Chapter five: The Flesh Grinding Mill.

  The Conductor did not attack, it watched as its body started to dissolve like a sandcastle when a big wave came. His lips curled up in a long grin, the same as before... Waiting, a smile waiting for the next "thief"

  The world was a place. Everything was being pulled in. Glass and stone and even the river of blood were all being sucked in. It was like an empty space that was hungry and wanted to get rid of everything.

  My ribbon, 叁 (3), did not just go dark. It actually shattered into pieces. Now, the character 肆 (4) started glowing slowly..

  I did not get pulled. I got ripped apart and I "died" once again.

  A final pulse, a very strong jerk shook the ground that was falling apart and what was left of my body. I felt every bit of my pain all by itself very clearly and it went on forever.

  The last thing that went away was not something I felt. A name. The name my mother used to call me when I was scared of that comforting word, with two parts disappeared into the noise. The tree took that name as its payment. Then I felt a relief that was really deep felt like I was dying or something. My vision started to get all weird and fuzzy.

  My body got pulled weightless, like a soul is getting transported to heaven, but to me it was a way toward hell.

  Underneath was a howling, formless grey static, the null-space, the anti-matter between worlds. The raw, unformatted void where the "Architect's" creations were compiled.

  On my wrist, The ribbon was back, The silk was frayed, burnt black at the edges as if it had been held to a flame. The character 叁(3) was gone, erased. In its place, the new mark 肆 (4) glowed faintly, as a moonlight glow shimmered in the letter,then. The ribbon returned to normal as if it had healed itself, the threads easily softened again and was no longer burned. A smooth silk rubbed against my wrist, the warm softness of the cloth.

  Then, the static swallowed sight, sound, and self.

  I felt myself being packaged, there was a sensation of immense , indifferent pressure from all sides, as if I were being stamped into a new shape. My bones cracked: the concept of my bones was forcibly reconciled with a new set of physical laws. It was a violation more profound than any monster’s bite.I existed in the non-space, in the transfer it was a moment that lasted a minute or less.

  World 4.

  Consciousness returned like a bone snapping into a socket. The first sense was cold. A deep, marrow-chewing damp that my thin, modern clothes did nothing to stop. It was a physical, honest cold , unlike any temperature-controlled torment before.

  The second was the smell. Not ozone, not decay. Wood smoke, dung, unwashed bodies, iron , and the wet-wool stink of soaked earth. It was complex, layered, overwhelmingly organic.I had another nonsensical world

  Third sound. No humming, no screaming. It was the sound of metal crashing on another metal, and the guttural scream of men, the creaking of wood, the snoring of the animal, the crack of the whip. It was chaotic, noisy like a humanly alive world, and in a way no previous world had.

  My body was shaking as the cold wind was against me, reminiscent of winter snowfall, it shook me like a snowman in a blizzard.

  I opened my eyes to see yet another horrible world, a faint question in my mind "Now what crazy stuff this world throws upon me, damn."

  I was on my knees in churned, frozen mud. My clothes, the same casual clothes and long sleeve T-shirt from my apartment, one part of my sleeve ripped and another by using that as a bandage. My branded wrist ached under the ribbon, now looking oddly plain against the grim backdrop.

  "I'm really in joy with this world, such a good view" I tried to lighten my mood, but it slowly changed as I realised the situation.

  My head tilted upward feeling the cold wind.

  This was not a curated absurdity. This was not a horrifying nightmare of monsters. This was an empire.

  Huge log palisades rim a huge, mud-churning yard. Smoke from dozens of raw huts rose into a low, iron-gray sky, from which fat, wet snowflakes were constantly falling. Men in rough spun tunics and fur walked along with purpose, other men drove rows of "slaves" who shuffled chains, their breath gasping in the cold.

  The architecture was brutal,there were some wooden watchtowers, a blacksmith's shed glowing orange, and piles of raw wood. Aesthetic was one of the sheer, grinding materials required.

  "Okay, that was not a good joke...."

  A shadow fell on me. A boot baked in frozen soil held a few inches away from my hand. The shade was that of a tall man, and from the outline, I guessed that he was of royal status because of the wide, fluffy cotton clothes he appeared to be wearing.

  "On your feet, void-spawn." The voice was a gravel rasp, speaking a dialect of Mandarin that sounded archaic, adorned with a marginal roughness.There was a subtle sense of suspicion in the term "Void spawn." I glanced over my shoulder at the shadow.. A man loomed, wrapped in heavy furs over lamellar leather armor. His face was a topographic map of scars and windburn, his beard matted. His eyes held no cosmic indifference.

  They held contempt, curiosity, and the simple, calculative cruelty of a man assessing a new tool. This was not a construct. This was a real person. A REAL person that is not the chosen one,how is that possible?

  The realization hit me like a sharp precise cut, colder than the snow falling on my shoulders. The horror of Worlds 2, 3 was that they were created and designed. Their cruelty had a curator, an Architect. This… this was different. This was the cruelty of history, of empire, of one human being owning another. It was familiar. It was ancestral. It was, in its own way, far more terrifying.

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  “this is not creat-” before I could finish up my thoughts. He yanked me up by my collar. My body was still processing the aftershock of trans-dimensional processing, and offered no resistance. He inspected me with a sneer, my soft hands, my strange clothes.

  "Pitiful. No muscle, strange cloth. Not from any province I know." He shoved me forward, toward a line of chained men. "But the Master likes curiosities. He'll find a use for you or feed you to the foundry-pits. Chain him!" He was right, this was not the place I belonged. Additionally, I lacked the physical strength compared to those who go to war, primarily because I had not eaten for four days. yet I was not feeling any hunger.

  After his inevitable command, rough hands grabbed me. They put a heavy, ice-cold iron collar around my neck, its weight an instant, profound humiliation. A chain was linked to the man before me, was secured with a hammer blow with men around them making the escape feel like a dream.

  As the blacksmith worked, I stared out at the empire. I saw real suffering, exhaustion in the slaves' faces, genuine malice in the guards'. I saw imperfect, hand-made tools. I saw mud, rust, and disorder. No repeating patterns. No curated silence. No symbolic monsters. Every single thing belonged to reality...Travel to the past? Possible. But well what is not possible when I reach these garbage worlds?

  A certainty washed over me. This world was not made by the Architect. It was collected or perhaps it was the presentation of the past?

  The truth crystallized, colder than the ice forming on my collar. The first three worlds were layers of a personalized, metaphysical hell. This was different. This felt like a real place, a slice of a brutal history, yanked out of time and space and slotted into the prison as its fourth layer. The humans here weren't programs or any creation ; they were likely as trapped as I was, their entire reality annexed into this nightmare. They weren't chosen ones, but they had been born here.

  The guard shoved me into line. "Move, curiosity! The overseer wants a look at the new catch." I stumbled forward and somehow managed to stop from falling, the chain pulling at my throat. My mind, still reeling, clung to one anchoring, terrible thought:

  "Damn it, it is not funny for sure" I muttered, my humourless joke wasn't even going to make me laugh. I had reasons, in the other worlds, I fought the rules of a mad god.

  Here, I would have to fight the weight of history, the cruelty of man, and the frozen ground. Without having no idea of the rules.

  With stumbling steps in the snow I continued walking. In front of me was a man in his 30s muttering under his breath, holding a pang of despair in his eyes, probably cursing his fate.

  I was feeling cold continuously; I didn't have much clothing to begin with. Then, in the line of sight, there was a blacksmith's shed. We were actually heading towards it. I could guess that even royalty and the presence of luxury could not warm the cold heart of a man; now, it didn't warm their bodies either.

  The mist had begun to diminish, clearing up the surroundings, yes precisely, it wasn't a luxurious place, it was a simple place and black smoke was coming out of the chimney, the fire was burning, but what was burning more was the desire of these slaves to live, which was turning it to ashes

  The guards entered the place, leaving slaves outside a tragic moment of history where humans were the enemy of their own. They tied the chain to a pillar giving us the respect of a street dog. Everyone else quickly sat down when the figures disappeared. This had become their luxury getting even the time to sit.

  A long-lasting sigh escaped from my mouth as I looked above me at the sky. Nothing wrong with it, totally fine and covered in the mist. I was feeling cold, yet I had to bear it.

  "I need to survive" was a thought that gave me the will. I continued looking at the sky hoping something or someone would come and save me or wishing to wake me up from the nightmare. Just as at that moment. one veteran man spoke; his voice empty, filled with harsh reality.

  “Don't stare at the sky for too long, boy. The sky doesn't have bread nor mercy. Keep your eyes on the mud or the overseer will take them, we are birds caught in a cage who have lost their wings.”

  His words were clearly soulless, he probably had lost his heart. I couldn't understand, but I'd when I got used to living in madness. “Where are we? This isn't.... This isn't the place like the other worlds...”

  He stifled a chuckle and said: “Other world? Boy, you aren't the first one to say that there have been few who-” He was going to finish the sentence when the other slave who was listening to this spoke his voice held a strange fear.

  “Do not speak loudly.... and young man you better not talk about another world to the overseer of this land. The master had killed many strangers when they talked about other worlds....one recently from three others, yet somehow two escaped and were never seen again. They might have gotten killed too” his voice conveyed a sense of danger, reflecting his fear of being caught by the guards.

  "Two escaped" they were the chosen ones. In that case, I could survive too, but death was still the rule of ascension. This was the doubt I had in every world. This was my thought I questioned to clear up my doubts about this 'Overseer'.

  “Overseer, huh? Who is this so called master?” my voice, hiding the curiosity hearing my tone, the veteran man said.

  “The master? A self-used term.... He is just another flesh in a finer suit of fur. The people of the kingdom 'Trasia' say he is the "Ascendent" of 'Dream Weavers'.” What he said was confusing to me. It was the term I'd heard for the first time.

  "What's a dream weaver?"

  "No idea"

  "But why did you say this then?"

  "This is what everyone says"

  An unfamiliar term or I might soon find out this once again, The veteran man's voice spoke again in the same low tone.

  “You are one of us now, tell us your name.”

  I turned silent. His words were true. This could become my fate. It took me a few seconds to respond, my jaw shimmering under the cold. “Mo Fei” only two words left.

  Veteran man nodded after hearing my name, then he said: “Mo Fei is a unique name. You may address me as Han and this fearful man is Feng." After he finished his words Feng warned me once again they weren't dry, it was grim.

  "If you want to live even a pathetic life, do not talk about another world ever again, young man," his world held the weight. I gulped slightly, feeling uneasiness. I decided not to push this further but without any perspective or knowledge of how I could survive and ascend to the next world. Then I realized and decided.

  "I will not ascend to the next world till I am prepared. recklessness will not let me live longer than a cicada" I decided to stay here in this world a little longer, as long as I can survive. Then again, the man who was wearing beads seemed like a religious guy who had been taken recently and his voice was a voice of acceptance.

  “Sinners pay in either way we must have done something. Give thanks to the cold, the cold purifies the rot. We are the grain and this world is a mill, the hand of the Devine. We mustn't resist it” I stared at his face totally flabbergasted. I had never seen a man believing so blindly that he was doubting himself.

  "WHAT A STUPID MAN!" a cursing thought took over my brain and I managed not to speak anything, he was stupid because if I accept this is 'Devine' I'd be admitting that I'd never see my family again. Why would I choose divinity instead of my home?

  The other two men also stared. They were trying not to show their surprise under the stoic expression.

  Feng leaned to the wall a slight flinch was noticeable a work of the cold. “Brother Wu, you shouldn't accept your fate just like that without any will. How can a person survive?” Hearing his words Wu mumbled but didn't say anything. He started praying,while my thoughts still wandered around the overseer of this land Han noticed it and his stoic expression was puzzled a bit.

  “What are you thinking?” Han asked with a hint of confusion. I hesitated but decided to trust him. His face held the solemn expression but deep within that was a soft heart of a human.

  “I was wondering, who actually is the overseer, his identity?” I finally questioned it wasn't a deep question but I wanted to know about him. What if I run into him if he finds out I'm one of those seven chosen he'd kill me.

  After hearing this Han leaned his head against the frozen pillar, his neck made a clicking sound. “Names are just air here boy, it doesn't matter whether he is an overseer, master or a dream weaver he still breathes the same air like us.” He took a small break for a moment and a small sigh escapes “he just gets to watch while we are used for scrap. We had seen his face, he is just like us made of meat and skin. We don't know anything about him at all”

  Han paused once again and looked around a faint echo of footsteps. Other slaves got alerted by the figure of that tall man coming out of the doorway. He had come here to check out. His silent gaze went upon me, and then to others with a glare. He went inside once again, disappearing from sight.

  Han looked at me, his eyes softened slightly. “I was the stonemason in the south before the 'vraalk' swallowed my village, now? I'm just a number forty two slave”

  My voice got silent by his words he was a man who was taken here forcefully just like me and any other slaves I looked around at other slaves my eyes locked in Feng for a moment thoughts filled my brain "This one will get me killed he's a liability but he had seen strangers getting killed can't blame in his sanity" I know what I had to do not to make the same mistakes I had to stay distant from this 'Overseer'

  I looked down at my wrist. The ribbon ,肆, glowed with a faint, steady light against the dull grey. A single, clean number in a world of filthy, overwhelming reality.

  Then,

  A voice cut through the deafening silence "Move, trash!" The guard's boots crunched near the snow, every slave's faces showing the panic. They quickly moved away and stood, Han stood up slowly, his joints popping a sound, my eyes didn't look at the guard's face, I looked at his belt for any key weapon or even a hint to escape. It wasn't useful in the snow but it was better than doing nothing.

  Before I could snatch the tall man come out I stopped with a quick reflex. I realized the risk, and then that tall man spoke, his voice rough. “Move now, we are heading forward.” his voice held no place as counter guards gathered us in a line once again. My nose was already getting red from the cold. I heard some Guards were whispering about something called territories of 'Kholkis'