The carriage had stopped hours ago. Niko didn’t know exactly when—time felt slippery in the dark confines of the wooden box—but the jarring halt, followed by the shuffle of boots and low voices outside, had told him enough.

Through the thin slats in the walls, the faint red glow of a campfire flickered weakly against the shadows. The traffickers were out there, laughing and talking in gruff, low tones. To them, the lives crammed into this carriage were less than nothing.

No one had come to check on them. No food. No water. Just the heavy silence and the cloying stench of blood, dirt, and fear.

Inside, the air pressed down like a weight, hot and rancid. The children huddled in the shadows, bound and gagged, their shallow breaths uneven and muffled. Every eye tracked Niko as if he were something unholy.

He shifted, testing his limbs again. The small, underfed body still felt alien to him, every joint unfamiliar. His skin—pale and almost translucent—strained over thin wrists and trembling fingers, but it obeyed him. That was enough. He flexed his hands experimentally, watching the sharp strip of metal he’d pried loose earlier catch a glint of the campfire’s glow. Cold. Jagged. Reassuring.

The girl clutching the rosary was closest to him. Her lips moved beneath the gag, forming silent prayers. Her trembling fingers gripped the beads as though they held all the power in the world. They didn’t.

If prayers could fix this, no one would be here.

Niko exhaled sharply and crawled closer, ignoring the way her wide eyes somehow widened further. Her fear deepened, a trembling wave that rolled off her and infected the others. For a fleeting moment, her gaze caught his, and he saw something flicker there: superstition.

To her, he might as well have been a ghost, rising from the shroud they’d thrown over his body.

That was fine. Fear was leverage.

His movements were slow, deliberate, as he reached for her bound wrists. She flinched but didn’t pull away, her breath quick and shallow. Sliding the strip of metal under the ropes, Niko began sawing. The fibers resisted, but he worked steadily, the faint rasping sound blending into the quiet chaos outside. Finally, the rope snapped, leaving faint red lines on her skin.

The girl’s hands flew to her gag, fumbling with the knot, but Niko grabbed her wrist before she could loosen it. His grip was firm, his voice sharper than he’d intended.

“Not yet.”

She froze, her breath hitching. Slowly, she nodded, her hands dropping to her lap. Pliable. That was good.

Niko moved to the next child, a boy whose bruises painted his face in deep, mottled hues. Unlike the girl, he didn’t flinch. He didn’t move at all, his body rigid as Niko cut through the ropes. The boy’s hands fell free, and he simply stared, his silence unsettling in a different way.

One by one, Niko freed them. None resisted. None thanked him, either. Their wide eyes flickered with something fragile—something desperate. Hope.

It was a fragile, fleeting thing, easily shattered. Niko wasn’t going to hold it for them.

By the time he reached the last child, his hands were shaking, more from hunger than effort. The boy sat apart from the others, his dark eyes fixed on Niko with an eerie calm. He didn’t tremble or shrink back. There was no pleading in his gaze, no desperation.

Just quiet observation.

Niko’s fingers hesitated over the rope. The boy tilted his head slightly, the corners of his gag curling upward in what might have been the shadow of a smile.

That smile, if it could be called that, felt wrong.

It reminded Niko of the doctors in the hospital, the ones who had spoken softly and evenly as they readied their tools, the calm before they peeled him apart. It was the kind of calm that hid something else.

“You’re not scared,” Niko said, his voice flat.

The boy’s gaze didn’t waver. He tilted his head further, his expression still unreadable.

Niko frowned and cut the rope quickly, his movements jerky. The fibers snapped, and the boy flexed his fingers slowly, deliberately, as if testing them. He didn’t reach for his gag. He didn’t rub his wrists like the others. He just kept watching.

Niko turned back to the crack he’d widened earlier. The cold air seeped through, carrying the scent of damp earth and pine. He placed the metal strip on his thigh, its jagged edge biting into his skin through the thin fabric.

The voices outside grew louder, boots crunching on gravel as the traffickers shifted closer. Niko could hear them clearer now—gruff words about "the buyers" and "the Witch’s Path." His eyes narrowed at the phrase.

The Witch’s Path.

Something stirred in the back of his mind, slippery and half-formed, like the ghost of a memory. He couldn’t grasp it fully, but he didn’t need to—not yet.

He leaned closer to the crack, the firelight throwing his face into sharp relief. Somewhere beyond the stretch of trees was freedom. Somewhere out there was his chance to claw back the life he’d lost—or build something new from the ruins.

A faint shuffling sound behind him made him glance over his shoulder. The girl with the rosary was watching him again, her bound gag rising and falling with her breath. Her eyes darted to the others, then back to him, wide and questioning.

“What now?” she seemed to ask.

Niko’s expression didn’t change. He didn’t answer.

The children were waiting for him to act, waiting for him to lead. They didn’t understand yet: Niko didn’t care if they survived. He cared if he did.