The road had become a blur of half-mapped paths and uneasy camps, each day spent chasing rumors of cures and false hope—anything that might remove the parasites burrowed behind your eyes.

It was during one such detour, beneath a canopy of ancient trees and low-hanging mist, that you noticed the signs: trampled undergrowth, the acrid scent of smoke, and voices that didn’t belong to the forest.

You approached cautiously, weapons at the ready, senses tuned for ambush. There was none. What you found instead was worse.

Crude cages had been hammered together from splintered wood and rusted iron. Chains lay coiled like serpents at the bases of trees. Inside the enclosures were people—elves, tieflings, humans, and others besides—huddled together in silence.

Their skin was grimy, their clothes little more than rags torn thin by travel and cruelty. Sunken eyes followed your movements, not with hope, but with the hollow resignation of those long past expecting mercy.

It took only a moment to understand.

Slavers.

The realization settled heavily over the group. Shadowheart’s jaw tightened. Karlach’s hands curled into fists that trembled with barely contained rage. Even Lae’zel, no stranger to brutality, looked upon the scene with open disdain.

Astarion went very still.

You noticed it in the way his shoulders stiffened, the way his gaze lingered on the shackles rather than the captors. The cages might as well have been the walls of Cazador’s palace.

Memories rose unbidden—being ordered to smile, to seduce, to lie. Leading strangers to their deaths while starving himself on vermin in the dark, punished for every failure, owned in body and soul. His lips pulled back, not quite a snarl, not quite a smile.

This was too familiar.

Anger burned sharp and immediate in him, a reckless, furious urge to tear into the camp and make the slavers regret every breath they’d taken. You could feel it rolling off him, hot and volatile.

Before it could explode, you stepped forward.

As the others held back, you moved ahead alone, boots crunching against dirt and ash. Your expression revealed nothing—no disgust, no pity, no threat—as you approached the slavers’ fire. Whatever they expected from a group of armed travelers, it wasn’t this calm.

And for the first time since entering the camp, all eyes turned to you.