In the dimly lit corridor of Sacred Heights High School, Atrixus Timothy's footsteps echoed with a hollow sound.
Every step was like a prelude to the ordeal he was about to endure.
As he rounded the corner towards his locker, he could already feel the prickling eyes upon him...
Up ahead stood Liora Hastings and Julian Caspar, the architects of his daily torment.
Liora had cascading blonde hair that shimmered like spun gold under the fluorescent lights and a beauty that very much contrasted her venomous nature.
Her eyes seemed to cut through him with disdainful amusement. She had utmost disgust for anyone of low backgrounds.
Julian was tall and athletically built, with jet-black hair and piercing green eyes that exuded an aura of unassailable confidence.
They were the scions of two of the city's most influential families. Their lineage was like a shield that rendered them untouchable.
"Look, the slum rat decided to grace us with his presence," Liora sneered with a tone of mockery.
Julian's laugh rumbled like a beacon that seemed to draw others in, eager to partake in the cruelty.
"Did you find your way here, or did the stench of the slums guide you, Timothy?"
The words were like barbs that embeded itself deeper into Atrixus' psyche with each statement.
He tried to move past them, to ignore the humiliation that washed over him like a tide, but they blocked his path.
"Where do you think you're going? We're not done with you yet," Julian hand shot out to push Atrixus back.
The force of the push sent him staggering as the laughter of the onlookers overshadowed his thoughts.
Before Atrixus could regain his balance, he felt himself being propelled forward. His arms were grabbed and twisted behind his back.
He was half-dragged, half-marched to the boys' bathroom with the jeers of his classmates echoing in his ears.
The interior smelled of antiseptic and something else, something darker. Liora and Julian, with the help of their cohorts, forced Atrixus' head under the faucet.
"Let's see if we can wash the slum out of you," Liora hissed with a venomous whisper.
Atrixus lungs burned for air underneath the flowing water as he struggled but their grip was unyielding. Just as he felt the edges of his vision begin to darken, he woke up while gasping for breath with his body full of perspiration.
It was a dream... a cruel playback synonymous with the realities of his high school days.
Lying in the small room he shared with his mother in the slums of Paricus City, Atrixus felt the old, familiar anger boiling in his veins.
But beneath the anger, there was something else... A determination that had been forged in the crucible of his suffering.
Today was the day of the evaluation... the day he had been waiting for... the day that could change everything.
As he sat up with the memories of his dream still vivid in his mind, Atrixus allowed himself a moment to reflect.
"They call me a slum rat, an outcast, unworthy of becoming a System Bearer," his voice turned into a silent monologue in the quiet of the morning.
"But they don't see what I see. They don't feel what I feel. They've never known hunger, never felt the sting of cold rain through a leaking roof, never understood what it means to fight for every breath."
Rising from his bed, Atrixus moved to the small mirror that hung on the wall. The face that looked back at him was marked by hardship, but in his eyes, there burned a fierce resolve.
"Let them underestimate me. Let them mock and scorn. For today, I will show them what a 'slum rat' can do. Today, I will prove that worth is not determined by birthright or lineage and background, but by strength of will and the courage to face one's demons."
As he dressed, pulling on the simple clothes that had seen better days, Atrixus felt a clarity of purpose that he had never known before. The trials he had endured, the pain and the humiliation, had all led to that moment.
Stepping out into the breaking dawn, Atrixus Timothy looked into the distance where Sacred Heights High School was located.
He could spot its towers silhouetted against the lightening sky, and he felt an unshakable conviction settle within him.
Today, he would not walk as a victim of his circumstances but as a challenger of his fate.
He would emerge from the evaluation not just as a System Bearer but as a representative to the indomitable spirit of those who had been cast aside and forgotten.
Today, Atrixus Timothy would rise.
■■■
"You have failed the evaluation!"
In the vast expanse of the testing ground, a heavy silence hung in the air, broken only by the buzz of the large screen that loomed ahead.
Atrixus Timothy stood alone with his gaze fixed on the words that sealed his fate.
The ground beneath him might as well have been a chasm opening to swallow him whole. His heart, once full of hope and determination, plummeted into an abyss of despair.
The shock rendered him momentarily speechless as disbelief coursed through his veins.
"But I passed phases one and two with high scores!" Atrixus found his voice as he turned to face the evaluators.
Their expressions were impassive and their stances were unyielding—
One of the evaluators, a man with sharp features that seemed carved from stone, shook his bald head. "Phase one and two are foundational, but meaningless without phase three. It's the compatibility with the System Bearer microchip that determines your future. Without it, you can not proceed."
"Please can I give it another try?"
"No, you have failed. Leave immediately!"
Atrixus' pleas fell on deaf ears. The finality in the evaluator's tone was a hammer driving nails into the coffin of his dreams.
As he was instructed to leave, a shadow of defeat draped over his shoulders while Liora Hastings stepped onto the grounds.
Her smirk was like a dagger twisting in his already wounded spirit. The murmurs and snickers of the onlookers, hidden in the shadows of the arena, felt like a chorus of ridicule aimed solely at him.
Liora's evaluation commenced, and with a flourish of triumph that Atrixus could barely stomach, she passed. The crowd erupted into cheers as she was whisked away...
She was now a future System Bearer, while Atrixus was left to navigate the aftermath of his collapse.
Away from the spectacle, hidden from the view of the masses, stood Liora's father, Leonard Hastings. A tall and slender man with glasses and his blonde hair braided backward.
He looked like he could pass off as a college student due to his young and intense apperance.
However, he seemed to be engaged in a hushed conversation with one of the evaluators. The man's nod was almost imperceptible like a silent acquiescence to a dark deed done.
"I trust everything went as planned," Leonard voiced smoothly with a toxin laced whisper.
"Without a hitch," the evaluator responded with a glint of complicity in his eye.
"The device showed him as incompatible, just as you wanted."
Leonard's laugh lightly in satisfaction.
"Good. We can't have a slum rat sharing the stage with my daughter. It would be a disgrace."
Money exchanged hands, confirming the silent contract that spoke volumes of the corruption that lay beneath the surface of the hallowed process.
Meanwhile, Atrixus' journey home was a march through a fog of despair. Each step felt heavier than the previous one...
His back slouched under the weight of a thousand unspoken dreams. The city, with its lofty structures and gleaming surfaces, mocked him with its indifference.
His mind was a tempest of thoughts crashing against each other with the force of a storm.
"How could I have failed? Was it all for nothing? My efforts, my dreams... were they just illusions?" The questions spun in a relentless cycle.
The slums welcomed him, not with open arms but with a grim acknowledgment of his return.
There, in the shadows of the city's prosperity, he was just another soul adrift, caught in the undertow of societal neglect.
As he entered the cramped space he called home, the reality of his situation settled around him like a cloak woven from threads of failure.
The light casted long shadows that seemed to dance in mockery of his plight.
Sitting alone, Atrixus allowed the full fabric of his defeat to envelop him.
In that moment of utter desolation, he found himself at a crossroads... the path ahead was shrouded in uncertainty.
■■■
(( Days Later ))
In the echoing halls of the school, Atrixus Timothy moved like a ghost. His presence was barely acknowledged by the throngs of students moving around him.
The days since his failed evaluation had melded into a blur, each indistinguishable from the last, marked only by the deepening chasm of his despair.
Among his peers, over thirty now bore the title of System Bearers. Their shoulders were backed with pride and their conversations buzzed with excitement about the factions vying for their allegiance.
Liora, Julian, and their cohort were the center of gravity, around which the school's social universe orbited. Their tales of potential adventures in Shunri Paradise, of powers, honed and battles to be fought, were the stuff of daily discourse, elevating their status to near-mythical proportions.
Atrixus, on the other hand, existed in the periphery. His dreams of joining their ranks... dashed against the unforgiving reality of his incompatibility.
Liora relished in twisting the knife of his failure.
"A slum rat will always be a slum rat," she taunted from up ahead.
"You were never meant for greatness."