The few prisoners who had met Warden Ghael always said she had a sense of humor. Those criminals who made guards run to apprehend them were often confined in cells so small they could do nothing but stand, unable to even lift their arms to their mouths to eat. Those who hid were stored in cages so tiny that the prisoners resembled nothing so much as balls of flesh … but this made imprisoning them simple since these cages could be stacked on each other. A sufficient bribe at the right moment might mean a prisoner was placed on top of a stack instead of the bottom.
Every prisoner at Barsul knows the condemned never escape, even after death. Their howls and wails float through the halls when night falls, seeking those who do not yet fear enough.
There is no surviving Barsul - there is only enduring it. Those precious few who committed crimes trivial enough to eventually warrant their release emerge and lose their vision in minutes after living in such darkness for so long. They hobble, muscles permanently shortened due to the conditions of their confinement and atrophy. And their hands? Those are the most visible sign of a prisoner sentenced to Barsul. If they still have their fingers, every bone in them was broken and never set, not even by prisoners. The hands of someone freed from Barsul look like the roots of a sickly tree, desperately searching for water.