The dented steel spoon felt as heavy as Klein's daggers. Akira's arm shivered violently, the rusted joints of his elbow screaming in protest as he lifted the bowl to his chin. Breakfast was a luxury they couldn't afford: soft, pale algae-starch noodles boiling in ration-water, dusted heavily with blood-spice. It was a warm, filling dish that only his mother knew how to make.
But today, he could barely eat it.
He tried to part his lips, but the bruised, overworked muscles in his jaw locked tight. He couldn't even open his mouth wide enough to take a full bite. Slurping a single, soft noodle past his teeth took agonizing effort.
I am never going to train again, he promised himself with each painful chew. It wasn't just his body that had failed him; it was his mind. Yesterday had proven exactly how weak he truly was.
Yet, amidst the ache, a strange realization settled over him. When he woke up this morning before the artificial lights flickered on, the pitch-black room hadn't terrified him as much as it usually did. Even his mother had noticed. "You are getting closer to the top," she had told him. It gave the boy a fleeting reason to smile, but the pride didn't last.
He stared down at his own soft, fair hands, comparing them to the calloused, thick-knuckled fingers of Deinne and the other slum children. The weight of his own frailty began to eat away at him. I thought I could save them, he thought bitterly. The fear he had tried so hard to bury—the terrifying question of whether he could truly do any of what his mother promised—crept back into his mind, accelerated by the weakness of his own flesh.
Whenever the doubt threatened to suffocate him, Akira would shake his head, clumsily shove another spoonful of noodles past his lips, and force himself to swallow, desperate to change his own thoughts. He realized today was the 4th cycle. There were only three cycles left until the next harvest. Every 7th cycle, the soldiers had to be prepared, both mentally and physically. Akira couldn't even prepare himself for breakfast.
"Klein is too barbaric... he doesn't understand how to treat a child."
Syuri, her long white hair falling over her shoulders, sat beside him as he struggled with the bowl. "How does it taste?" she asked softly.
Akira nodded, unable to form a sentence without his jaw flaring in pain.
"Poor thing," she whispered, her eyes filled with sympathy. "I shall scold him more, don't you worry."
Syuri gently caressed his hair. Underneath her touch, Akira felt a deep, burning shame. He had thought his mother would be disappointed in him. Even a simple warm-up had left him a crippled mess, but Syuri was different. She never looked at him with anything but a warm smile.
She reached for a rusted tin containing her homemade medicine. It was a vile mixture of remaining algae, monster oil, Icarus sillet herb, and the crushed petals of Deepbed mourns she had bartered for in the market. The green, slimy texture carried a horrendous, fecal stench that made Akira gag. Knowing what was coming, he quickly chugged the rest of his food, ignoring the pain in his throat, and braced himself.
"You never used to be this quiet when I applied the ointment," Syuri noted, scooping the slime onto her fingers.
It didn't take long before Akira was howling. As Syuri pressed the foul-smelling salve deep into his skinny limbs, neck, and face, the pressure felt like she was grinding glass into his bruises. He couldn't tell if the medicine was supposed to help him relax or just cause more harm. But in that moment, he decided to trust her. Mom is the best at everything, he reminded himself.
In the Sanctuary, Akira was the only one blessed to eat delicious food every day, because Syuri could turn the dirtiest ration-meat into a luxury. Even Chief Murad Xie had once sent his personal cooks to try and learn her secrets. She had flatly refused them. She hated the Chief. Akira never understood why; to him, Murad Xie was the ultimate symbol of strength.
Beyond her cooking, people respected her medicine. Akira remembered the harshir Family would often visit along with men,woman and children who wore cheap leather would crowd around their rusted door, peeking inside just to get a glimpse of her. It was creepy, but it made him glad there were people who liked them. Roste had visited earlier, and their circle kept growing.
I have to step up too, he thought. But the memories of the outskirts dragged his pride back down into the dirt. Can I really save them? He pictured Klein, the daggers, and the suffocating void. A violent shiver erupted from his heel all the way to his ear.
"I s-saw things outside the gates," Akira blurted out. He was breaking the silent promise he made to Klein, but he justified it quickly: Klein didn't tell me to keep it a secret directly, so it doesn't count. "It was too dark... and too cold," he continued, refusing to lock eyes with her. The weight of the outskirts was too much for an eleven-year-old to carry alone. Confessing it to his mother brought a wave of relief. He expected her to stay quiet, to just listen.
Instead, the warm, massaging pressure on his leg abruptly stopped.
"That's not true... Akira," she said.
Her voice had changed. It was no longer the warm tone of a mother. It was the sharp, argumentative tone she used when debating the market merchants or the guards.
"I-I saw the darkness with my own eyes, Mom," Akira stuttered, suddenly defensive. "There weren't even any monsters, even though we were off guard..."
"That's just a facade," she interrupted, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "The further you go away from this cage, the more you'll reach the outside world high up... where the children of men are waiting for us. Waiting for you."
Akira barely heard the second half of her sentence. His focus was entirely on her face. Her vibrant green eyes had gone completely lifeless. Her stare was empty, cold, and distant—like she was looking right through him at something horrific.
He panicked. He reached out and shook her shoulder. Her body moved, but she felt entirely docile, like a ragdoll.
"Mom!" he screamed.
She blinked, startled, and finally glanced down at him. Her eyes were suddenly filled with deep, profound sadness. She looked around the small room, visibly confused about what had just happened.
"Mom... are you okay?" he asked, his voice trembling.
"Why do you look scared, Akira? I am right here," she said, her own voice wavering.
Akira instantly regretted speaking. He had made a mistake. It was always like this when he asked about the Overworld or the people outside the gates—she would get argumentative and distant. But she had never directed that lifeless stare at him before. He promised himself never to ask her about the outside again.
"I'm sorry, Akira... your mother has been busy lately. I'm sorry if I spooked you," she said, quickly standing up and putting the tin of medicine away.
"Sorry... I shouldn't have talked back to you!" Akira rushed to reply.
His mother forced a smile. "Akira, you can't go around apologizing to everyone when you haven't made a mistake." She reached down, took his arm, and helped him to his feet. "Now, walk slowly. Try not to let go of my hand."
Akira gripped her hand tightly and took a cautious step. The pain was still intense, but a warm, soothing relief was slowly spreading through his muscles where she had applied the salve. He managed a small smile. "Mom, it feels better."
"This is the first time I've had to use this on you," she said quietly, listening to the rusted floorboards creak under their feet. "I was sad that you were hurt. But..." She paused, looking down at him. "I think you need to go back to Klein. I think you need to learn from him."
Akira pushed his face away, his cheeks burning with embarrassment. If his own mother was suggesting he go back to the man who nearly broke him, did she think he wasn't worthy anymore?
"It's not because I don't believe in you, Akira," she continued softly. "I want you to see more of what's outside the gates. I want you to understand the world above."
Slowly, as they walked around the small room, Syuri began to talk. She spoke of the lands above, the advancements of the surface, and the people who used to live there. But as her story shifted from the beauty of the Overworld to the horrors that ended it, her face darkened.
"The monsters that led humanity to extinction," she whispered.
She had never mentioned this to anyone. Not even to Klein. It was a secret Akira instinctively knew he had to protect. She explained that the people of the Sanctuary had forgotten the true nature of the beasts outside. They thought the monsters were just mindless, starving animals, no different than rabid dogs or blind pigs. They remembered the teeth, she said, but they had forgotten the true fear.
The monsters had not vanished. And they had not grown weaker.When Akira tried to picture them, his mind conjured images of the mindless, thrashing Gritmaws or the hulking Mawtorus from the harvest.
"But they have intelligence," Syuri said.
Akira stopped walking. "Intelligence?"
"The beasts that nearly wiped us out weren't a mindless horde of flesh," she explained, her voice trembling with an ancient hatred. "They were intelligent. Cunning. An emergence made by human hands... They are called the Rvernx."
Akira gulped. Monsters smarter than humans. An intrusive thought flashed in his mind. He pictured Klein—lethal, calculating, and ruthless. Could an intelligent monster act like that?
Syuri sat back down on the bed and pulled Akira onto her lap, gently caressing his hair.
"Do they look like us?" he asked softly, resting his cheek against her.
"More like us than the men in the Sanctuary," she replied.
"How do we tell them apart, then?" The fear was burning deep in his chest now.
"They are cold," she whispered, staring blankly at the rusted wall. "They lack human love, a soul, and warmth."
The terrifying image of Klein as a monster immediately vanished from Akira's mind. Klein was warm, he thought, remembering the heat radiating off the man's back when they rode the bike through the Rustyards. A profound relief washed over him, but the lingering fear of the Rvernx remained.
He looked up at his mother. He trusted her enough to let his true insecurities show.
"M-Mom... will I be good enough?" he asked, tears finally welling in his eyes. "I don't think I can even beat Deinne in a play fight... or save anyone. I might not able to beat those Rvernx" He waited for her to stroke his hair, to tell him it was okay to be weak right now.
Instead, Syuri's hands gripped his shoulders with terrifying strength. She pulled him up so they were face-to-face.
"There is no one above you in this world," she hissed, her green eyes wide and fanatical. "You are a god, Akira. Your powers are immeasurable... and you shall bring us many glad tidings."
Her stare was just as scary, just as lifeless as before. For the first time in his entire life, Akira felt a spike of genuine, paralyzing fear toward his own mother.
But as he looked at her trembling hands and the desperate, manic light in her eyes, he didn't believe she was crazy.
He just realized she was completely, utterly alone, and suffering in ways he couldn't even begin to understand.
For once, Akira felt an overwhelming need to assure her that he was all she needed. He tucked himself into his mother's side, feeling her face warm against him. It felt as if she were about to cry, but like anyone else in the Sanctuary, her tears had long since dried up. Maybe because she had cried too much in the past, he thought. Even though Akira was weak in muscle, lacking in strategy, and frail in will, his blind faith in his mother remained absolute.
The artificial lights overhead grew brighter, signaling it was almost midday. Because he had skipped the morning training with Klein, he had missed the crowd of children who walked together to the school. Now, he would have to walk alone through the bitterly warm markets, across the central platform, and into the rust-cold halls of the academy. He didn't feel like going today, but the longer he sat here, the more trouble he might cause her.
"Your muscles are still sore... you should rest more," she said, holding him tight, refusing to let him go. "And whatever they teach there is useless. I will spend the day here with you. I will teach you more from the books... the true ones."
It was the opposite of what Akira wanted. He needed to breathe the outside air, even if his legs failed him. "I-I want to go out and play with some friends..." he lied, making an excuse. Both he and his mother knew the only friend he ever had was Deinne, and Deinne was nowhere near.
"Those... dirty children are beneath you," Syuri pressed, her grip tightening. "You do not have to waste your time with them when you could learn more. Maybe one to three chapters more."
Only Akira knew how much he truly hated studying the Book of Hyrae. It was strange, weird, and impossibly hard to decipher. Yet, he always acted like he cared, simply because his mother praised him every time he completed a chapter.
"Will you let me go if I finish a chapter?" Akira begged.
His mother hesitated. But eventually, worn down by his constant pleading, she gave in. "Fine... but you must learn the verses by heart, and be back before the lights fall."
Thank you, Akira thought, though the words didn't leave his mouth. Instead, he launched himself at his tall mother, hugging her tightly before slipping out the door.
He left carrying the heavy, scarred book. Its cover was patched together with various leathers from different monsters through the ages, and furs oiled black, fibers attached to it from the koiln plants grown in the west, inscribed in a language only he and his mother could read. It bore the title Book of Resurrection. Akira could read the words, but he didn't truly know what they meant. When he had asked, his mother simply told him it meant "a great return of mankind." This was the 7th Edition. No one knew where the other parts were, what was taught within them, or who this 'Hyrae' even was, aside from the local mythos.
"An old, wise king who fell!" A sentence from a dream drifted into his mind, echoing the first time his mother had taught him these chapters. When he was younger, the book had contained stories of the octopus and the squid—tales he had loved. Now, the pages were no longer bright or fun; they were heavy, filled with crushing moral obligations.
The bright artificial light shone down on his messy, purple hair, which hadn't seen clean water for days. He walked through the city, hoping to reach the central platform and head south toward his school. But the main thoroughfare was too crowded. Instead, he took a different route—a hidden path he and Deinne used to run. It wound through the black, misty alleyways behind the prison and the Dain.
It smelled worse than rotting corpses here. He had to jump over the slick, rusted canals where the Dain flushed its vile excrement, pushing deeper into the old ruins of the Gershlands. This was where the old and the sick lived. He had heard Roste joke about moving here once. A joke, Akira realized, because the Gershlands were not a place for the elderly to live out a peaceful retirement. It was a waiting room for death.
Soon, Akira would discover exactly why. And he would learn the horrifying truths of the Sanctuary that his mother had kept hidden from him.
"Chief... I-I am not ready... don't l-leave me..."
The wet, ragged groans of an old man echoed through the cold mist of the Gershlands. The sound was enough to make the boy stop in his tracks. It wasn't uncommon for the sick or elderly to collapse in these alleys, and Akira and Deinne had helped a bunch of them back to their feet in the past. They were usually rewarded with praises, or perhaps some discarded tools Akira could collect for his "King's stash."
He rushed toward the sound, weaving through the tall, rusted buildings with their arched slopes and unruly, jagged wires hanging low in the thick fog.
But the moment he approached the source of the noise, he froze. This wasn't an old man who had simply fallen on his back. Despite the thick mist, the overwhelming copper stench of human blood saturated the air. It smelled like a monster had dragged its prey away to feed.
Through the fog, he saw the old man. He had been stripped naked and was being dragged violently across the floor. His fragile skin tore against the jagged, rusted grates of the iron pathways, leaving a slick, red trail of peeled flesh that tracked exactly where he had been pulled from.
"Elder..." Akira stood in a stupor. His mind and body ached—not from yesterday's soreness, but from the sheer, suffocating aura of bloodlust that filled the alley.
Who could do such a thing? Akira thought.
His eyes slowly tracked up the dragging arm, settling on the face of the one pulling the body. The man was a behemoth, standing taller than most—perhaps seven-foot-eight or more. His raw, bulging biceps were the size of a grown man's head. He wore a heavy, stretched-back hood, but his face was obscured by a terrifying mask: the right half was forged from a human skull, and the left half was the jagged bone of a monster. Wrapped tightly around his wrists were thick, broken chains, and protruding from his gear was a spine stronger than steel. Beneath the mask, his eyes burned with the feral intensity of a Gritmaw.
Is this a Rvernx? The thought flashed through Akira's mind. It seemed illogical to think a human could look like this. The sheer hostility radiating from the man, mixed with his burning body heat and sweat, implied he was human, but it felt wrong. Maybe he was something worse than a Rvernx. But if humans like this exist... why did we ever fall to the monsters in the first place? Akira wondered.
The longer he watched the behemoth drag the weeping old man toward the industrial sector, the faster the pieces clicked into place. The overhauled long black coat. The expensive, soldier-exclusive weapons. There was no doubt.
It was Aaron Krovnic, the Butcher.
For a single, agonizing second, Akira locked eyes with the old man being dragged through the dirt.
Save me... the old man's desperate, milky eyes pleaded. The words never left his broken mouth.
Akira's legs locked. The terrifying image of Klein pulling his daggers in the pitch-black void stuttered his muscles. The paralyzing fear of adult men and their violence had already been deeply ingrained into him. The only thing he could move was his ambitious, naive mouth.
"I-I'll save you... I'll save all of you," Akira mumbled, his voice shaking.
He stood by shivering, like a lamb staring down a bear, watching Aaron Krovnic drag the living man toward the Dain.
The absolute rule of the Dain was simple: once the dead and the monsters entered its mechanical jaws, only the blessing of food came out. Cannibalism was allowed within the Sanctuary. Akira knew that. It was confusing and illogical to him, but he had been taught it was a cruel necessity.
But what could possibly be the purpose of killing someone who was still alive?
If the goal is for the dead to feed the living... why make them dead in the first place? He bit his bruised lip.
The question that had haunted him since the morning—was he worthy enough?—rumbled in his mind once more.
Why am I so weak? Why did Mom lie? The unwavering faith he held for his mother suffered its first, devastating crack. Akira's knees gave out, and he collapsed onto the rusted floor grates. The heavy Book of Hyrae tumbled from his hands, landing open next to him.
An unusual, drafting wind—a rarity in the stagnant air of the Sanctuary—caught the heavy pages, flipping them over.
"Why did you lie to me!" Akira cried out into the empty, bloody alley, letting all his frustration shatter. "Look how weak I am! I can't save anyone!"
"The Mighty One." "Son of the True Innovation." "Beholder of the Wise." "Conqueror of Faith." "The Decider." "Monarch's Presence." "Guardian Deity of Mercy." The grand, mythic titles his mother had forced him to memorize were all in vain. She told him he would do great things, and now... he couldn't even raise his voice against a true human monster.
Blurry, hot tears fell from his eyes, splashing onto the yellowed, patchy pages of the book. Instinctively, Akira reached out and wiped the wetness away. As he cleared his vision, he saw that the book had stopped turning. Like a god sending a message in a time of peril, the text lay open to the exact words he needed.
Victory is determined by the chosen, the ink read.
Lies, he told himself. He read the next line, desperately searching for an excuse to hide away from his pain and his burden.
Surely, with hardship comes ease.
Another tear fell onto the ancient verse—words written in a time before mankind became so weak. Akira stared at it. He felt like he wasn't even worthy of reading this verse. How much hardship have I actually taken? he asked himself. The children his age in the slums were far more competent, far more hardworking, while he had given up on his very first day of training. He hadn't endured hardship; he had run from it.
Klein was right, Deinne was right... Murad Xie was right... they were right because they were strong, he murmured.
He nearly choked on a sob before his bright yellow eyes burned with a sudden, fierce heat. It wasn't fear anymore. It was a burning, desperate need to achieve something real—something beyond the empty praises his mother spoon-fed him.
He looked up at the crossroads of the alley. Going straight would take him to his school. To the left lay the monstrous, churning gears of the Dain. To the right was the edge of the rusted nothingness. And back the way he came was his mother, waiting in her safe, suffocating room.
He took his first step toward the Dain. It was slow at first. Then, his pace quickened.
Before long, the pain in his legs began to vanish, the cold air he breathed warmed his lungs, the slow shattering beats while he walked turned into the gallops of a man. The muscles he had torn and battered yesterday felt fixed, flooded with a sudden rush of adrenaline, anger, and a need for power. Like Murad Xie once said to his men, "The iron they used to strike the walls was born from the same rusted scraps they had salvaged from the dark," he thought, forcing his jaw tight.
He emerged from the foul, corpse-scented mist of the Dain's outskirts, stepping out into the bustling lights of the central platform. He didn't stop. He made his way directly toward the Chief's office. The tall white building, with stretches of green leaves and the aromatic smell of luxury, swept out. He knew, just like everyone else knew, that the Elites practically lived there.
Walking away this morning had been a betrayal to Klein. But Akira hoped against hope that Klein would give him one more chance. He would train him one more time. And this time, Akira swore to himself, he would pick up the daggers even if his arms fell off.
"Saviour..." Akira whispered into the rusted wind, his yellow eyes locked on the horizon. "I'll be their saviour."