The alley never slept.
Even at night when the city above tried to pretend it was still alive the alley breathed. Rats scraped along broken concrete. Beggars shifted in their sleep, clutching coats that smelled of rain and rot. Somewhere, water dripped in a slow, maddening rhythm, counting time no one cared about.
The boy lay against the ground on a makeshift mat , hands folded behind his head, staring at a strip of sky barely visible between leaning buildings.
Seventeen, he thought. Still nothing.
He had learned early that wishing was useless. Still, some habits were hard to kill.
In a world ruled by Dusk, power decided everything. Who ate. Who hid. Who lived long enough to matter.
He had none of it.yet he still hoped...still yeaned
People called him lazy.
They weren't wrong but they weren't right either.
He didn't rush because rushing got you killed. He watched instead. Learned patterns. Counted footsteps. Measured how long it took a Dusk siren to fade after sundown. He knew which beggars were harmless, which would stab you for bread, and which ones weren't human anymore but pretended well enough.
Observation kept him alive.
Power… had never come.
Awakening usually happened young.
Some kids screamed as the Interface burned itself into their vision. Others collapsed, bleeding from the eyes as a Tide took hold. By fifteen, if you hadn't awakened, the world quietly decided you never would.
He had waited.
Sixteen passed in an orphanage that smelled of disinfectant and fear. Caretakers rotated weekly. Children disappeared monthly. When the walls cracked during a Dusk surge, no one fixed them.
His parents had died during an early expansion caught between evacuation zones that no longer existed. No bodies. No closure. Just names crossed out of a registry.
At sixteen, the orphanage turned him out with a ration card and a warning:DONT STAY OUT AFTER SUN SET
as if anyone listens to warnings anymore
Now he lived in the alley.
Not because he liked it.
Because everywhere else was worse.
Half the world had already fallen cities swallowed by permanent Dusk, continents marked red on old maps no one updated. Dusk Beasts roamed freely beyond the barriers, and sometimes inside them when the guards were bribed, asleep, or dead.
No place was safe.
Some places just lied better.