(Karan's point of view)
Narak was not just a prison. It was a place everyone in the empire feared. Criminals, traitors and even fallen soldiers were sent here. People said that once you enter Narak, you never return as the same person.
I arrived with a group of new prisoners. We were pushed out of the transport ship into a huge open yard. High metal walls rose around us in a circle. In the centre stood a tall black tower. It looked like it was made from a single piece of dark stone and it swallowed the light around it.
A senior officer stood on a raised platform and spoke to us through a loudspeaker. He said we were no longer people, only numbers. He said Narak did not keep prisoners, it kept tools. Tools had to work. Broken tools were thrown away. While he spoke, a guard dragged one man out of our group because he had tried to run earlier. They made him kneel.
Without warning, a guard in a black tunic raised a metal baton. A flash of blue light hit the man. He screamed once and fell, smoke rising from his back. No one rushed to help him. Two machines simply rolled forward, picked up his body and carried it away. The officer told us calmly that this was what happened to tools that disobeyed.
My legs shook. No one around me even cried. Most men looked down at the ground, their jaws tight. I understood that here even fear had to be silent.
After the speech, they divided us. They pushed us through narrow corridors into the mess hall for our first meal.
The mess was a long hall filled with metal tables fixed to the floor. Everything was grey—walls, floor, trays, even the steam from the big cooking pots. Guards walked on platforms above us, watching like vultures.
We stood in a line. When my turn came, the caterer dropped a slimy grey paste on my plate. He also filled a metal cup with cloudy water. It looked like someone had washed dirty hands in it.
My stomach growled. Without thinking, I spoke.
"Is there anything else to eat? Maybe some vegetable?" I asked in a soft voice.
The caterer did not answer. He just stared at me for a moment. Then he looked over my head, as if checking who was behind me. After that, he walked into the back and returned with a spoon full of real vegetable curry. It smelled so good that my mouth filled with water.
For one second I thought he was actually going to help me.
But the spoon never reached my plate.
The boiling curry flew straight into my face.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" I screamed, It burned my cheek, my ear and part of my neck. I screamed and dropped the tray. The hall exploded with ugly laughter. Some men banged their fists on the tables and whistled, enjoying my pain.
I rubbed my face wildly, but the heat would not go away easily. Tears mixed with the curry and ran down my chin. When I could finally see again, I went back to the counter, holding my empty tray with shaking hands.
The caterer's face was blank. He lifted his eyes only to point at a sign above him.
"ONE SERVING PER PRISONER. COMPLAINTS = PUNISHMENT."
I understood. Here, even asking for a better meal was a crime.
I picked up what little was left on the floor and sat at the end of a table. A thin, older prisoner sat across from me. He did not look at me directly, but he spoke in a low voice.
"First lesson," he said. "Don't talk to the staff unless they talk to you. Second, don't show weakness. They like that too much. Third, don't get in the way when the strong ones eat. And last, never ask too many questions. People who know too much vanish."
He finished his food quickly and left without another word.
In the afternoon after breakfast, we were taken to work.
They marched us into a transport ship and flew us to a nearby resource moon. Through a small window I saw mountains of shining crystals. These were urja patthar, the energy stones that powered the empire's machines and ships.
When we stepped out, the air was thin and sharp. Guards threw heavy reinforced tools at us. The tools were almost as big as me. Our job was simple and cruel. We had to strike the crystal walls, break off chunks of urja patthar and load them into moving carts.
I tried to lift my tool. My arms shook. The tool slipped and hit the ground with a loud thud.
Before I could try again, I felt a burning line on my back. I screamed and fell forward. I turned and saw not a guard but a prisoner—a man with many scars on his arms holding a whip made from stolen wires.
"Move faster," he hissed. "If you slow us down, we all lose food."
He hit me again for good measure and walked away, laughing with his friends. I realised that here, prisoners were also used to control other prisoners. It was not just the guards we had to fear.
The work was endless. By the time the siren told us to stop, my hands were covered with blisters. My lungs burned from the crystal dust. I watched the carts full of urja patthar roll into ships with the imperial symbol on them. Our pain was powering the empire.
In the evening we returned to the mess hall. I stood in line again. This time, my plate got two dry rotis and a thin orange curry. I was almost happy to see something that looked like real food.
But before I could sit, a big shadow fell over my tray.
A huge hand grabbed my plate. I looked up.
The man in front of me was like a mountain. He had yellow hair tied back, a thick beard and arms full of muscle. Black eyes stared at me with boredom, as if I was not a person but an insect. Behind him stood three other prisoners, clearly his followers.
"Mine," he said simply, and took my food. Then he reached out and took the plates of two more prisoners nearby. None of them protested. The whole hall pretended not to see anything.
I opened my mouth, but the scar-armed man from the mine stepped close and whispered in my ear.
"That is the boss of the biggest gang. His name is Bharan. If you argue, you die. If you complain, you die slower. Choose."
My throat went dry. I said nothing. Bharan walked away with our food stacked in his hands. His gang laughed as they followed him.
That night, my stomach was empty again.
Days turned into weeks. I started to learn how Narak really worked.
The prison was ruled by gangs. Each gang had a leader. Bharan's gang was the worst. They did not protect weak prisoners. They used them like toys.
Soon, they chose me as one of their toys.
They began to pick on me every day. In the mess hall, one of them would trip me so that my food fell. If I tried to pick it up, another would step on it with his boot. They would laugh and say, "Look, the little prince is eating from the floor."
During exercise time, when other prisoners trained to stay strong, Bharan's gang used me as their plaything. They made me hang from a bar until my arms gave up. They made me lie under a metal bar while they pretended to drop it on my chest. Sometimes they would use my small body as extra weight while doing push-ups.
I thought of running to another gang. But no other leader wanted trouble with Bharan. Anyone who took me in would become his enemy. So I stayed, like a prisoner inside a prison.
The rules I had heard at the start kept repeating in my head: stay quiet, don't ask, don't be in the way when the strong are hungry. But in Narak, even if you follow all the rules, suffering finds you.
Around us, rumours started to spread. Prisoners whispered during work and in the toilets, when the cameras could not hear clearly. They said the palace was searching for traitors. Some believed nothing. Some laughed. I tried not to listen. These were matters of the high world. I was too busy trying not to starve.
One day, something strange happened.
Bharan's gang returned from a secret meeting with a guard. They smelled of clean air, as if they had been in another part of the prison. One of them shoved a crate into my hands.
"Carry this to the storage room by the kitchens," he ordered. "If anyone asks, say a guard told you to."
The crate was heavy and locked. I struggled with it all the way through the corridor. Two soldiers at the kitchen door scanned my number and the crate's code. Then they let me pass. I left it where a cook told me and hurried back, afraid to be beaten for being slow.
I did not know then that someone was watching those codes very closely.
A few days later, the air in the mess hall changed.
When I entered for breakfast, people went quiet one by one. The usual low talk stopped. Men bent over their plates, pretending to be busy. No one looked at me. Bharan and his gang were not at their usual table. Their bench was empty.
I went to a boy I sometimes worked with at the mine.
"Where is Bharan? Where are the others?" I asked.
The boy flinched as if I had hit him. He stood up quickly and moved to another table, even though there was no free space. He preferred to stand while eating than sit next to me.
My plate that morning had only the old slimy paste and cloudy water again. The caterer's face was hard. He did not even pretend I was invisible now. It felt like I was carrying a disease no one wanted to catch.
I finished my tasteless food and walked with the others towards the area where the shuttle waited to take us to the mine.
A heavy hand landed on my shoulder.
I turned. A guard in a black military tunic stood behind me. His eyes were hidden behind a dark visor.
"Prisoner K-" he read my number, "you are summoned."
The crowd parted around us. No one said a word. No one wished me luck. In Narak, being summoned to the main tower (the same tower I was led to when I arrived here for the first time) meant your story was about to change—or end.
The guard did not take me to the shuttle. Instead, he led me through clean, quiet corridors I had never seen before. The floor was smooth under my feet. There was no shouting here, no smell of sweat or metal. Only cold air and the distant hum of hidden machines.
Finally, we reached a door in the base of the tower. It slid open with a soft sound. Inside was a small room.
There was a single table and two chairs. They tied me to one chair with metal straps around my wrists and ankles. Then the guard left. The door closed. I was alone.
Time passed slowly. My heart beat loud in the silence. I tasted fear like iron in my mouth.
At last, the door opened again.
A woman walked in. She wore a black and silver uniform, perfect and sharp. Her hair was pale, her eyes cold and hard. I knew her face from another life.
"Silviya," I whispered.
Her hand moved faster than my thought. She slapped me across the face so hard that the chair rocked.
"Only my lord may speak my name," she said in a voice that was like ice. Then she kicked my jaw. Pain flashed and my vision blurred.
When I woke properly, I felt something strange in my mouth. Thin threads were wrapped around the base of my teeth and gums. The ends of the threads went up through a small pulley on the ceiling and down to Silviya's hand.
She stood calmly, holding the strings like a puppeteer.
"Her Highness drank from a cup," Silviya said. "Moments later, she collapsed. Poison was in her blood. The codes show that a crate passed through the royal supply line. And a similar crate was carried by a prisoner from Narak. That prisoner was you."
My body turned to ice.
"I didn't do anything," I tried to say, but the threads cut into my gums when my jaw moved. The words came out thick and wet.
Silviya's eyes did not soften.
"You will tell me who ordered you," she said. "Who gave you the crate? Who told you what it carried? Who wants Her Highness dead?"
"I don't know," I tried to answer. "They just told me to carry—"
She pulled the threads.
Pain exploded in my mouth. It felt like my teeth were being ripped out one by one. Blood filled my gums and spilled over my tongue. I tried to scream, but the sound came out as a gurgle.
"Lies," she said calmly. "Every lie will cost you another piece of your mouth."
"Stop it, I beg you!" I tried to shout, but it sounded like broken words.
She pulled again.
The pain was worse than any whip, worse than the burns, worse than hunger. My whole body shook. Tears ran down my face without my permission.
In that storm of hurt, pieces of memory floated up.
I remembered the crate. I remembered Bharan's gang watching me as I carried it past the guards. I remembered their smiles when I came back alive. I remembered another place long ago, where a soft voice had once asked me to taste a drink before serving it. Her Highness's face flashed in my mind like a ghost.
Maybe I was only a small part of a bigger plan. Maybe someone had used me and thrown me away. But none of that mattered to Silviya.
She stepped closer until her cold eyes filled my whole world.
"I do not care if you are guilty or a fool," she said. "Someone tried to kill Her Highness. I will break every tooth in your mouth until you give me a name."
She pulled the threads again.
As the torture dragged on, I understood one thing clearly: Narak was not only a place to break bodies in the mines. It was a place to break secrets out of people. And for me, this was only the beginning.