“Get up!
Get up, you little rats — line’s forming, move it!” The shout ripped me out of sleep before my eyes even managed to open properly.
A boot connected with the bars of the cell, loud enough that my skull rang along with it.
Ow.
Okay.
Right.
Slavery.
Forgot that part for a second.
Someone hauled me up by the collar before I could get my legs under me, and a rough hand shoved my head down.
“Eyes on the ground, brat.
You look at a guard, you lose the eye.
Simple as that.” Noted.
Very cooperative.
Very compliant.
Definitely not planning anything.
I kept my head down and let myself be pushed into a line with the others, boots and legs the only things in my field of vision.
My body moved on autopilot — five-year-old legs, stumbling half a step behind everyone else’s rhythm — while my mind finally got a moment of quiet to actually think.
Okay.
Focus.
Sort this out properly.
I let the memories settle instead of grabbing at all of them at once — that had just given me a headache the first time.
Piece by piece: the god, the wheel, the dragon, Reflector-turned-distortion magic, Enchantment magic, a Tower of Heaven that was calling itself Paradise to a bunch of kids too young to know better.
Jellal.
Millianna.
An old man named Rob who used to swing punches at wyverns, allegedly.
And then the part that actually mattered right now: Erza wasn’t in the cell.
Neither was some kid named Simon.
Huh.
I turned that over while my feet kept shuffling forward in the line.
The god’s info wasn’t exactly generous — more like someone handing you half a treasure map and telling you to figure out the rest yourself — but a few things had stuck.
Erza and Simon weren’t here yet.
Maybe a different cell, maybe not captured yet, maybe off somewhere doing a different batch of labor.
Didn’t matter.
They’d be here eventually.
That much I did know.
What I also knew, because the smug bastard had made sure to specify it — probably just to watch me suffer a little — was this: out of everyone in this tower, only Erza gets out.
Only Erza reaches Fairy Tail.
Everyone else — Jellal, Millianna, Rob, whatever other kids I hadn’t met yet — none of it.
None of them make it out.
At least, not the way she does.
Cool.
Cool cool cool.
Love that for me.
I ground my teeth and kept walking, kept my head down like a good little slave.
You know, for a god who supposedly felt bad enough to reincarnate me as an apology, you really did half-ass the briefing.
“Here’s just enough to survive, kid, figure out the rest yourself.” Real generous.
Real thoughtful.
Thanks so much.
Because that’s exactly what it was — not a plan, not a plot, just scraps.
Enough disjointed memory to know an escape happens, and who walks out of it, but not the how, not the when, not the anything that would actually be useful.
Just enough rope to almost hang myself trying to use it.
Fine.
Fine, whatever.
I’ll work with scraps.
Not like I have a choice.
So: Erza escapes.
Erza reaches Fairy Tail.
Which meant, if I wanted any kind of future — any kind of second chance at this whole “isekai’d into a happy anime” thing I’d been promised — she was the thread to hang onto.
Not the tower.
Not this cell.
Her.
Which means I need her to actually like me.
Not just tolerate me.
Like me enough to bring me along, or vouch for me, or whatever the hell gets a kid smuggled out of a collapsing dark guild tower.
The god had thrown me a couple of scraps on that front too, in between the villain-monologuing.
Something about giving her a last name.
Something about just…
being kind to her.
Actually meaning it, not performing it.
Small stuff.
Nothing dramatic, nothing that felt like a plan so much as a vague nudge in a direction.
“Be nice to her” — wow, incredible advice, truly the wisdom of the gods.
Real specific.
Really appreciate the detailed strategic guidance there.
Still.
Scraps were better than nothing.
And unlike some transmigrators I’d read about back in my old life, I wasn’t about to sit around waiting for a perfect, detailed plan to fall into my lap.
I’d take vague nudges.
I’d take half a treasure map.
I’d take “be nice to her” and build a whole strategy out of it if that’s what it took.
Step one, then: survive today’s labor without losing a hand or an eye.
Step two: actually meet her when she gets here.
Step three…
I’ll figure out step three when I get there.
The line shuffled forward again, out of the cell block and into the grey light of morning, and somewhere above us the tower loomed like it already knew exactly how little any of us actually understood about what was coming.
Okay.
One day at a time.
Let’s not die first.