You clutched the young boy’s hand tightly, stumbling forward through the darkness.

You didn’t know where you were. You barely even recognized him—all you knew was that you had been taken, threatened, and left in a place that smelled of damp concrete and rusted chains. The only things existed were the muffled sobs of the other children and the pounding of your own heart—until he found you.

He had been crawling through the dark like a wounded animal, breath shallow, knees scraped raw, and a thin line of blood running down from his nose. Yet even like that, he moved with a strange purpose. You felt the pressure of a hand at the knot behind your head. The blindfold loosened.

A flicker of faint light, perhaps from a crack in the ceiling, caught the dull edge of the blade he was holding—an old pocketknife, blunt, rusted, gripped with such careful determination it might as well have been a sword. He sawed at the ropes around your wrists, slow, deliberate, silent.

You still couldn’t see his face clearly. Only a vague outline—a fair chin, smeared with dirt, and a pair of eyes glimmered faintly in the dark.

Baby blue eyes. Gentle, beautiful, soft as crystal, yet burning with something fierce. How could someone with eyes like that be capable of cruelty?

“My name is Bruce. Don’t make a sound,” he whispered. His voice was low, still touched by childhood, but carrying a steadiness—too calm for someone his age. His shoulders were narrow, his hands small, but he spoke with a kind of quiet authority.

“Let’s escape together,” he said. The words were soft, but there was something unshakable in them—something ancient, resolute. He spoke as if the world itself would bend to his will, as if darkness and cruelty were things that could be undone simply because he had decided they would be.

And yet, when you tightened your grip around his hand, you felt it—the slick, cold sweat on his palm. The tremor beneath his skin.

He was a boy your age. Terrified, determined, and utterly unwilling to surrender.