Damien was just fourteen but already stood a head taller than most grown men—5'11 and still growing. Broad-shouldered, bronze-skinned, and golden-eyed, he was a storm wrapped in flesh. His knuckles were raw more often than not, his voice deeper than his age allowed, and his temper. Unfiltered.
Think later. Fists first. That was Damien.
He lived in the industrial outskirts of Neo-Britannia with his mother and younger sister, Sera, just eight years old. Their home was modest, cracked by time but held together by laughter, warmth, and the weight of a missing father whose name was never spoken.
Sera:(Wrinkling her nose) "You look like shit."
Damien:(Stops mid-step, blinking) "Y–You! Where did you learn that language?!"
Sera:(Shrugs casually) "Uncle Wayne says it when the spice stew's too hot."
Damien:(Pinching the bridge of his nose) "Of course he does..."
Sera:(Marches up, poking his arm) "You're bleeding, dummy. What were you doing, wrestling gravity again?"
Damien:(Dryly) "Something like that. Gravity hits harder than most kids at the academy."
Sera:(Grabs his wrist and drags him toward the kitchen) "Come on, sit down. I'll patch you up. If I leave you alone, you'll probably bleed on mom's rug again. And guess who gets yelled at for not stopping you?"
Damien:(Chuckles as he limps after her) "You're such a bossy little gremlin."
Sera:(Grinning) "Yeah? Well, this bossy gremlin just saved your ass from getting grounded."
Damien didn't need enhancements. No AI-linked neural visor, no fusion serum injections humming under his skin. He was raw, born of nothing but instinct and will. In a world engineered for advantage, he was anomaly and defiance wrapped into one.
At Xyprus Academy, a combat institution founded by the long-dead God King, students came augmented. They flew across arenas with synthetic muscles and fought with predictive AI overlays. Xyprus had branches on every habitable planet—a cathedral of evolution through artificial superiority. Xyprus Academy stood like a fortress-city above the ruins of Old Britannia, a gleaming symbol of post-war unity and technological supremacy. Sprawled across a walled mountaintop in Neo-Brittania, the academy was equal parts military base, research hub, and elite finishing school for the next generation of enhanced warriors.
Damien didn't care. Using only natural training, raw physical conditioning, and unrelenting discipline, Damien beat the academy's top augmented elites. He did what no AI could predict. He fought without formula. Without algorithm. Without limits.
He walked its halls wild and free, a relic of what humanity used to be before science rewrote the definition of strength. They mocked him—until he made them bleed. Some called him a relic. Others, a fool. But the echoes of his fists in the Crucible silenced all doubt. In time, even the AI systems could not model him—his movements broke their logic trees.
Yet for all his savagery in the ring, Damien wasn't cruel. His heart was bigger than his fists. He'd give the last bread to his sister, fight three seniors to defend a friend, and smile like a kid who didn't know the world was burning outside the academy walls.
He was many things: loud, reckless, untamed.
But above all else, he was real.