Trash.
Bastard.
I wish you didn't exist.
Those were the words Elder Mu, no, Mu Chen had always heard in his life.
They were the harsh, grating background noise of his entire childhood, echoing through the narrow, filth-ridden alleyways of the mortal city where he had been dragged into existence.
He wasn't anyone special.
He was just a bastard child of a prostitute mother who despised his very breath for being an extra mouth to feed, and a gambling-addicted drunkard of a father who only acknowledged him when he needed a punching bag to vent his frustrations after losing his last copper coin.
He grew up sleeping on cold, damp stone floors, nursing bruises, and learning to steal scraps just to survive another day. He thought that his life would just end up exactly the same as his wretched parents—short, miserable, and entirely forgotten by the world...
Until, that gentle, radiating hand reached out to him.
