The storm raged on.
Rain slammed against the orphanage windows like the world itself was trying to erase them. Thunder rolled across the night sky with a god's fury. Lightning etched twisted shadows across the cracked walls, and in the cold dormitory of Saint Helia's Home for the Unwanted, silence reigned—pretend silence. Children lay in their rusted bunks, breathing shallowly, pretending to sleep, pretending not to feel the wind slicing through the broken panes.
But Elias didn't pretend.
He never did.
He sat cross-legged beneath the flickering lightbulb at the farthest corner of the dormitory, clutching a worn book with a cracked spine and pages smudged with years of rereading. The final chapter of *Towerborn: The Forsaken Son.* The book was battered, but it was his sanctuary. His only escape.
Kael, the cursed prince, had just reached the apex of the divine . Bloodied. Scarred. Alone. His sword was shattered. His heart, colder than the void above. And yet—
*"Kael looked back, not with sorrow, but with pride. For even in damnation, he had carved his name into eternity."*
The book closed.
And Elias shattered.
Tears slipped silently down his cheeks. Not from grief. Not from the ending. But from the terrible stillness that followed. The story—the pain, the triumph, the struggle—it was over. He was back. Trapped. In a rotting world where dreams suffocated and the strong ground the weak beneath their boots.
"It should've been me," he whispered. "I would've climbed. I would've suffered. I would've *bled*."
And the book heard him.
A hum—a low vibration—started in his fingers.
The cover of the book began to glow. Faintly, at first. Then brighter. The sigil of the Tower on the front began to twist, shift, pulse. It burned golden, then white-hot. Symbols flowed like liquid across the leather binding, unknown and yet… familiar.
He tried to drop it.
He couldn't.
The room tilted.
His heart thundered.
Light erupted from the spine and swallowed him whole.