Starting out as a Dragon Slave-Chapter 95: Emptiness

The room was cold.A gray, nearly monochrome space, lit by a single harsh fluorescent tube hanging above a worn metal table, scarred by years of interrogations. Inspector Marc Lemaire sat in silence, watching Isaac across from him—slumped, barely held upright by the uncomfortable steel chair beneath him.

The young man’s hands were cuffed in front of him, resting carelessly on the table. His wrists and forearms were wrapped in white bandages, stained with dried blood and antiseptic. His face bore the fresh marks of recent care: small cuts and abrasions dotted his pale skin, grim reminders of the brutality he had endured.

But what struck Lemaire most was his eyes.

Isaac’s gaze was completely empty.Absent.Lifeless.His pupils were fixed, unmoving, staring at some invisible point in space, far beyond the cold walls of the room. His head hung slightly forward, his shoulders hunched, as if carrying the weight of the entire world on his back.

Lemaire exchanged a frustrated glance with his colleague, Inspector Laura Vasseur, seated beside him. The silence pressed down like an anvil—oppressive, suffocating. For over half an hour, they had been trying to get even a single word out of Isaac. But he remained mute. Absent. Either unable or unwilling to react to the simplest of prompts.

— "Isaac Nohr," Lemaire began again, his voice dry, shaking faintly with impatience. "Listen to me. We’ve already wasted enough time. Where are your teammates? Yvan Fournier, Charlotte Gauthier, Victor Martel, Sophie Lacroix, and Léon Faure. They were with you in that dungeon. Why are you the only one who came back?"

He paused, letting the names sink into the void behind Isaac’s eyes.But the boy still didn’t react.His face remained frozen—an expression of frozen despair that was almost unbearable to witness.

— "Can you hear me, Nohr?" Lemaire pressed, his tone growing sharper. "Answer the question. Your teammates—your comrades, the people who trusted you—where are they now, huh? Speak, damn it! We need to understand what happened in that damn dungeon!"

Still nothing. The silence was maddening.

Lemaire felt a wave of frustration boil inside him.He slammed his fist onto the table with a sharp bang, causing Vasseur to jump slightly beside him.But Isaac didn’t flinch.He remained completely motionless—his gaze still fixed on nothing. Like a soulless mannequin.

— "For fuck’s sake, Nohr!" Lemaire exploded, finally losing control. "This isn’t a game! This isn’t some twisted joke! We found no one—no one, you understand? Just you! Covered in blood, half-dead in front of a sealed portal! So tell us—tell me—how the hell did you survive, and why the hell are your teammates gone?!"

He leaned over the table, almost threatening, desperately searching for a reaction. A blink. A twitch. Anything. freeωebnovēl.c૦m

Nothing.

Laura gently placed a hand on his arm.

— "Marc," she said softly, her voice low, calm, firm. "Yelling isn’t helping. Look at him. He’s not in any state to respond right now. Give him a moment..."

Lemaire clenched his jaw, slowly pulling back with a grunt, though his eyes never left Isaac’s hollow face.He knew she was right. But the helplessness gnawed at him, inflamed by the sheer absurdity and horror of it all.

The silence returned, heavy and stifling, broken only by the low hum of the flickering light above.Lemaire stepped back, arms crossed, trying to steady his breathing.

And then...Very slowly, like rising from a dreamless sleep, Isaac lifted his eyes.

For the first time, his gaze met Lemaire’s.And what the inspector saw made his blood run cold.

That gaze...A void so vast, so total, it was like staring into a black hole.A broken man.Hollowed out.Crushed beyond repair.A man who had nothing left to lose—nothing left to hope for.

Lemaire froze.For the first time since entering the room, his confidence faltered.He swallowed hard. The anger gave way to something else. Something worse.A creeping, unwilling compassion. Quickly smothered.

— "Isaac," Laura said gently, her tone maternal, trying another path. "Listen. No one is judging you. We just want to understand. Help us. Talk to us. Tell us... anything. Anything you remember."

Isaac blinked slowly, as if even that small act required monumental effort.His eyes, still locked on Lemaire, seemed to look through him—to something else.Something invisible.Something horrifying.

And then...He looked away.

Back to the cold surface of the table.Still saying nothing.

He hunched further into the chair, his shoulders curling inward—as if crushed beneath a guilt no one could imagine.

Lemaire’s blood began to boil again. The powerlessness of it all was unbearable.He glanced at Laura for reassurance but found none.They both knew something unspeakable had happened in that dungeon.But without Isaac’s words, they were completely lost.

Lemaire muttered a curse, took a deep breath, and abruptly pushed away from the table, pacing toward the back wall in a futile attempt to calm down.

Laura stayed behind, her troubled gaze never leaving the young man.

Isaac remained slumped. Silent. Motionless.

His eyes now focused on his own bloodstained bandages.No more tears.No more emotion.No flicker of life behind his stare.

He looked dead on the inside.

Marc Lemaire slammed the door behind him as he exited the interrogation room.He stood motionless for a moment in the empty hallway, breathing heavily, fists clenched, frustrated beyond words. Nothing had worked. The morbid silence of Isaac Nohr weighed heavily on his shoulders. After a few seconds trying to steady himself, he walked outside, toward the cold air that might soothe the wildfire of anger and helplessness burning in his chest.

Meanwhile, behind the door, Isaac remained seated in the shadows, alone with himself.He didn’t even feel his eyelids grow heavy, closing slowly from exhaustion and pain. His mind, too broken to cling to reality, drifted into the void, slowly detaching from the cold, gray room.

Mordred slowly opened his eyes in the familiar darkness of his cold, damp cell.He had felt no shift, no transition between his world and this one—only a silent passage, painless. And yet, the moment he felt the chill of the stone floor against his legs, he knew exactly where he was.

But this time, there was no will left in him. No strength to move.

Lying on the tattered bedding, he stared blankly at the dark ceiling of his cell, his gaze lifeless, completely void of life or hope. Even breathing seemed too costly, too difficult. His chest rose slowly, mechanically, in a rhythm of breath so slow it hurt with its own emptiness.

His mind—fractured beyond repair—could no longer think, reflect, or feel.He had become an empty shell, barely aware of its own existence.

The heavy, metallic footsteps of the dragon-guards echoed in the distance, drawing closer to his cell. He heard the rusty click of the key turning in the lock, followed by the groaning creak of the door swinging open. Mordred did not move a single inch, as if paralyzed, absent from himself.

— "Up. Vermin," growled the dragon-guard with disdain, barely surprised by the slave’s lack of reaction. "Come on. The mine’s not going to dig itself."

Mordred gave no reply.His body, moved only by habit beyond consciousness, slowly rose like a soulless automaton. He stood, swaying slightly on his feet, his gaze fixed straight ahead, emotionless, lifeless, without resistance.

They escorted him without care to the mines, through the dark, damp hallways he had walked so many times before. But this time, everything felt distant. Unreal. As though his mind remained detached, watching with disinterest.

Once at the mine, he took up his rusted pickaxe without a word, eyes still lowered to the ground, not even glancing at the other slaves. He began to work without thinking, without even feeling the usual stinging pain in his arms or shoulders.He struck the black stone slowly, methodically, extracting Moonstone as if he were no more than a machine, a lifeless being, acting without thought or sensation.

He found a shining one—translucent, shimmering with bluish light.His gaze slid over it—cold, indifferent.He didn’t take it.He didn’t absorb it.He simply dropped it into the collection basket, without a thought.There was no desire left in him. No drive to grow stronger. No will to move forward.

There was only the void.The cold.The total absence of purpose.

Hours passed slowly, in mechanical, exhausting silence. Eventually, the guards came to inspect the baskets, surprised to find that Mordred—despite everything—had met his quota without issue. One dragon-guard grunted in disdain, not even bothering to provoke or humiliate the slave who no longer seemed capable of feeling anything at all.

They returned Mordred to his cell in silence, without unnecessary violence.Once locked inside, he simply sat back on his cot, eyes once more fixed on the void, as if everything that had just happened had been nothing but a distant, meaningless dream.

He stayed there, unmoving, eyes dull, arms limp at his sides, until the daylight faded entirely into the cold darkness of the cell. Silence returned—heavy, stifling, relentless—until a figure slipped slowly, almost soundlessly, through the barely opened door.

Mordred did not lift his eyes.

— "Mordred?" whispered a woman’s voice—familiar, tinged with soft worry, almost fear."...Mordred?"

He didn’t react right away.The voice felt so distant, so foreign to his current state that it took several seconds just to identify it, just to understand that it was speaking to him.

Even then, he didn’t move.Didn’t reply.He remained hunched, vacant, staring at the floor of his dark cell.

But deep inside him, something trembled—ever so slightly.A sliver of awareness, buried far beneath the ruins of his shattered mind, had been touched by that familiar voice. He didn’t have the strength to respond. Not yet. But somewhere, at the core of his being, a faint spark of self had flickered back to life.

Still...For now, Mordred remained silent.Still.Drowned in total inner darkness.

The silhouette, hesitant and concerned, waited patiently for his answer.

But Mordred said nothing.

He had nothing left to say.