"Kai, why do you always come back looking like a stray dog that just lost a fight?" Nason, a boy slightly taller than Kai, sneered, his friends erupting into a mocking laughter that echoed too loudly in the frozen air.
Kai tightened his jaw, the raw scratches across his arms stinging in the relentless cold. "One day, Nason," Kai promised, his voice trembling less from fear and more from sheer frustration, "I will be stronger than you."
Nason just threw his head back, laughing harder. "In your dreams, Kai. You're the weakest kid in Snow Valley Village. If it wasn't for your sister, you wouldn't even be alive."
Those words were like a physical blow, heavier than any of Nason's clumsy punches. Kai had no response. He was powerless, and Nason was right. In a world where everyone wielded some form of elemental magic, Kai was an anomaly—a weakling with barely a trickle of usable ability, protected only by his kind and capable sister.
Elara, his older sister, was a talented Healing Flame user, her magic manifesting as a gentle, warm, golden fire. She owned the only small healing shop in the village, and it was her meager income that kept them housed and fed, especially now that the bandits with their low-level, violent magic constantly harassed the village's supply lines.
Hurt, defeated, and covered in fresh cuts, Kai turned away from the mocking laughter and headed home.
He slipped into the small, familiar cabin and went straight to his tiny bedroom. The humiliation of the fight, combined with the guilt of being unable to defend himself or help Elara, boiled over. He slumped onto his worn bed and cried alone, the tears quickly cooling on his cheeks.
"Why?" he whispered, clenching his fists. "Why am I the weakest? Why don't I have the magic to help her?"
In a fit of helpless rage, Kai punched the wooden wall beside his bed. The impact barely hurt his hand, but the resulting sound was wrong—a hollow, strange noise.
He looked closer. Where his fist had struck, a thin seam appeared in the old wooden floorboards. As he pushed the boards aside, a small, square door, hidden and forgotten, was revealed. A wave of intense curiosity washed over his despair.
They had a basement?
Kai lifted the latch. A heavy, earthy scent wafted up from the darkness, and a set of wooden rungs descended into a pitch-black pit. He had no idea this space existed.
Hesitantly, Kai climbed down, his feet touching cold, damp earth four meters below the floor. The room was tiny, barely three meters square, but his hand soon brushed against a small, wooden box tucked into a niche in the dirt wall.
He forced the box open. Inside, resting on frayed velvet, was a single, ancient-looking object: a large, perfectly preserved canine tooth.
Kai leaned in, inspecting the ivory-white fang with intense seriousness. He didn't know how, but the tooth felt important. Just then, a drop of fresh blood from the scrape on his arm—a residual injury from his earlier defeat—slipped down his wrist and landed squarely on the tooth.
The effect was instantaneous and violent.
The tooth didn't just sit there; it instantly blackened and dissolved, rushing into Kai's skin. A scream tore from his throat as a white-hot, agonizing fire erupted inside his veins, followed by a sensation of ice-cold dread. It felt like his very essence was being burned and remade.
His knees buckled, and he hit the dirt floor, the pain consuming him until the darkness mercifully swallowed his consciousness.
When Kai's eyes snapped open an hour later, the pain was gone. A profound, alien stillness had replaced the chronic weakness in his body. Before he could fully process the change, a shimmering blue screen materialized directly in front of his eyes.
[Sanguine Legacy System Activated.]
[Host Found: The Last Hope.]