The slums weren't dead. No—death would've been kinder.
Here, the city's marrow was rotting. Forgotten. Left to fester beneath the silver towers and polished streets of a world that worshipped strength like divinity.
The air was thick with smoke from burning trash, and the scent of unwashed flesh clung like rot. Somewhere nearby, a baby cried hoarsely—then went silent. Footsteps echoed off stone and rusted metal, but no one looked up.
A man walked through it—not slow, not fast. Like he belonged. His cloak was the color of dusk, neither tattered nor regal, the hem untouched by filth. The mask he wore resembled an avian predator—curved like a plague doctor's, sculpted like a magpie's beak. Overhaul style.
Dark glass covered his eyes, reflecting broken lanterns and skeletal limbs reaching from blankets of ash. He did not look strange here. He didn't stand out. But he wasn't part of this place either.
No one looked twice. That was the unspoken rule of the slums: don't stare. Don't hope.
He moved past the starving, the skeletal, the soulless. People who had forgotten the shape of hope. Who could no longer stand, let alone steal.
Children watched from shadows. Old men curled beside heat pipes. Rats fought over a lump of fungus.
Then he stopped.
The boy was half-hidden beneath a collapsed stall, no older than eight. Gaunt, filthy, with a shard of sharpened metal clutched like a secret.
Their eyes met.
The boy's weren't empty yet. Tired, yes. Desperate. But not empty.
The man crouched. "You want to survive?" he asked, voice calm, cold. "I can give you that. Strength. Shelter. A future."
No inflection. No kindness. Just fact.
The boy didn't respond.
He lunged.
The shard flashed—jagged, rusted, swung with all the strength a starving child could summon.
It struck the man's chest—and shattered.
The boy fell.
Flat on his back. Wind knocked from his lungs.
His fingers shook. His breath hitched.
His eyes—wide, terrified—snapped from the broken shard to the figure standing untouched.
The man hadn't moved.
The boy scrambled backward like an animal, heartbeat pounding like war drums. His limbs trembled so violently he could barely crawl. The world blurred with sudden, violent clarity—this was a predator.
He was prey.
He'd crossed a line. Attacked someone far above his weight.
In a world where strength reigned, weakness was a death sentence.
Terror clawed its way into his gut. He'd gambled with the only thing he had left—his life.
And lost.
But the man didn't retaliate.
"You've got fight," he said, brushing a speck of dust from his shoulder. "Good."
He stood to full height, casting a long shadow over the boy.
"The hungry ones always do."
A pause.
Then he turned and began walking.
"Come," he said, voice fading into the choking dusk. "Be strong—like me."
The boy didn't move.
Then he did.
He scrambled to his feet and followed.
Not out of trust.
Not out of belief.
Because there was nothing else to follow.
Because he knew one truth.
This world only respected one thing: power.
And if he didn't chase it—he'd be eaten by it.
---
The carriage was parked in a narrow alley between two collapsed tenements. Sleek, unassuming, dark wood polished like obsidian. Beasts stood yoked to it—hulking things with blank, mirrored eyes, reflections shimmering like oil slicks.
The door opened silently.
The interior glowed faintly. Runes carved along the wooden frame pulsed with soft, measured light—lines and nodes that looked decorative at first, but the longer one stared, the more they looked… intentional.
Like something from a scholar's sketchbook.
Or a physicist's blackboard.
Grids. Coordinates. Function arrays.
The boy hesitated. Then stepped in.
He didn't notice the way the runes re-aligned briefly as he passed.
Didn't hear the whisper of activation. The pulse that marked new data.
He sat across from the man.
The door closed.
The silence between them was absolute.
Until the boy spoke.
"…Where are we going?"
The man tilted his head, as if amused.
"To someplace that'll teach you what survival costs."
The boy swallowed.
Outside, the slums disappeared behind them.
And no one noticed they were gone.
No one ever does.