The next day, Tetsu mindlessly roamed through the halls of the grand castle of Aelios. Usually he didn’t get terribly upset over something that was out of his control, such as slavery. But for some reason, he couldn’t get the image of the permanent scars on those slaves out of his mind. The memories of his own enslavement clung to him as tightly as his own skin. No matter how much he wanted to shake away those torturous memories, they relentlessly haunted him and it was impossible to get rid of them. Seeing those slaves get mistreated the day before only brought back the recollection of his harsh past.

Yuu had tried to convince him that there was nothing wrong with slavery and that social hierarchy was natural in flourishing nations. But Tetsu didn’t like the idea that people were being treated like animals and burdened with the hardships of a nation while a group of rich nobles gobbled away at delicious foods and enjoyed their endless sea of fancy treasures.

Tetsu wondered what Darien thought of slavery. He lowered his eyes and suddenly heard a bumping sound. He halted in the middle of a silent corridor and turned his head. The noise had come from a small doorway where a pair of stone stairs led down to the Royal Jail of Aelios. The boy reached to his side, skimming the tip of his index finger along the rough grip of the hilt of his sheathed sword. Narrowing his eyes, he began to slowly creep towards the Royal Jail’s entrance.

Ordinarily there were three guards stationed at this entrance, making sure that no one entered the Royal Jail without authorization. But right now there was no one. The ominous silence that lingered in the jail made Tetsu uneasy, and the thumping sound that he had heard only put him more on edge. It had sounded like something hitting the ground.

Discarding his previous thoughts of slavery, Tetsu descended the stone stairway into the Royal Jail, darkness curling around him and locking him in a world of blackness. After several seconds of diving through oblivion, Tetsu spotted tiny flickers of light from lit sconces illuminating the darkness. Shadows receded from a moving light and Tetsu immediately knew that someone was moving there. Freezing completely, he curled his hand around the hilt of his sword, perfectly prepared to strike out at whoever was intruding.

“This scepter really is something.” The voice shattered the silence and echoed through the entire room. Cambyses? “Where did you get it?”

Tetsu exhaled, relieved. There was no intruder. This was only Darien’s uncle, the king’s royal advisor. He began to descend the last final steps and saw that Cambyses was indeed standing in a long hallway, with his back to Tetsu. He held a lit torch in his hands, with his red cape cascading down his back and onto the floor.

The floor was made of coarse, stone tiles. They looked loose and beaten, as if someone had taken a hammer and bashed each individual tile in the hallway. On both sides of the corridor were iron doors that led into individual empty cells, filled with nothing but darkness so thick that Tetsu’s eyes couldn’t penetrate the cloudy mist of blackness that surrounded the silent rooms. Tetsu looked down at the ground and his eyes widened, noticing that a ghostly-white hand was limp on the stone floor, smeared with blood. A body.