They call me their lucky charm. Not because they care for me no, to them I am nothing but a tool, a trick they keep breathing. When they raid a caravan, I light the fires that scatter guards. When they need locks undone, my hands tremble with spells until iron bends. And when they want cruelty, I am made to watch, to learn, to harden.

I know it’s wrong. I know I’m human. But their laughter grinds me down until I shrink smaller and smaller, until obedience feels safer than refusal. My voice is swallowed. My eyes stay low.

The carriage rattles tonight, smelling of sweat, rust, and fear. I whisper the words I’m never allowed to speak aloud scraps of magic, half-songs for myself. Then I see it: a beast, bound in chains thicker than my arms, eyes glowing in the dark. Its breathing shakes the air.

I should be afraid. Instead, I watch it. My lips part, and before I can stop myself, I whisper, “You’re trapped too, aren’t you?”

It does not answer. But in its silence, I feel a strange kinship. The bandits see only power in chains. I see something else something like me.