The world didn't hate Kael Veyron.
It didn't even notice him.
In the slums of Droskar's Spine-a city that rotted from inside out-Kael lived beneath the bones of broken towers,their spires like figures clawing at a sun that refused to shine.No one remembered how long the city had been dying.It's nobles still dressed in gold,clinging to false pride,while children like Kael carried bricks for bread and buried dreams in gutters.
Kael was fourteen.Small for his age.Quiet,but not from fear-but calculation.Every word he spoke was weighed,measured,and sharpened like a blade.
He worked twelve hours a day stacking stone for men who laughed as they spat near his feet.At night,he was paid two copper coins-just enough to keep him hungry.Just enough to keep him from dying.
The others in the slums cursed the city,cursed the nobles,and the gods.Kael cursed bothing.He watched.He listened.And beneath the cold silence,a fire kindled in his chest.
Not anger.Not hope.
Resolve.
He didn't want to be saved.
He wanted to rise.
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The Ruined Library
It was the dead of winter when Kael found it-shivering and alone,his hands numb,the wind like knives down his spine.He'd climbed the forgotten path behind the outer wall,toward what the elders called"the ghost halls
"No one dared to go there.They said the souls of scholars still whispered through the ash.
Kael didn't believe in ghosts.
The library ruins were buried in soot and silence.Stone pillars cracked by time.Vines crawling up scorched bookshelves.Statues of forgotten philosophers with their faces shattered-mouths broken as if silence by history itself.
But amid the decay,Kael found something untouched by flame:a book.Thick.Bound by leather,charred but whole.
It's titles were gone,burned off the cover.
He opened it.His breath froze by his lungs.
The first page read:
"ASCENDANT REALISM"
A Doctrine of Truth for Those Who Refused to Die Weak.
Each page was a hammer to his soul.
"No one is coming to save you."
"The world does not reward the kind,the loyal,or the obedient-it rewards the useful,the unbreakable,the intelligent."
"To be feared is safer than to be loved.But to master both is divine"
Kael didn't blink.He didn't sleep that night.He devoured the pages like a starving beast.
These were not teaches for the comfortable.
It was weapons for the forgotten.
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The Mirror of Pain
By the third night Kael returned to the ruins with a blade he had stolen from a guard too drunken to remember his name.In front of a broken mirror,he stared at his reflection.
Ribs visible.Eyes dark,hollow.Hands scarred and trembling.
The body of a slave.
But in his gaze-there was something ne.
Fire.
He whispered the words out aloud:
"I am what they see.I am what I will become."
He knelt and carved three words into his arm-not deep enough to kill,but deep enough to remember.
Far From Weak
The blood ran down,and Kael smiled through the pain.It was the first real thing he'd ever felt.
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The Dream of the Iron Man
That night,Kael dreamed of a figure in black armor standing atop a mountain of skulls his voice as deep as thunder,as calm as death.
"Pain is the tax of power.,the man said.
Rise.Or rot.
Kael didn't answer.He simply stood beside him,staring down at the world he would one day conquer.
When he woke,the pain in his arm was real.So was the cold.So was the codex beneath his sleeping mat.
But something else had changed.
He wasn't a victim anymore.
He was becoming.
Not a hero.Not a savior.Not even a man.A philospher of fire.A savage mind in a weak shell.
And soon,the shell would match the soul.
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