Chapter 63: Miguel
A long, resonant toll of the bell echoed through the halls of the Evernight Academy.
In an instant, the corridors were flooded with a mixture of human children and skeletal forms. The air was a chaotic symphony of youthful laughter and the rhythmic, dry clack-clack-clack of bone against stone. Some children were even seen playing tag with the lower-tier skeletons, weaving through the crowd with reckless abandon.
Miguel led the children of Sunflower House toward the main gates, their small hands clutching the hem of his tunic as they stared wide-eyed at the undead students.
Miguel scanned the crowd. At the gate, countless parents were waiting. He saw a mother scoop up her daughter, planting a kiss on her cheek. He saw a father hoist his son onto his shoulders, letting out a booming, hearty laugh. Even a Skeleton Berserker was seen awkwardly patting a Skeleton Soldier on the head, the soldier's jaw clicking open and shut as if sharing a secret.
Every child had a home to return to. Every life had a place where it belonged.
Watching this, Miguel's pace slowed. The surrounding noise began to fade into a distant hum, and his thoughts drifted back to a time long ago.
Back to the days before he met Hans.
Back then, Miguel's world was painted in shades of gray.
The darkest corner of the slums had been his "territory." There, he had used scraps of rotting timber salvaged from refuse piles to build a tiny shack. The boards were of uneven lengths, riddled with rusted nail holes and the black veins of decay. The space was so small he could barely lie flat. The wind howled through the gaps, and the rain trickled down the wood, but to him, it was home.
He remembered a specific day when he was trying to reinforce the roof. He had found a relatively sturdy plank and tried to hoist it up, but his foot slipped on a patch of slick moss. He stepped hard onto a piece of warped wood, and a rusted iron nail tore through his ankle.
The pain was a white-hot spike. Miguel let out a cry and collapsed into the dirt.
Not far behind him, he heard a woman's frantic voice. "Oh goodness! Are you alright? Did you hurt yourself, sweetheart?"
Miguel whipped his head around, a flicker of longing—one he hadn't even known he possessed—igniting in his eyes. Instinctively, he started to answer, "I'm okay..."
But the words died in his throat. The woman wasn't looking at him. She was sprinting in the opposite direction, toward a well-dressed boy who had tripped on the cobblestones and was wailing at the top of his lungs.
The woman gathered the child into her arms, tenderly patting his back and murmuring, "Pain, pain, fly away... Mama's here, the pain is all gone."
That voice wasn't for him. It never had been.
Miguel watched the mother and son disappear into the distance. He looked down at the gash on his ankle. The bleeding had slowed, but the wound was caked in filth and grit. He didn't make a sound.
He simply picked up a piece of charcoal and, on the smoothest board of his shack, drew two shaky stick figures. One tall, one short.
Miguel looked at the drawings and allowed a small, hollow smile to touch his lips. "There," he whispered. "Now I have a Papa and a Mama too."
His stomach let out an ill-timed, hollow growl. The sound was a sharp reminder of a much more immediate reality: he was starving.
Miguel stood up, limping toward the back alleys of the district's restaurants. He knew that wealthy adventurers often discarded half-eaten meals. If he was lucky, he might find a whole loaf of bread, or perhaps a bone with some gristle still attached.
The alley reeked of the sour stench of rotting grease and stagnant sewage. Miguel scavenged through the trash until his eyes locked onto a bone. There were still slivers of dark red meat clinging to it.
His eyes lit up. He lunged for it, but a dark shadow blurred past. A mangy, skeletal stray cat snatched the bone in its teeth and vanished into the darkness of a side street.
Miguel froze, then let out a resigned sigh. Eventually, beneath a pile of wilted vegetable leaves, he unearthed an apple. Half of it was a bruised, fermented brown, smelling of cheap wine, but the other half looked edible.
He was overjoyed. He wiped the "clean" side on his shirt and took a cautious bite. It was sour and mealy, but to him, it was a feast. He sat at the entrance of his shack, eating the rotten fruit bite by bite. When he finished, he took his charcoal and drew a lopsided circle next to the stick figures.
"Papa, Mama... you should eat too."
Night fell. The slums after dark were a hunting ground. The shouts of drunks, the snarls of fighting dogs, and the soft footfalls of thieves echoed through the shadows. Miguel lay in his shack, covered only by a tattered piece of burlap. The wind whistled through the cracks in the wood, bringing every terrifying sound into his ears.
"The night really is scary, isn't it?" he murmured. He turned his head to the stick figures on the wall. His smile returned. "But with Papa and Mama here, I'm not afraid of anything."
Just then, he heard heavy footsteps and low, aggressive muttering. A group of older street urchins—the kind who specialized in shaking down the weak—was approaching. Miguel's heart hammered against his ribs.
Suddenly, the board he had failed to nail down earlier that day slipped and fell. It landed perfectly across the entrance, sealing the shack from view. The urchins paused outside. "Looks empty. Let's check the next block."
The footsteps faded. Miguel curled up in the dark, listening to the rhythm of his own heart, and fell asleep with a smile. It felt as if his "parents" really were protecting him.
The next morning, however, Miguel was wracked by a violent cough. His head spun, and his limbs felt like they were made of lead. He was sick. The injury, the filth, and the rotten food had finally taken their toll. His forehead was burning to the touch. He tried to sit up, but the world tilted, and he collapsed back onto the dirt.
He looked at the stick figures on the wall. "Mama, it hurts..." he wheezed. "Papa... I'm so cold."
The charcoal faces offered no reply.
An unknown amount of time passed before the door of scrap wood was nudged open. A shaft of brilliant light pierced the gloom. Miguel squinted, shielding his eyes as a man's silhouette blocked the sun.
His first instinct was terror. He thought the older boys had come back for him. But the man didn't force his way in. He simply knelt at the threshold. The sunlight traced the man's profile in gold.
The man extended a hand.
"If you don't have a family either... would you like to be part of mine?"
The voice was the gentlest thing Miguel had ever heard.
Miguel froze. He looked at the outstretched hand. It was clean. The nails were trimmed. It was a hand unlike any he had ever seen in the slums. In that moment, the light behind the man was so radiant it was almost blinding.
Miguel's lips moved, but no sound came out. With the last of his strength, he simply nodded.
Yes.
The memory shattered.
The noise of the present rushed back into his ears. Miguel felt his hand being released. Lily and the younger children were running forward like birds escaping a cage.
Miguel looked up.
Hans was standing at the school gates. He knelt to catch the lunging Lily, planting a kiss on her forehead.
"How was your first day? Did you learn well?"
"I learned how to write my name!"
"The teacher praised me!"
"The skeleton teacher's head fell off! It was so funny!"
The children chirped over one another, their faces glowing with a light that had never existed in the slums. Hans's gaze shifted past them, finding Miguel lingering at the back. He raised a hand and waved.
That smile was exactly the same as it had been on that golden morning years ago.
Miguel's nose stung.
That's right.
I'm not that orphan in a wooden shack anymore, talking to stick figures.
I have a home.
Miguel broke into a grin. He took a step forward, then broke into a run, heading toward the warmth of that light.
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