Fiction

Banished

With each step I imagined the laughter of those who cast me out

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I stumbled into the wilderness, banished from the city that thrived on order and conformity. The city gates, tarnished iron and towering, slammed shut with a finality that scorched deeply into my psyche.

With each step I imagined the laughter of those who cast me out.

Desperation gnawed at me as I wandered into barren wastes where the silence of nature was broken only by the howls of feral winds. Days blurred into nights, hunger and exhaustion mixing into a fevered haze.

Then they found me — others marked by difference, shunned by the same cold, heartless authority. A seer with eyes like storm clouds, a tinker who whispered to machines, and warriors whose loyalty was forged through exile.

We were a patchwork of broken souls, bound by survival and defiance. In their company, I discovered something raw and electric — a belonging born not of sameness, but of shared purpose.

We built a haven from the ruins of forgotten outposts, carving a place where each voice mattered and power was earned, not taken.

Our community thrived, a living defiance to the city’s rules of order. News of our success rippled back to those marble halls and iron…