The air in the dungeon was heavy,
as if the very walls were holding their breath… waiting for the sound of life or a scream of death.
Nerin lay on the cold stone floor, her hands bound in chains,
her forehead drenched in sweat, and her lips stained with blood.
Everything inside her was breaking:
her heart, her body, her patience.
---
"Not now… not before he comes."
She whispered to herself, barely audible.
The fetus moved violently within her.
Pain tore through her belly as if the chains weren't just on her wrists… but in her womb as well.
She gasped.
She screamed.
She kicked the ground with all the strength she had left.
---
One of the "Wei" guards entered—a cold-faced woman carrying a bowl of lukewarm water.
She looked at Nerin with disdain and said:
"Is it birth or collapse?
We won't bring a midwife. The child will die… as promised."
Nerin screamed in a voice unlike any human's:
"Don't touch him… he will not die!"
---
She wrapped her hands around her belly as if to protect him from poison, cold, and the world.
She began to push…
And every memory of Van passed before her eyes:
His smile as he fell ill.
His gaze the day he vowed never to let her be just a shadow.
His blood-stained hand when he learned she was taken from him.
She screamed.
She screamed a name never spoken before:
"Rai… Rai…"
She didn't know if it was a boy or girl, but she felt it… she felt it alive.
---
Minutes passed like years.
Every pain shattered the earth.
Every tear was a river.
Then… in the darkness…
A small cry… a sob.
A child was born, eyelids wet, skin soft, crying out to the air it had never known.
---
Nerin held him in her trembling hands, hugged him to her chest, and whispered:
"You… did not die."
Then she closed her eyes and slept, her face resting on his small forehead…
while his voice still screamed.
---
At the same moment, at the entrance to an underwater tunnel,
Van donned his black helmet and whispered:
"Hold on… I'm on my way."