Freedom {LGBT+}

1.Fifteen

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Some call it The Iron Fortress; a hellhole. The scorching flames devouring the flesh of the sinners. Ear grating screams that fell silent beyond the giant. Nails digging into its brick length, desperate for a hold of escape. Walls tall enough to keep the diseased in, never too tall enough for the outsiders to throw away the thrash. Not many can survive the heat below, landing on a scorching ground; awaits them is a battle of survival.

There's only one way in, the gate at the utmost front. Guarded by the skilled, the best men they could find who loathes the fifteens as much as their ruler did. Only the branded can welcome these walls as their future home. A damned mark that they were force to bear. Lucky are a few, to escape the imprinted evil. Like a birthmark, destined for them the moment they show their true nature. The truth of who they are.

The Iron Fortress welcomed the forgotten, the unwanted and the lost. No one escaped its hold, dancing in its womb until the day they die. Lucky are those who managed to escaped such destined walls. Unluckily for them, what awaits them outside the fortress, each day was filled with no hope, a reason not to walk among the living any further.

As the sun peaked from over the horizon, giving light to the fortress. Its wall blocking the only light that they had in theirs lives. No longer shrouded in darkness, the lopsided buildings that were abandoned decades ago, left to disintegrate into nothingness. Make shift houses that could fall at the strongest of winds. The morning sun left nothing to the dark. Showing what laid inside the Iron Fortress but would never spread what it gave light to beyond it.

A new chapter was beginning; a new day. As one chapter closes, another opens. The people of the fortress, the fifteens, laid bare to what a new day bought. Rising from the cold hard ground they called a bed, beginning a new chapter. Not everyone can take up a feather and dip it in ink to write a new chapter. Not everyone lives on to a new day.

That is what the Iron Fortress is, Area fifteen was its unholy name. It bought about despair, no hope and death for those not fit to survive. Area fifteen, the most despised place in the Kingdom of Seridina.

"Finish." Phoenix's muttered to himself, closing the cover of the book he was reading. Watermarks stained its exterior, seeping through and staining the pages. Phoenix allowed a yawn to escape his lips, adding the book to stack he was reading.

It was a bad habit of his to get lost in the many books he found in the book house. They were tattered, stained and ripped apart. Phoenix didn't allow such faults to hinder his reading. He was grateful to have even the littlest of resources to engage in something educational. The book house was abandoned amongst many other infrastructures. The only thing Area fifteen had to offer that wasn't a knock at deaths door.

Phoenix would indulged himself in every books. Grasping at every information. From trade, medical treatments that could be useful and even the simplest things he thought could assist in his everyday life. The building was lopsided as all the others. The roof potted with holes and chipped walls, paint striped on every corner. The bookshelves had long gave out, the books falling into muddles of muddy water. Phoenix couldn't bear to leave them like that. Setting them in the sun to dry, stocking the books he could into a safe corner so when it rains they wouldn't get wet allover again. There were still plenty books left unsheltered and Phoenix was only taking it a day at a time.

It wasn't until the sun peeked through a hole in the wall, sending its ray across the room. Phoenix rubbed his eyes tiredly, his stomach growling for its daily fill. So caught up in the book he found last night, Phoenix didn't caught sight of the rising sun.

"I've made it." he said, his hand reaching for the pendant around his neck. Phoenix thumb caressed over the golden wings engraved on it.

It was a part of Seridina's crest. Embedded in the left hand corner of the emblem. It was a keepsake from his mother. Phoenix never met her or his father. He was told from his guardian --the only person he knew as a mother-- that it was a gift from his father to his mother. Now, it was a gift from her to him. Phoenix never knew what the golden wings meant. It was a symbol of importance for it to be on the Seridina's crest. It was a symbol to him that he had made it through another day in Area fifteen.