The cold wind knifed through the alleyways, slicing silence into the bones of the city. Between flickering neon signs and the metallic stink of rain, the boy stood still. His clothes were torn. Blood, both dried and fresh, painted his skin in cruel strokes. The darkness wrapped around him, but there was no comfort in it.
He had followed Seren here.
Three months ago, the man had saved him from the jaws of death — from a dozen tormentors who treated pain like a game and him like nothing. That night, his soul had awakened. Not because of power. But because of the man who arrived like the end of a sentence.
Seren.
The boy had watched him that night — watched the cold precision of violence, the graceful malice in every movement, and the calm in his eyes that didn't tremble before cruelty. He had thought, This man is not from here. He is something else.
Tonight, he stood again before that man.
The boy's voice cracked the still air. "Can I ask something?"
Seren didn't look at him. He had his back turned, leaning slightly against the steel railing, eyes raised to the black clouds.
"Speak."
The boy hesitated. His voice came quieter, almost a breath "Can you give me a name?"
Now Seren turned.
His gaze was still, unreadable. The boy stood his ground, though his legs trembled. "I don't want to carry the old one anymore. I want something… that starts here from this moment."
Seren stepped forward, stopping just in front of him. There was no warmth in his face, no approval. But there was something heavier and it was the weight of acknowledgment.
"Xaren," he said.
The boy blinked.
Seren continued, "It means nothing in this world. So you'll make it mean something. Carry it until it bends reality or until you break."
Xaren. He said it in his mind. Then again. Then once more. And just like that — something shed from him.
He looked down at his hands which was still trembling. Still stained with weakness but much different than before.
---
A month passed.
And Xaren bled.
Every day, Seren took him deeper into the edges of the city. No lectures, no comfort and only tasks, each crueler than the last. He was made to steal from predators, fight grown men, enter places where monsters wore human skin.
Tonight was different.
He stood across from a man. A killer.
Xaren's body ached, ribs bruised from yesterday's punishment. He'd broken his knuckles. His breathing was sharp, but controlled.
"Move," Seren said, standing back, arms crossed.
The man lunged.
Xaren dodged barely. He wasn't fast enough to dodge a knee kick into his gut, knocking him out. Pain exploded in his side and his body folded, but he didn't fall. He couldn't.
Move, he screamed at himself.
Another blow and this time to his face. Blood spilled from his lip.
He fell.
The man raised a rusted pipe.
A silent second passed and then something cracked.
Seren had moved — his fingers wrapped around the attacker's wrist, breaking it with a twist like paper.
The scream echoed through the alley. Seren didn't stop. He struck once, twice and three times. The man collapsed with a thud.
Seren stood above him, breathing steady.
Then he turned to Xaren.
"You die once, I save you. You die again, I leave you."
Xaren nodded, still gasping for breath.
Seren added, "Don't expect justice. No one's coming to save you not even me. Except yourself."
---
Later that night, Xaren sat alone on a rooftop, clutching his bruised ribs.
So this is the path, he thought. It's not power. It's becoming something that doesn't need saving.
A voice murmured inside his head.
"You bleed like him."
Xaren didn't flinch. He had grown used to the presence.
The shadow-beast.
It had come to him weeks ago. A whisper in darkness. A shape he couldn't touch. But its voice lived inside him now — a rumble made of oil and storm.
"What do you mean?" Xaren whispered.
"That man Seren. You see him as something else. But he bleeds too and I've smelled it on him. The kind of blood that kills what it once was."
Xaren clenched his fists "He's more than human."
The beast chuckled "Perhaps. But you— you're not him. You're something that crawled out of the bottom. You're the one who survives when even the light has forgotten you."
Xaren leaned back, staring at the stars.
"I want to be stronger," he whispered.
"Then break yourself again," the beast replied. "And again until there's nothing left of the boy who waited."
---
In the coming days, Seren pushed him further.
He fought five men once and then ten.
Sometimes he lost and woke up hours later with cracked ribs and blurred vision.
Sometimes he won , and saw the look in their eyes as something darker grew inside him.
The city whispered of a ghostly boy who appeared and vanished like a phantom, leaving behind blood and silence.
One night, after returning from a hunt, he found Seren waiting in a rooftop garden , a place untouched by filth. A piece of quiet.
"You've changed," Seren said without turning.
Xaren stood beside him, silent.
"You don't ask questions anymore," Seren continued "You stopped being the boy who begged for names and now you wear it."
Xaren spoke softly, "Because that boy would've died."
Seren finally looked at him.
A rare thing happened. He nodded.
Then without another word, he vanished into the night, leaving Xaren standing beneath a shattered sky alone but now reborn.
And in the depths of his soul, the beast stirred.
"You're not him. But you're walking the same edge. Don't fall."