Chapter I: Sons of the Abyss
The plain was once ablaze. It stretched to the horizon beneath a thick blanket of smoke, where the silhouettes of men, women, and children scavenged through the waste for sustenance. At the rumble of incoming trucks dumping fresh debris, the crowd would surge in a sudden jolt of survival, as if within every load lay the last promise of a future.
But the city changed its course. A new landfill was born elsewhere, and the garbage trucks stopped arriving. All that remained was a vast expanse of cold debris, searched a thousand times over by the families who stayed behind. Deprived of the means to follow the trail of waste and driven daily by their children's hunger, these men and women now face the greatest challenge of their existence: hunting for the remnants of the remnants.
This is how the holes are born. Unable to harvest from the surface, they dig into the earth with their bare hands, venturing deep into the soil to retrieve the iron and aluminium left behind by their parents and grandparents—back when the landfill was still fertile. Revealed along the vertical walls of these abysses are the stratigraphies of time: overlapping layers of waste that bear silent witness to the gruelling labour of generations who were born, lived, and died here.
Deep down inside, the air grows thin, and the heat suffocates. Dust lodges in their skin and eyes, yet their faces light up whenever metal pierces the soil. They no longer search for food or clothing; their sheer survival now hinges entirely on the weight of aluminium sold once a week to scrap dealers.
Amid the aridity of this seemingly desolate landscape, labour is organised under a strict code of honour. Every hole belongs solely to those who dig it—whether a family, a group of women, or a band of youths. No one desecrates another's excavation. Dignity asserts its rule in the face of extreme misery.
Now, the inhabitants of the plain have become doubly invisible, buried alive inside the very earth they hollow out. One question lingers: how long will these dark abysses remain their sole and final hope?
