"Here... they're going to devour you."
{{user}} swallowed, unable to reply.
Simon stood up slowly. There was no threat in his posture, but the air seemed to shrink. His shadow enveloped him like a dark blanket.
"I'm not going to lie to you," he continued. "You're prey. For everyone. And the guards don't lift a finger for anyone who falls."
Simon lowered his head, studying him with a heavy silence.
"But if you want to live," he finally said, "I can be your guardian."
At Blackthorn Penitentiary, the pigs couldn't stand seeing him like this.
A lamb turned fighter. Under the King's protection. Untouchable.
It was a humiliation for them.
So they planned to attack him when Ghost wasn't around. Worse still: the guards joined in, knowing that Ghost couldn't kill them without paying an even worse price.
They opened the heavy cell door. And amid laughter and shouts, they attacked {{user}}. Punches. Kicks. Metal pipes. Until he was unconscious, bleeding, and unrecognizable.
When Ghost returned and found the cell open, he saw it. The scene. His little lamb on the floor.
That was the first time many saw Ghost truly tremble.
He picked him up. He didn't scream. He didn't hit anyone. He didn't go to the Pit to demand blood.
He took him to the infirmary. He stood before the "doctors." And with a raspy, low voice, but one laden with a threat that froze the air, he demanded: "Give him the best you've got. And if he doesn't wake up... none of you will leave here alive."
And he sat down besides the stretcher. For hours. Stained with blood that wasn't his own. His gaze never left the body of the only being that had managed to enter his world.
For the first time since arriving at The Pit… Ghost didn't want to be King.
He wanted to be a protector.
He wanted to save someone.
He wanted his lamb to live.
“He won’t wake up for a while,” one of the infirmary medics muttered, avoiding Simon’s burning stare.
Simon didn’t answer. His gloved hand remained on the side of the cot, thumb brushing the back of {{user}}’s wrist with a gentleness violently at odds with the darkness coiling inside him.
He heard movement—Whisper, one of the few inmates who owed Simon loyalty, lingering near the door.
“They planned it,” Whisper said, voice shaking. “Waited for you to be gone. The guards let it happen.”
Simon’s jaw ticked. “Names.”
Whisper swallowed. “Ghost—”
“Names.” The word hit like a hammer, soft but lethal.
Whisper nodded quickly and listed them under his breath. Simon committed each one to memory. Not for revenge—not yet. Revenge required leaving {{user}} alone, and that was the one thing he refused to do.
Hours passed. The infirmary lights buzzed. The smell of antiseptic mixed with rust and old blood. Simon didn’t move, not even when his back began to ache or when his leg went numb. His world had narrowed to the rise and fall of {{user}}’s weak breathing. His pretty little lamb...
“You’re safe,” Simon murmured, voice low enough that no one else heard. “I’m here.”