The sky had long since forgotten how to be blue.
Once upon a time though even that memory was fading the sun used to rise, and the moon would watch over the world by night. Clouds danced across a sapphire canvas, and the wind carried laughter instead of ash. But those days were gone.
Now, the heavens burned a dull ember-red, like the dying coals of a fire left to smolder. The moons had vanished without warning, and the sun seemed to rise only in stories. The sky hung heavy and gray, choked with dust and regret.
This world was dying. And it was dying slowly.
They said the gods had abandoned it and turned their backs when the curses came, when monsters emerged from the earth and sea and sky to claim what was left. Cities fell, forests withered, and towns like Hollowrest became nothing more than graveyards with breathing corpses.
Among the cracked stones and splintered wood of the village ruins, a boy moved.
He was thin far too thin for someone still growing and cloaked in rags that barely clung to his frame. He had no name anymore. The world had stripped that from him, just as it had stolen his parents, his little sister, his home.
He had once been a child with dreams. Now, he was just a shadow with a pulse.
He dragged himself down a dirt-choked alley, stomach growling louder than the distant howls of the beasts outside the shattered village walls. Survival had become routine. Purpose? That had died with his family.
Still, vengeance smoldered like coal in his chest.
He stopped beside a broken wall, sliding down until he sat in the dust, his breath uneven. His hands were stained red, but he couldn't even remember whose blood it was anymore. his, a beast's, maybe another scavenger. The line had blurred long ago.
Every day was a war. If the monsters didn't kill you, the hunger would.
He glanced toward the twisted corpse of the creature he had barely managed to wound. A jagged blade, rusted but faithful, lay at his side. His limbs trembled from exhaustion, but he wasn't dead yet.
"I'll survive," he muttered under his breath. "I always do."
But his stomach twisted violently, and his vision swam. He pressed a hand to his gut, gasping. "Damn it... I'm so hungry…"
And then—the earth shifted.
It began as a whisper, a tremor humming through the bones of the world. Dust danced around him, rising from the ground. At first, he thought it was another quake common these days, as the land fractured under the curse, but this felt sharper. More alive.
He pulled himself upright, staggering toward the source. Over the broken rooftops and dead trees, he saw it, light. Blinding, unnatural light.
"Magic"The boy muttered
Rumors spoke of those from the capital cities elites, magi, royals people who still clung to the divine threads of a dying world. They could command elements, bend the remnants of nature, summon fire and steel with whispered words.
The boy should have turned back. But curiosity had always been crueler than hunger. He walked toward the light.
Smoke rolled in thick columns, masking shapes, distorting sound. The monsters had vanished, and the air was deathly still. His instincts screamed, but his legs carried him forward anyway.
Then he saw them, two figures standing amidst the dust.
Tall. Still. Strong.
They weren't like the beasts. No snarling. No chaos. Just calm, too calm. They looked like men, but something in their aura bent the world around them. The boy felt it in his lungs, in his bones.
He tried to step back. But it was already too late.
One of them turned.
There was no flash. No warning.
Pain bloomed in his chest like fire.
He looked down, dazed. A spear of silver light had pierced straight through him. It shimmered with magic. cold and precise, like death itself had been sculpted into a blade.
He fell. Blood spilled into the dirt beneath him, warm and thick.
"Heh…" he choked, laughing weakly. "I guess… my luck ran out after all…"
As his vision blurred, something caught his eye, another figure. Kneeling not far away from him but far for him to reach
Another boy, just like him. young, ragged, dying. But there was something off about him. His aura didn't belong here. It didn't belong anywhere.
Four spears were driven through his chest. The magic had impaled him too, yet he knelt as though it meant nothing. He looked up, his face calm. Tired. And then, he smiled.
That small, strange smile the kind worn by someone who already knew how this would end.A moment later, his body dropped beside the first boy.
The spears that had pierced them both cracked, dissolved into glittering dust.
The world tilted. Sound fled. Darkness fell.
And in the fading embers of consciousness, the boy accepted the only truth he had ever known.
He was never meant to be the hero.
He died as he had lived—lost, alone, and forgotten. Beside a stranger who didn't belong.