Growing up in a rundown orphanage teaches you truths no one bothers to explain.
The first is this:
The powerless have nothing.
No respect. No voice. No future anyone cares to protect.
People like me aren't hated—we're worse.
We're ignored.
Stepped around instead of acknowledged. Talked over instead of spoken to. Counted only when bodies need counting. Existing in the margins of other people's lives like stains no one wants to admit are there.
I learned early that being alive didn't mean being valued.
That's why I want to climb.
Not wander forward. Not hope things change.
Climb.
Climb until no one can look down on me again without craning their neck.
Climb until the world is forced to acknowledge my presence.
Climb until my name stops sounding disposable when spoken aloud.
Climb until I am strong.
But wanting strength and attaining it are not the same thing.
That's another lesson Fantasia Terrae Divisae teaches quickly.
In this world, strength is not abstract. It isn't measured in ambition or kindness or intent. It is measured by one thing alone:
Your core.
Knights shape Aura until steel becomes an extension of their will. They shatter stone, carve mountains, and stand unmoved against forces that should crush them.
Mages with abundant Mana twist storms from nothing, rewrite temperature and terrain with gestures and words older than kingdoms.
Priests and spiritualists mend shattered bones, seal wounds, and manifest armaments of pure Ether—faith and discipline given form.
Evokers whisper, and beasts answer. Spirits listen. Ancient things remember.
Invokers become something else entirely—miracles wrapped in mortal skin, or disasters waiting for permission.
Chosen. Gifted. Tethered to beings far beyond human scale.
And then there are Jaki users.
I try not to think about them.
Everyone pretends they don't exist until it's too late. They rot from the inside out, letting greed, hatred, and desire overtake restraint. Jaki isn't learned—it's indulged. The more you draw upon it, the less human you become, until what's left barely remembers what restraint ever felt like.
The world hunts them.
It has to.
Because Jaki doesn't destroy just its user.
It poisons everything nearby.
Compared to all that, my problem should be simple.
I haven't felt anything in my core.
Not a spark. Not a flicker. Not even a pulse strong enough to doubt.
When others sit in silence and describe pressure, heat, whispers, or weight—there's nothing inside me to relate to. No resonance. No stirring. No sense that something dormant is waiting to awaken.
Kids younger than me already know what they are.
They feel it.
They talk about it casually, like breathing. Like gravity. As if having power inside you is the most natural thing in the world.
For me?
Just emptiness.
Like sitting alone in a locked room, staring at a door that never opens—listening to footsteps pass by on the other side, knowing everyone else was invited out.
Day after day.
And still—
That emptiness doesn't convince me to stay low.
It convinces me I can't afford to.
Because if I stay where I am, I'll die.
Not dramatically. Not heroically.
Quietly.
The world doesn't wait for the weak to catch up. It doesn't care about potential or excuses. It grinds forward, and those who can't keep pace are left behind—forgotten, buried, replaced.
Here, strength is currency.
And weakness is death.
So I have only one choice.
I must climb.
Even if my core is silent. Even if my name means nothing. Even if the world keeps telling me I don't belong among those who matter.
Because deep down—beneath doubt, beneath hunger, beneath silence—
I know something is there.
It has to be.
And if strength won't come to me willingly, then I'll survive long enough to tear it out of myself piece by piece.
Storms don't ask permission to exist.
Neither will I.