Chapter 20 #2
He looked human. Matted dark hair hung past his shoulders. Clothes that might have once been fine now hung in rags. His frame was thin, wasted, but somehow still alive.
"Real?" He laughed, and the sound was broken. "Nothing's real down here. Just the dark and the dreams and—" He stopped, nostrils flaring. "You smell of sunlight. Of the world above."
"I am from above. I'm a prisoner too."
His gaze found the marks visible at her throat, and recognition flickered across his features.
"His prisoner. Marked like I was. Like I am." He lifted his arm, and she saw them, thorned vines wrapping his forearm, old and faded but unmistakably the same as hers. "You're new though. The marks still grow on you."
"You have them too." Relief flooded through her at finding another human who'd survived this. "How long have you been down here?"
"I don't know." His voice broke on the words. "Years. Many years. Time doesn't exist here."
She looked around the empty cell, the bare stone, the chains. No food bowls, no water, nothing.
"How are you still alive? There's no food, no water—"
"I don't know." He sounded genuinely confused, lost. "I should be dead. Should have died long ago. Sometimes I think I did die and this is just what death is. Eternal darkness."
"But you're not dead. You're talking to me."
"Am I?" He tilted his head. "Or are you another dream? They're so vivid sometimes."
"I'm real. I promise." She moved closer to the bars. "What's your name?"
"Thomas. Thomas Gray. I was—" He paused, brow furrowing. "I was someone. Before. Had a life, a trade. It's fuzzy now. The darkness eats memories."
"Why did he lock you here?"
"The flowers." The word came out as barely a whisper. "Golden flowers that grew where they shouldn't. From me. From the marks when they tried to consume me."
The warmth in her chest pulsed with recognition.
"You grew golden flowers?"
"They grew themselves. When the marking happened, when he tried to claim me completely, my body fought back. Golden petals burst from my skin." His hand traced patterns on his arm. "He couldn't kill me. The flowers wouldn't let him. Every time he tried, they bloomed brighter."
"So he locked you away instead."
"So deep no one would know. So deep the flowers couldn't find light to bloom." He looked at his hands. "I haven't seen them in so long. But I'm still here. Still breathing. Maybe they're keeping me alive somehow, dormant under the skin."
"The warmth," she said suddenly. "Do you feel a warmth in your chest?"
His eyes snapped to hers, suddenly sharp through the haze of madness. "You feel it too. The burning. The reaching."
"Yes. What is it?"
"I don't—my thoughts are so clouded. Hungry. Always so hungry even though I don't die from it." He pressed his hands to his temples. "If I could think clearly. If I had food, real food, maybe I could remember better. The hunger makes everything foggy."
She studied him carefully. He seemed genuinely confused, genuinely suffering. The marks on his arm were real, she could see them clearly.
"If I brought you food tomorrow, would that help? Would you be able to tell me more about the flowers? About how to survive this?"
"Food." The word came out desperate. "Yes. Please. Even a little. It might help the fog clear. Might help me remember what I learned before my mind started slipping."
"But you don't know how you've survived without it?"
"Maybe the same reason he couldn't kill me. Maybe the marks changed me into something that can't die properly." His laugh was bitter. "A blessing and a curse. Eternal hunger but eternal life."
She felt the leaf's magic flickering. Time was running short.
"Tomorrow," she promised. "I'll bring what I can."
"Thank you." Tears tracked through the dirt on his face. "Just to have someone know I exist. Someone to talk to who isn't a phantom of my breaking mind."
"What should I bring?"
"Anything. Bread. Fruit. Something real." He retreated slightly into the shadows. "Be careful though. If he finds out you've found me—"
"He won't. I have a way to stay hidden."
"The girl with golden flowers has ways to stay hidden." He laughed softly. "Of course she does. Maybe you're the one I was waiting for. The reason I couldn't die."
"What do you mean?"
"I used to think about it, in the early years when my mind was clearer. Why keep me alive? Why not just let me rot?" He looked at her through the bars. "Maybe it was for this. To tell someone else with golden flowers that they're not alone. That they're not broken."
The sincerity in his voice made her throat tight.
"Tomorrow," she said again. "I promise."
As she backed away, he called out softly, "The warmth you feel? Feed it. When you can. It likes beautiful things. Music. Sunlight. Joy. The more you feed it, the stronger the gold grows instead of the shadow."
She ran up the stairs clutching that advice, her mind spinning. He was human, marked like her, kept alive by some quirk of the magic that wouldn't let him die. Trapped for years, slowly losing his mind to isolation and hunger.
Tomorrow she would bring him food. Tomorrow she would learn what she could before his mind slipped further.
She didn't question how he'd survived. Magic did impossible things. The marks changed people in ways that didn't follow normal rules.
She just knew she couldn't leave another human to suffer alone in the dark.