Kael stood still.
The wind had fallen silent.
Dust hung suspended, unmoving, as though the air itself had forgotten how to breathe.
All around him sprawled a graveyard of ruins—
submerged in a reddish haze,
steeped in the bitter aftertaste of ash and burnt metal.
Before him, the creature waited.
Perfect in its monstrosity.
It had no reason to fear him.
No reason even to kill him.
And yet—
Kael was still breathing.
A reflex.
A flaw.
A mistake.
Each breath scraped his throat raw,
each heartbeat struck like a blasphemy against the silence.
He wished it would stop.
That everything would stop—
the pain,
the fear,
the unbearable clarity of being aware.
But something, deep inside, refused.
Something small.
Something pathetic.
A useless defiance.
A stubborn spark.
Perhaps that was what people called life.
Or perhaps it was nothing more than the animal refusal to die
before being utterly emptied.
He closed his eyes.
And in the darkness, the past came crawling back.
The orphanage.
Grey walls.
Narrow beds.
Cold meals served without words.
The cries of younger children in the night.
The echo of heavy boots in the corridors.
And him—
standing in the middle of it all,
unseen.
He remembered rain leaking through a cracked window.
The nights spent counting the seconds between each drop,
just to prove—to himself—that he still existed.
He remembered the voices.
Adults telling him he would never become anything.
Eyes empty of care.
Promises made thin, then broken.
Dreams he never had the right to dream.
No one had ever looked for him.
No one had ever told him he mattered.
And yet…
he had survived.
Again.
And again.
And again.
But why?
Why keep breathing?
Why keep holding on,
when everything eventually crumbles to dust?
Then—
from somewhere deep within—
a voice surfaced.
Distant.
Fragile.
A whisper he thought long buried.
"Kael… if you want to exist, fight.
Even if it's against the heavens themselves.
Never let a permanent action be the answer to a temporary problem.
Believe me—life is worth living."
A dry, cracked laugh slipped from his lips.
"Tch… damn memory."
He opened his eyes.
The beast stood exactly where it had been—
a predator sculpted to perfection.
It was beautiful.
Terribly, offensively beautiful.
And he hated it for that.
Kael spat onto the dust.
The metallic taste of blood reminded him—
he was still here.
Still breathing.
Still alive.
"You know what's funny?" he murmured,
his voice echoing thinly through the hollow space.
"I've spent my whole life bending. Enduring. Waiting for something to change."
A pause.
"And look where that got me."
The creature stirred.
A smooth motion.
Elegant.
Effortless.
Its eyes—if they were eyes—flared with a deep, simmering crimson.
"You were supposed to eat me, right?" Kael rasped,
a bitter grin carving itself across his face.
"That's the plan, isn't it?"
"The weak get devoured. The strong evolve."
A short, breathless laugh.
"The perfect little cycle—HUH?"
He straightened slowly.
His legs trembled.
His arms burned.
But his gaze—
His gaze hardened.
All those years spent running.
Surviving without ever living.
Waiting for a miracle in a world that never offered any.
No.
Not this time.
Not without one last spit in the face of fate.
"You want to play?" he muttered,
voice low, guttural, scraped from the bottom of his chest.
"Then let's play."
He stepped forward.
One step.
Then another.
His fists clenched until his knuckles turned white.
He had no strength.
No technique.
No hope.
But he possessed something the beast did not.
Despair.
The kind that drags a body forward
when everything inside it is already dead.
The dust settled.
And for the first time—
Kael lifted his gaze to meet the creature's—
without fear.
"Come on," he whispered.
"Let's see how far your damn game goes."
[ 93%... ]