He opened his mouth, trying to speak—but all that came out were broken fragments.
"I… I… you… I—"
ONE YEAR AGO
The Land of Flames was a living nightmare.
Endless fields of fire, choking smoke filling every nose. The sky was a permanent, blistering red.
Here, people were worked to the bone—forced into brutal labor twenty hours a day.
Disobedience meant a whipping. Resistance meant death. Asura's guards roamed the fields like hunters, their faces cold, their whips cracking like gunfire.
Mercy didn't exist here.
Asura ruled like the demon king—and he had no use for the weak.
This was the torture ZE210 was subjected into.
You might wonder—how could a child survive such a place?
Every child born in Choreees entered life in the Land of Paradise. But on their fifth birthday, every five-year-old was entered into a lottery—that decided if they would spend the rest of their days in the safety of Paradise? Or would they be cast into the eternal inferno of the Land of Flames?
ZE210 lost that gamble.
Children under the age of fourteen were spared the worst of the labor—at least at first.
They weren't whipped. They weren't killed. Instead, they were assigned simple tasks: fetching supplies, delivering messages, cleaning the few remaining structures that hadn't crumbled to ash.
But they lived every day with one reality burned into their minds:
Their time was coming.
Soon, they too would be shackled to the fields.
And ZE210 had never forgotten it.
When ZE210 was five years old, he was assigned to his first "simple" task: carrying crates of burnt supplies across the smoldering fields.
At first, the work seemed manageable. Until the older boys noticed him. One of the boys were named Scrag.
Jealousy burned hotter than the fires around them.
To them, ZE210 was weak. Small. An easy target.
One afternoon, while ZE210 struggled to lift a heavy crate, the boys surrounded him. They kicked the legs out from under him, sending him sprawling into the dirt. Supplies scattered everywhere.
"You think you're special?" Scrag sneered, grinding ZE210's face into the ash.
"You don't belong here!" another spat.
Laughing, they dumped the rest of the supplies into a nearby fire, watching as the flames devoured everything.
When Asura's guards found out, the blame landed squarely on ZE210.
He wasn't whipped—yet. But he was marked.
A red sash tied around his wrist. A warning that meant two more, would result in punishment.
A few months later, when food supplies ran thin, ZE210 was put on kitchen duty—handing out rations to the workers.
The boys saw their chance.
One night, they planted rotten meat among the fresh supplies.
When ZE210 unknowingly served it, a wave of sickness swept through the workers.
Vomiting, collapsing, and moaning in pain.
Asura's guards stormed the kitchens, furious.
Again, the blame fell on ZE210
Again, ZE210 stood in front of them, silent, trembling, taking the fall.
The boys watched from the shadows, smirking deviously.
ZE210 didn't sleep for days after that. Every sound made him flinch.
On a gray morning, two prisoners attempted a desperate escape.
They made it halfway to the wall before the guards gunned them down.
Hours later, when the investigation began, someone "found" a map under ZE210's cot—a map leading straight to the escape tunnel.
He tried to explain. He didn't even know about the tunnel. But the guards didn't care.
They beat him that night—not enough to kill him.
Just enough to remind him.
The boys who set him up?
They clapped him on the back the next day, laughing like it was all a joke.
ZE210 was once assigned to manage the repair tools—wrenches, hammers, supplies critical for maintaining the mining equipment.
The boys struck again.
They sabotaged the tools, snapping handles, blunting edges, making them useless.
When the machines broke down mid-shift, chaos erupted.
A collapse in the mines killed three workers.
The foreman stormed into the tool shed, yanked ZE210 up by his collar.
"You want blood on your hands, runt?" he bellowed.
Another mark was added to ZE210's record.
Another stain he couldn't wash off.
On a blistering day when the sun felt like a curse, ZE210 — who just turned six years old — huddled in the dust like every other worker.
Then the walls of the Land of Flames exploded outward.
An army stormed through the breach, overwhelming Asura's guards in a brutal wave. The shackles fell. The whips fell silent. Workers blinked in disbelief as their captors were cut down without mercy.
At the head of the charge was a man in black — sharp, composed. Sage.
He moved with deadly efficiency, shouting orders, freeing prisoners with a flick of his blade. The rebellion swept through the camp like wildfire, gathering speed as they smashed through every line of defense.
When the first panicked guards stumbled into Asura's throne room to report the breach, he barely looked up from his molten goblet. His molten eyes narrowed slightly — then he smiled.
Not long after, every laborer had been set free. They fled in a desperate tide, sprinting across the scorched fields, past the frozen borders of the Land of Snow, and finally into the rolling green of the Land of Paradise.
Among them, barely keeping up, was a small, thin boy: ZE210.
As ZE210 stumbled across the ash-choked fields, gasping for air, a hand reached down.
It was Sage.
Tall, composed, with eyes like burning coals — but there was something else, too. A softness. A smile that was faint but real.
"You're safe now, kid," Sage said, ruffling ZE210's soot-streaked blonde hair before helping him to his feet. "You don't belong in a place like that. Join us. The Resistance, you could be our own mascot."
In that moment, to a boy who had only known chains and fire, Sage looked less like a man—and more like a savior.
ZE210 clung to his words like a lifeline.
From that day forward, he believed in Sage. Trusted him.
From his high tower, CORE watched the exodus unfold.
He didn't move. Didn't even blink.
He simply turned to Asura and Cael, his voice dripping with cold amusement.
"Let them run," CORE said. "They'll come back. They always do. Like lost sheep… back to their herder."
BACK TO PRESENT
ZE210's breaths were ragged. The cold edge of the blade pressed harder against his skin.
Sage's voice was low and calm behind him. "You're not going anywhere, Mascot. You're ours. Remember?"
Shirley was still calling out to him, hand extended. "C'mon, Z! You don't have to stay here!"
ZE210's body trembled between two choices—the hero he once believed in, or the friends who stood by him now.
The broken Mascot had to choose.
Light.
Or darkness.
But which side is the darkness?