This city never forgave the weak.
That truth clung to my skin like the cold rain pouring down on my drenched body, each drop cutting like a needle. My bare feet slapped against the cracked pavement as I ran as fast as I could, trying not to slip on the slippery ground.
My heart raced, and my breath came out in choked, ragged gasps. I couldn't afford to stop. Not now, not when he was after me.
I should have just taken the beating, but I made the grave mistake of fighting back for once. He couldn't bear the fact that I finally stood up to him, so after beating me mercilessly until I was barely breathing, he made a phone call. I knew what that meant. He never made a call unless it was for one reason.
Despite my pain, nothing could hurt me more than that. So, I gathered the last bit of courage I had and did something I never imagined I would do.
I ran. The last thing I heard was his haunting voice shouting for me to come back, but I knew if I did, he would drag me back to my hell.
I fled down the alleyways between rotting buildings and broken neon signs, the rain hammering down on me, trying to ignore the stench of urine and old blood.
"Run, you little bastard! I'll break your legs this time!" a voice bellowed behind me.
My heart stuttered in fear. It was his voice. My stepfather.
My chest burned, each gasp of air stabbing my ribs like shards of glass. My body was small. Too small. I was thirteen years old, yet I looked like I was eight. I appeared malnourished and pale, but even then, I was pretty—too pretty for my own good. My gray eyes—cold, tired, and cracking with exhaustion—scanned the alley desperately for an escape.
Then I realized where I was and my eyes widened as I scanned the familiar alleyway. A hint of hope trickled inside me as I skidded to a stop and ducked behind the rusted dumpster behind the bookstore, scrambling toward the hidden back door.
It was the bookstore I sometimes visited when my stepfather was gone. Old Mr. Lau sometimes let me hide there when the beatings got too rough. The smell of freshly printed paper hung in the air, making me feel oddly safe.
My stepfather would never find me here. Calming down, I made my way to the front desk. Unlocking the small drawer, I grabbed my most prized possession: my novel. Mr. Lau let me keep it there, knowing some of my situation but not the full extent. I pulled the novel from the drawer, my fingers numb and trembling from the cold.
'The Sword of the Raging Storm: Kael's Rise.'
The cover was worn, its edges frayed like the tattered remnants of a fading memory, the pages soft from countless nights spent reading beneath flickering street lights or curled up in the suffocating darkness of my grimy room. This battered book was my only beacon of light in my lonely life.
Kael Voss, the youngest son of the fallen sixth Ducal household. He was betrayed and abandoned by his so-called family members, shackled in the filthy depths of Sin City's Pet Prison. Yet, he was strong, proud, and undeniably brave. Kael fought fiercely to reclaim his family's lost honor despite the betrayal, and was hell-bent on defeating the Demon King in a desperate quest to reclaim his family's former glory under the Emperor's orders.
Kael was a hero, in every sense of the word.
I ran my thumb over the title embossed in gold—Kael's Rise. Not Kael's End. Because he would triumph. He had to.
As I closed my eyes, I whispered the lines I had memorized, each word a lifeline in my pathetic existence. "Kael stood in chains, the rotten stench of the Pet Prison heavy in the air, but his back was straight, never once bending to the harsh glares and curses. His icy blue eyes shone brightly, even in the surrounding gloom."
Those eyes—burning, resolute, filled with a fire that mattered. Eyes worthy of a true protagonist.
Not like my own, a dull and lifeless gray.
I forcibly shook that thought away, its bitterness slicing through my mind. What a cruel joke it was. I wasn't Kael. I couldn't even hold a candle to him. I was a mere shadow, a nobody.
Just the useless orphan son of a dead mother and a drunken stepfather who had sold my body for his own petty gains. A worn out yet pretty boy devoid of strength, burdened only by arrogance that compelled me to keep fighting.
I lived a life worse than death. I was the worst kind of existence.
"Maybe... maybe I'll be reborn in that world," I murmured to the book, my voice breaking in the stillness. "Maybe next time, I'll mean something. Like Kael."
My fingers closed tightly around the tattered cover. This novel has been my only refuge for two years and my only dream.
I cast a glance toward the back pages—the forbidden territory I never dared to explore.
The ending.
I dreaded knowing how it all concluded. What if Kael failed? What if Aria, the seemingly flawless heroine, betrayed Kael like everyone else in my life had? What if the villain, Eiden Constello, met his end in vain?
No.
I cherished the uncertainty. I clung to it like it was my saving grace, for it brought hope for the unknown.
I didn't know how the novel ended, but deep down, a part of me yearned to finally finish my most beloved story.
But I couldn't. It wasn't because I didn't want to. I had finally made up my mind to finish it. But in the end...I couldn't.
Because I died before I could.
"Killian—!"
Rough hands closed in around me, my stepfather's putrid stench of stale beer and simmering rage filling the air, suffocating me
"You little brat—"
A brutal strike was thrown across my face. Stars exploded in my vision. My cheek ripped open and blood spilled into my mouth.
I let out a gasp. Icy tendrils of fear surged within me as the book slipped from my grip.
"I'll kill you, you ungrateful bastard!!" My stepfather screamed as he buried his hunting knife deep into my chest.
My chest burned with pain as blood spilled out from the wound. My stepfather yanked it out, causing even more blood to spill.
"Ahahahaha!" My stepfather started to madly laugh as he continued his slaughter, stabbing me over 30 times before finally my vision started to fade.
My last sight before I died was of the cover of my favorite book, 'The Sword of the Raging Storm: Kael's Rise.'
If only... if only I hadn't been so stubborn, too afraid to turn the final page, the only light I had left.
If only I'd lived long enough to discover the ending.
My dull gray eyes blurred with unshed tears.
Before the darkness swallowed me whole... I saw something in the darkness.
It was a pair of dark violet jeweled eyes, shimmering like fragments of fallen stars. They held a stubborn resolve, shimmering with fragility.
They reminded me of my eyes. But... they were not mine.
Perhaps this was a fleeting glimpse of something yet to come.
And then, nothing.
The darkness swallowed me whole.
—
Making sure it couldn't be seen... something flickered in the dark.
A thread. As black as the abyss itself. Strange and insatiable.
It was calling out to the young boy who lived a pathetic life.
You wished for a new life... the void whispered softly. A place to belong. A chance to reshape the story. It has been granted.
And destiny shifted.