."

Nino let go of the pickaxe. It struck the floor. The young man took a slight step back.

"What is it?"

Nino stared at him. He had fought the Shadows, moved a mountain, and ended up imprisoned in Solvar. And there, hundreds of meters beneath the earth, he had found a piece of what Alicia wanted most.

"She's alive."

The young man froze.

"Phew! I've been dying to ask you that. When I saw you here, I was in shock. I didn't even know what to say or whether I could trust you. I just remember seeing you take her away in that separate carriage." The cart slipped from his hands. "Where is she?"

"..."

The young man grabbed Nino's arm.

"Where?"

"I don't know exactly."

The hope on his face faltered. Nino continued before it could disappear.

"But she's alive. And I'm going to find her."

The young man was still holding his arm.

"Are you sure?"

Nino thought of Three. The three marks. Veyra.

"I'm sure."

The young man's eyes began to fill, but he quickly turned his face away and wiped them.

"She..."

He had to stop before continuing.

"Is she okay?"

Nino thought of the girl walking behind him while complaining. The endless questions. The teddy bear clutched against her chest. The red ribbon she had tied around his sword. The voice that kept talking even when he clearly didn't want a conversation.

He almost smiled.

"She... talks too much."

The young man let out a broken laugh.

"Yeah..."

Nino bent down and picked up the pickaxe.

"Was your mother all right when they took her to Lumeris?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"I saw her get into the carts. My mother was hurt, but she was alive."

Nino slowly nodded. Alicia had no idea, but she might truly still have a family to return to.

For hours, everything the King had told him had made Nino feel as though the ground had vanished beneath his feet. His past had become a collection of questions. Perhaps his mother was alive somewhere beyond the Four Nations. Perhaps she had been dead for years. Perhaps some of the few memories he still considered his own were false as well.

He didn't know where he came from. He didn't know what he had been before Zero. But this was real. Alicia was real. Her dream was real: to find her family.

Nino raised the pickaxe again. If he couldn't find meaning in his own past, he could still do something with the future. The pickaxe struck the stone.

Time passed.

The young man had left again with another load when Nino slowed his pace for the first time. He ignored the exhaustion the poison was spreading through his body. The question had returned. Who was he? The King had an answer.

Zero.

A weapon built over years. A Hero manufactured to obey. Nino closed his eyes for a moment. And another voice surfaced in his memory. Much softer. Much younger.

"Can I ask you something?"

Nino remained still before the mine wall. He could remember the red ribbon between her tiny fingers.

"You said your name was Zero... but that's not a real name."

He remembered the gentle wind passing between them.

"My teddy bear's name was Nino." She had smiled. "Can I call you that?"

That day, he hadn't known why he'd accepted. Perhaps even she hadn't known what she was doing. Throughout his entire life, no one had ever asked what he wanted to be called.

Zero was a designation. A function. Something the King needed to exist. Alicia had simply given him a name.

Nino.

His eyes opened.

"I hit something!"

The voice came from another part of the tunnel. Nino turned.

One of the workers had stopped in front of a wall several meters away. The tip of his pickaxe had opened a small cavity between the stones.

"Looks like Noctrium," he said.

Another man approached.

"That's not Noctrium."

Something felt wrong. For a second, Nino couldn't understand why. Then he saw the glint. It wasn't ore. It was metal. A small cylinder was partially concealed behind the rock.

Nino dropped his pickaxe, hurried toward them, and tore away part of the stone with his bare hand.

The worker stepped back. More of the mechanism appeared: wires, a dark capsule, faded markings along the side. Nino knew those markings.

Mezi.

His blood ran cold.

"Don't touch that."

The two men backed away. Nino tore away another section of the wall. There was another cylinder. And another.

They weren't charges meant for excavation. They had been buried inside the mine's structure. Nino looked down the tunnel, at the beams and the pillars. Then he understood. The charges hadn't been positioned to open new passages. They had been placed to bring them down.

Why did the King tell me everything?

He started walking.

Why let me know about the Stone?

He quickened his pace.

Why agree to send me here?

Twenty-four hours. One relaxing his shoulders. Mezi's troops positioned far too close to Solvar. The King saying he wouldn't be there to witness his death. Nino stopped.

"Damn it!"

A small sound came from inside the wall.

Click.

Nino's eyes widened. His gaze swept across the tunnel: dozens of workers, guards, carts. Alicia's brother had just appeared around the bend.

Nino drew in as much air as he could.

"GET DOWN!"

Several people looked at him without understanding. Nino released his Pulse, and violet light flooded the mine together with the explosion.