Chapter Text
There was something happening in the mansion.
Chadros could feel it in the air, the atmosphere thickening with something unnatural, something unknown. It pressed against his chest, heavy and suffocating, as if the very walls were holding their breath. It made his skin crawl, cold sweat drenching him with anticipation.
At first, he thought he was imagining it, the Master’s latest beating finally breaking something loose inside his head. Pain throbbed through every inch of him, old wounds flaring with the new, his bad leg protesting with every dragging step as he forced himself away from the parlor. He was used to the abuse, had learned to endure it, lest he became the latest specimen for the Master’s experiments.
Still, something felt different this time. Something felt off, wrong. He couldn’t shake the feeling.
It had started the moment he regained consciousness.
He’d awoken on the hard floor, cheek pressed against damp carpet, wet with his own blood. His senses returned in fragments—the sharp coppery tang in his nose followed by the sound of a distant roar somewhere in the background, then the pungent, acrid scent of smoke overcoming everything else. His eyes flickered open to a pulsing amber glow that danced along the hallway walls, heat licking at his bruised skin.
A fire, his mind supplied, old instincts kicking in and forcing his mind to focus, to assess the danger he had awoken to. A big one, judging by the tremors rattling through the floorboards.
Disoriented, he tried to remember what had happened, how long he had been unconscious. His thoughts were sluggish and disjointed, memories blurring under the pain. He could have sworn there had been a new voice speaking to the Master, just before the last strike from the cane had bashed against his temple. Maybe. His head throbbed too much to be sure.
The thing was, Chadros hadn’t been a servant at the apothecary’s estate for long—merely a month since he had been purchased by the Master at a royal auction, discarded by previous owners but still bound to his life-long sentence.
He had been a chieftain once.
Years before, when the Old King was still alive, he and his band of bandits had roamed the open plains, walking unshackled beneath the vast sky. But that life ended the day illness swept through their camp. He’d been captured soon after, dragged away in chains and sentenced to live out the rest of his days as a slave. Only two of his men remained—Smooge and Chappe, the last of his family—sold alongside him.
But the sickness hadn’t spared them either. They had collapsed days ago, weakened and fading fast. They were the reason he had dared to face the Master that night, why he had pleaded to him with foolish hope, to help his friends before it was too late.
He should have known better.
Chadros had dared to ask a monster for mercy, and he’d been beaten near senseless for his trouble.
Tears welled in his swollen eyes, falling freely down his dirt-streaked cheeks. He felt useless, body broken and dignity in tatters, his hope bleeding out with every step. An awful realization crossed his mind, the undeniable truth shredding his will.
He deserved it.
All this pain and humiliation, he deserved it all.
For all of those he had failed, for all of those he had hurt in his days as a criminal. This was his punishment, his pain to carry.
The smoke thickened around him. It curled along the ceiling and clawed at his lungs, pulling dry, rattling coughs from his chest. The fire spread too fast, devouring the eastern wing with flames that ate through carpet and timber with the hunger of the starved. His vision swam, unshed tears making everything blurry; he couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead, and his bruised eyes burned. One hand searched blindly for support, using the blistering wall to guide himself, the other clutching his side as he limped forward.
He had to reach the tunnels. Even if it was the last thing he did. Even if it was just to die there, buried beneath the burning mansion.
He had to reach them.
The strange tension from earlier still clung to the air. It felt insidious in a way he had never felt before, not even after enduring life at the Master’s estate. It was something deeper. Older. A primal fear stirred in his chest, driving him onward despite his injuries. Chadros’s heart thundered painfully, desperation turning into a cold void just beneath his lungs.
Something else was there, stalking the hallways. Something that felt far more dangerous than the very man that ruled over the mansion.
Had a beast sneaked into the Master’s grounds?
No, that was impossible. No animal dared to roam near the mansion, the stench of death strong enough to scare them away.
Was it another one of the Master’s mindless creatures?
No. No, this felt worse.
The sensation was unbearable now, suffocating in a way not even the smoke from the fire could be. The air felt thick as tar, each breath clogging, painful. It was like being caught in the gaze of a predator, as if the walls had grown eyes and teeth, waiting for the moment to bite him to shreds and swallow him down.
He tried to move faster, but his leg was dead weight, dragging behind him.
A new tremor rattled the floor, this time deafening. A burning rafter tore loose from the ceiling, and Chadros blamed his own worthlessness for the way he froze in place, struck by panic. The beam crashed down on him with a sickening crack.
The world spun around him. Chadros screamed from the pain, shooting sharp and scalding through chest and ribs as the weight of the rafter crushed him against the floor. More tears streamed down his soot-streaked face, his cries hoarse and barely audible over the roar of the fire. He clawed at the beam, nails scraping uselessly over the splintered wood.
The agony he felt was nothing compared to the helplessness that overcame him. Despair scoured his resolve, making his limbs weaker. His grip on the rafter slipped, leaving trails of blood where his nails had fractured upon impact.
This was it. There was no hope. He would die here, buried beneath the wreckage. His friends would die too, entombed by the walls that enslaved them, their names lost like all the rest.
In the end, Chadros could not save them.
Regret burned behind his eyes, just as painful as the fire encroaching around him. His cries became silent, betrayed only by the quiet shudders racking his body. He was useless, a disgrace.
That’s when he heard it; footsteps, loud and lumbering, drawing closer. The pressure in the air, the one that had felt suffocating just moments before, became worse than unbearable now, intolerable to the point where it drowned anything else. It felt charged, the hairs of his beard standing up in alarm, shivers running down his spine. His breath hitched, heart pounding loudly in his own ears.
Whatever was coming, it wasn’t the Master. The steps were too deliberate, forceful enough to make the ground shake. They echoed like thunder.
The fire roared, masking the thing’s pace, but he knew it was getting closer. He could see its shadow flickering across the firelit walls—tall, wild hair spilling in all directions, with shoulders impossibly broad. Chadros squeezed his eyes shut, trembling. He listened as the thing turned the corner, and all he could do was wait and pray for a quick death.
It never came.
Instead, the beam pinning him down was lifted and hurled aside with inhuman strength. Air rushed into his lungs in a desperate gasp, and rough hands grabbed him, pulling him upright with jarring speed.
He blinked in shock.
There was a man in front of him.
“You okay?” the stranger asked, voice light, almost child-like. Chadros stared, dumbfounded
The man was short. At least a few heads shorter than him, wearing ill-fitting clothes that hung too long in places and stretched too thin in others. A straw hat hung loosely from his neck, bouncing as he moved. His dark eyes blinked owlishly up at Chadros, waiting for an answer.
The stranger’s hands were stained with blood, some of it smeared across his face.
The same unsettling feeling that had been haunting Chadros returned, stronger now, fueled by dark, fathomless voids that seemed to stare straight into his soul. A fresh wave of fear surged through him.
“Hey, you don’t look so good,” the man said, peering at Chadros’ injured body, at his unsteady stance. His tone was strange, curious rather than empathetic. There was a certain coldness to it, even if the words were not unkind.
“W-what…” Chadros managed, dizzy, barely staying upright.
A firm hand caught his arm, anchoring him in place with unexpected strength.
“A fire… the Master… where—?” he tried to speak, his tongue thick and thoughts tangled.
“You mean Caesar?” the stranger interrupted, a faint frown creasing his face. He glanced over Chadros’ injuries again, and something in his gaze shifted, understanding. “Don’t worry. I took care of him.”
The words hit Chadros like a blow to the chest. He staggered, coughing violently.
Took care of him, his mind repeated, the phrase echoing in disbelief. It felt foreign. Inconceivable. The meaning hovered just out of reach, too large, too impossible to grasp.
That can’t be right…
How could it be? The Master was the final authority within the mansion’s walls, his commands backed by royal decree. No one defied him. He was untouchable, a shadow that haunted every corner of this cursed estate with his poisonous eyes.
So how could he be gone?
“Uhh, Beard Guy?” the stranger interrupted, snapping Chadros out of his spiraling thoughts, glancing at the groaning beams overhead. “Not trying to rush you or anything, but this place is probably gonna collapse soon,” he said, voice maddeningly casual, not an ounce of worry to be heard. He spoke like they were deciding whether or not to leave a tavern in the rain.
“B—but…!” Chadros stammered, his voice thin and strained with disbelief, the shock still rattling through him.
The man didn’t wait for an answer.
“We should go,” he said simply, and with startling speed, he grabbed Chadros by the arm and hauled him forward, taking half his weight with ease.
“Wait!” Chadros cried out, his voice sharp with panic. The stranger stopped, looking up with a puzzled frown. “Wait…” he repeated, more breathless this time.
“What?”
“M—my friends…!” he muttered, his desperation transparent for the man to see, stronger than the primal apprehension that the shorter man evoked in him. “They’re sick, I need to get them out, I need to—!!”
“The ones under the kitchen?” the man interrupted, already turning his head toward the end of the west wing, just one corner ahead. His face shifted slightly, as if considering his next move. There was no trace of surprise in his face, just grim acceptance.
It was as if he already knew.
But how did he know? The tunnels beneath the cellar weren’t common knowledge. They were the Master’s private dungeon, the final stop for slaves who had outlived their usefulness.
The man hummed thoughtfully, face unreadable. The fire raged around them, casting a furious glow on his bloodstained skin. Then, as if the flames themselves had whispered something, he brightened, a wide grin taking hold of his face.
“Torao’s a healer! He can help them!” he said with sudden enthusiasm, eyes nearly sparkling. His whole posture shifted, shoulders lifting and chest rising proudly, like the thought of it filled him with excitement.
Chadros could only stare, the last of his energy draining with the outburst. And yet, despite everything, his heart felt a little lighter, somehow mended with new, hesitant tendrils of hope. His eyes welled with unshed tears, stricken with emotion. He was about to thank the stranger, when the other looked up sharply at the ceiling.
“Watch out!” The shorter man pulled him back by the arm. Another beam gave way behind them, crashing to the floor in a spray of splinters. The fire roared, drawing nearer. Urgency returned, overwhelming.
“We better head out!” The stranger laughed, almost dancing away from the wreckage.
Time blurred after that. Chadros’ legs moved on instinct, his battered body half-dragged, half-carried by the stranger’s grip. He had no strength left to argue, nor the intention to protest the manhandling; he knew better than to think he could hold his own weight with his injured ribs.
And as the fire roared behind them, tears finally spilled down his face, only this time they weren’t from pain.
They were from relief, he realized, minutes later as they broke into the cellar, and then again into the catacombs hidden beneath it, the passage hidden beneath a half-rotted barrel.
He did not think about the inhuman strength the stranger showed down there, shattering shackles and rock alike to release the three prisoners from their cells. Chadros didn’t let himself dwell on the way the man’s eyes caught the light and flared crimson in the dark, nor the strange sense that his shadow moved just a second out of step, stretching long and sharp against the stone walls. He certainly did not dare acknowledge the halo of silk that shimmered in and out of sight, clinging to the stranger’s back, rising and curling over his shoulders like clouds coiling in a twilight sky.
Because for the first time since he was dragged from his home in chains, someone was helping him take his family back. For the first time since entering this hell, he dared to believe they might make it out alive.
——
The man—Luffy, he said his name was—was definitely strange.
The thought had lodged itself in Chadros’s mind within moments of their meeting, like a quiet voice whispering from the back of his skull, warning him of the danger lurking beneath the youthful face.
There was something deeply unsettling about him. His strength alone was terrifying, and his actions certainly bordered into uncanny territory. As a matter of fact, the more Chadros watched him, the more certain he became; this was no ordinary man.
Above all else, Chadros knew, instinctively, irrevocably, that under no circumstances did he want to end up on his bad side.
That thought followed him as Chadros, the strange man and his friends reached the stables, battered and bruised, with arms full of loot. The fire raged behind them, casting a lurid glow across the stone walls.
The stables were in complete disarray, all the stalls open, with three horses and a mule neighing anxiously by the entrance. A tall silhouette stood by a huffing mare, tense, with one arm braced against the saddle, the other resting just above the hilt of a sword. His frame was worn with exhaustion, just as dirty and bruised as Chadros and his friends, but his eyes remained sharp, cutting through the night like the very same blade he was wielding. Unlike Luffy, he looked at them with suspicion. His gaze narrowed as they approached, his fingers twitching near the weapon at his side.
“Torao!” Luffy called out loudly, his voice cutting through the air and making Chadros and his friends flinch, still easily spooked by what they all suspected was not entirely human.
The shorter man paid them no mind, looking at the taller stranger with something almost reverent in his gaze. His grin warmed, edge lost and replaced with adoration. The taller man’s eyes softened at that, shoulders easing, sword-hand lowering without a word. And just like that, the pressure in the air, that crushing, invisible weight that had their lungs trapped in a tight grip seemed to dissipate in an instant.
Oh, Chadros thought, watching the men exchange words, their bodies angled towards each other in a way that spoke of intimacy despite the direness of their situation.
Torao took control of the conversation, asking questions and barking orders while Luffy wagged his metaphorical tail, basking under his attention. The realization struck through the fog clouding Chadros’ mind, his eyes widening at the interaction.
The beast had turned into a puppy in the presence of this man.
Like a dulled blade, Chadros thought, watching them curiously from the sidelines. But no, that wasn’t right either, he realized later, as he watched the same man plow through soldiers and guards with terrifying ease.
He contains him, he decided, as the pressure in the air returned with a vengeance, an invisible weight that bore down on the enemy like the hand of a giant, crushing them like insects. It was a power beyond comprehension, and he was pretending to be a just a boy.
And there was no doubt in Chadros’ mind now about who held the reins.
He couldn’t help but wonder if this Torao guy truly understood the kind of power he held in his hands,to have such a beast wrapped so effortlessly around his finger.