Planet Ardh #73.
That's what they call it in the higher realms, a sterile designation from beings who look down on it from the heavens above. But here on the ground, among the broken cities and cracked skies, the people call it Bastardia.
It's not just a name. It's a curse, a confession, a middle finger pointed straight toward the divine.
The bastard son of God.
A planet abandoned. A world where faith died generations ago, or was slaughtered alongside it. Whatever sense of justice or higher order once governed Bastardia, it's long since rotted away, leaving behind a husk of a society running on survival, violence, and raw power.
And despite the filth and ruin, the people have their rules. It's a brutal one, simple but absolute.
"The weak have no right to speak about justice."
If you can't defend yourself, your opinions don't matter. If you can't back up your complaints with blood or fire, you'd better keep your mouth shut, or someone will shut it for you.
Somewhere in the slums beyond the city's central district, a skinny young man lies pinned to the ground beneath another man's boot. His head is crushed into the mud and gravel. His gray hair, matted with dirt and dried blood, clings to his pale, bruised face.
The name is Irvine Donovan, and right now, life is pressing down on him as hard as the heel grinding into his skull.
"There's no meaning to life anymore…"
He mumbles, voice trembling like a broken flute. His face is swollen, bleeding from his temple. His eyes stare blankly into the dust, unable to cry.
The foot on his head? It belongs to Mathias Burke, a smirking young noble with the face of a prince and the soul of a pig.
"Now you get it, huh?" Mathias grins, relishing the moment. "Your life's worth less than street piss. Even the dogs eat better than you. So do us all a favor, kill yourself. Clean up the world a little."
Around them, a crowd has gathered. As is Bastardian custom, no one intervenes. The commoners avert their eyes, afraid of drawing attention. The nobles watch with amusement, as if observing a theater performance. There's no police officers, no law enforcement, no justice, just another day.
Mathias leans in, eyes glowing with mock concern. "Want to know what really broke you? It wasn't the beating. It's her, isn't it?"
Irvine doesn't move.
"Your little sweetheart. Your precious Maya." Mathias chuckles, and his voice lowers to a whisper. "This morning… she gave herself to us."
Irvine twitches. Just once.
"Right in front of you," Mathias says. "She let us all take her. Willingly. Every second of it."
"You lie," Irvine croaks.
"No," Mathias says, calm as a priest. "You saw it, didn't you?"
The gray-haired boy says nothing. But his silence is enough. Emotions war on his bruised face, and Mathias smiles, knowing the wound has reopened.
"You don't even have the guts to end it yourself, do you?" Mathias says, stepping harder on his head. "What's left of your pride now, huh?"
Then, an empty liquor bottle smashes on the ground near Irvine's face, followed by a voice cutting in, a deep, brutish tone full of ugly satisfaction.
"He should've thanked us. Bet he enjoyed watching."
The speaker is Oogorim, an orc with two thick horns jutting from his earlobes. By orcish standards, he's considered handsome, which says more about orcish standards than anything else.
Next to him, Myriil Gremenor, a tall mountain elf with sharp features and smug grace, folds his arms and smirks.
"It's what she wanted," he says. "You just couldn't satisfy her."
And there's the ogre, or rather, ogres. Kurok and Glokork, conjoined twins sharing one massive body, two heads wobbling as they laugh in unison.
"She was screaming with joy," Kurok says.
"You heard her," Glokork adds. "Can't fake that, can she?"
Irvine doesn't reply. He's shaking now, not in rage, but in despair. His body trembles under the weight of what he thinks he saw, what they claim is truth.
Mathias, ever the showman, steps back and unzips his pants without a shred of shame. Then he begins to relieve himself directly on Irvine's head.
Crrrsss!
The warm stream hits Irvine with a hiss.
"Be grateful," Mathias says, laughing. "I'm generous enough to give your pathetic life some purpose. Now you can resign from this world with a resume being a toilet bowl."
The crowd laughs with him. Some even clap.
This is Bastardia.
In a world where moral compasses don't exist, Mathias' act of public peeing isn't shameful. It's apparently a flex.
When he finishes, Mathias zips up, spins theatrically, and walks away, posing for a group of giggling girls who cheer like he's a rockstar.
"Make sure you die somewhere quiet," he calls back to Irvine. "So you don't leave a mess behind."
Left alone in the dirt, Irvine doesn't scream. He simply breathes, broken and silent, his thoughts drifting to the only truth left in his mind:
Maya betrayed him.
He doesn't care whether it was illusion or reality. The pain is too great. The world is too cruel, and whatever light he once believed in, it's gone.
Now thoroughly humiliated, and emotionally wrecked, he seriously considers taking Mathias's advice. Suicide is starting to sound like the only logical option.
So he stands.
Numb, bloodied, and soaked in urine, he limps toward the edge of the city. His goal is simple, to find a quiet place to die.
Alone, with every eye pinned on him, he walks the long path of shame, each step an effort to strangle whatever pride or self-worth still clings to life inside his head.
Then it occurs to him, maybe it's easier if he stops seeing himself as someone who exists at all. He might still be breathing, but he's already dead inside.
As he nears the city gates, the guards stationed there wrinkle their noses.
"What's this stench?"
"Take a look at that kid. He looks like he lost a fight with a sewage demon."
"Hey, kiddo! Looking for a place to die, huh?"
"Do you have a permit to leave the city?"
But Irvine doesn't respond.
"Hey, punk!"
"No… let him be!"
"But…"
"Just look at his military uniform! He must be a student at Ezlenmir Academy."
Irvine says nothing. He keeps walking, slipping through a narrow door hidden beside the towering border gate and walks toward the desolation beyond.
What awaits out there is not a neighboring district or a trade route, but the skeletal remains of a world half-destroyed, a scarred stretch of ruins where nature has retreated and memory hangs in the air like ash.
A perfect place for anyone who considers to check out.
Once, this region thrived. It was a center of industry and commerce, a convergence of cultures across Drudal Kingdom. But the war reduced it to rubble, and the world simply moved on.
By dusk, Irvine reaches the skybridge, a narrow wind-worn catwalk between two towers, suspended high above the street. The glass underfoot is cracked in a spiderweb pattern, and the metal railings have long since rusted away.
He steps onto the ledge without ceremony, facing outward, eyes distant.
No prayers. No screams. No hesitation.
Just one breath.
And then…
He lets go.
Gravity takes him without resistance. His body plummets, arms limp, hair flaring upward in the rush of air.
Above, clouds part for the briefest moment, allowing a single ray of sunlight to break through. It strikes him directly, painting him in gold for the span of a heartbeat, as if the heavens themselves have chosen this moment to spotlight his exit.
He notices the light, feels the warmth.
"Such a beautiful sky…" he mutters.
"….But a terrible world to live in."
Then everything goes black.
Blugh!
The impact is sickening, blood-spattering thud against broken pavement. His body crumples like a discarded marionette, limbs twisted at impossible angles.
For a moment, there's only the sound of breeze.
But then…
Tic!
A finger twitching.