Chapter 20: Just Survive

Elian lay on the cold, unforgiving floor of his cell, the rough stone beneath him offering no comfort.

The chill seeped into his bones, but it was nothing compared to the icy grip of despair that clutched at his heart. His body was battered and bruised, a testament to the cruelty of his captors, but it was the turmoil within that truly tormented him.

He had long since lost track of time, hours, days, weeks, they all blended together in the oppressive darkness.

The only sounds were the distant echoes of footsteps and the occasional murmur of voices from beyond the heavy iron door.

It was in this bleak silence that Elian's thoughts began to drift, pulled inexorably toward the past he had tried so hard to forget.

His breath hitched as memories surfaced, unbidden and unwelcome. Not memories of this life, this existence, but of the one before. The one that had shaped him, broken him, and ultimately, led him to this fate.

Before Elian had found himself in this bastard's body, trapped in a world he barely understood, he had been someone else, someone who had known suffering all too well.

The boy he had once been, born into a life of neglect and hardship, had fought tooth and nail to survive. But no matter how hard he fought, life had always found a way to crush him.

The memories was overwhelming...

"You're nothing but a burden, boy. No one's ever going to care about you."

The voice of the headmaster at the orphanage echoed in his mind, a sharp, biting tone that had once made him flinch.

He could see the man's face clearly, pinched, cruel, and utterly iindifferent

Elian, a small boy at the time, had stood trembling before him, a loaf of bread clutched tightly in his hands.

He'd stolen it, not because he wanted to, but because he was starving. The punishment had been swift and severe, a beating that left him bruised and limping for days.

"Why'd you even bother, Elian?" a girl's voice, one of the older kids, had jeered as he was dragged back to the dormitory. "You know they'll just beat you for it. It's not worth it."

But he hadn't listened. He couldn't. Hunger gnawed at him constantly, and every morsel of food was a victory, no matter the cost.

The orphanage had been a war zone, where every child was an enemy, and every adult a potential threat.

He remembered the fights, scrambling for blankets in the winter, scuffling over the rare kind word from the staff, and trading blows over scraps of food. His fists clenched instinctively as he remembered the sting of a punch landing on his jaw, the taste of blood in his mouth.

"You think you're tough, don't you, Elian? But tough isn't enough. Not here."

One of the older boys had taunted him after a particularly brutal fight, one that had ended with Elian's nose bloodied and his lip split.

The other kids had gathered around, watching with cold, uncaring eyes. There was no sympathy, no empathy. Just the brutal reality that in the orphanage, weakness was a death sentence.

Elian's breath hitched as the memory shifted, morphing into another scene. The night he had finally escaped.

"This is it, Elian. Your one shot. Don't mess it up."

He had repeated those words to himself over and over as he crept through the darkened halls of the orphanage, his heart pounding so loudly he was sure it would give him away.

He had planned for weeks, waiting for the right moment, the right opportunity. When he reached the door, his hands trembling, he had hesitated for the briefest of moments.

"If they catch you, they'll kill you. You know that, right?"

A warning from one of the other kids, a girl who had tried to run once and been caught. Her back had been marked with scars from the lashings, a constant reminder of the price of failure.

But Elian had pushed the thought away, forced himself to take the final step into the night.

The cool air had hit him like a slap, sharp and bracing. For the first time in his life, he had been free. But that freedom had been short-lived. The streets, he quickly learned, were even less forgiving than the orphanage.

"You don't belong here, boy. This is our turf."

The voice of a street gang leader, a man with a face scarred from countless fights, echoed in his mind.

Elian had tried to carve out a place for himself among the homeless, but the city was a battleground, and he was just another piece of prey. He had been attacked, beaten, and robbed countless times.

"Get out of here, kid, before you get hurt."

A rare moment of kindness from an old beggar, one of the few who hadn't tried to take what little he had.

The man had shared a scrap of bread with him once, a small act of compassion in a world that had forgotten the meaning of the word. But the old man had died not long after, his body found cold and stiff in an alleyway, another nameless casualty of the streets.

"Please… don't…"

Elian's breath quickened as another memory surged forward, one he had tried so hard to fforget

The night he had been cornered by a group of thugs, their eyes gleaming with cruelty.

They had taken everything from him, his food, his clothes, and finally, his dignity. He had fought, he had screamed, but there had been no one to hear, no one to care.

The cell around him seemed to close in, the darkness pressing down like a physical weight. He curled in on himself, trying to block out the memories, but they wouldn't stop.

"You'll never be free, Elian. Not truly. The streets, the orphanage, they're all the same. You can't escape your past."

The words of the last man he had met on the streets, a fellow beggar who had seen too much, suffered too mmuch

Elian had tried to believe otherwise, but deep down, he knew the truth. There was no escape, no redemption. Only the endless, unrelenting struggle to survive.

But despite it all, he had kept going. He had fought tooth and nail for every scrap of food, every fleeting moment of safety.

He had done things he wasn't proud of, begged, stolen, even sold his own body, just to keep going, just to survive.

But the cost had been high, too high. And now, here he was, trapped in another life, another body, with the same crushing despair, the same relentless struggle.

Elian's breath hitched as the memories faded, leaving him alone in the darkness once more. But the pain, the fear, the hopelessness, they remained, a constant reminder that no matter where he went, no matter who he became, his past would always haunt him.

"Survive." The word echoed in his mind, a mantra he had repeated to himself so many times before. "Just survive."