Chapter 1

I mined in a medieval pit, lived on moldy black bread, with whip scars across my back and iron chains around my ankles. The lord treated us like livestock.

I thought that was simply how the world worked—until I forced open a hidden passage and crawled into a white corridor that should not have existed: cold fluorescent lights, metal doors, surveillance cameras, as if the skin of the age had been ripped away in an instant.

That was when I understood: the Middle Ages were only a set, everyone around me was acting, and I was nothing more than a toy for the amusement of the rich.

They cloned the real-life rivals they could never defeat, threw them into different “scenarios,” and tortured them for pleasure.

They thought they could keep me in the dark forever.

What they don’t know is that I’m ready to get out—and tear this entire human-toy industry out by the roots.

————

I’m Ryan.

In the lord’s ledger, I’m probably nothing more than a number—or a single short line: male, fit for labor, assigned to the mine.

My name is just what people in the shacks happened to call me. They said it often enough that it became mine. As for where I came from, who gave birth to me—those things I can’t remember, and no one will tell me.

People here care about only two things: whether today’s stone quota is met, and whether they’ll still be able to stand tomorrow.

I live in the lowest stretch of the mining camp, the shack quarter.

The shacks are slapped together from damp planks and mud. The roofs leak. The ground never dries.

At dawn, the bell rings once and everyone has to crawl up and line up. At night, it rings again and the line is driven back behind the fence.

I know nothing about the outside. Some say if you head north for days you’ll reach a city—stone roads, taverns, people singing. None of that has anything to do with me.

My world is this small: the quarry, the mine tunnels, the cart track, the fence, the shacks. Sometimes I can see the roofline of the lord’s manor, tiles glaring in the sun, but we can’t get close. Real soldiers stand guard there—armor, crossbows, and a gallows frame that can hoist a man up at any time.

I should be like everyone else—numb, empty, not thinking. Then the days would pass.

But I can’t go fully numb, because I noticed early on that something here is wrong.

For example, I clearly remember counting how many carts of stone I pushed before I lay down at night—then I wake up the next morning and the number is gone, wiped clean from my mind. Or the time I cracked a fingernail in the tunnel, pain keeping me awake all night—two days later the nail looked perfect again, no bruise, no split, like it never happened. Worst of all, sometimes I wake up exhausted, like I ran a long way, but I can’t remember anything at all.

I don’t dare say any of it out loud. Anyone suspected of “having something wrong in the head” ends up worse.

The overseers love making examples of those people: tie them to a post, beat them, then force them to say, I was wrong. I made it up. If they can’t say it, they get beaten again.

So I had to find my own way to leave myself a mark.

I made a rule for myself: whenever I’m about to do something out of line—talk back, resist, go somewhere I shouldn’t—I first take a small knife and lightly cut myself under my left ribs.

Not deep. Just enough blood. Just enough pain.

Not for bravery. Not for spite.

For proof.

If I wake up and can feel the wound, I know I truly made a decision—and it wasn’t a dream.

The knife is something I ground out of a broken strip of iron, thin as a sliver. I keep it hidden under the insole of my shoe. No one ever checks there.

Every time I use it, I wipe the blood clean and slip it back, like nothing happened.

This morning, when the bell rang, I sat up on my straw mat. The first thing I did wasn’t rush to line up for porridge.

I slid a hand inside my shirt and felt beneath my ribs.

My fingertips brushed over scabbed skin.

My heart jumped. I pulled my collar open, leaning into the faint light seeping through the door crack—and froze.

There were three scars.

Three shallow, almost parallel cuts, healed over, their edges pale—like the same spot had been sliced again and again.

They weren’t fresh. And they weren’t from the same time, either. The spacing was different. The depth was different.

I stared at them for a long time, until my breathing slowed.

I remember cutting myself only once.

That was a long time ago. I’d snapped, muttered that the quota was too heavy, and got lashed for it. Back in the shack, I followed my rule—one cut, to remind myself not to be stupid again. I remember it clearly: where it hurt, the metallic taste of blood, even the tremor in my fingers as I pressed cloth to the wound.

But now there were three.

Who made the other two? When? Why can’t I remember any of it?

I fastened my shirt and forced myself to stand and go line up.

The line was long. The air reeked of damp and sweat. Men were packed together like penned livestock.

The overseer stood on the wooden platform calling names and handing out tools.

There were never enough iron picks and crowbars. If you got a broken one, you didn’t complain. You used it anyway, ground your palms raw, then wrapped them and kept going.

I was assigned to the quarry to push carts.

Late in the morning, a group arrived from the lord’s side—women slaves, thin chains on their wrists and ankles, driven forward with sticks. They were there for the menial work: hauling water, gathering gravel, scraping slag off blades. Their clothes were even thinner than ours. Their hair hung in snarls over their faces. As they walked, the rings at their ankles clinked with every step.

One woman staggered while carrying a bucket. It hit the ground, water splashing out and wetting a guard’s boot.

The guard had a vicious temper. He raised his stick and struck her, hard across the back.

Everyone around lowered their heads and kept working. No one dared make a sound. We’d seen too much of this. Speaking up only meant getting hit yourself.

But for some reason, my feet felt nailed to the earth. My hands on the cart handle stopped.

I didn’t have time to follow my rule and cut myself first.

I went straight over, grabbed the stick, and stopped it in midair.

The guard blinked, then his face twisted with rage. He swung his other fist at me. I turned my head just enough; the punch grazed my cheekbone, pain buzzing through my skull.

The second punch was heavier, landing square on my nose. My vision flashed black. Hot blood poured instantly.

“You got a death wish?” he snarled.

I didn’t let go. I kept my voice low. “She can’t work. And you can’t deliver the quota. You break her, you answer for it.”

He didn’t care. What mattered to him was face. He yanked at the stick; when it wouldn’t come free, he drove his knee into my gut. My stomach heaved and I almost dropped to one knee—but I still held on.

The overseer had already noticed. He didn’t hurry. He walked over at a measured pace, like he was waiting for the show to hit its best part.

“Ryan,” the overseer called. “What are you doing?”

I looked up at him. Blood ran from my nose to my lips, salty and bitter. I forced my voice steady. “She fell. No one’s moving the water. Today’s load will be short.”

The overseer stared at me like I was a dog that had suddenly learned to bite. He didn’t explode. He smiled.

“Pretty thoughtful,” he said.

He lifted a hand and gave a small signal.

A hulking man behind him swung a club from my rear side toward my head.

I couldn’t dodge.

The impact was dull, like a whole stone block smashing into my skull.

My ears rang. The world tipped sideways. Then my forehead slammed into the edge of a rock. Red flooded my sight, a hot stream running from my temple.

My grip loosened. My body went down.

Before I hit the ground, I heard the overseer’s voice as if from underwater: “Drag him back. Don’t kill him. He’s working again tomorrow.”

Hands grabbed my shoulder and hauled me out of the mud.

I tried to fight, but my limbs felt packed with lead. I couldn’t get any strength into them.

They dragged me along, my face scraping the earth. Mud and blood mixed and smeared into the corner of my mouth.

Someone at the roadside glanced over, then quickly lowered their head.

They dragged me into a small hut near the tool shed.

It was dark inside, stinking of herbs and mildew. Someone dumped me on the floor. The door shut. The noise outside receded, muffled.

I lay there, my vision pulsing between bright and dim, as if water sloshed across my eyes. The ringing in my ears didn’t stop. My mind felt like someone had knocked a hollow into it.

And in that half-conscious fog, something that wasn’t mine forced its way in.

Not a story whispered into my ear. Not imagination.

More like a sequence of images shoved straight into my head—crystal clear, and completely wrong for the world I knew.

A blinding white room.

I saw myself lying on a chair that was cold to the touch.

It looked like a chair, but also like a device—hard edges, icy metal. My wrists were locked down tight in bands like iron, but smoother than any shackle I’d ever seen. A strap cinched my chest, pressing so hard my breathing was shallow.

Someone stood beside me in spotless clothing, white as the light.

I couldn’t see his face—only that he wore something over his hands, and his movements were steady.

In his hand was a transparent tube.

Inside it, a liquid clear as water. At the end, a thinner needle.

The needle moved toward the back of my neck.

I tried to move. Tried to twist away.

I couldn’t.

My head was fixed in place. I couldn’t even turn it an inch. I could only watch as the needle pierced my skin. Then the liquid was pushed in, coolness spreading inward from my neck.

My awareness blurred. My memories began to smear and fade.

I thought of the three scars under my ribs. I still couldn’t remember when I cut them—but I suddenly connected things that had never fit.

My head injury had shaken loose something I’d lost.

That white room. The chair. The clear tube.

Not a hallucination. Not madness.

It looked like a procedure.

If every time I did something out of line, I got dragged to that place, strapped down, injected with something, then woke up with the event wiped clean—

Then those three scars meant I’d made up my mind at least three times, stepped outside the rules at least three times, been taken to that place at least three times to be “cleared out”—

And then tossed back into the mine to keep being Ryan, the Ryan who remembered nothing.

The thought made cold crawl up my spine, though I couldn’t have said why.

Because I still didn’t know where that white room was. And I didn’t know who could take me from the mine, then put me back.

I knew only one thing: what I’d forgotten wasn’t just a few words, a few beatings.

What tightened in my chest even more was this—

If I truly had been “processed,” why did no one in the camp ever mention it? If I’d resisted before, caused trouble before, been dragged away before, there would be traces. Someone would remember. But they acted like nothing ever happened. The next day they pushed carts, lined up, and treated me like the same Ryan as always.

Did they forget too? Or were they forbidden to speak of it? Or did they simply not care—because in a place like this, someone vanishing and reappearing was normal?

The memories in my head broke into fragments, thinner and thinner. I clawed at them for detail—and the harder I tried, the less I could hold.

Then I sucked in a sudden breath, like being hauled out of water.

I opened my eyes.

Blackened wooden beams overhead. The stink of mildew and herbs. A tiny window leaking a strip of yellow light—late afternoon.

I pushed myself up and touched my temple. My fingertips came away sticky with blood.

Then I slid my hand under my shirt again, to the spot beneath my ribs.

The three scars were still there.

Three silent pieces of testimony, telling me: this wasn’t the first time I tried to break out of the circle.

I sat there for a long time, until footsteps sounded outside. The door opened. Someone tossed a bowl of thin porridge inside, voice flat as if feeding livestock.

“If you can move, get back to the shacks. Work as usual tomorrow. Don’t play dead.”

I caught the bowl and nodded, forcing out a “Yes.”

The bowl trembled slightly in my hands.

Not fear.

I was pressing down the conclusion I’d just reached—

As long as I step out of line, as long as I resist, I’ll be taken to that white room, injected, and I’ll forget again—as if none of it ever happened.

And the people in this camp—whether they’ve forgotten too or are pretending—can’t be trusted completely.

What I need now is to look as “normal” as possible, find out where that white room is, and learn what all of this really is.

I woke up.

But I can’t let them know.