Nyx learned early that some children were born unwanted.
He didn't cry much as a baby. His mother often bragged about it to her friends. "So quiet, he barely makes a sound," she would say, sipping wine behind glass doors.
But when the doors closed, when the lights dimmed and the world stopped pretending, the words changed.
"Dull."
"Defective."
"Empty."
His father never held him. His mother never smiled at him. The warmth other children seemed to receive so freely—the hugs, the stories, the tucked-in blankets—Nyx saw them only on television.
No birthday parties. No bedtime kisses.
Just silence.
By the time he turned six, he knew something was wrong with him.
Not in the way children suspect monsters under their beds, but in the way animals know when they are sick—instinctively, irrevocably.
When he spoke, people looked away.
When he smiled, no one smiled back.
Even his presence seemed to make the air colder, the room quieter.
Nyx wasn't cursed. He wasn't dangerous.
He was just… nothing.
And people hated him for it.
School was no better.
He didn't talk like the others. He didn't dress like them, didn't have the same polished shoes or expensive coats. His backpack was always torn, hand-me-downs from kids he'd never met. His lunches were dry sandwiches, half-wrapped in crumpled napkins.
And he was alone. Always.
The other children didn't tease him at first. They ignored him. Pretended he wasn't there.
But eventually, someone noticed the way he flinched when touched. The way he avoided eye contact. The way he kept his head down.
And children, like wolves, hunt weakness.
It started small.
A pencil broken on purpose.
A desk kicked out from under him.
A whispered name—"Creep."
Then came the bruises.
The spitballs.
The empty locker with the slurs carved into the metal.
He told a teacher once. She smiled politely and said, "Sometimes kids are just mean."
He told the counselor. She asked if he'd tried "being more positive."
He stopped telling anyone after that.
At home, the silence turned to violence.
His father, a cold man with too many hours and too little patience, began to look at him like a burden he couldn't get rid of. The back of his hand replaced conversation. Discipline came with bruises and locked doors.
His mother said nothing.
Her wine glass was always full.
Her gaze always elsewhere.
When he failed a math test, his father shouted for ten minutes and broke a chair. When he aced the next one, no one noticed.
Nyx existed in a space between rage and neglect—never quite worth hating, never once worth loving.
He stopped speaking at home.
Stopped trying at school.
He walked the halls like a ghost.
Sometimes he would stare at his own reflection and try to see what everyone else saw. A reason to hate him. A flaw deep enough to justify it all.
He never found one.
And that was the worst part.
The night he ran away, no one noticed.
He packed quietly. Just a jacket, a few protein bars, a flashlight that barely worked, and the twenty-eight dollars he'd saved from skipped lunches. He left through the back window. No tears. No drama.
Just a single glance back at the house.
Its windows dark.
Its doors shut.
Its silence absolute.
He whispered one word under his breath:
"Goodbye."
And meant it.
The city was colder than he expected.
And meaner.
He spent the first night under a park bench, curled tight, shivering. The next day, he wandered downtown, hoping to find food. No one offered help. No one looked twice.
A man pushed past him and muttered, "Get a job."
He was thirteen.
By day four, the hunger gnawed at his stomach like glass. He stole a half-eaten sandwich from a bin behind a café. When the owner caught him, they hit him with a broom and called him a "vile little parasite."
He didn't fight back. He ran.
By day six, his feet were blistered, and his cough had turned wet.
The skies began to darken.
The storm rolled in like a punishment.
He found shelter beneath a broken overpass, the concrete dripping, the wind howling. Thunder shook the sky. Lightning danced in the clouds like gods arguing.
He pulled his knees to his chest and tried to stay dry.
But the rain came anyway.
And with it, the cold.
The kind that seeps into your bones, into your blood, until everything feels heavy. Until even thinking hurts.
He tried to sleep. But sleep didn't come.
Only the rain.
Only the storm.
Only the emptiness.
And somewhere, in the hollow of his chest, something cracked. Not his body. His soul.
And in a voice barely louder than a breath, he said:
"I hate this world."
Not with rage. Not with venom.
Just… truth.
There under that overpass he froze to death.