Underworld's Chosen Like None Other

Sent To Blackthorn

Even the bailiffs was shocked.

Blackthorn is the most dangerous and frightening prison ever built, feared all over the globe. Holding not just ordinary and mere criminals like Warren, but warlords, mafia leaders, terrorist, dangerous scientists, ex terrorist veterans that served years in war front, high level cultivators and those who had caused wide spread devastation all around the world. That was were Warren was going to be held for good seven years. For what? For drug mulling.

Warren couldn't laugh or cry, he was stoic out of numbness.

The bailiffs did their job and hauled him away, his wrists chafed raw by the cuffs.

Some persons mustered in the court, "why blackthorn?"

Blackthorn loomed on the edge of Ironspire, monolith surrounded by an iron clad built entirely from iron, high tensile metals and nothing else. It was a prison filled with despair.

The transport van rumbled through its gates at dawn, the sky bruised purple. Warren’s belongings were stripped—wallet, phone, dignity—replaced with an orange jumpsuit and a number: 47219. The guards’ eyes were cold, their batons too ready. Inmates watched from the yard, "he won't last more than 48 hours in here, he is too weak" Some said, predators sizing up fresh meat.

The prisoners suffered harsh living conditions and daily relentless torture. Fights, murder, riots was a norm and tradition, survival was for the smartest, strongest, fittest and mostly by grace.

The prison represented the ultimate terror for every power on earth and so no matter how strong you were, escape was impossible.

How a mere drug dealer got convicted and sent to this diabolical blackthorn was still a mystery to a lot of news readers and listeners as the news broadcaster highlighted it.

Victor smirked in his office as he turned off the TV, "I'm not done yet!"

To the jury, the case against Warren seemed airtight, a grim tapestry of means, motive, and opportunity woven from half-truths and planted evidence.

The delivery job, arranged through Victor’s lackey Cal, had been a trap as precise as a guillotine’s blade. His debt accumulating interest, no home or money to get something to eat, His recent divorce and discovering his twins were not really his, was enough for the prosecutor to paint him as a desperate man turned drug runner and also a motive they could sell.

Victor Crane’s bribe, a quiet exchange of cash to a precinct captain and a judge’s offshore account, was the invisible hand that sealed Warren’s fate. Yet, even without the money greasing palms, the case held water in Ironspire’s cynical courts. The city thrived on stories of men like Warren—honest until they weren’t, broken by circumstance and ready to break the law.

To Ironspire’s weary citizens, Warren’s conviction made sense because it fit the city’s brutal script: the little man always falls, and the powerful always walk. Victor’s wealth ensured the evidence was pristine, the witnesses coached, and the judge’s gavel swift.

The bribe was the spark, but Ironspire’s corrupt machinery was the fire, ready to consume anyone who stumbled into its path. As Warren was led away in chains, the crowd outside the courthouse murmured not of injustice, but of inevitability. In their eyes, Warren was just another soul crushed by a city that spared no one, his guilt less a fact than a convenient truth.

But to be sent to Blackthorn? A living hell? Just for being a drug mule?

***

As the cellblock door clanged shut, the reality hit Warren like a fist. He was alone, framed, he lost his whole life and freedom in 12 hours. The family he thought he had, his identity.

He was thrown into a cage where survival meant learning fast. The shouts of inmates and the clatter of steel echoed around him, a chorus of violence waiting to erupt. But somewhere, deep in his gut, a spark of defiance flickered. Victor had played his hand, but Warren wasn’t done yet.

Warren’s situation is a gut-punch—spiraling from desperation to a trap set by Victor, landing him in Blackthorn Penitentiary’s hellscape. The seedy bar, the shady figure, and the “delivery” job reek of a calculated setup, with Victor pulling strings to bury Warren. Now in Ironspire’s max-security prison, he’s surrounded by violent inmates and corrupt guards, stripped of freedom and hope. Survival in Blackthorn demands grit; Warren will need to navigate alliances, dodge betrayal, and uncover Victor’s scheme to have any shot at redemption.

He was all alone in this world, with no one coming to save him. Stripped of the family he’d built his life around, the kids he’d loved as his own, and the brother he thought had his back.

That loneliness drove him to the Rusty Anchor, where Cal’s offer of quick cash seemed like salvation. But Victor’s shadow was there, too, orchestrating the setup that landed Warren in Blackthorn. The loss of his family wasn’t just a wound—it was the bait that made him desperate enough to take Cal’s deal. Victor didn’t just steal Rachel and the kids; he engineered Warren’s fall, ensuring he’d lose his freedom, too. In Blackthorn, the pain of that betrayal festers.

Warren’s got no one now—no wife, no kids, no brother. Just a number, 47219, and a spark of defiance to claw his way back.