Khalid kicked, screamed, thrashed. None of it mattered. Hands reached for him, fingers slipping just out of reach — then darkness. After that, nothing. Vision being reduced to just blurs.

  When he woke, the walls leaned in. Rough stone blocks pressed cold and damp beneath his fingertips. Thin cracks let in slivers of daylight, not enough to chase the shadows from the corners. The floor was packed mud bricks, uneven and crumbly; every shift of weight stirred dust into the stale air.

  Iron bars jutted from the walls, pinning his arms and ankles. Heavy chains bit into his skin with every twitch, clinking with a relentless warning: he was trapped. In one corner, a thick wooden post bore deep gouges, scars from struggles long past. His chains were fastened to it, tightening the cage around him.

  His brother. Where was Jaleel?

  The last time he had seen him, Jaleel had looked like an animal. Eyes burning with rage, hands stained with blood. A hunger to destroy. That wasn’t his brother. That wasn’t Jaleel. Was it?

  The question hovered in the damp air, unanswered, gnawing. Khalid forced it aside. Food. Water. Survival. Those came first.

  He leaned as far as the chains allowed, peering into the hallway. Beyond the bars, more cells. Slumped bodies. Silent witnesses to broken lives. This was what had become of his home. Of his people. Enslaved.

  A Crusader entered, sword and shield in hand, distributing rations. Khalid swallowed his grief as a bowl was shoved toward him. Gray gruel, watery and flecked with barley and root. It smelled sour, faintly metallic. He lifted it to his lips. Bitter. Grainy. Sliding down with nothing to follow it.

  A cracked cup of water sat beside it. He drank slowly, savoring the chill, feeling the iron against his wrists, the grit of mud under his palms.

  He stared at the bowl, half tempted to throw it. Then a voice came from another cell.

  “Did you just wake?”

  Low, hoarse, the voice continued, “I don’t know how long it’s been… but we’re not in Acre anymore. They keep saying a word — Iss… Iss…”

  The speaker scraped weakly at the floor. “That might be where we are. And they keep saying the Mediterranean.”

  Another scrape. “I don’t know why I’m telling you. Like the others, you’ll probably pass out from hunger soon enough.”

  Khalid couldn’t answer. His voice was gone. He dragged his chains once, then lay back.

  “I think they brought us in waves,” the voice continued. “So we couldn’t riot. Not that we’re strong enough anyway. I was awake when they dragged us down here. The rest of you were already broken.”

  A bitter sneer crept into the voice. “If I’m right, we’ll never smile again. The Mediterranean is the Nasara’s home.”

  …

  Jaleel still carried the wrath. Not a flare, not a passing heat—but a constant, thick, pulsing fire, a hunger that had replaced everything else. They marched for days, tied together in a line. The sun scorched their backs; their bare soles tore against stones and sand. Every step drew blood. Every step whispered of infection, of death waiting patiently for the weak.

  His own blood had dried across his shoulders, crusted with dust and sweat. Itched, stiffened, a permanent reminder of the beatings and the deaths he had seen. The other slaves whimpered, moaned, staggered. Guards barked orders, cracked whips. Their food was slop fit for animals; their water tasted of rot and iron. None of it mattered.

  Revenge mattered. Blood mattered. The sight of the Nasara kneeling, screaming, bleeding—that mattered. The sight of every man, woman, and child the Nasara bore at his feet in a bloody mess mattered. Every step forward was measured against that vision. Every lash, every groan, fed the furnace inside him. He did not struggle against the ropes. He did not plead. He waited.

  At night, when the guards’ shouts grew slurred and half their eyes closed, he worked the rope with his teeth. The rough hemp shredded his gums. Blood mixed with saliva. Pain scorched through him, but he didn’t care. Each night, he gnawed at it. Each night, a little more gave way. Each night, he imagined the Crusaders’ skulls cracking under his hands, their blood watering the earth they had stolen from him.

  Khalid. The name throbbed in his skull. After Ayyadieh, the world had blurred—fists, boots, screams—but not that. Not Samira’s broken body on the stones of Acre. Not the red haze that had settled in his vision, permanent as shadow. That memory alone had hardened him. It had sharpened him. He would carve his vengeance into the world. Every Christian soldier who had marched with them, every hand that struck him, would pay.

  The march had no rhythm. Forward, forward, forward. Dust choked the air. His wrists burned where the rope cut deep lines into his flesh. Around him, men stumbled, were dragged upright, stumbled again. The column stretched ahead and behind like something wounded, pitiful, already half dead. He didn’t count guards. He didn’t calculate gaps. He waited and watched.

  Hours later—or was it days?—a wagon groaned, its axle seizing with a shriek. Guards swore, ran to wrench it loose. The column bunched. Chains rattled. Men were shoved together, cries erupting from the weak.

  Jaleel lowered his head. He tasted blood and grit in his mouth. The ropes pressed against his wrists, rubbing raw, biting into bone. He bit down hard. His teeth tore into the hemp. Pain flared. The fibers gave a little, then held. He bit again. A low groan came from him, half frustration, half ecstasy.

  He imagined them all, the Crusaders: their smug faces, the leering, the cruelty. And he pictured the fires he would set in their homes, the bodies piled in the streets. They had done this. He would repay it tenfold.

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  Another tug. The rope frayed. A tiny snap. Heart hammering, he shifted his weight, ignored the burning in his gums and wrists. A guard coughed nearby. He froze. Breath held. One hand pressed the rope tighter; the other dug into the earth for leverage. Seconds passed. The cough ended.

  He bit, pulled, twisted. The rope finally split. He freed one hand, then the other, and at last dropped the bindings entirely. Chains clinked as he rose slowly, measuring, waiting. The line still trembled behind him. One misstep—one sound—and death would come like a hammer.

  He bolted. Pain screamed in his legs, cuts and bruises forgotten in the surge of fury. Through thorn and brush, he crashed, lungs burning, heart pounding. Every snap of a branch, every rustle made him flinch. Blood from his raw feet and wrists mingled with the earth beneath him.

  He did not stop. He could not. Distance was life, and revenge demanded he survive. Khalid, Samira, the ruined streets of Acre—they were behind him, but the wrath inside him surged forward, stronger than fear. Each stride was a promise: the Nasara would pay. Every village, every patrol, every soldier who had touched them, he would find them. He would make them bleed. And when it was done, the fire would not be quenched.

  Not yet. Not until the Mediterranean itself ran red with the vengeance he carried.

  …

  How many days he ran, he couldn’t say. The sun rose and fell in cruel cycles, burning his back, then vanishing into bitter nights that left him shivering and raw. His legs ached with every step, joints screaming, soles torn and bloody. Rocks cut through sandals, then bare flesh. Thorn and bramble clawed at his arms and face, drawing more blood. He never looked back.

  The wind carried the tang of salt from the sea, a cruel reminder of the coast he’d left behind — of the fate he could not prevent. Each shadow in the forest made him flinch. Every distant bird call set his nerves on edge. If he were caught, if they found him, he would never return to Khalid.

  Night fell like a shroud. His breaths came in ragged gasps, chest heaving. Limbs ready to collapse beneath him, he stumbled over roots and rocks, barely noticing the cold dew soaking his clothes. Then, a dark shape rose ahead, silhouetted against the moonlight.

  A fortress. Blackened by fire and time. Its gate hung open like a maw, the courtyard littered with broken carts and old bones. Torches flickered within, casting twisted shadows across the walls. Voices drifted on the wind, rough and careless, but unmistakable. Alive.

  Bandits. Twenty or more.

  He waited in the shadows until he heard them speak.

  “The haul was good today, boss. Those Nasara didn’t know what hit them.”

  Muslims.

  Relief flickered through him. He stepped forward.

  They sat around a fire, meat hissing over the flames. Coins and silk lay scattered at their feet. A pouch of fine white powder gleamed in one man’s hand.

  “Are you soldiers?” Jaleel asked.

  Laughter answered him.

  “A starving boy playing hero?” a scarred man said. “Get lost. This isn’t a place for children.”

  Jaleel stepped closer.

  “Are. You. Soldiers.”

  He showed them his wounds. The fire in his eyes. The hate. Hate that should take a lifetime to grow, yet here it was, forged in seventeen years.

  The man studied him, then sneered. “No. We’re bandits. We kill Nasara for coin.”

  Jaleel’s heart hammered.

  “I’ll work. I’ll fight. Anything. Let me join.”

  The man looked him over. “If you can’t survive, we leave you to die.”

  “Understood.”

  “It’s Daghir,” the man said. “Just Daghir.”

  …

  It had been days since Khalid last heard the scraping of another slave. Time was impossible to measure in this dungeon. He was lucky if a rat squeaked, just to prove something still lived. The stench was thick enough to see, a mist of rot and filth hanging in the air. Even the Crusaders recoiled from it. This war was inhuman. These conditions were inhuman.

  Then: a jolt. Rustle of keys. It was time to go. Harsh voices barked a single word over and over as the doors unlocked.

  “Up. Up.”

  Khalid had learned a new word in their language.

  When it was his turn, the guard paused, surprised—almost offended—that Khalid obeyed.

  He received a lash for it.

  “Dirty Saracen. You think you have the right to learn our language?”

  Another lash. This time he didn’t understand why. He had followed the order perfectly. Maybe “up” was an insult. He would listen more carefully next time.

  Pain was inevitable now. The blows barely registered. His dark hair hung in limp strands over hollow cheeks. Jaleel had taken forty-four. He could endure three.

  He dissociated. The only way to survive. He fixed his mind on anything but the present: cracked bricks, damp stone, the stench of waste.

  Then light struck him.

  Sunlight.

  Before he could react, he was hauled forward with a mass of other Muslims, dragged by chains and uncaring hands. His eyes burned. White exploded behind his lids. Half-blind, he staggered. Men cried out, coughed, vomited. Some collapsed as their legs forgot how to stand.

  The air was different here. Wet. Sharp. Salty.

  The sea.

  A cold wind rolled in, carrying tar, fish, and rotting wood. Khalid turned his head enough to see masts rising like a forest of spears beyond the yard. Ships. So many ships.

  A sound tore out of him, raw and broken.

  The sea — the three of them had loved it. Samira had called it a promise once. One day, she had said, they would stand on its edge together, speaking of dreams of crossing it. Not like this. Never like this.

  “Samira—” His voice cracked. “Samira, no, what have I—”

  A lash cracked across his back. Then another.

  He barely noticed the shouting around him, only the anger. Guards barked orders, herding captives like animals: shackled to beams, roped into lines, penned behind rough rails. The ground was slick with old filth and blood. Flies swarmed.

  The crying didn’t stop. It multiplied.

  Another lash. Another.

  Khalid dropped to his knees, half-blind, still seeing Samira sprawled on the stones of Acre, broken and red. The image replayed louder than the waves, louder than the guards.

  Eight. Eight lashes. He barely felt them.

  This was the sea. This was how he would cross it.

  And whatever waited on the other side, he knew it would not be mercy.

  …

  At least, for once, Khalid had a pen to sit in — even if rope bit into his wrists and a noose brushed his throat whenever he shifted. The ground beneath him was damp, trampled into a foul paste of mud and blood and straw. Every movement dragged against raw skin. Even breathing felt like something he had to earn.

  He lowered his gaze to his hands. They were slick, dark with drying blood, the lines of his palms filled in as if someone had inked them with slaughter. He had seen more of it these past days than water. More than sleep. More than anything that could still be called human.

  The boy beside him shuddered and coughed, a wet, choking sound. Thick discharge slid from the corner of his wound and soaked into the rags that passed for a bandage. The smell in the pen — iron, rot, and the sharp tang of salt from the nearby sea — clawed at Khalid’s throat. It felt like the air itself was rotting around them.

  A voice rasped from the shadows, low and ruined.

  “We’re finished. We may as well resign ourselves to Allah… Surely He will reward us for surviving this fitna. It would’ve been easier to die at Ayyadieh.”

  Khalid closed his eyes. Surviving? He didn’t know what that meant anymore. Didn’t know how to survive this. Didn’t know why he hadn’t given up.

  Then it hit him. He did know.

  Samira’s body. Spattered on the floor. Hands trembling. Hands cold. Hands that once stroked his face so tenderly. Hands that had patted his head with kindness. She had died for him.

  He had no right to die.

  Khalid was her legacy. A slave. Trapped in a pen with no dignity. Staring at her dream — the sea — and surviving felt like sin.

  He wanted to die. And yet, to live was like a daily punishment, a constant fight. He couldn’t escape it. He couldn’t stop it. He could only endure it.

  So he would fight.

  His father would fight.

  His brother would fight.

  Samira had fought so he could live.

  So he would fight too. He had no right to die. No right.