She opened her eyes.
Blank ceiling. Stone walls. A bed she didn’t recognize.

She didn’t move.
Not from fear.
Just- disconnection.

Her limbs didn’t feel like hers yet. They lay heavy and still,
as if waiting for instructions from someone who hadn’t spoken in a long time.
She didn’t sit up. She didn’t gasp.

The silence didn’t demand a reaction.

The room around her was quiet, but not comforting.
It wasn’t a prison, but it wasn’t freedom either.
It felt like something in between - a waiting place built for things that hadn’t yet decided what to become.

She looked at her hands for a long time.
They didn’t tremble. Didn’t curl.
Didn’t reach for anything.

They were steady. Too steady.

A dull throb stirred in her side, just below her ribs.
Not enough to make her flinch. Just enough to remind her:
She was still in her body. Still alive.

Alive.
But not home.

And what was home, again?

The thought passed like smoke. She blinked. Once. Twice.
Still nothing felt familiar.

Then the memories started falling. Not crashing- just dropping, one after the other.
The snow. The sound of boots behind her. Her own breathing. That voice.

The Command.

She hadn’t run. Hadn’t screamed.
Not because she was weak.
Because she knew better.

She hadn’t been rescued.
She hadn’t been captured.
She had been taken.

Not questioned. Not asked.
Commanded.

Her body had moved before she could stop it - not in surrender, but in silence.
A silence so deep, it scraped the edges of her will.

And now she was here. In this room.
Even when her soul was lost.

---

The silence broke.

Not with noise.
With presence.

The door opened. A tall man stepped in.

He was striking- In a distant, unbothered way.
As if sculpted by hands that found warmth offensive.
Black hair, sharply parted. Skin pale enough to look carved.

And those eyes- Not soft. Not cruel.

Worse.

They were still.
Not dead, not alive.
Just... calculated.

His eyes didn’t carry kindness.
Only arithmetic.
Cold. Exact. Efficient.

She didn’t flinch under his gaze.
Didn’t tremble.
But her own eyes never rose past his shoulder.
Not out of fear.
Simply because she didn’t care to know more.

She watched without interest.
He observed without emotion.
And in that stillness, something unspoken passed between them.

Not understanding.
Not tension.
A transaction waiting to be named.

He approached slowly. Not cautiously- just deliberately.
As if even danger would have to wait its turn.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Zero-One.”

A pause. The barest flicker behind his gaze.
“Is that your name?”
No warmth. No suspicion. Just inquiry. Like asking the temperature of snow.

“It’s what I was given.”

He said nothing.
For a moment, even silence seemed to hesitate around him.

“What were you doing in the snow?”

“I was shot.”

“By whom?”

She didn’t answer.
Didn’t blink.
Didn’t twitch.
Her lips sealed like stone.

He turned, walking towards the door.

“At once healed, return to your house.”

She didn’t know where the words came from.
Didn’t mean to say them.
But she did.

“I don’t have a home.”

He stopped.

Didn’t face her.

Then he turned- unsheathing his sword.
In two steps, he was close.
Cold steel kissed her throat.

“Do you think I’ll let an unnamed, unknown thing like you stay?”

Her voice didn’t tremble.
Didn’t rise.

“What if yes?”

A silence that pressed in.

“What if I’m useful?”

He paused. A long pause.

Then, only- 
“Prove it.”

And he left. No look back. No sound.
Just the hollow closing of a door, like a verdict.

He didn’t say when.
He didn’t say how.
But when morning came-

---

She was taken down beneath the estate.

A stone corridor. A gate. The dungeon.

The guards shoved her in. The door locked behind.

Men stared at her. Criminals—filthy, scarred, hungry. They laughed.

“Look what the Duke sent down. A doll to entertain us?”

They jeered, mocked, surrounded her.

She didn’t flinch.

Maybe the Duke didn’t care if she lived or died.
Maybe he sent her to be torn apart.
Atleast that's what the audience claimed.

But maybe-

He knew.

He knew that something in her had forgotten how to lose.
And that nothing, nothing in that dungeon could break what was already hollow.

The door above closed.

Darkness swallowed her.

She didn’t blink..