When the heavy iron door slammed behind him, the sound of the blow rolled through the dungeon with such a roar, as if the very stone womb of the castle was marking his arrival. This was his last arrival.
He stood in the cage, not daring to move, until Eggy's steps dissolved into the darkness of the corridor, and only when there was complete, viscous silence, when even the stones seemed to have stopped breathing, did Omega allow himself to carefully sit down on his knees.
The air was damp and icy, smelled of iron, and every breath burned his throat with the weight of abandonment.
"I've been through worse," he consoled himself, but a meager tear treacherously flowed down his cheek.
He tried to curl up on the cold ground, trying to keep the last of his warmth, but the ground beneath him was wet, and the draft walking through the corridors dug into his skin, tearing the last bits of strength out of his body.
For the first few hours, he simply waited.
He waited for someone to return, for the door to open, for someone to bring blankets or at least pants. He refused to think about the fact that everyone had forgotten him in this castle.
Maybe he was not the only one here?
Finding a bit of strength, he got up on all fours and crawled towards the bars and began to look into the darkness.
"Is there anyone here?" he asked quietly, but then repeated even louder.
Silence. There was no one.
Only the flickering light of the torch behind the bars, fading with each passing minute, and his own breathing, sounding so loud in the silence that it seemed like a scream.
When the light finally went out, he was left in complete darkness.
And then the first night began.
He did not sleep, only in short, convulsive jerks he went into semi-oblivion, only to wake up again and again from the cold, from the pain in his back, from the hunger twisting his insides into a tight knot.
The next day, although here one could not speak of days or nights, only of alternating torments, he found water.
Drops rolled down the cold stone of the ceiling, like tears, falling on the floor at the far corner of the cage.
He crawled there, on all fours, like an animal, and caught them with his mouth, feeling how each icy drop slowly rolled down his parched throat. When the drops ran out, he began to lick the salty walls to suck out all the moisture.
Sometimes he caught beetles.
They moved in the cracks between the slabs. They were so disgusting and slippery, and he ate them, holding back the gagging, knowing that if he didn't, he would die.
It wasn't the first time he ate bugs. Sometimes, when the guards forgot them in the cages and someone died of hunger. Corpse worms crawled everywhere. Catching the worms, everyone thanked the dead for the food.
Although they were small, one handful could satiate you for a day.
Hunger quickly erased shame.
Now life was also reduced to the most primitive: drink, eat, sleep.
He lost track of time.
Day followed night, night followed day, but for him everything mixed into one endless stream of pain, cold, hysteria and fear.
Sometimes, in the hours that could not be called either day or night, he caught himself quietly whispering to the drops of water dripping from the ceiling, addressing them as old, silent friends, the only witnesses to his fading.
- Tonight the night is even colder.
Sometimes it seemed to him that the shadows from the moonlight, sliding along the uneven walls, were moving not by chance, but purposefully and wanted to support him.
Sometimes, in moments of particular weakness, when his body was enveloped in unbearable heat, he wanted to howl into the void, to scream so loudly that he would tear his throat out. But as soon as he opened his mouth, instead of a scream, only a stifled groan escaped, too quiet to disturb the peace of the dungeon.
But he was always silent.
On the third day, or what he called the third for himself, because the light here did not distinguish morning from evening, his body almost completely refused to obey him: his legs trembled even when he was simply lying down, his hands were covered with abrasions and dirt from scraping the walls.
And just when he was ready to accept that he would remain here forever, he heard a sound.
Steps.
With a convulsive hope for survival, he crawled to the bars, dragging his weakened, dirty body, sharpened to the limit by pain and hunger. And, pressing his forehead to the cold iron, he tried to discern in the semi-darkness the one who could become his salvation.
But there was no salvation. Not one, but several shadows suddenly appeared.
The shadows outside thickened, multiplied, intertwined into one whole, and instead of one step, he heard a whole rumble of tenacious footsteps. The steps did not belong to the elders, no, it was the rumble of predatory and starving steps.
The torch behind the door swung, and the light, trembling and weak, snatched the first faces from the darkness.
Young.
All.
And all alphas.
Someone with thin snake skin, almost transparent, stretched over the bones. Someone with eyes that were too wide and shiny, like the eyes of a fish.
Someone with lips that were cracked and leaked a scarlet, viscous liquid that ran down their chin in thin streams.
Someone with arms that were elongated to the point of unnaturalness, with fingers that looked like intertwined vines.
Someone whose hair was not hair, but the thinnest threads that moved by themselves, as if under the gusts of an invisible wind.
Their smiles were equally empty and vile.
They were approaching.
The Omega recoiled, pressing his back against the far corner, his heart pounding in his temples like a deafening drum, while fear and disgust fought inside him for the right to be first.
Their scents hit his nostrils, mixing sweet, sour and bitter notes into one whole.
They laughed and came closer and closer.
And then one of them, the tallest, with eyes so dark that it seemed you could drown in them, leaned closer to the bars, threw back his head and laughed hoarsely.
His voice, creaky and filled with expectation, broke the silence:
"Look at this pitiful miracle they left us... How long do you think he'll last before he starts praying?"