The nights in Alctara's slums were quieter after she left.
Maybe it was me that changed maybe the world had always been this still and I'd just never noticed.
The lamps by the street corners flickered weakly, like they were afraid of being seen, and the wind carried the smell of iron and rot. Somewhere in the dark, someone coughed blood. Somewhere else, a bottle broke, and laughter followed. It never stopped here. Misery had a voice, and it liked to talk at night.
I slept behind the baker's shed most days. It wasn't much just a hole in the wall big enough for rats and a boy with nothing left. The ground was always damp, but at least the walls stopped the wind from cutting straight through me. I used to tell myself I was lucky. That was before I learned luck is just what people call suffering that hasn't finished yet.
Work came in scraps unloading trash, cleaning blood from the arena steps, carrying crates for merchants who paid in crumbs. The city had a way of breaking your back just to feed you enough to keep crawling. I never said no. I couldn't afford pride.
At night, I'd press my hands against my ribs and count the bones like coins. Hunger was a habit by then a slow, chewing thing that didn't go away, just learned to hum softly inside your chest. Sometimes I dreamed of bread, sometimes of warmth, sometimes of her.
Lira had talked about the academy like it was a star you could touch if you just kept walking. "Blue-grade talent," she'd said, grinning with pride. She'd laughed when I told her I didn't even know what color I'd be.
"Then maybe you'll surprise everyone," she said. "Maybe you'll shine."
The guards patrolled less often in the slums not because they cared less, but because they didn't need to. Nobody here had the strength to rebel. We were too busy starving to dream. I saw kids younger than me trade their limbs for mana potions, hoping to awaken early. Most didn't live past the week.
I used to sit by the old fountain at midnight, watching the reflection of the upper district lights on the water. They looked like stars fallen into mud. I wondered if people up there ever looked down if they ever thought of us. Probably not. Maybe we were just the shadow that made their light brighter.
Once, I tried to steal bread from a stall. The owner caught me and broke my arm with a stick. He didn't stop hitting until I couldn't move. When I crawled away, bleeding into the gutter, I remember thinking it was funny that even pain had a limit, but humiliation didn't. It just stayed.
That night, I couldn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her Lira standing in the rain again, saying my name. I didn't know if it was memory or guilt. The fever in her eyes, the way her fingers trembled when she tried to hand me the last piece of bread.
"I'll be fine," she'd whispered.
She wasn't.
The world kept turning anyway. The next morning, I went back to work. Carried boxes till my hands bled. Cleaned horse stalls. Fought another street kid for scraps and lost. My body moved, but my head stayed somewhere else somewhere quieter, where the wind didn't smell like death.
One night, after another long day of nothing, I felt it a pulse. Faint, buried deep in my chest. Not a heartbeat. Something slower, older. It came like a whisper, sliding beneath my ribs and vanishing before I could breathe.
For a moment, I thought it was hunger again. But hunger didn't make the air shiver.
I pressed my palm against my chest and waited. Nothing. Just silence and the wet breathing of the city. Still, something had changed. The air felt heavier, the shadows sharper. I could hear the flutter of insects from across the street, the drip of water from a pipe. It was like the night itself was breathing with me.
I didn't understand it. Maybe I never would. But I knew this: the world had noticed me.
And for the first time in a long time, that scared me more than being invisible.
So I curled tighter against the wall, closed my eyes, and pretended to sleep while the city whispered in languages I didn't know.
When morning came, I'd wake up the same just another ghost with dirt under his nails, too stubborn to die.
But deep down, beneath hunger and bone, something small had stirred.
Something waiting.