The Cradle of Broken Hearts

“There were those alive that day who still believed. They believed what we were told about Cradle, our city.

“Our city.

“You wouldn’t think it was ours if you looked through my eyes that day… all those days that our hearts soared with hope, as our voices rang out calling for change. Cradle is ours only because we live here, only because we breathe the air inside these gigantic walls.

“Only because they keep us here.”

***

Asier awoke. A damaged man amongst a pile of broken wood and shattered stone. A home collapsed. One of countless in the city of Cradle.

Kyomi… she was out there… somewhere.

She was the first thought in his mind and the only thing that forced him to rise from the debris.

Screams rang out, shrill, bloodcurdling. Horrific. Was her young voice among them? Even considering the possibility was like an icy blade plunging into his heart.

The pain in the back of his head numbed at the thought of Kyomi being lost to him. Even as fire raged around him, he felt cold to the core. Asier shivered as he struggled on all fours to crawl out of the rubble. Through cloudy eyes, dripping with tears, he placed hand after hand, foot after foot as he scrambled to the surface. Everything felt as though he was being cut and sliced by the nails, stone and wood scraping against his skin.

His palm met something soft, something wet. As his vision began to clear, he realised he was on top of a dead man trapped in the wreckage.

Asier spared no thought for the dead, not in that moment. All that mattered was finding Kyomi. She was what pulled him like an invisible, unstoppable hand, yanking him to his feet as he descended into the streets of Cradle’s First Level. Her soft, shining black hair, her eyes like glittering gems, her face of pure innocence, and her silver, heart-shaped locket.

Kyomi was a promise. The only promise worth keeping.

***

“The people of the Second Level, Cradle’s elite; they continue to peddle the stories to us. Stories of monsters, and mayhem, and death; all awaiting us beyond the walls.

“The people of the First Level, the common folk, the 80% of Cradle, us… we soak it all up. We eat it like the scraps that are left after the Enforcers come with their carts, packing what little we have to the brim while we starve under the threat of bolt, baton and bomb. We believe the stories of old. That the world outside is a barren wasteland; that monsters of metal and bone will devour us the moment we leave Cradle.

“None have seen these mythical monstrosities, the plague, pestilence and scourge of humanity… ever since… how long?

“We know not how long Cradle has held us in it’s crushing embrace. We know only the stories that the Second Levellers prattle down to us, and we are supposed to believe them.

“Why? Because a man can see over the wall from the Second Level. So why are we never allowed up there? They do not want us to leave, but they do not let us see.

“That only begs the question… Where do we leave?

“How do we leave?”

***

The flames began to lick at Asier’s heels as he escaped the wreckage. Just another nameless, burning home that belonged to another nameless, destitute civilian of Cradle.

They were all around him. The men, women and children of Cradle’s First Level, strewn about in their torn rags, bloodied, burnt and broken; much like himself. Half dead, half living; stuck in the limbo between, as they struggled for the only thing they had left… their very lives.

But Asier had more than that. He had a promise; to Kyomi.

As he thought of the locket that hung eternally around the young girl’s neck, his mind drifted to her mother.

Nyssa. The woman of his dreams.

That locket once hung around her neck. Asier remembered how it shone in the sun; it’s silver reflecting the light in beautiful, blinding white streaks. Her lips would spread into that long, exhilarating smile. Kyomi’s… Nyssa’s black hair flowed wildly when they played as kids, never losing it’s joyous bounce as they grew into adulthood.

The street began to narrow in, with houses collapsing everywhere. The fires swept through the shanty town like a wave, sending houses stacked upon houses crumbling apart from the inside, and tumbling into the street like giant meteors. Asier was thrown back as entire families were obliterated in an instant. He scrambled to his feet, running towards any gap he could find, anywhere that wasn’t shrouded in flames.

As each footstep pounded the stone streets, a memory of Nyssa flickered in his mind.

In every memory Asier had of Nyssa, there was always a light inside her. That light gave him hope; and hope was a scarcity in Cradle. It was a hope that no matter what happened, he would always love her. Asier could forever see it. Even when she cried, even when she was angry, even after every purge that the Enforcers unleashed upon the First Level.

Even when Nyssa told him that she would be marrying Azazel.

“Seer…” she called Asier. “Please don’t let this ruin what we have.”

They were best friends, the three of them. Seer, Zaze, and Nyssa. In the end, she could only choose one. Asier just wanted to live. But Azazel, he had a vision, a dream to bridge the gap between the First and Second Levels. To make Cradle one place. A peaceful, safer, better place. It made Zaze a better man, and Seer’s love was just not enough for her.

Asier did as she said. He could never stop loving her. She would always be what was beautiful in Cradle. Perhaps the only beautiful thing in this world.

Another house collapsed, trapping so many doomed innocents into a burning hellhole. Asier found an alleyway, but the moment he ran towards it, flames spurted out with a pressure beyond reckoning.

“If you truly love me, you will find a way, Seer…” Nyssa had pleaded with Asier.

Little did he know at the time that it might mean this.

Biting his lip and propelling himself forward with all his might, Asier charged into the flames. It snaked across the meagre protection he offered himself, slipping through and agonisingly ravaging a good portion of his face.

Miraculously, he made it through the other side. Burnt, but alive.

Asier would sacrifice everything, including his own beauty for the memory of Nyssa; the most beautiful woman in this life, who died giving birth to the most beautiful girl. Second Level doctors could have saved her. They might have even been able to save Asier’s face. But the First Level civilians were all scum to them.

Why waste the trip down the walkways to save a commoner woman from bleeding to death?

***

“I, like you, like every other First Leveller, have walked the entirety of Cradle’s circular wall. If not for the ramshackle, piled up buildings on our opposite side, we would never distinguish one part of the circle from any other. Sleek, dull, grey. Etched with an uncountable, unmemorable number of markings, carvings; all evidence of the discontent of the citizens trapped within. There is not a single gate, door, hole or grate leading to the outside. Nothing to show mankind ever has or ever could leave Cradle.

“Should we attempt to climb hundreds of metres into the air, what are we met with? Sharpshooters from Cradle’s Second Level poised and aimed ready to shoot those poor souls brave enough to venture beyond our cage. None have made it over the top, but how many have fallen back down, bolts slammed through their splattered remains? Why?

“We cannot leave. But we must not stay; staying only to live out our meagre, pitiful, tortured existence.

“We need to fight.”

***

Making his way into the next street, Asier bore witness to the little revolt that had been planned.

Out of the chaos that they had wrought against the First Levellers, the Enforcers would bring back order. The flames would be doused once their homes had been burnt to the ground. The commoners would be sorted into piles of wounded and mounds of dead, the streets would be swept one by one until they found the rebels… and thus, order would be restored.

Order was something to be feared.

Asier had seen this all before. People going about their daily lives as the Enforcers caught wind of anything that might disturb the “natural order of Cradle”. It didn’t matter if it was a protest for change, or a full-blown attempt at revolution. Revolutions, where First Levellers would only ever be armed with sharpened lengths of wood and the longest nails they could find.

It was then, that the Enforcers would come, and they would bring everything they had along with them.

Crossbows, swords, all manner of metal. They would even bring technology from the Old Time. Batons that could shock people, lengths of metal that shot forth balls of flame. Asier and the rest of the First Levellers could only imagine what weapons they would use if a revolt made it to the doors of the Second Level.

The Enforcers wheeled away carriages full of First Levellers, innocent and guilty alike. While they went to those golden doors at the top of the walkways, Asier remembered when Azazel was forced into one of them. That was the last day he saw him.

His best friend. Zaze only tried to make Cradle a better place all those years ago. That was the price for disruption.

Every First Leveller knows that once you go beyond those doors, you don’t come back. Azazel knew it too as he held Asier’s hand, begging his best friend one final request.

“They’re going to take me, and I have to let them. It’s the only way they’ll stop killing.”

The tears in Zaze’s eyes broke Asier’s heart.

“Please, whatever you do after I’m gone… just live, Seer. Live, and look after my daughter. You’re all Kyomi has left.”

Asier was guilty of living. Innocent of rebellion. Much like Kyomi was. But that never mattered to the Enforcers.

***

“Cradle is supposed to protect us.

“It is supposed to keep humanity safe from the monsters outside the walls. But what can we do when the stories are false? When we are lied to? When we try to speak out, to speak the truth, and we are silenced? When innocents are butchered in the streets by those who are supposed to protect us? When we are all left for dead?

“It is only then that we realise… the monsters are inside the walls.

“If we cannot escape, we must slay the monsters.”

***

There were no fires left. Only dust, rubble, and burnt, murdered souls.

Asier had survived the Enforcers, but he wondered if he could survive this rebellion.

He gazed at the bottom of the pile of charred bodies before him, twice as tall as he was. It was only one pile of many. Asier’s vision was clear, but he wished it wasn’t. He wished he were dead.

Every promise had been broken. From Cradle to the people, from himself to those he loved.

He stared down, as a white light glinted back up at him.

One sliver of silver remained in that tarnished, ruined heart-shaped locket, laying upon the pile of the dead.

***

Asier stared down at the words he had written, Kyomi’s locket twirling in his hand.

Many years had passed since that terrible day.

He had re-written it a thousand times, dreaming one day, in the end, he would read it to the hordes of aggrieved First Levellers. To force a change in a world so cruel to rid him of all that was beautiful.

Nyssa, Azazel, Kyomi.

Would today be that day?