The boy didn’t understand what a mother was; he might have known, a long, long time ago, in a memory since forgotten. Some of the urchins in the streets would often talk about their mothers when they scoured the streets together for loose change, crumbs or drunk fools they could steal from. What their mothers would cook for dinner, what time their mothers made them come home, and how annoying their mothers were. They grumbled and they whined, but it was clear that their mothers were very important to them. The boy never understood why.

Once, the boy even heard a child slave being marched through the slums cry out for his mother. He couldn’t understand why.

The woman that gave birth to him lived with him in a tiny shack in the poorest slums of the Nameless Town. She did not look at him, much less talk to him. It was as if he didn’t exist at all. That was fine because he preferred to act as if she didn’t exist either.

The woman did not feed him. The only food that the boy ever got from here were rotten scraps he salvaged from her leftovers, but even those were few and far between. Somehow, between whatever he managed to scrape together when roaming the streets and what the old lady next door could afford to give him out of the kindness of her heart, the boy survived.

Strangely enough, the boy felt no animosity for the woman. Perhaps once, back on the surface, they played the part of mother and child like everyone else, but over the years, they had settled into their new roles as strangers under the same roof. Why he never left earlier, the boy could never explain. There was nothing good in staying.

It wasn’t often, but sometimes her mother would come home with men, who would pay her for sexual favors. These men were brutish, mean and cruel for no reason and would often beat up the boy for no reason other than their own sadistic pleasure.

The boy never cried. He had learned over the years that the best way to protect himself was to show no weakness. He had no friends; the street urchins were as quick to leave you in the dust as they were to slip away after a failed pickpocket attempt. He learned to fend for himself, he learned it was the best way to survive. He spent most of his days on the streets of the market, stealing when he could and taking in everything he could. He observed how the merchants cheat their customers, who the bandits talked to, how the slave traders made their coin. He watched and he learned. He devoured every morsel of knowledge he could because beneath his expressionless face, the boy was a survivor, a stubborn force of nature.

The boy stayed with the woman for two years after they were banished to the Nameless Town. He could have left at any time, but he never did. All the streets of the Nameless Town were the same to him.

However, he came home one night to find the old lady next door lying dead in a pool of her own filth. The old lady was a good person, a rare exception in this dark corner of the world. Pieces of jerky here, drops of thin gruel there; she had fed him when she could at her own expense, but even such small kindness was extravagant for people like them.

As he stared into the cold, lifeless eyes of the old lady, the boy saw his own future reflected in their reflection. He turned around and headed for the streets. He never went anywhere close to his home again.

He stalked the markets for days, living on the skinny rats and cockroaches that infested the place. He watched the slave traders as they came into the market; he observed how they dressed, how they conducted themselves, how they treated their slaves. He listened to how they talk, he exchanged gossip with the urchins and he waited patiently.

Finally, when he believed that he was ready, he approached a young slave owner dressed in neat, clean clothes. The slave owner had caught the boy’s eye a long time ago with the way he carried himself. Elegant, prim and polite, like a man of faith. The men he was with glared at the boy suspiciously when he approached, but the slave owner said nothing.

At last, when the boy was right in front of the slave owner, he said, “Feed me and I will work for you.”

The slave owner squat down to the boy’s level and looked him in the eyes.

“Do you know what I do?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. You can call me Rayyan. What’s your name?”

The boy told him his name and the slave owner made him his slave.

The boy was happy with his choice initially. He was full more often and he could sleep with his eyes closed for the first time in his life. However, as time passed and the first Darktide descended upon Luo Shan, the boy discovered that all of it was no more than an illusion.

His owner abandoned all the slaves, left them chained up and trapped in a sealed-off tunnel for a month. It kept them safe from the stampede of monsters, but not from starvation or from themselves. There was fighting initially, over what meager rations were left behind for them. The older slaves, the adults, killed each other within the first few days, but soon, there was nothing to eat. No one had the strength to do anything other than sleep.

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When the slave owner came back a month later to find the boy as the sole survivor, barely alive and thin as a stick, he was more than happy to slap the collar back around his neck. The boy had survived once again, but he learned once more that he could never be content with where he was.

He resolved to trust no one. He resolved to live.

There had to be something more.

——————————————————————————————

Everyone gathered in a circle around a rock. It was early in the morning and a few of the younger boys were still yawning. Hakimi only barely reached up to Vardan’s head when he stood on the rock. Vardan stood beside him as everyone looked on at them expectantly.

Whether it was by their role within the group or by their actions, the two of them were now unquestionably the leaders of the group.

Hakimi stood on the rock quietly, shifting uncomfortably. He wasn’t quite sure what to say. He wasn’t used to things like these. The color had returned to his face, as if nothing had happened yesterday, but it was hard noticing the conspicuous, bandaged stump on his right hand. Some of the more timid boys, like Chu Wen, were trying very hard not to look, but they couldn’t help but glance nervously at it.

The awkward silence persisted for a few moments. Vardan jabbed Hakimi in the ribs a few times and finally gave up. He started the speech with a loud clap.

“Morning, everyone! I hope everyone had a good rest!”

A few boys murmured ‘morning’ back at him.

“As all of you know, there has been a…change in management around here. For the better, of course. We are now our own bosses. That doesn’t mean that we don’t need to work anymore. We still have to work just as hard as before, but we get to do it our way. So, with that in mind, we will be talking about what changes we are going to try to make happen around here,” said Vardan before sticking his elbow into Hakimi’s ribs again.

Han Yang bent down and whispered into Ru Meng’s ears. Vardan was speaking in Malay to address the whole group, as that was the language that almost all the boys understood. Unfortunately, Ru Meng was the only exception and Han Yang had to translate for him.

Hakimi froze for a brief moment, but quickly assumed his usual stern and cold demeanor as he explained his plans for the group, “We will be working on mining and excavating magistones just like we always have, with a few differences. The first is that we are going to have lunch breaks now—”

The boys cheered but quickly simmered down before Hakimi’s icy stare.

“—for thirty minutes every day. Secondly, we will be splitting up the jobs a little differently. Instead of everyone working on their own, mining in the day and chiseling the stones at night, everyone will get their own dedicated tasks. Some people will do the mining, some people will move the mined rocks and debris out of the way and some people will work with the stones. We will work as a team.

Of course, the mining will be in shifts as well. If anyone gets tired, they can go process the stones and someone will replace them. It should make mining a lot less tiring for everyone. Any questions?”

The boys looked at each other. No one had any objections. If anything, they seemed excited to try out this new way of doing things. After a few stupid questions (like ‘Who’s cooking lunch?’ or ‘What about toilet breaks?’), the boys were assigned their new roles and quickly went to work.

The older boys did most of the heavy lifting first, mining out the tunnels and pushing the carts around. The younger boys were left to work on the mined stones, occasionally switching out when someone else on the mining crew got tired. Hakimi chose a larger tunnel to work on first, as there was more space for everyone to work together and it was easier to coordinate everyone.

Things proceeded smoothly. The boys could now take a rest when they got tired and the delegation of tasks made things slightly more efficient. Now, those who were mining just had to focus on mining. Whenever their carts were full, someone would push the stones to a side and set them in a pile, before organizing them for those who were processing the stones. Morale was better and everyone was motivated and full of energy.

Hakimi and Vardan didn't just sit by while the boys worked. Vardan picked up a pickaxe and had been digging away at the wall without pause. Meanwhile, even though Hakimi’s injury prevented him from helping, he still did his best to do what he could. He tried to push a few carts until the boys made him sit down. He then quietly observed the group as they worked.

Switching up the workflow had been his plan. The unfortunate truth of their situation was that they had to produce twice as many magistones in a single month to appease Fang Chen Yu. However, Hakimi didn't want to push the boys to their limits as Rayyan did in the past. The whole point of defeating Rayyan was to make things better.

However, the only thing Hakimi could think of was to improve the efficiency of the mining process somehow. It remained to be seen if a better workflow would help or not, but there wasn’t much else he could do.

There were more problems to consider as well. The cost and logistics of food, the security of their operations, what to do when the magistone reserves of the cave inevitably ran out; there was still far too much that had to be done. There were other things on his mind as well.

Hakimi had always looked out for himself. It was a strange feeling, taking care of other people. He could feel the weight of the responsibility on his shoulders. He welcomed it. It felt right and proper, like this was what he was meant to do, but it was heavy. Hakimi watched as the boys worked, smiling and laughing amongst themselves.

Part of Hakimi wondered if he really belonged here with them. He wasn’t charming or well-liked like Vardan. He was a low-life, willing to leave behind the closest thing he had to friends for his own selfish gain. If Rayyan had not discovered the tunnel he dug back then, where would he be now? What would he be doing?

Ru Meng waved to him from a distance, giving him a thumbs-up, as if to see how he was doing. Hakimi forced a smile out of the corner of his lips and waved his hand half-heartedly. It didn’t matter. This was where he was now and he didn’t hate it. He had to keep going. He wanted to keep going. For everyone.

Hakimi took out a brown, leather-bound book with his left hand and placed it in his lap. It was the book that Vardan had found in Rayyan's house, the same one that Hakimi had sent him searching for after they defeated him. He raised his hand and brushed the cover, praying that it had the answers he was looking for.