Chapter 7 when fear burns
Renan did not rise with the others.
The bell rang, hollow and distant, echoing off the cold stone walls of the estate. Around him, the other slaves stirred from their straw pallets, their movements sluggish, their faces blank with exhaustion. The overseer's boots clattered sharply down the corridor outside, barking orders already familiar and merciless.
But Renan lay still.
The thin blanket draped over him slipped to the floor as he swung his legs over the side of the cot. His breath misted faintly in the frigid morning air, and his muscles trembled—not from the cold, but from something deeper. A low simmer that had burned quietly in him for months, maybe years, and that now, in the darkness before dawn, threatened to blaze.
He could still hear it: the crackle of torches in the night, the wind clawing at the estate walls. And he could still feel it—that sensation that had coursed through him as he'd lain awake, staring into the endless black. Fear, yes. But not only fear.
Something else had come alive inside him.
He rose and dressed with the rest, falling wordlessly into line as they marched out into the gray mist that settled over the fields. The earth was hard beneath his feet; frost had crusted the rows of dry, dying crops. Across the fields, the manor loomed like a wound against the horizon, its towers crooked and silhouetted by the first thin streaks of morning light.
The work began as it always did: endless, back-breaking labor under the watchful gaze of the overseers. Renan's hands worked mechanically, muscle memory carrying him through the motions of tilling and cutting. But his mind was elsewhere.
He watched.
He counted.
He memorized.
The overseers' patterns, the movements of the guards at the gates, the schedules of the patrols that circled the outer walls. Every loose board, every unlatched door, every blind corner where a whisper could pass unnoticed. He took it all in, burning it into his mind with the same intensity as the fire smoldering in his chest.
By midday, the sky had darkened with heavy clouds, and a thin drizzle misted the air. Renan's shirt clung to his back, and mud sucked at his boots as he worked. The overseer, a stocky man named Garran, stomped down the rows, lashing out with his whip whenever hands slowed.
Renan kept his head low, jaw clenched.
It was only when Garran passed that he glanced sideways—and caught Lysa's gaze.
She worked three rows over, her long braids plastered to her neck with sweat and rain, her slender shoulders hunched against the cold. Her dark eyes locked onto his, sharp and unflinching.
A silent message passed between them.
Tonight.
They had spoken in whispers over the past weeks, always careful, always cautious. Plans had been laid—not just between him and Lysa, but among a handful of others. Small things. Weapons hidden beneath floorboards. Messages carved subtly into the undersides of carts. Food stashed away, drop by drop.
It was dangerous. Fatal, if discovered.
But the risk no longer weighed as heavily as it once had. Not for Renan.
When the evening bell finally rang and the slaves trudged back toward their quarters, the rain had thickened into a steady downpour. Renan's limbs ached, and the thin fabric of his tunic clung cold to his skin, but he felt only a growing clarity.
Tonight.
In the dim confines of the quarters, as the others settled into their pallets and the overseers locked the heavy doors behind them, Renan found Lysa waiting near the back wall. Two others joined them: Marek, broad-shouldered and grim-faced, and Ysolde, quiet and quick-fingered.
Lysa's voice was barely a whisper.
"It's time."
Renan nodded. His fingers brushed against the jagged shard of metal hidden in the seam of his trousers. Marek's hand hovered over the thin blade concealed beneath his shirt. Ysolde shifted her weight, her eyes darting toward the single narrow window set high in the wall.
"We don't wait for dawn," Renan murmured. "We go now. Before the next patrol."
The others nodded.
The window was small, but Ysolde had loosened the stones around it weeks ago. One by one, they slipped through the gap and into the rain-drenched night. The wind howled across the empty fields, and the distant torches of the guards blurred into golden smears against the darkness.
Renan crouched low, leading them across the muddy ground, skirting the edges of the barracks and stables. His heart pounded, every beat a drum against his ribs—but the fear had shifted now. It no longer paralyzed. It propelled.
They reached the supply shed first. Marek broke the lock with a swift, brutal motion, and they slipped inside. Crates of tools and barrels lined the walls. Lysa moved quickly, retrieving bundles of cloth and packets of dried meat. Ysolde uncovered the cache of blades they'd hidden weeks before—short knives and rusted sickles, crude but sharp.
Renan gripped a blade, the metal cold and heavy in his palm.
"This is it," Lysa breathed.
He met her gaze, steady and sure. "We burn it all."
They scattered like shadows into the compound.
Within minutes, the first fire had caught—the hay in the stables flaring bright against the rain-slicked night. Smoke curled upward, and shouts echoed across the estate. Torches bobbed as guards scrambled toward the blaze.
Renan didn't stop. His legs carried him toward the main storehouse, the heart of the estate's provisions. His breath came ragged and fast, his soaked clothes clinging to his skin. Behind him, he could hear more crackles, more shouts.
The fear burned now.
It burned like oil.
He drove his blade into the burlap sacks lining the storehouse, spilling grain and seed onto the floor. Lysa burst in moments later, clutching a torch stolen from the stable wall.
"Renan!"
He turned. The torchlight flickered across her face—drenched, fierce, radiant.
She hurled the torch onto the spilled grain. The fire roared to life, hungry and bright.
The compound erupted into chaos.
Guards raced in all directions, some toward the flames, others toward the fleeing figures of slaves breaking from their quarters. Bells rang, shrill and desperate. The overseers' shouts were lost in the rising storm.
Renan and Lysa sprinted back toward the breach in the outer wall where Marek had pried loose the stones weeks earlier. Smoke billowed behind them, and the glow of spreading fire painted the night in gold and crimson.
As they reached the wall, Renan risked one final glance back.
The estate—the place where he had been born, bound, broken—blazed like a beacon against the dark.
He did not feel regret.
Only freedom.
And the fire waiting in his chest blazed brighter still.
They slipped through the gap, vanishing into the storm.