The Horde Work in the Life

Athour.......shahjhan

The siren screamed at dawn.

It always did.

It was not a shrill alarm or a musical chime, but a low, grinding howl—like a machine in pain. The sound stretched across the valley, bouncing off metal walls, rolling down stone alleys, and settling in the bones of the workers.

They were known simply as the Horde.

Not by name, nor title. Just the Horde. A mass of men, women, and even children, trained to rise, work, and sleep in an endless cycle of obedience. They lived beneath the towering city of Iskar, whose shining spires pierced the clouds while its underbelly fed on the sweat of the valley dwellers.

Among them was a boy named Coren.

At sixteen, Coren’s back was already hunched from lifting stone, his palms calloused like bark. He had no mother—only the Horde. His father, like most, had been worked to death before Coren could remember his face. No one mourned. Mourning was inefficient.

Every morning, Coren joined the line. Faces blank. Movements robotic. Tools distributed. Chains secured.

But Coren was not like the others.

He remembered a word—one word—that no one else seemed to say anymore:

“Why?”

He didn’t dare speak it aloud. But he carried it in his chest like a secret ember, warm and terrifying.

Why did they break stones day after day?

Why was the sky only visible as a thin blue slit between the city’s massive pipelines?

Why did no one resist?

He kept the word hidden, but the questions grew.

It began the day he found a book.

It was buried beneath a collapsed storage unit—an old, metal-bound thing with torn pages and faded letters. At night, while others slept in exhausted silence, Coren read by the glow of a smuggled matchstick.

The book told stories—myths, really—of lands beyond the Valley, of cities where people chose their work, where names were given, not numbers. It spoke of rebellion, of leaders who rose against their masters, of the power of words.

Coren was hungry for them.

He began whispering words to himself in the tunnels. “Freedom.” “Hope.” “Choice.” Words no longer used. Words the Overseers considered corruptive.

But the Horde heard.

At first, they thought him mad. Then, one by one, they started listening. In the pauses between pick strikes and ore loading, they asked him questions. Dangerous ones.

“What is freedom?”

“Did your book say how they fought?”

“Do you think we could leave?”

Coren didn’t know the answers. But he knew the questions were alive. They changed things. Like wind against stone.

One day, the Overseers noticed.

Coren was pulled from the line, accused of disruption. The punishment was swift. Public. Meant to break spirits. His body was chained to a support beam in the central hall, lashes carving red rivers across his back.

The Horde watched.

They did nothing.

But the questions didn’t stop.

When Coren returned, bloodied and weak, someone gave him water. Another handed him a strip of cloth for his wounds. No one spoke. But something had shifted. A quiet tension, a pulse under the skin.

Then, it happened.

A shaft collapsed. Three workers were trapped inside. Normally, the Overseers would declare them “expendable” and seal the shaft. But Coren shouted, “We dig them out!”

And the Horde moved.

Not with orders. Not from fear. But by choice.

They dug like animals—frantic, furious, united. The Overseers tried to stop them, but were shoved aside. The trapped workers were saved.

And something snapped.

That night, the Horde gathered without summons. Coren stood before them, barely able to walk.

“We are not machines,” he said. “We are not slaves. We are people. And people can choose.”

A silence followed, long and thick.

Then, one by one, the Horde removed their number tags.

The next morning, when the siren screamed, no one moved.

Overseers roared. The shock batons came out. But this time, the Horde did not bend. They stood tall, shoulder to shoulder, a wall of will.

Coren stepped forward, holding the book above his head.

“We remember,” he said. “We remember the words you tried to bury.”

And the Horde roared back, not in anger, but in unity.

“Freedom!”

“Hope!”

“Life!”

The city above didn’t know it yet, but its foundations were cracking—not from an earthquake, not from sabotage, but from the horde work… the unrelenting, thankless labor… finally turning into resistance.

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In the life of the Horde, work had once been survival. But now, it was purpose. Now, it was revolution.