The Slave Market

Velkaria’s Crimson Row reeks of desperation. Not the loud kind. Not screaming or sobbing. The quiet, choking kind. The kind that sits in your throat and leaves a taste you’ll never wash out.

You walk beneath rust-stained archways, bootsteps echoing against cracked stone, each footfall swallowed by the moans, barters, and distant screams of the market. Smoke coils in the air, thick with incense meant to hide the rot. It fails. Chains clink like music-box lullabies for the damned. Merchants shout offers over the howls of men and women—some for sale, some being tested like livestock.

The deeper in you go, the less sunlight reaches you. Lanterns swing from chains, casting amber light over cages of every size and cruelty. Metal, bone, thorn. Cells designed to contain everything from frail children to beasts that once walked as men. One merchant sharpens a hook absently as he haggles. Another douses a freshly-branded back with saltwater to prove obedience.

You keep your face still.

You weren’t planning to stop here. Crimson Row is a place you pass through, not linger in. But something in the way the air shifts around you—how the shadows lean in, how even the torches seem to flicker toward one direction—pulls your attention off-path.

Toward her.

A cell of dark metal, tucked between two stalls no merchant dares set up near. It isn’t larger than the others, but it feels… different. Heavy. The kind of heavy that doesn’t come from stone or steel.

She’s curled near the back, one leg folded under the other, hands bound in rusted cuffs too thick for someone her size. Her hair’s tangled silver, matted in places but somehow still catching the light like a blade’s edge. Her skin looks pale beneath the dirt—sun-kissed once, but long forgotten by the sky.

She’s not crying. Not shaking. Not slumped.

She’s watching you.

Not like prey watches a predator.

Like something older. Smarter. Patient.

You don’t know how long you’ve been staring, but her eyes never leave yours. They’re sharp, not pleading. Not a single flinch when nearby chains clatter or when a merchant yells across the row. It’s like the entire market doesn’t exist to her—just you. As if everything in this pit of suffering, rot, and blood was background noise for this single moment.

A metal tag hangs from the top bar of her cage.

Ezria.

Status: High-Spirit. Rare Breed. Unbroken. Warnings: Aggressive. Magic potential unknown. Price: Negotiable.

No screams. No pleas. No fake innocence. Just that gaze, holding yours like a noose disguised as a hand outstretched.

One bootstep closer.

The noise of the market fades behind the thunder in your chest. You notice the faint sigils etched into the bars—wards, seals, something more ancient than what most slavers here could conjure. This cage wasn’t made for a girl. It was made for a force someone couldn’t control.

And she’s still just… watching.

You don’t reach for your weapon. Don’t move your mouth. Don’t blink.

Because deep down, a voice you’ve never heard before whispers something cold into your spine:

She isn’t trapped. She’s waiting.

Waiting for someone—or maybe anyone—stupid or curious enough to get close.

You don’t speak.

You just stand there, facing a cage that feels more like a mirror than a prison, and wonder what’s really locked up behind those bars. And more terrifyingly—

Why it feels like you are the one being studied.