PRIME EDEN.
When you tilt your head back and squint through the smog, you can sometimes see it. The underside of their world. Gigantic steel plates that cover the sky. They hang over us like the lid of a coffin that someone forgot to nail shut. And through the cracks, their abundance drips down on us. Not gold. Not hope. But sewage. Oil. And the cold, black rain that never stops.
Don't let the holographic posters tell you anything, flickering on the few working walls. This isn't "reconstruction." This isn't a "temporary state." This is a damn cage. A labyrinth of rusted steel, concrete, and human misery.
The elite... those bastards call their floating districts "The Garden." They have real sunlight. They breathe filtered air that smells of flowers and the ocean things I only know from old data files. They live in a bubble of glass and arrogance, protected by walls and weapons, so they don't have to smell our misery.
And us? We're suffocating down here. We eat their trash. We drink their recycled water that tastes like chemicals and death. We are the shadows they need so their light can shine brighter.
Down here, the law doesn't rule. Fear rules. Violence is the only language everyone understands. It's the damn currency we pay with every day just to be allowed to keep breathing.
And the bank that collects this currency? The Blood Chain.
They aren't a "gang." That word is too harmless. They are a tumor. Syndicates. Mercenaries. Tattooed butchers who traded their humanity for power years ago. They wear heavy boots and grin at you with rotten teeth while they break your ribs just because you looked at them the wrong way. They come into your neighborhood, knock on your corrugated iron shack, and offer you "protection."
Protection? From whom? From themselves? It's extortion. It's slavery. If you don't pay, they don't just take the little you have. They take your fingers. Your teeth. Or someone you love. These sons of bitches have no honor. They are parasites that fatten themselves on the weakest, while licking the boots of the elite's sycophants to stay in power.
But in the middle of this chaos, between the screams and the smell of burnt plastic... there were rumors. A whisper that crawled through the ventilation shafts. Something that made the Blood Chain nervous. The White Wolves.
For the media up there? Terrorists. Kriminelle. Madmen disrupting the "divine order." For the Blood Chain? A threat to their business. But for me? Back then, they were just a myth. A fairy tale told when your stomach cramps so hard from hunger that you can't sleep. A spark in an ocean of darkness. A sign that you don't just have to lie down and die.
That you can strike back.
Kyro's Youth The Whisper and the Light
But before I dreamed of wolves, revolutions, or revenge, there was only one thing that kept me from losing my mind. Or rather... someone.
Aria.
When I say her name, it becomes quiet in my head for a moment. The noise of the slums, the drone of the machines, the shouting of the dealers everything goes silent. She wasn't a soldier. She wasn't a leader. She was just... there.
I don't remember how we found each other. In the slums, you don't ask about origins. You don't ask about parents. Usually, they are dead or sold you to buy their next hit of "Neon." We were just two abandoned children in an ocean of debris. But Aria was different from the others.
In a world that forces you to become a monster, she remained human. She had this black hair, streaked with bright blue strands that looked like little stars in the dirt of the alleys. When we sat in our hiding place an old, abandoned maintenance shaft that smelled of rust and dampness the world outside didn't matter.
I remember one night. The rain drummed so hard against the metal that it sounded like gunshots. My stomach felt like it was digesting itself. I was shivering, not just from the cold, but from a strange internal heat.
That feeling was there. It was already there back then. A tingling under my skin. A buzzing in my blood, so quiet that I thought I was imagining it. Sometimes, when I was angry or afraid, it felt like the air around me was vibrating. Like the room was breathing. I was scared to death of it. I thought I was sick. I thought I was contaminated, like the poor devils who had slept too close to the waste pipes of the Vayne labs and then grew tumors.
I crouched in the corner, pressing my hands against my ears to get rid of the buzzing. "I'm wrong," I whispered into the darkness. "Something is wrong with me."
Then I felt her hand. Cool and... but so incredibly gentle. Aria sat down next to me. She had hardly eaten herself, her cheeks were hollow, but there was no fear in her eyes. Only a calmness that was as deep as the ocean we had never seen.
"Shhh, Kyro. Everything is fine."
She pulled me close. I smelled the rain in her hair and the faint scent of old engine oil. It was the best smell in the world.
"You aren't sick. You are just... special."
She smiled. It wasn't a triumphant smile. It was sad, but warm. She pulled a piece of moldy bread out of her pocket she had probably stolen it at the risk of her life and broke off exactly half. No, more than half. She gave me the bigger piece.
"You must eat, Kyro. You must become strong."
I stared at the bread. I wanted to devour it, but I saw how thin she was. "You need it too," I muttered. She just shook her head and squeezed my hand tighter.
"I am strong enough for us both. But you... the world will try to break you, little one. They hate everything they can't control. These people out there... they only know greed and fear."
Her voice became quieter, almost like a prayer meant only for me.
"But you must not let them turn your heart black. No matter how dark it gets, Kyro... promise me that you won't forget who you are. Fight for what you believe in. Not out of hate. But because it is right."
I ate the bread. It tasted like dust, but it filled the emptiness in my stomach. The buzzing in my body calmed down when she was with me. It was as if her mere presence ordered the chaos inside me.
She didn't tell me fairy tales of heroes who come to save us. She was honest. She knew that no one would come. We were alone. Only her and me against the damn three families. Against the Blood Chain. Against the hunger.
But in those moments, when she stroked my matted hair and softly hummed a melody she had picked up somewhere... I didn't feel like trash. I felt like a human being.
I didn't know then what this "buzzing" inside me was. No one had ever told me about the Resonance. How could they? Those up there guarded the knowledge like a treasure, and down here it was just a myth or a reason to be kidnapped by Vayne scientists.
I only knew one thing This tingling, this strange energy that sometimes struck sparks when I touched something... it was dangerous. But Aria wasn't afraid of it. She looked at me as if I weren't a monster, but a miracle that was just born at the wrong time in the wrong place.
I swore to myself that night, while the acid rain washed away the streets outside I would become strong. For her. I would learn how to survive. I would learn how to fight. I would make every single one of those bastards who treat us like dirt pay for ever making Aria suffer from hunger.
I had no idea how close I was to the truth. I had no idea that this buzzing in my veins was the key to unhinging their whole fucking world. And I had no idea that I would soon lose her...