Tarvek stood frozen, his mind trying to process what had just happened.

His eyes darted around frantically, searching for the armored figure, but there was nothing.

Just the blood of the overseer painting the black ice in shades of red and the other slaves staring with wide eyes and trembling limbs.

His legs gave out.

Tarvek collapsed onto his belly, his entire body shaking so violently he could hear his bones rattling.

The pickaxe slipped from his nerveless fingers, clattering against the ice with a sound that seemed impossibly loud in the sudden silence.

"I'm alive," he whispered, the words barely audible. "I'm... I'm alive."

"Tarvek!"

The shout came from his left. Tarvek's head snapped around to see Mekris, another slave who worked the same section, scrambling toward him with an expression that mixed fear and something that might have been excitement.

"Was that him?" Mekris shouted urgently, dropping to his knees beside Tarvek. His hands gripped Tarvek's shoulders, shaking him slightly. "Was that the yellow-eyed demon? The one from the stories?"

Tarvek's mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.

His brain was still trying to catch up with reality, still processing the fact that he wasn't dead, that the monster in black armor had simply let him go.

"He spoke to you!" Another voice joined them. Velika, a smaller demon whose name Tarvek had learned only last week. Her eyes were wide with something that looked dangerously close to hope.

"The yellow-eyed demon spoke to you and you're still alive!"

"He... he asked questions," Tarvek managed to gasp out. "He wanted information."

"And you gave it to him?" Mekris's grip tightened. "You told him?"

"I..." Tarvek swallowed hard. "Yes. I told him. What else could I do? He killed an overseer with one strike. Tore him apart like... like he was nothing."

The three of them looked at the scattered blood of the overseer, the blood already beginning to freeze in the perpetual cold of the pit.

"He let you live," Mekris said quietly, his voice carrying an edge of wonder. "The yellow-eyed demon didn't kill you."

"Why would he?" Velika whispered. "We're not his enemies."

"You don't know that," Tarvek said, though his voice lacked conviction. "You don't know what he is or what he wants. Maybe he's just killing overseers for fun. Maybe we're next."

But even as he said the words, Tarvek knew they weren't true. The yellow-eyed demon had looked at him with those burning eyes and made a choice. Kill or spare. And he'd chosen to spare his life.

That meant something. It had to.

A shout erupted from deeper in the pit, distant but carrying clearly in the cold air. Then another. And another.

"What's happening?" Velika asked, her head turning toward the source of the commotion.

More shouts joined the first. Not screams of pain or terror, but something else. Something that Tarvek couldn't quite identify until he heard the words being repeated, spreading through the mining sections like wildfire.

"Yellow eyes! The yellow-eyed demon!"

"He's here!"

"The monster is real!"

"Did you see it?"

"An overseer just died!"

"No warning, his body just vanished!"

The words overlapped, building on each other, creating a wave of sound that rolled through the pit.

Slaves who'd been working in terrified silence suddenly found their voices. Guards who'd been confident in their authority suddenly looked around nervously, their hands tightening on weapons.

"It's spreading," Mekris breathed. "Everyone's talking about it now."

"They're going to know," Tarvek said, panic creeping back into his voice. "The other overseers and Kragoth. They're going to know something's wrong."

"Let them know," Velika said, and there was something fierce in her voice now. Something that hadn't been there before. "Let them know there's something hunting them. Let them feel afraid for once."

More shouts echoed through the pit. Tarvek could see slaves in other sections stopping their work, turning to look at each other, whispering urgently. Some pointed toward where the overseer's body was.

Others gestured at shadows, convinced they'd seen yellow eyes watching from the darkness.

The fear that had ruled this place for so long was changing.

Transforming into something else.

Something that tasted almost like hope.

"Back to work!" a guard's voice bellowed from an elevated platform. "All of you! Back to work or face the whip!"

But the command lacked its usual authority. Tarvek could hear the uncertainty in the guard's voice, the way it cracked slightly on the word 'whip.'

Because guards were disappearing too. And now an overseer was dead. And somewhere in this pit, there was something with yellow eyes that killed without warning and vanished like smoke.

"BACK TO WORK!"

The slaves slowly, reluctantly, returned to their tasks. Pickaxes rose and fell.

But something had changed. Tarvek could feel it in the air, could see it in the way slaves glanced at each other when the guards weren't looking.

He could hear it in the whispers that passed between workers like a secret language.

The yellow-eyed demon was real.

And he was hunting.

Tarvek picked up his pickaxe with shaking hands and forced himself back to work.

Chip, chip, chip.

The familiar rhythm that had sustained him through months of suffering.

But now each strike felt different. Each swing carried a question he couldn't quite articulate.

'What happens next?'

------

Kragoth arrived at the pit's edge with the heavy footsteps of someone who didn't care about being heard.

The massive demon stood at the rim, his three-meter frame silhouetted against the crimson sky, his small piggish eyes scanning the mining operation below with growing irritation.

The noise hit him first. Not the usual sounds of labor, pickaxes striking ice, carts rumbling over stone, but thousands of voices.

Slaves talking and shouting to each other across sections.

"WHAT IS THIS?" Kragoth's voice boomed across the pit like thunder, echoing off the black ice walls. "WHY HAVE YOU STOPPED WORKING?"

Slaves flinched, hunching over their tools, trying to become invisible.

Guards scrambled to attention, their postures straightening as if pulled by strings.

But the whispers didn't completely stop. They just became quieter. More furtive.

Kragoth descended into the pit using the carved spiral path, each step shaking the ice beneath him.

His hand rested on the hilt of his legendary greatsword, the massive blade strapped across his back radiating cold that made even the pit's perpetual chill feel warm by comparison.

A guard captain hurried to meet him, the demon's face pale and his hands trembling slightly.

"Pit Master," the captain said, dropping to one knee. "There's been an... incident."

"An incident." Kragoth's voice was flat, dangerous. "Elaborate."

"One of the overseers. He's... he's dead, sir."

Kragoth's small eyes narrowed. "Dead how?"

"Torn apart, sir. Just... scattered across the ice. Well, what's left of him anyways. The slaves who witnessed it say it happened in seconds. One moment he was there, the next..." The captain swallowed hard. "His body was gone."

"Show me."

The captain led Kragoth through the mining sections, slaves scrambling out of their path like rats fleeing a predator.

Other guards joined them, forming a protective ring around their Pit Master, though Kragoth doubted any of them would be useful if a real threat presented itself.

They reached the section where Mekris, Velika, and Tarvek worked.

The small bit of the overseer's remains were still spread across the ice, though someone had draped a tarp over the worst of it.

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