Chapter Text
Grey. Everything is grey. The only colour is the blood. The cloaks. The end.
The bells tolled in twelve sharp notes, striking the air with the clarity of iron.
Every resident of Dema knew those chimes. They weren’t the soft, pastoral bells one might imagine in some half-remembered story of churches and countryside towns—those were myths, the kind that carried whispers of “the old world.” No, the bells of Dema were cold, mathematical. They did not sing; they ordered. Twelve strokes: the sound of assembly, of obedience, of the machine that ground each soul into its intended form.
Clancy stood among the lines of citizens, his posture mirroring theirs. Eyes down, shoulders squared, arms stiff at his sides. The grey jumpsuit hung loose against his body. He was not distinguished in the crowd—deliberately so. To be noticed was dangerous. To stand out was to tempt scrutiny, and scrutiny came from the bishops.
|-/
His bishop was Keons.
The name alone tightened Clancy’s stomach. Keons was different from the others, or at least that was how it seemed to Clancy. The other bishops—Lisden, Andre, Nico—were fearsome, yes, but predictable. They enforced, they disciplined, they monitored. But Keons… Keons seemed to take joy in the unpredictable. He would forgive one day what he would torture for the next. He watched for the flicker of an eye, the breath drawn too sharply, the momentary hesitation in a step.
Clancy knew this too well. He had been on the receiving end of Keons’ smile—thin, crooked, a slash of mockery—when his questions had wandered too far one day in the learning hall. That had been years ago, when he was younger, still naïve enough to think one could ask why Dema’s walls existed, or what lay beyond them. Keons had silenced him with a stare and later a private “conversation” that left Clancy’s ribs aching for weeks.
Since then, Clancy learned to keep his questions locked behind his teeth.
But questions had a way of echoing.
|-/
Rumors moved strangely in Dema. Officially, there were none. The bishops ensured that every word was watched, every phrase calibrated to align with the Authority. And yet, under the still surface, whispers traveled like currents. One could feel them in the quiet pauses between sentences, in the small hesitations before someone recited the prescribed phrases.
Clancy first heard the phrase “the old world” from a fellow worker in the fabric mill. The man was older, his hair thinning, his back bent from years of repetitive labor. He never spoke much, but one day, when the overseer had stepped out, he muttered to Clancy under the roar of the looms:
“They say there was a time when walls didn’t bind us. When people chose where they walked.”
Clancy’s head had snapped up, his pulse racing. “What do you mean?”
The man didn’t answer directly. He only leaned closer, his eyes darting nervously around. “The old world. Some still remember. Or claim to. Careful who you ask, boy.”
The words stuck with Clancy, more intoxicating than forbidden drink. He turned them over at night, staring at the ceiling of his cell-like quarters. The old world. What was it? A time before Dema? A place beyond the walls? Could it be both?
Then came another phrase, drifting to him in a hushed conversation overheard in the food hall: the outside.
He repeated it silently to himself. The outside. A concept so simple, and yet it struck him as revolutionary. If there was an outside, then Dema was not the whole. And if Dema was not the whole, then what authority did the bishops truly hold?
|-/
Every year, the Assembly of the Glorified was held in the center. It was both celebration and warning, spectacle and sermon. Citizens gathered by the thousands, filling the grey stone expanse before the looming structure of the Cathedral. From its high balconies, the bishops appeared, draped in their crimson robes.
The assembly was meant to remind the people of their blessed fortune. They were told that to be inside Dema was salvation, that to be under the bishops’ rule was to be glorified. To resist was to fall into chaos, into madness, into the formless void beyond the walls.
Clancy had attended every year since he could remember. But this year was different.
This year, he had been approached.
It happened in the weeks leading up to the assembly. A young woman named Rhea, whom Clancy had seen often in the mill but never spoken to, slipped a folded scrap of fabric into his hand as they passed in the corridor. Later, in the privacy of his quarters, he unrolled it to find a single phrase stitched in faint thread:
We plan to leave. Do you believe in the outside?
His heart thundered. He had read it a dozen times, scarcely able to believe his eyes. Leave. The word was electric. Could it be done?
He sought Rhea out cautiously, and in stolen moments they exchanged fragments of truth. She was not alone. There were others—eight at first, then twelve. Each had heard whispers of the old world, each had grown restless under the bishops’ gaze. They dreamed of escape, of finding the Banditos said to live beyond the walls, resisting Dema’s reach.
The plan was dangerous. Suicidal, perhaps. But Clancy felt the weight of years pressing on him, and the possibility of something more shimmered before him like a distant star.
They would act during the Assembly of the Glorified, when the city’s focus was turned upward toward the bishops’ ceremony. While the chants and proclamations thundered, they would slip into the night, following a map drawn from memory and rumor, toward a weak point in the walls.
Hope, fragile as it was, became their compass.
|-/
The night of the assembly came, and the city moved in orchestrated rhythm toward the square.
Clancy stood among his peers, eyes lifted as Keons and the other bishops appeared on the balcony. Their voices, amplified by hidden machines, rolled over the crowd in solemn proclamations. Words of glory, of submission, of eternal gratitude for the “protection” of Dema.
But Clancy’s mind was not on the speeches. His gaze flickered toward Rhea, standing several rows away. She met his eyes for the briefest moment, and that was enough.
When the chants began—thousands of voices rising in unison—Clancy slipped from the edge of the formation. His heart pounded in his throat, each step feeling like a drumbeat of rebellion.
By the time the assembly ended and the citizens were dismissed, twelve figures were already moving silently through the shadowed alleys of Dema, carrying nothing but stolen rations, fragments of rope, and the burning will to be free.
They would try.
They would run.
They would see if the outside was real.
|-/
The city of Dema at night was a different creature than in daylight.
By day, the streets were filled with the dull thrum of order—workers marching in files, overseers barking their mantras, the sound of production and compliance. But at night, silence ruled. Silence, and the constant watch of patrols.
The twelve rebels moved like shadows. Rhea led, her steps confident, her face half-lit by the sickly glow of the ever-burning lamps that lined the main avenues. They stayed in the narrow back streets, where the lamps did not reach, and where the scent of rust and rot clung to the air.
Clancy’s breath came fast, though he fought to steady it. His body felt alive in a way it never had before—every nerve sharp, every sound magnified. The scrape of a boot, the whisper of cloth, the distant clank of a patrol’s armor. Danger was everywhere, but so too was possibility.
For the first time, he was moving not where the bishops commanded, but where his own will guided.
|-/
They reached the first checkpoint: a fence of wire strung across the alley, low enough to crawl under. One by one, they slid beneath it, careful not to rattle the rusted strands. On the far side, they crouched together in the dark.
“Next is the drainage tunnel,” whispered Rhea. “We follow it for two kilometers, then we’re at the wall.”
Clancy nodded, though his throat was too tight to speak. The wall. He had seen it his whole life, stretching around Dema like the horizon itself. To imagine passing beyond it felt unreal, almost dreamlike.
They moved again, keeping low.
|-/
The drainage tunnel yawned before them, a black maw in the earth. The stench of stagnant water and rot billowed from it, but no one hesitated. One by one, they slipped inside, their footsteps echoing on the wet stone.
Clancy tried to keep track of the group, but the darkness swallowed them. He could only hear the splashes ahead, the faint rasp of breathing. His own heartbeat thundered in his ears.
Halfway through, disaster struck.
A shout echoed down the tunnel, followed by the flare of torchlight behind them. Patrol.
“Run!” Rhea hissed.
The tunnel exploded into chaos. The twelve surged forward, splashing through ankle-deep water, their movements no longer silent but frantic. Behind them, the torchlight grew brighter, and the clatter of boots rang against stone.
Clancy pushed himself faster, his lungs burning, his eyes straining for the faint glimmer of the tunnel’s exit ahead.
|-/
They burst out into the night air, stumbling into a marshy field. For a moment, the stars stretched above them, wide and infinite. Clancy gasped at the sight—the sky, so vast, so unbounded. He had never seen it like this, without the choking glow of the city lamps.
But there was no time to marvel. The patrol poured from the tunnel, their torches blazing.
“Scatter!” Rhea cried.
The group split in every direction. Clancy darted toward a line of dead trees, his legs carrying him faster than he thought possible. Shouts rang out. He heard screams—short, sharp, silenced too quickly.
He didn’t look back.
|-/
By dawn, they were fewer.
Clancy found Rhea and three others hiding in the hollow of an abandoned storage shed. Their faces were streaked with dirt, their eyes wild.
“Where are the rest?” he asked, though the answer was already in the silence.
Rhea shook her head. “Gone.”
The weight of it pressed on them all. Twelve had begun the journey. Half were already lost.
But they couldn’t turn back. To be caught now was certain death—or worse, a return to Dema under the bishops’ gaze.
“We go on,” Rhea said. Her voice was steady, but her hands trembled as she tightened the straps of her pack.
And so they did.
|-/
The wall loomed before them by the second night.
It rose higher than Clancy had ever imagined, a sheer expanse of black stone stretching into the sky. No words could capture its enormity. It wasn’t just a barrier; it was a monument to control.
“This is it,” Rhea whispered.
They crept along its base until they reached the place the rumors had spoken of: a section weakened by disrepair, where the stone had crumbled at the base and the iron reinforcements had rusted through.
It was still formidable. But it was possible.
Together, they dug at the loose stones, pried at the metal bars. Hours passed, their fingers raw, their bodies aching. Every sound felt like thunder in the night. Clancy expected at any moment to hear the shouts of patrols.
Finally, a gap yawned wide enough.
One by one, they squeezed through.
|-/
On the other side, the air felt different.
It was subtle—cooler, sharper, filled with scents he couldn’t name. Grass. Soil. Freedom.
Clancy’s chest tightened. They had done it. They were outside.
The group collapsed in the tall grass, breathless and stunned. Some laughed, half-mad with relief. Others wept quietly.
But Rhea stood, scanning the horizon. “We can’t stay. The Banditos must be out here. We find them.”
They set off into the night, hope flickering in their weary steps.
|-/
Hope died quickly.
The land beyond the wall was vast but empty. Fields stretched in every direction, broken only by skeletal trees and the ruins of structures long abandoned. No voices greeted them. No fires burned in the distance. No Banditos waited.
By the third day, food ran low. Their stolen rations were gone, and the wild land offered little in return. Clancy chewed bitter roots, his stomach gnawing itself hollow.
One of the rebels collapsed and did not rise again. Another vanished in the night—whether taken by patrols or consumed by despair, Clancy never learned.
At last, only he and Rhea remained.
|-/
They argued on the fourth night.
“We have to keep moving,” Rhea insisted. “The Banditos are out there somewhere. We just haven’t found them yet.”
Clancy shook his head. “What if they’re not? What if the stories were just that—stories?”
Rhea’s eyes blazed. “Then we make something of our own. Better than Dema. Don’t you want that?”
“I do,” Clancy whispered. “But wanting doesn’t make it real.”
The words hung heavy in the air.
By morning, Rhea was gone.
Clancy searched, but found nothing—no footprints, no sign of struggle. She had simply vanished into the wilderness.
He cried.
And so he was alone.
|-/
Alone.
The vastness that had once thrilled him now crushed him. The sky was too big, the silence too deep. The grass whispered like voices he could not understand.
Clancy wandered aimlessly, his body weakening, his mind fraying. He called out sometimes, hoping Rhea would answer, or that the Banditos would emerge from the shadows. But only the wind replied.
On the sixth day, he collapsed in the grass, unable to go farther. His lips cracked, his vision blurred. For the first time, he thought of Dema not as a prison, but as a place of water, of food, of shelter.
It was then that he heard them.
The patrol.
|-/
Torches flared against the dark. The sound of boots pounded the earth.
Clancy tried to rise, but his limbs betrayed him. He could only watch as the red-robed figures approached, their faces masked, their weapons gleaming.
Keons himself stepped forward, his smile sharp as ever.
“Clancy,” he said, as if greeting an old friend. “You always were curious. And curiosity always brings one home.”
Strong hands seized him. Chains closed around his wrists.
The outside faded behind him.
Dema awaited.
|-/
The return to Dema was worse than Clancy had imagined.
He had thought the walls would loom, terrible and oppressive, when he saw them again. And they did. But what broke him was not the stone. It was the way the gates opened for him—not as for a prisoner forced inside, but as if he had never left.
The city swallowed him whole.
Keons oversaw his return personally. Clancy was dragged through the Cathedral’s lower halls, where the air reeked of smoke and iron. Torches lined the walls, their flames quivering in the draft. Every step echoed, heavy with finality.
At last they stopped in a chamber lit by a single lamp. A chair sat in the center, its arms and legs bound with straps of leather.
“Sit,” Keons ordered.
Clancy obeyed, too weak to resist. The straps bit into his wrists and ankles as guards fastened them tight.
Keons stood before him, hands clasped behind his back. His eyes glinted like shards of glass.
“You saw what lies beyond,” he said softly. “And what did you find?”
Clancy said nothing. His throat was parched, his tongue swollen. But silence was its own answer.
“Emptiness,” Keons continued. “No salvation. No Banditos. No world worth clinging to. Only ruin. You see now why we protect you?”
Clancy closed his eyes. He did not want to hear.
But Keons leaned close, his voice a whisper in Clancy’s ear.
“You belong to Dema. And Dema does not forgive.”
The punishment was not swift. It was slow, methodical. Keons understood that pain alone could harden a man, but despair could unmake him. They left Clancy in the chair for hours, days perhaps, feeding him scraps, allowing sleep only in fragments. His body screamed for rest, his mind blurred at the edges.
And then came the “sessions.”
Keons questioned him endlessly: who else had fled, where they had gone, what they had said. Clancy answered what he could, but much was already lost. Names faded, faces blurred. Even Rhea’s voice grew faint in his memory, like a dream slipping away.
When Keons was finished, Clancy was sent back to the city.
|-/
The years that followed were a blur of monotony.
Clancy returned to his work in the mill, though now under stricter surveillance. The overseers watched him closely, their eyes sharp whenever he faltered. The other workers avoided him, as if his rebellion were a disease that might spread by proximity.
At night, in his narrow quarters, he dreamed of the outside. He dreamed of grass whispering in the wind, of stars stretching without end. He woke with tears on his cheeks, his chest aching with a longing he could not extinguish.
Sometimes, he thought he heard Rhea’s voice. In the hiss of the looms, in the murmur of the crowd at assembly. But when he turned, there was no one. Whether she had perished or survived somewhere beyond, he would never know.
|-/
Nine years.
The number weighed on him like an iron chain.
He marked the passage of time in subtle ways: the deepening of the lines on his face, the grey creeping into his hair, the ache in his shoulders from endless labor.
Keons visited him often—not always with words, but with presence. A glance across the square, a lingering gaze in the learning hall. It was enough to remind Clancy that he was never free, not even in thought.
Yet, beneath the crushing weight of routine, something endured. A spark, faint but stubborn.
He had seen the outside.
Yes, it was empty. Yes, it had offered no Banditos, no salvation. But it was real. Vast, untamed, unbounded. The bishops could not erase that knowledge from him.
And in that knowledge lay danger—for them, and perhaps one day, a sliver of hope for him.
|-/
On the ninth anniversary of his failed escape, Clancy stood once more in the central square, watching as the bishops proclaimed the glory of Dema.
The crowd chanted, their voices rising in practiced unison. The sound was deafening, a wall of obedience.
Clancy’s lips moved with the rest, but his heart was elsewhere. He pictured the gap in the wall, the stars above the fields, the silence of the night beyond. He remembered the cool air filling his lungs, so different from the stifling breath of Dema.
He remembered, and he endured.
Because as long as memory survived, so too did the possibility that one day—whether in his lifetime or another’s—someone would escape, and not return.
|-/
The bells tolled twelve sharp notes, striking the air with the clarity of iron.
Clancy lowered his gaze with the rest, his face unreadable. But inside, his thoughts whispered against the silence, a secret rhythm only he could hear.
The old world. The outside.
Not forgotten.
Not forgiven.
Not gone.