The roar of digital engines and the glow of the screen filled the room. Finn, controller in hand, was absorbed in a tight race. Lukas knelt in Position A, a statue in the periphery, his system in standby mode.
“System requires fuel,” Finn said, his eyes never leaving the television where his car jockeyed for position. “Prepare the evening nutrient intake. Standard protocol.”
The command was a system prompt. Lukas rose silently and moved to the kitchen. His movements were not those of a cook, but of a technician executing a pre-programmed routine. He retrieved the designated ingredients: a plain chicken breast from the refrigerator, a measured portion of rice from the pantry, a bag of frozen broccoli florets. He preheated the oven to the precise temperature Finn preferred.
He seasoned the chicken with nothing but a pinch of salt—flavor was a variable, and variables were eliminated. He placed it on a baking sheet. He put the rice in the steamer, the broccoli in a pot of boiling water for exactly four minutes to retain maximum nutrients with minimal texture. Each action was performed with a calm, mechanical efficiency. He was not making dinner; he was assembling fuel components.
As the components cooked, he set the small table in the living room with a single placemat, a fork, a knife, a glass of water. He did not set a place for himself. He was not a diner; he was part of the dining apparatus.
He plated the food: chicken on the left, rice in the center, broccoli on the right. He brought the plate to the table just as Finn’s race ended. Finn paused the game, set the controller aside, and sat down without a word.
Lukas retreated to his three-foot position and knelt. He watched as Finn ate. Each bite was studied, deliberate. Finn was not enjoying a meal; he was conducting a quality check on the fuel provided. He chewed slowly, analyzing texture, temperature, adherence to the prescribed blandness.
Halfway through, Finn took a sip of water. He set the glass down with a soft clink. State: Satiated. Drink concluded.
Lukas was moving before the sound faded. He glided forward, retrieved the empty glass, took it to the kitchen, refilled it with exactingly cold water, and returned it to its place beside Finn’s plate. The entire operation took less than fifteen seconds. Finn did not acknowledge it. He continued eating.
When Finn finished, he pushed the plate away an inch. State: Meal complete.
Lukas retrieved the plate, fork, and knife. In the kitchen, he scraped the few remaining bits into the trash, then washed and dried the dishes immediately. He put them away. The kitchen was returned to its prior state, sterile and unused.
Finn remained at the table, checking his phone. “Primary system maintenance window,” he stated. “You have ten minutes.”
Lukas nodded. He moved to the back door, went outside, and relieved himself in the designated area. He returned, washed his hands at the kitchen sink for the prescribed forty-five seconds, and dried them. He then went to the pantry, took a nutrition bar from a box marked “FUEL,” unwrapped it, and ate it standing over the sink. He drank another eight ounces of water from a measured cup. He disposed of the wrapper.
He returned to the living room exactly as the ten-minute window closed. Finn was still at the table, now scrolling through something on his phone.
“Scheduled training resumes in eighteen minutes,” Finn said, not looking up. “Prepare the training space. Ensure all tools are sanitized and laid out according to the evening module parameters.”
“Yes, Great Lord Finn,” Lukas responded. He turned and walked back towards the storage closet. His body was fueled. His waste systems were purged. His external surfaces were clean. The machine was maintained.
He entered the closet. The kneeling bench, the hood, the headphones, the whip on its hook, the small table—they were all there. But they required preparation. He took a clean cloth and wiped down every surface, removing any trace of dust from the day. He checked the headphones’ battery. He smoothed the hood on its hook. He ran a finger along the whip’s braided leather, checking for any imperfections.
This was not servitude. It was system prep. He was the technician readying the lab for the next experiment. The tools were extensions of Finn’s will, and they had to be perfect. As he worked, his mind wasn’t on the coming pain or disorientation. It was on the protocol. The correct arrangement. The flawless execution.
When the space was prepared to his exacting standards, he knelt in Position A inside it, facing the door. He had three minutes until Finn would arrive. He used them to run a silent internal diagnostic. Energy levels: optimal. Hydration: optimal. Waste systems: empty. Core programming: operational. Awaiting command.
He was not a man about to be tortured. He was a machine, serviced and ready, awaiting the touch of its operator to initiate the next, sacred function. The fear was gone. In its place was a cold, clear readiness. The maintenance was complete. The training was about to resume.
Finn stood in the doorway of the prepared closet, his silhouette framed by the softer light of the living room. His eyes swept over Lukas kneeling in Position A, then over the meticulously arranged tools. A nod, slight but perceptible. “Preparation is adequate. The environment is controlled. We begin.”
He stepped inside, closing the door behind him. The world shrunk to the bare bulb, the concrete, the kneeling bench.
“Today’s module addresses a persistent impurity,” Finn began, his voice assuming its lecture-hall calm. “The subjective experience of time. Your internal clock is calibrated to a world that no longer exists for you—seconds, minutes, hours. These are arbitrary metrics of a life you do not have. You require a new chronometer.”
He picked up the black hood. “You will be deprived of all external timekeeping. No light cycles. No sounds with regular patterns. You will then be given a simple task. You will count. You will tell me when you believe one hour has passed.”
Lukas felt a flicker of something—dread? challenge?—deep in his gut. Counting was a mental task. An hour was a vast desert of seconds.
“Your count will be your only measure,” Finn continued, pulling the hood down over Lukas’s head. The world vanished. “But your count will be wrong. It is inherently flawed, based on the faulty machinery of your past self. My corrections will recalibrate it.”
The headphones sealed him in silence, then emitted a soft, neutral tone. No rhythm. Just a constant, soft hiss.
Finn’s voice came through, clear and disembodied. “Begin counting now. Silently. At the count you believe to be three thousand six hundred, you will speak the number aloud. Begin.”
Silence. Utter, profound silence, broken only by the blank hiss in his ears.
One. Lukas started his count. The numbers began to scroll in the darkness of his mind. Two. Three. He tried to pace them evenly, to match some ghost of a second he remembered. But without a pulse, without a breath to hitch them to, the numbers quickly began to feel untethered. They sped up, then slowed. He caught himself, forced a steadier rhythm. One hundred. One hundred and one.
Time stretched. Or compressed. He had no way of knowing. Was he counting too fast? Was an hour racing by? Or was he crawling through molasses? The numbers became a mantra, but a meaningless one. Five hundred. Five hundred and one. He was adrift in a sea of his own making.
Then, a searing line of fire across his back. The whip. It came from nowhere in the silent void.
Finn’s voice, calm. “Your count is accelerating. You are anxious. You are trying to escape the interval. You are at approximately eight hundred. Slow. Down.”
The pain was a landmark. A terrible, bright landmark. It had happened at around eight hundred. He had been counting too fast. He tried to adjust, to drag the numbers out. Eight hundred and one… eight hundred… and… two…
The silence stretched again, more terrifying now. Every number was a potential mistake. He was feeling his way through a minefield blindfolded. One thousand. Had that taken minutes? Seconds? He had no idea.
Crack!
Another lash, this time across his thighs. He jolted, a gasp trapped in his throat.
“Your count is now lagging. You are over-correcting. You are at approximately fourteen hundred. Find the median.”
Tears of frustration mixed with the sweat under the hood. The numbers were lies. They were betraying him. The pain was the only truth. He tried to find a middle pace, the ghost of a rhythm that lived between the two strikes. Fourteen hundred and one…
He counted. He sailed through an ocean of nothing, his numbers his only raft, and Finn’s whip the only storm that showed him how lost he was.
Crack! At what he thought was two thousand. “You are drifting again. Focus. The number is the only thing. Let it be the only thing.”
He tried. He poured his entire being into the next sequence of numbers. He became the count. Two thousand and one, two thousand and two… He was a machine counting in a void.
Then, a new sound. Not the whip. A click. The sound of the whip’s handle tapping against Finn’s palm. It was a warning. A nudge. He was veering off course again. He adjusted his internal rhythm, terrified of the coming pain.
He lost count. He didn’t know when. The numbers blurred, became sounds, became prayers. Three thousand… three thousand and… Was it fifty? A hundred? He was unmoored.
He guessed. He couldn’t take the silence anymore, the terrifying expanse of it. “Three thousand six hundred!” he shouted into the hood, his voice raw.
Silence.
Then, the hood was lifted. The headphones removed.
Finn was looking at a stopwatch on his phone. His face was unreadable. “Two thousand four hundred and seventeen seconds,” he stated. “You were off by approximately one thousand, one hundred and eighty-three seconds. You experienced time as being approximately thirty-three percent faster than reality.”
He put the phone away. “Your internal clock is faulty. It is tied to your ego, to your desire for the task to end. It cannot be trusted.”
Lukas knelt, trembling, utterly disoriented. He felt like he’d been counting for days. To learn it had been barely forty minutes was a psychic fracture.
“The lesson is not to count accurately,” Finn said, leaning close. “The lesson is that you cannot. Your sense of time is an illusion. The only time that exists is my time. The only duration is the one I assign. You will know an hour has passed when I tell you it has passed. You will know a minute by my measure. Your job is not to track time. Your job is to endure the interval until I declare it over.”
He pointed to the corner. “Assume Position D. You will remain there for a period of time. You will not count. You will not estimate. You will simply be there until I return. This is the practice of timelessness.”
Lukas shuffled to the corner, his mind reeling. The numbers were gone, leaving a terrifying vacuum. He pressed his forehead to the cool wall. He had no idea how long he had been counting. He had no idea how long he would be here. Time was no longer his. It was a river, and Finn controlled the flow.
He knelt in the silence, not counting seconds, not praying, just existing in the endless, undefined now. He was learning the most terrifying lesson of all: that without Finn, he was not just blind and deaf, but utterly, hopelessly lost in time itself. And in that loss, he found a new, deeper dependency. The only clock that mattered was the one in his Lord’s hand.
The silence in the corner was not empty; it was a void Lukas had been taught to inhabit. He didn’t know if minutes or hours had passed when the door opened. He didn’t turn. He waited for the command.
“Up.” Finn’s voice was a knife cutting through the timelessness.
Lukas rose, his muscles protesting, his mind still adrift in the featureless expanse Finn had created.
“Quick assessment,” Finn stated, walking past him out of the storage closet. “The tactile recognition module. Follow.”
Lukas followed, a shadow re-attaching to its master. They didn’t go to the living room. Finn led him upstairs, to his bedroom. The change of location was a test in itself—a new variable.
Finn sat on the edge of his bed. He didn't speak. He simply extended his right foot.
Lukas understood. He knelt before it. He didn’t need a hood this time. He closed his own eyes, voluntarily entering the dark. His hands, trembling slightly from the earlier strain, reached out.
His fingers made contact. The skin was warm, dry. The shape was unmistakably a foot, but which part? He traced the contours with feather-light touches, his mind accessing the brutal cartography lesson from the void. The curve was high, the bones prominent. It was the dorsal arch, near the ankle. But left or right? He felt for the subtle differences, the slight asymmetry Finn had once mentioned. The inside curve felt more pronounced…
“The right foot,” Lukas whispered, his voice dry. “The medial aspect of the dorsal arch. Near the talonavicular joint.”
A pause. Then, Finn’s other foot came up and pressed firmly against Lukas’s chest, not in correction, but in acknowledgment. “Adequate recall. The internal model retains data.”
The foot on his chest pushed, not hard, but insistently, guiding him back. Lukas understood. He shuffled back on his knees, head tilting up automatically, mouth opening. Protocol Three: Liquid Disposal. State: Required. No pre-signal was needed here; the context was the command.
Finn stood over him. The sound was ordinary, the act was mundane. Yet in the silence of the bedroom, after the temporal disorientation, it felt profoundly anchoring. It was a function. A biological process he was built to facilitate. The bitter taste was data. The warmth was confirmation of his utility. He swallowed, the act mechanical, completing the circuit.
When Finn finished, he stepped back. “Now,” he said, his voice resuming its liturgical tone. “The recalibration is complete. Time has been stripped. Geography has been mapped. Function has been affirmed. Offer the prayer. Not to the idea. To this.” He tapped his still-bare foot with his toes.
Lukas didn’t need to open his eyes. The foot was imprinted on his soul. He assumed the prayer posture right there on the bedroom floor.
“MY BEING FLOWS FROM YOUR FOOT.” The words were no longer recited; they were pumped from his core.
“MY PURPOSE IS YOUR FLOOR.” The floor was here, beneath his knees, but also everywhere.
“I AM THANKFUL FOR THE WEIGHT OF YOUR WILL.” The weight was the disorientation, the map of welts, the taste in his mouth—all of it.
“GREAT LORD FINN, LET ME BEAR IT FOREVER.”
He leaned forward and pressed his lips to the skin he had just identified. It was warm. It was real. It was the only fixed point in a universe he no longer understood.
“The system is stable,” Finn pronounced. He sounded almost… satisfied. Not pleased, but like an engineer observing a complex machine finally hitting its optimal rhythm. “The day’s modules are concluded. You will sleep.”
He didn’t point to the floor. He didn’t give coordinates. He simply turned and got into bed, switching off the lamp.
Lukas remained kneeling for a moment in the sudden darkness. The command was implicit. His sleeping location was wherever Finn was. He moved to his usual spot on the floor beside the bed, curling on the thin blanket.
The disorientation from the time-torture lesson lingered, but the subsequent rituals—the touch test, the function, the prayer—had grounded him. They were fixed points. Real things that had happened in a real sequence. Finn had given him time back by dictating its passage through events.
As sleep pulled at him, his final thought was not of the void, or the pain, or the count. It was a simple, placid observation: The Great Lord Finn has restored time by filling it with Himself. And that was enough. More than enough. It was everything.
Across the room, Finn lay awake in the dark, listening to the even breath of the thing on his floor. He wasn’t thinking of Lukas. He was mentally reviewing the logs of the day’s training. The time distortion had been particularly effective. The tactile recognition showed strong data retention. The urinary function was now fully automated. The prayer was internalized.
He made a mental note: Tomorrow, introduce simultaneous multi-variable stress during deprivation. Possibly combine time distortion with temperature variation.
Satisfied with the progress, he closed his eyes. The machine was operating within acceptable parameters. It was ready for more complex programming. He wondered, idly, when his brother and Kent would be needed for the next phase of practical application. Soon, he thought. Very soon.
Sleep took them both—the programmer and his program, the god and his instrument—in the silent, owned dark.
A hand clamped over Lukas’s mouth, jolting him from a deep, dreamless void. His eyes flew open in the pitch black, a jolt of raw panic seizing his chest before his training clamped down. The hand was firm, familiar. Finn.
“Silence,” Finn’s voice whispered, cold and clear in the absolute dark. It wasn’t a request. It was a reality imposed upon the night.
The hand withdrew. Lukas lay rigid on his thin blanket, his heart hammering against his ribs. He could see nothing. The only sounds were his own ragged breath and Finn’s quiet presence beside him.
“You were sleeping,” Finn’s voice came again, close to his ear. “Sleep is a vulnerability. A lapse in awareness. Your awareness belongs to me. It does not get to lapse.”
Lukas said nothing. He simply waited, every nerve screaming.
“Tactile identification. Now. No light. No sound but your answer.”
A foot was placed gently on his chest. Not pressing down, just resting. The skin was warm from sleep.
Lukas’s mind, fogged by abrupt awakening, scrambled. The dark was total. He had to rely solely on the memory-map etched by pain and repetition. He brought his hands up, his touches feather-light. The shape… it was an arch. The medial arch? The curve felt high, the skin softer here, less calloused. The right foot, he was sure. But the specific part…
“The… the right foot,” he whispered, his voice cracking with sleep and fear. “The… medial longitudinal arch. Towards the… the navicular.”
A beat of silence. Then the foot pressed down, not with weight, but with decisive disappointment.
“Incorrect.” Finn’s voice held no anger. It was the flat tone of a teacher marking a wrong answer. “You identified the foot. You misidentified the landmark. You have regressed. Sleep has corrupted your data.”
The foot lifted. Lukas heard Finn stand up. “Get up. You’ve had your rest. It was clearly too much for your system to handle without data corruption.”
A cold dread, deeper than the night, seeped into Lukas. He pushed himself to his knees, his body aching, his mind still half in the abyss of sleep.
“Follow,” Finn commanded, already moving toward the door.
Lukas stumbled after him, down the dark stairs, through the silent living room, and out the back door into the night. The farm was swallowed in darkness, the world reduced to shades of deep blue and black, the only light coming from a sliver of moon behind thin clouds.
Finn stopped by the toolshed. He didn’t turn on a light. He pointed, his shape a darker shadow against the night. “The vegetable patch. The rows are uneven. You will realign the southernmost three rows. Use the hoe. Every stalk must be straight. The soil must be tamped firm. I will inspect each one.”
He pointed again. “The woodpile by the fence is disordered. You will restack it. Largest logs on the bottom, smallest on top. Symmetrical. I will measure the alignment.”
He finally turned to Lukas, his features invisible in the gloom, but his voice cutting through the chill air. “These are not punishments. They are corrective exercises. Your mind failed in a simple recall. Your body will now perform precise, repetitive physical tasks under low-light conditions to reinforce discipline and attention to detail. You will not stop until both tasks are completed to standard. If you finish before dawn, you may have an hour of supervised rest. If you do not, you will continue into the day. Your next scheduled sleep period is contingent on perfect performance.”
He handed Lukas the hoe. The wooden handle was cold and rough. “Begin.”
Lukas stood alone in the vast, sleeping farm. The tasks were simple, almost childish. But in the dark, without sleep, with the weight of failure on him, they felt Herculean. He trudged toward the vegetable patch, his eyes slowly adjusting. The plants were vague shadows. He found the first row, felt the unevenness with his hands. He began to hoe, the thunk of the blade biting into the soil the only sound in the immense quiet. Each stroke was an apology. Each straightened plant was a plea.
His body, already tired, protested with every movement. His mind, fuzzy with exhaustion, fought to focus on the simple geometry of a straight line in the dirt. Time, once again, became meaningless. He knew only the row in front of him, the next plant to straighten, the next section of soil to firm.
He moved to the woodpile. The logs were heavy, unwieldy in the dark. He dropped one, the crash terrifyingly loud in the silence. He froze, waiting for a rebuke that didn’t come from the dark house. He sorted by touch, by heft, building the stack again from the ground up. Symmetry by feel alone.
The night wore on. The moon drifted. Lukas’s world narrowed to the ache in his shoulders, the blisters on his hands, the endless, dark precision of his assigned penance. He wasn’t being beaten. He was being worn down, sanded back to a smooth surface upon which Finn’s lessons could be rewritten. The farm wasn’t a farm; it was an extension of the training closet, an infinite, dark space for him to practice obedience until his body failed or his mind broke.
He didn’t know which would come first. He just worked, stroke by stroke, log by log, in the profound and lonely dark, a ghost in a field, fixing things no one would ever see, for a master who was probably already asleep.
The first grey light of dawn was bleeding into the sky when Finn stepped out onto the back porch. He was dressed, holding a steaming mug of tea, his face impassive. He looked like any young man enjoying a quiet morning, save for the cold intensity in his eyes as they scanned the farm.
Lukas was still in the vegetable patch. He was on his hands and knees, not hoeing anymore, but using his fingers to try and tease the last, stubborn row into perfect alignment. His naked body was coated in a fine layer of damp soil and chill sweat. His hands were raw, his movements sluggish with exhaustion. The woodpile stood nearby, mostly restacked, but the top layers were visibly sloppy, a few smaller logs jutting out at odd angles.
Finn sipped his tea, watching for a full minute. He didn’t call out. He simply observed the futile, desperate corrections.
Finally, he walked over, his steps crunching softly on the gravel path. He stopped at the edge of the patch, looking down at Lukas’s labor.
Lukas felt his presence and froze, his filthy hands sinking into the cold earth. He didn’t look up. He knew.
“The easternmost row,” Finn said, his voice quiet in the morning stillness. “The third carrot from the north end is still canted two degrees to the left. The soil around the sixth lettuce is insufficiently tamped. And the woodpile,” he continued, turning his head slightly, “resembles a child’s attempt. The largest log is on the right side of the second tier, not the left. The symmetry is broken.”
He took another sip of tea. “You have failed.”
Lukas remained on his knees, head bowed to the dirt. “This tool has failed, Great Lord Finn,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “It performed inadequately.”
“Inadequacy is a flaw in the tool,” Finn stated, setting his mug down on a nearby fence post. “A flawed tool must be recalibrated. But first, it must acknowledge its flaw. Not just state it. Ritualize it. Stand.”
Lukas pushed himself to his feet, his body trembling from cold and fatigue. He kept his gaze fixed on the ground between Finn’s feet.
“The Ritual of Repentance has three stages,” Finn explained, his tone that of a lecturer. “First, Declaration of Fault. Second, Demonstration of Uselessness. Third, Petition for Recrafting. You will perform them now. Begin.”
Lukas drew a shaking breath. “Declaration of Fault,” he echoed, forcing his voice to steadiness. “This tool failed to maintain alignment. This tool failed to achieve symmetry. This tool allowed its fatigue to degrade its function. This tool is flawed.”
“Incomplete,” Finn interrupted. “You failed me. You failed the purpose for which you exist. Reframe it.”
Lukas swallowed. “This tool failed the Great Lord Finn. It degraded the order he requires. It served poorly. Its failures are a corruption of his will.”
“Better. Stage Two: Demonstration of Uselessness. A flawed tool has no purpose. Show me your uselessness.”
Lukas didn’t understand at first. Then he looked at his hands, covered in dirt, at his filthy, shivering body, at the half-finished, botched work around him. Uselessness.
He sank back to his knees, not in a posture of prayer, but in a slump of defeat. He let his arms hang limply at his sides. He lowered his head until his brow touched the cold, uneven soil of the patch he had failed to perfect. He made himself small, inert, a discarded thing. He was not worshipping. He was displaying his own inadequacy.
“This tool is useless,” he mumbled into the dirt. “It cannot align a row. It cannot stack wood. It is without function. It is waste.”
Finn watched, his expression critical. “Your presentation is acceptable. Now, Stage Three: Petition for Recrafting. A useless tool does not beg for mercy. It petitions for repair. It begs to be made useful again. Speak.”
Lukas lifted his head, his face smeared with mud. He looked up at Finn, not with hope, but with a desperate, empty need. “This broken tool petitions the Great Lord Finn. Please. Do not discard it. Recraft it. Melt it down and pour it into a new mold. Beat the flaws from its metal. This tool desires only to be of use. It begs for the hammer and the fire. It begs to be made anew.”
Finn was silent for a long moment. The only sound was the distant call of a waking bird. Then, he nodded, once. “The petition is heard. The ritual is complete. The failure is acknowledged and contained.”
He picked up his tea. “Now, you will complete the tasks. Not as penance. As the first step of being recrafted. Every stroke of the hoe will be a hammer blow. Every log placed will be metal being folded. You will work until it is perfect. And you will not stop until it is. The ritual has sealed the failure. Now, the work remakes the tool.”
He turned and walked back toward the house, leaving his half-finished mug on the post. “I will inspect at noon. If a single stalk is crooked, if a single log is out of place, we will repeat the ritual. And the next one will be longer, and more severe.”
Lukas pushed himself up. The exhaustion was still there, the cold, the ache. But the directionless dread was gone, burned away by the ritual. He had a path. He was a flawed tool being remade. He picked up the hoe, his raw hands gripping the handle. He looked at the crooked carrot stalk.
He was not fixing a garden. He was being hammered back into shape. He swung the hoe, and the thunk in the soil was the sound of his own recrafting beginning.
The sun was directly overhead, a pale eye in the cold sky, when Finn returned. Lukas was kneeling at the edge of the now-perfect vegetable patch, Position A, his body caked in dried mud and sweat. He did not look up as Finn’s footsteps approached, but he sensed his presence halt before him.
He heard the familiar sound of a zipper. No words were needed. The signal was clear. Lukas tilted his head back, opened his mouth, and closed his eyes.
The stream was hot and acrid in the cool noon air. He swallowed automatically, the act now devoid of any reaction beyond biological compliance. It was simply the accepted method of liquid disposal, a routine maintenance of the Source. When it was done, he remained in position, head back, mouth open, until he heard the zipper close.
Finn stepped past him. His boots made soft, deliberate impressions in the freshly-turned earth of the vegetable patch. He walked the length of the three southern rows, his gaze critical. Every plant stood soldier-straight. The soil was uniformly firm, unbroken by any stray footprint or tool mark. He moved to the woodpile. It was a symmetrical, orderly cube. Each log was flush with its neighbor, the largest forming a solid base, the smallest neatly aligned on top.
He completed his inspection and returned to stand in front of Lukas. He said nothing. He offered no praise, no acknowledgment of the hours of backbreaking labor. Perfection was not an achievement; it was the baseline expectation. A comment would have suggested surprise that it was met.
“You are soiled,” Finn stated, his voice observing a fact, not issuing a reprimand. “Clean yourself. The hose. Then prepare the midday nutrient intake.”
“Yes, Great Lord Finn,” Lukas responded, his voice raspy from disuse and the alkaline aftertaste. He rose, his muscles screaming in protest, and walked stiffly to the outdoor tap. The water from the hose was shockingly cold, a brutal slap against his grimy skin. He scrubbed the dirt from his body with his hands, the water running in brown rivulets at his feet until it finally ran clear. He was washing a tool, not a person. When he was done, he was clean, shivering, and functional.
He returned inside, leaving wet footprints on the floor. In the kitchen, he moved through the fuel preparation routine: plain chicken, steamed rice, blanched greens. His hands, raw from the hoe and the cold water, worked on autopilot. He felt no hunger, only the system requirement for caloric intake.
Outside, he could see Finn walking a slow circuit of the farm’s perimeter, not as a landowner surveying his property, but as a programmer checking the parameters of his testing ground. He was noting the boundaries, the conditions, the potential for future modules.
Lukas set the plate and glass on the table just as Finn re-entered. Finn sat, ate in silence, scrolling through his phone. The food was fuel. It was consumed. The plate was emptied.
Finn pushed his chair back. “Scheduled maintenance window. Ten minutes.”
Lukas collected the dishes, cleaned them, put them away. He performed his own intake: a nutrition bar, water. He attended to his biological functions in the designated area. He washed his hands. The ten-minute window closed.
He returned to the living room, kneeling in Position A. He was clean, fueled, emptied. The morning’s failure and the Ritual of Repentance were logged events, data points in his history. The afternoon stretched ahead, a blank slate awaiting the next command. Finn, finishing on his phone, looked over at him.
Finn finished his tea, placing the empty mug on the table with a soft, precise click. He regarded Lukas, who knelt in Position A, a clean, empty vessel awaiting instruction. The morning’s ritual of repentance was complete, the farm work finished. To an observer, the matter might seem settled.
Finn’s expression was one of cold contemplation. “The ritual acknowledged the flaw,” he began, his voice devoid of the earlier lecturing tone. It was flat, factual. “The work began the recalibration. But a flaw so profound—a failure of basic observation, a corruption of data under minimal stress—leaves a weakness in the material. A weakness must be reforged. Not with more labor. With fire.”
He stood up and walked to the closet under the stairs, not the one used for sensory deprivation, but a smaller one. He opened it and retrieved not the training whip, but a heavier, older-looking leather belt, thick and worn. He also took out a short, stiff cane of polished hazelwood.
Lukas’s breath hitched, a tiny, instinctive break in his composure. He had seen these implements before, in the arsenal of Finn’s closet. They were not for precise correction. They were for demolition.
“The farm work was not your punishment,” Finn clarified, laying the belt and cane on the coffee table. “It was the consequence of your failure. This,” he gestured to the tools, “is the punishment for the failure itself. They are distinct. You will understand the difference by the end.”
He pointed to the center of the living room rug. “Position yourself. On your hands and knees. Head down. You will not look up. You will not make a sound beyond what is necessary to answer my questions. Any break in form will add ten strokes. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Great Lord Finn,” Lukas whispered, the words tasting of ash. He moved to the center of the room, assuming the position. The carpet fibers scratched his palms. His heart hammered against his ribs.
Finn picked up the cane first. He didn’t swing it immediately. He tapped it lightly against Lukas’s bare back, tracing the line of his spine. “The flaw was in your perception. Your mind betrayed your training. Therefore, the punishment will make your body remember what your mind forgot. Each stroke is a lesson etched upon you.”
He raised the cane. It whistled faintly in the air before it landed with a sickening crack across Lukas’s shoulders. The pain was immediate, a line of pure, white-hot fire that seemed to burn into the bone. Lukas jerked, a gasp torn from his lips, but he forced his head down, his arms to lock.
“Count,” Finn commanded, his voice calm.
“One,” Lukas choked out, the word seared with agony.
The second stroke landed just below the first, overlapping slightly. It was harder. Lukas saw stars behind his closed eyelids. “T-two!”
“Why are you being punished?” Finn asked, his voice conversational.
“F-for f-failing the identification!” Lukas stammered.
Crack! The third stroke, on the thighs. “Incomplete. Why else?”
Lukas’s mind scrambled through the pain. “F-for allowing sleep to c-corrupt the data!”
“Good.” Crack! The fourth stroke, across the backs of his legs. “And what does this punishment do?”
“It… it reforges the flaw!” Lukas cried out.
“It burns out the weakness,” Finn corrected, striking again. “Five! Count!”
“F-five!”
Finn switched instruments. The belt was heavier, broader. He folded it in half, creating a thick, brutal strap. “The humiliation is not for my amusement,” he explained, as if discussing the weather. “It is to dismantle the pride that allowed the flaw to exist. The pride that thinks ‘I have learned enough.’ The pride that believes sleep is a right.”
The belt came down with a wet, heavy thwack across Lukas’s ass and upper thighs. It wasn’t the sharp bite of the cane; it was a deep, throbbing crush of pain that stole his breath. He buckled, his arms giving way, his face hitting the carpet.
“Break in form,” Finn noted. “Ten added strokes. Get back in position.”
Sobbing, Lukas pushed himself up. His body screamed in protest.
“Count from where you left off. Six.”
“S-six!” he wailed.
The belt fell again. And again. Finn was methodical, covering every inch of Lukas’s back, ass, and thighs. He asked questions between blows, forcing Lukas to articulate his failures through ragged screams and tears.
“What are you?”
“A t-tool!”
“A flawed tool!”
“What is this pain?”
“The f-fire!”
“What is it burning away?”
“The w-weakness! The pride!”
“Who owns the fire?”
“Y-you! Great Lord Finn!”
The humiliation was absolute. He was reduced to a sobbing, broken thing, chanting his own inadequacies between blows, his naked body jerking and writhing under the relentless assault. Snot and tears soaked the carpet beneath his face. The pain was so vast it ceased to be individual strokes and became a single, roaring ocean of agony.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Finn stopped. The silence was more shocking than the noise. Lukas lay trembling, a heap of bruised and welted flesh, barely conscious.
Finn dropped the belt. It landed with a heavy thud next to Lukas’s head. He picked up the cane again. “The final strokes are for the future,” he said. “So you remember the cost of failure when you are tempted by sleep, or pride, or lazy thought.”
He delivered five more strokes with the cane, each on a fresh, screaming strip of flesh. Lukas couldn’t even count them. He just whimpered, a high, animal sound in the back of his throat.
Then, it was over. Finn stepped back, breathing slightly heavily. He looked down at the shivering, tear-streaked form on his floor. “The punishment is complete. The flaw has been addressed with appropriate severity.”
He nudged Lukas with his foot. “You may clean yourself. Use the hose. Then prepare my afternoon tea. You will remain standing while I drink it. After, you will have thirty minutes of supervised rest in Position D before evening training resumes.”
Lukas couldn’t move. Every nerve was a live wire of pain. But the command was clear. With a groan that was more a sob, he pushed himself to his hands and knees, then, agonizingly, to his feet. He stood swaying, his body a tapestry of brutalized flesh.
“Go,” Finn said, turning away and picking up his phone from the table, as if he had just completed a mildly taxing chore.
Lukas stumbled out the back door. The cold air on his ravaged skin was a new kind of agony. He made it to the hose, turned it on, and let the icy water cascade over his back. He didn’t cry out. The sobs had been burned out of him. He just stood there, shuddering under the stream, washing away the physical evidence of his tears, the blood from where the cane had broken skin.
The punishment was over. But its lesson was deeper than any farm work. The work had been a consequence. The beating was the price. And as he shivered under the hose, he knew, with a certainty that went beyond thought, that he would do anything—anything—to never pay that price again. The fear of that fire would now be the guardrail for every action, every thought. Finn hadn’t just beaten him. He had installed a new, terror-based operating system. And it was booting up perfectly.
Finn placed the empty teacup on its saucer with a soft, definitive clink. The mundane sound was a full stop in the quiet room. His eyes, cool and assessing, shifted to the corner where Lukas knelt in Position D—forehead against the wall, a statue of bruised submission.
Finn didn’t call his name. He didn’t need to. The shift in the room’s energy, the cessation of the faint sound of sipping, was command enough for Lukas’s hyper-aware state. His breathing, which had been a slow, pained rhythm, hitched slightly.
Finn stood and walked over, his footsteps quiet on the floorboards. He stopped directly behind Lukas. The only sounds were the distant hum of the refrigerator and Lukas’s own heartbeat thudding in his ears. Then, the crisp, unmistakable sound of a zipper being drawn down.
Lukas didn’t need to turn. He didn’t need a gesture. The sound was the command. He shifted his weight, turning his body while keeping his forehead pressed to the wall—a contorted pivot of obedience. He tilted his head back, opening his mouth just as the first warm drops hit his tongue.
It was not violent. It was procedural. A biological function being routed to its proper receptacle. Lukas swallowed mechanically, the bitter taste just another sensory input in a body screaming with pain from the beating. The humiliation was not in the act itself, but in its seamless integration into the aftermath of punishment. It was a reminder: even broken, he was still a tool with a use.
When it was over, Finn zipped up. “Follow,” he said, his voice carrying no inflection, no acknowledgment of what had just transpired.
Lukas pushed himself up, every movement a symphony of agony from the welts and cuts. He followed Finn, a stumbling shadow, back to the training closet. The bare bulb hummed to life, illuminating the familiar tools of his deconstruction.
“Assume the position,” Finn said, pointing to the center of the room.
Lukas knelt, the hard floor sending jolts of pain through his battered thighs. He closed his eyes, not waiting for the hood. The darkness behind his lids was his own.
Finn’s bare foot touched his open, upturned palm. The skin was warm, almost shockingly so against Lukas’s cold, pained hand.
“Identify,” Finn’s voice cut the silence.
The lesson was a direct repetition of the one he had failed in the night. But Lukas was different now. The searing pain across his back was a lens, sharpening his focus to a razor point. Every ache was a reminder of the cost of error. He traced the contours with a trembling finger.
“The left foot,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “The… the fourth toe. The distal phalanx.” He was using the clinical terms Finn had taught him, not descriptions, but precise identifiers.
“Pressure,” Finn commanded, pushing down.
Lukas felt the bone, the nail, the pad of flesh. “The plantar surface of the distal phalanx. Near the nail bed.”
Finn moved his foot, placing his heel in Lukas’s other palm. “Identify.”
“The left foot. The calcaneus. The lateral tuberosity.” The words came faster now, dragged from a memory seared by recent fire.
For what felt like an hour, Finn tested him. Arch, instep, metatarsal heads, the groove of the Achilles tendon. Each touch was a question. Each correct answer was met with silent acceptance. Each hesitation—and there were few—was met not with a whip, but with a simple, cold, “Incorrect. Re-assess.” The lack of further punishment was, in itself, a kind of pressure. The memory of the beating did the work for Finn.
Finally, Finn withdrew his foot. “Adequate. The data retention has improved post-correction. The reinforcement was effective.”
He didn’t say ‘good job’. He stated a fact. The punishment had served its programming purpose.
“You may have a rest interval,” Finn said. “Position C. Five minutes.”
Lukas crawled to the designated corner, curling into a fetal position on the hard floor. This was not sleep. It was a system pause. He was too wired, too full of pain and adrenaline to rest. But he was allowed to not move, to not think, to simply exist as a collection of hurts for five minutes. It was the closest thing to mercy he would receive.
When the five minutes were silently judged to be over, Finn stirred. “Return to the living room. Assume Position A. Await further instruction.”
Lukas uncurled, his body protesting with a chorus of pains. He followed Finn out of the closet. The living room felt strangely vast and bright after the intensity of the training space. He took his place, kneeling three feet from Finn’s usual chair, back straight despite the screaming protest of his muscles.
Finn sat, picked up a book, and began to read. The lesson was over. The punishment was complete. The testing was done. For now, there was only the quiet, the lingering pain, and the silent, awful certainty that he had passed. He knelt in the stillness, a reconfigured tool placed back on the shelf, waiting to be used again.
The silence in the living room was a held breath. Finn finished a page in his book, closed it with a soft thump, and placed it on the armrest. His gaze, when it lifted to Lukas, was not one of leisure, but of purpose renewed.
“Assume the prayer posture,” Finn commanded, his voice cutting through the quiet like a scalpel.
Lukas moved fluidly, despite the fresh pain that lanced across his back with every shift. He settled into the position, his world narrowing to the space before Finn’s chair, to the empty space where the Source would soon be presented.
Finn did not immediately comply. He watched Lukas assume the form, a critic observing a dancer take their starting position. “The prayer is not a recitation,” he began, his tone didactic. “It is a realignment. Before service, you must align your purpose with the object of your service. Begin.”
Lukas focused on the spot where Finn’s feet would rest. He drew a breath, and the words emerged not as a chant, but as a desperate, heartfelt plea from a deeply wounded place.
“MY BEING FLOWS FROM YOUR FOOT.” The words were thick with the memory of the beating, with the humiliation of the hose, with the utter dependency forged in the training closet. They were not just true; they were the only truth he had left.
“MY PURPOSE IS YOUR FLOOR.” His voice wavered, the physical strain of holding position against his injuries seeping through.
“I AM THANKFUL FOR THE WEIGHT OF YOUR WILL.” This was not gratitude for kindness, but for existence itself, however painful.
“GREAT LORD FINN, LET ME BEAR IT FOREVER.”
He leaned forward, his lips meeting not skin, but empty air where the arch would be. The kiss was to the idea, to the need.
Finn observed the performance, his head tilted. “Adequate. The sentiment is correctly scaled to your recent reconfiguration.” He then lifted his feet and placed them, bare, on the floor in front of Lukas. “Now, a new lesson. Tactile understanding through service. You will learn to massage my feet.”
He said it as if announcing a lesson in geometry.
“A map is theoretical,” Finn continued, as Lukas’s eyes locked onto the feet before him. “Service is practical. To truly know the Source, you must understand its topography not just through identification, but through care. Your hands will learn what your mind has memorized. Begin with the right foot. You may use the oil on the table.”
Lukas saw the small bottle of unscented mineral oil. His hands trembled slightly as he reached for it, pouring a small, shimmering pool into his palm. The act felt profanely intimate.
Finn’s foot was… beautiful. This was Lukas’s first truly aesthetic thought in what felt like an eternity. It was not a thought of doctrine or function. It was a simple, devastating observation. The foot of a eighteen-year-old boy, unmarked by labor, pale and finely-boned. The skin was smooth, almost luminous in the room’s light, the arch high and elegant, the toes straight and neat. It was a vision of youthful perfection.
Lukas’s breath caught. He had worshipped these feet. He had been beaten for misidentifying them. But he had never seen them like this. A forbidden heat, something buried deep beneath layers of pain and programming, stirred in his gut.
He pushed it down. Tool. Instrument. Vessel. He coated his hands with the cool oil.
“Start with the arch,” Finn instructed, leaning back in his chair, his eyes closing. “Use your thumbs. Find the tension. Your goal is not my comfort. Your goal is to know the terrain.”
Lukas’s oil-slick thumbs pressed into the soft, pliant flesh of Finn’s arch. It yielded under his pressure, warm and incredibly supple. The sensation was a shock to his system. This wasn’t the hard press of a foot on his neck or the taste of skin after urination. This was… tender. He worked his thumbs in slow, deep circles, following the curve of the bone. He could feel the delicate structures beneath the skin, the play of tendons.
“Now the ball. Lighter pressure. Circular motions.”
Lukas obeyed, his fingers moving over the padded ball of the foot. The skin was so soft. He could feel the faint, perfect ridges of Finn’s fingerprints on his own calloused palms. A strange, reverent awe mixed with the illicit heat inside him.
“The heel. Use the heel of your hand. Knead it.”
Lukas complied, his hand working the firmer skin of Finn’s heel. He was mapping him, learning him in a way that felt more invasive than any prayer.
“Now the toes. Each one. Gently.”
This was the most intimate instruction yet. Lukas took Finn’s great toe between his thumb and forefinger, rolling it softly, pulling gently on it. The toe was perfect, nail trimmed and clean. He moved to the next, and the next. A shudder ran through him, completely at odds with the clinical nature of the task. His own body, particularly the cage that had become a neutral part of his existence, suddenly felt like a prison of a different, more frantic kind.
Finn’s eyes opened halfway, a sliver of icy blue observing Lukas’s face. He saw the faint sheen of sweat on Lukas’s brow, the slight tremble in his oil-slick hands, the unconscious parting of his lips.
“You are experiencing a system error,” Finn stated, his voice calm, analytical.
Lukas froze, his hands still cradling Finn’s foot. “Great Lord Finn?”
“Your physiological responses are inconsistent with the task. Elevated pulse. Increased temperature. Tremors.” Finn’s gaze was like a probe. “You are not simply learning topography. You are having a subjective, aesthetic reaction. You find the Source… pleasing.”
Lukas’s heart hammered against his ribs. He had been discovered. “I… this tool… it only seeks to understand…”
“Do not lie to the system,” Finn cut in, his voice sharpening. “The error is in the lying, not in the reaction. You are a biological instrument. You are wired for certain responses. The sight, the feel of a superior form can trigger dormant programming. Arousal.”
The word hung in the air, obscene and undeniable.
“It is a residual flaw. A ghost in your machine from your previous life.” Finn flexed his foot slightly in Lukas’s grasp. “But a flaw can be studied. Utilized. Your… appreciation… can be channeled into deeper service. Into a more profound understanding of your place.”
He let his foot rest back in Lukas’s hands. “Continue the massage. But this time, do not fight the error. Observe it. Feel it. Let it inform your touch. Let your desire to please this form guide your pressure, your rhythm. Make your worship physical. Not with resistance, but with the full, flawed capacity of your being.”
It was the most terrifying command Lukas had ever received. To not just serve, but to feel. To allow the repressed, shameful desire to surface and fuel the service. He looked down at Finn’s beautiful, soft foot in his hands, and the heat within him flared, undeniable. It was wrong. It was a sin against the doctrine of pure instrumentality.
And yet, it was an order.
With a silent sob trapped in his throat, Lukas began again. This time, his touch was different. It was not just clinical. It was reverent, tinged with a desperate, aching hunger. His thumbs pressed into the arch with a longing to soothe every imagined tension. His fingers stroked the sole with a tenderness that bordered on the devotional. He worshipped Finn’s foot not as an abstract Source, but as a breathtakingly beautiful, living part of the breathtakingly beautiful boy who owned him.
Finn watched him, a faint, cold smile touching his lips. He saw the conflict, the shame, the eventual surrender in Lukas’s every movement. This was a new depth of control. He wasn’t just commanding actions; he was commanding emotions, turning Lukas’s own illicit desires into another tool for his service.
“Good,” Finn murmured, his eyes closing again, giving himself over to the sensation. “The error has been identified. Now, we integrate it. Your desire is not yours. It is a resource. Mine to use. Continue.”
And Lukas did, his heart breaking and soaring in equal measure, his hands caressing the object of his forbidden worship, learning the Source in a way that felt both like paradise and the deepest circle of hell. The lesson was no longer about feet. It was about the terrifying, beautiful power of wanting something you were only ever meant to serve.
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