No one was in the hallway when the door opened.
No caretaker. No farewell. No bag.
Just Reis, standing there, holding in his right hand a crumpled paper sealed with a red stamp. On the back, a faded address:
"Wing A - Sixth Floor - Room 14."
In his other hand… nothing.
Today, he turned ten. In this world, that is not the beginning of childhood... but its end.
The air outside was colder than he imagined. Not because of winter, but because no one noticed him leaving.
He stood for a moment on the threshold. He looked behind him.
He didn't want to say goodbye to the place, but he wanted to feel that the place missed him.
Nothing happened.
He slowly went down the stairs. The same steps that thousands of children before him had climbed. Some never came back down.
The city in front of him seemed to be waking up from a heavy sleep. Fog, horns, buildings made of metal bricks.
Everything was moving... but none of it belonged to him.
His shoes made a faint sound over the wet asphalt. He was wearing the coat they gave him this morning: tight at the shoulders, loose at the sleeves, as if they hadn't bothered to measure him.
He passed by a food cart. He smelled something that resembled bread.
He didn't stop. He had no money.
He reached the building. A gray facade, covered in blackness and smoke. Six floors, no windows lit.
He climbed. Each floor was the same. Crumbling walls, the sound of pipes, doors with partially erased numbers.
At door number 14, he stopped.
He hesitated.
Then he opened the door.
The room was like a cold tin box.
No bed, just a torn mat in the corner.
No windows, just an upper opening covered with rusty wire.
No sound... except his breathing, trying to remain steady.
On the wall, barely visible, was an old inscription scratched with nails:
"Stay alone, stay safe."
He sat in the corner. No tear came. Just a slight feeling in his chest...
As if the whole world had forgotten he existed.
He reached into his pocket. Took out the paper, looked at it, then tore it in half.
For the first time, he didn't feel fear...
But he felt something else:
Emptiness.
Not around him... but inside him.
Something with no name. But it felt like the sky you never see...
But you feel it's watching you.
He sat still long enough for his limbs to shrink from the cold.
There was nothing in the room that belonged to him except silence.
He slowly raised his head to the mirror on the opposite wall.
It was worn out, half covered in rust, the other half cracked as if someone had tried to break its face once and failed.
He saw himself... or something that looked like him.
A thin body, slumped shoulders, thick black hair hanging loosely.
But what caught his attention... were the eyes.
Black. Empty. Not like his.
He wasn't terrified, just distant. As if the reflection in the mirror was a version of him he had never met before.
Then he noticed something.
That reflection didn't move exactly like him.
He suddenly closed his eyes, then opened them.
Nothing. Everything was in place.
He sighed slowly, then stood.
He walked toward the small window, pulled the tattered curtain that looked like old skin.
The sky was there... or what remained of it.
Polluted. Gray. Spinning with dust and artificial light.
No stars. No moon. No beginning. No end.
They used to say the sky was blue.
That rain was clean.
Now, the rain burns, and the light doesn't warm.
He looked up for a long time, not knowing why.
Something inside him... pulled him there.
An image he didn't know when he saw, or if it was real at all.
Green grass. An open sky. A laughing voice.
One image... then it shattered.
He closed his eyes.
He wasn't crying.
But for a moment,
He wished he could.
But crying takes something he lost long ago... forgetting.
He was ten.
And still...
He remembered his birth.
Not blurry images. Not distorted flashes.
But with surgical precision.
He remembered the cold metal under his small body.
The bright white light above him.
And the faces that looked at him through the glass... faceless.
Then her.
His mother, the queen. Ruler of the continent and one of the most powerful people in the world.
Beautiful. Stern. Still as a statue.
She looked at him.
She didn't touch him.
She didn't speak.
She only slowly raised her hand and pointed.
Moments later, his body was moved to another place.
His birth was unusual. but on the same day, they began experimenting on him:
'Mana Core Injection.'"
Half noble blood.
Half... something unnameable.
"Failed cellular stability."
"Unprogrammed consciousness."
"Premature cognitive link."
He remembers their voices, the cold that filled him, the pain... no, not physical pain.
The real pain was in her eyes.
She didn't cry.
But she hated him before he ever spoke.
That look... still burned inside him.
It wasn't disdain.
It wasn't pity.
It was a sentence.
A quiet execution.
Reis opened his eyes slowly.
The sky was still the same dark, suffocating.
But he wasn't just looking at it...
He could feel something beyond it.
Like something... waiting.
Watching.
Something that belongs to him.
He stepped back from the window slowly.
Sat down again, his back against the wall, his eyes on the door.
They threw him here to die silently.
But they forgot one simple thing.
He wasn't made for this world alone.