When I awake, young girls are scattering around me, placing leaves and something sticky all over my now bare body. When they realize I had awakened, they scurry out of the room. I try to move my hands, but they are chained to the table that I'm splayed out on. They had placed golden cuffs on my wrist. The same on my feet and neck. I think about him. He called me his golden boy all the time. Now I'm the Kayonese golden boy. I want to laugh out loud, but the thought of laughing pained my damaged body.

"The golden one awakens. Finally. Meet your master, Jerodian, the seventh, ruler of Kayon, and all its inhabitants."

The large man has a smile on his face. The same smile he had as he watched a Linovian soldier be raped and murdered. I growl. He tells a woman to sit me up. She unhooks a latch, and then the table splits in half so that my upper body is now upright. I realize there are a few people in the room. The leader, a few women that look like healers of some sort, and a few men. The walls are made out of smooth wood and the floors are dirt. Jerodian is wearing a thick pair of pants made out of some kind of animal hide. He has no shirt on, but his body was covered in inky black tattoos so you can barely see his skin. He wears necklaces upon necklaces made out of yellowed animal teeth. Some human. His hair reachers mid-chest and is unruly with specks of dirt and dried blood. The sight of this man is truly terrifying.

"The beautiful boy! How lucky we are to have you amongst us! Let us celebrate your arrival!"

What the actual fuck is happening. I want to speak, but the words aren't coming out. Why aren't they coming out?

"You want to speak? Speak! Do not be afraid. You have already spoken to us. Do not fear us!"

"Am I a prisoner?"

Horror strikes their faces. They look around at each other.

"You are nothing of the sort. You are a gift from the gods."

"Then why the shitting hell am I chained to a goddamn table?" I say this with another sharp growl. My voice is rough from days of inhaling smoke. My eyes narrow, and my nose scrunches. My hands, I realized after, were in fists. My breathing is heavy from fatigue and pain. I want to close my eyes. I want to sleep forever. Fighting is so exhausting, but fighting without real purpose? Devastatingly wearing.

"What is your name, golden boy?"

I say nothing. Jerodian approaches me. His hands are at his sides. He then raises them and grabs my face. I try to squirm out of his hold. He grips me tighter. I make eye contact with him and glare at him as hard as I can. Up close, he is even scarier. His face is broad and squared with a protruding jaw. His nose is straight and long. His eyebrows are thick and dark. But it's his eyes that are the scariest. Black as can be. So black, you cannot see his pupils. His eyes are not angry, and that surprises me. There is something about the way he is looking at me. It's- well, it's confusing. I don't understand what he is seeing when he looks at me. I look away.

"Name."

And I want to tell him. I do. Why does it even matter if they know? But I cannot bring myself to say it. Perhaps I am afraid of something specific that I can't place.

"You must tell us your name. Kayon must know the golden boy's name."

When I was born, it was said that I came out with a golden glow. I always thought someone had been making it up. But here I am in Kayon, where they think I am the golden boy from the gods. I cannot tell them my name. They will believe I truly am the god's gift, and I do not know what is in store for such a person. I was giving the name Auriel. In Latin, that translates to golden. I think. I cannot believe my luck. I am a dead man once again. But I can lie. So that's what I do. 

"Adam." I spit it out and yank my face out of his hands. He steps back.

"You lie. You are not Adam."

"I am not lying. My name is Adam."

He stares at my chest and something in his voice changes. Disappointment, perhaps. "You are Adam? Is that your birth name?"
I had forgotten. My name was Adam. On the tag. I had been given Adam's tag when he died. I replaced mine with his. It had his blood on it. I didn't wash it off. I wouldn't. And now Jerodian is holding it between his filthy fingers, looking at it with great intent of figuring this out.

"The gods have told us the golden boy's name, and it is not Adam. This is not the golden one. This is not our Auriel."

I don't mean to. I really don't. But I gasp. Or more like exclaim something that isn't technically a word. And the worst part? They hear.