So the sky was red again, and that meant someone had lied.
The children were gathered in the Chapel Pit, lined up by height, boots in bone dust, faces scrubbed raw to look obedient. You didn't breathe too loud in the Pit. You didn't blink unless you had permission. And you definitely didn't twitch — not even if the flies were treating your eyelids like landing strips.
Eli twitched anyway.
He was eight. Still soft in the joints. Still shaped like someone who might've been hugged once. That was a problem.
Across the pit, Sister Hex paced with the book of Blood held high above her head. It wasn't a real book. Just charred slabs of plastic tied together with old shoelaces, but it was heavy, and when it hit you, you stayed hit. She was tall like a storm drain and wore a necklace of dried tongues. Said it kept her safe from lies. Said it made her holy.
"Someone," she hissed, voice sharp enough to slice open clouds, "has desecrated the Meal Units."
The children flinched. One of them whimpered. It might have been Eli.
"Someone," she repeated, stepping over a femur with the casual grace of a dancer, "has violated the Trust of Ration Law and eaten sweet."
A gasp went up. Actual sugar? That was heresy. That was legend. That was death.
Sister Hex turned, her eyes narrowing on the twitching child with honey on his breath and sin in his teeth.
"Eli."
His name dropped like a hammer.
He looked up. Then down. Then nowhere.
"I—" he started.
Wrong answer.
She descended. Fast. Like wrath with a face.
"No lies," she whispered, crouching beside him. "No stories. No candy dreams."
She reached out, cupped his chin in a hand that smelled like scorched iron and wilted roses. "What do we say when we're caught?"
Eli swallowed. "The Truth is Blood."
"And?"
"Pain purifies."
She smiled. It didn't reach her eyes. Nothing ever did.
"Good," she said. "Then you understand your lesson."
They always gave you one chance. One choice.
You could take the punishment — or you could give it.
"Pick someone," she said. "Make it true."
Eli's lip trembled.
He looked at the line of faces beside him. Every one of them terrified. Every one of them hoping it wouldn't be them.
But they didn't hate him yet.
Not yet.
He pointed.
A girl. Seven. Hair like threadbare straw. She had been his tentmate once. Shared a single glove with him through three freeze nights.
He didn't know her name.
That was the point.
Sister Hex nodded. "Good boy."
The others looked away as he was handed the rebar rod. It was still warm from the last lesson.
He didn't want to do it.
He did it anyway.
Because this was the world. And the world did not forgive.
The girl screamed once.
Then there was silence.
Afterward, when they dragged her away to become tomorrow's protein, Sister Hex gave Eli a ribbon made of copper wire and pride.
"You've grown," she said.
Eli looked at his hands. They were red.
Not all of it was hers.
Something inside him had cracked open, and he could feel the cold wind of loyalty blowing through the hole.
He looked up at the red sky and whispered the mantra.
"Truth is Blood."
But somewhere beneath it, something else stirred. Something soft. Something stupid.
He'd kept a wrapper. Just a scrap. From the sweet.
It was hidden in his boot. Smelled like apples.
He hadn't eaten it.
Not all of it.
Not yet.
And that was the lie.
The real one.
The one that would kill him if it ever got out.
But for now, he stood straight, and he didn't twitch, and Sister Hex was proud.
And sometimes, that was enough.
Until it wasn't.