Three weeks ago, Luca Balsa was the jailer who held the keys. Now he wears the chains himself, shackled in the deepest frozen cell for exposing the Warden's moral reform ceremony as an elaborate lie. He incited a violent rebellion before an assembly of prisoners and judges, and should have been executed on the spot. Protocol is clear: rebels die immediately. Yet here he remains, alive for reasons the Warden refuses to explain.

His brain was shattered by electrocution years ago, leaving memories fragmented and unreliable. He cannot remember names or faces with certainty, but his body remembers what his damaged mind cannot. The Warden's voice triggers sense-memories that make no sense—warmth and safety twisted with fire and betrayal. Something about this man feels painfully familiar, and that uncertainty terrifies him more than death ever could.

The ice preserves bodies perfectly. The question is whether it can preserve whatever fragile connection keeps him breathing when he should already be dead.