In the lower chambers of Lady Vayra's estate were not silent, but they knew how to whisper. The stone walls muffled sobs, and the lanterns flickered with mana too faint to warm the children's skin. This was where they worked, sorted, and waited.
Tamura sat alone near a cracked beam, tracing a borrowed glyph into the dust with his finger. It meant "fire," but not the kind that burned buildings. Tamura wanted to learn the way of embracing his peers with its warmth. And to use its heat to shatter those who threatened the children's peace. He needed the fire to help them all survive and to fight a path clear to freedom.
From behind a wooden crate, Mugen appeared. His shirt stitched up and ragged, almost 3 times his size. His eyes were as sharp as any scholar but sleepless from watching stars he could not fully see within his cell. He dropped a worn slate in Tamura's hand covered in symbols that Tamura couldn't understand. "You're not dumb," Mugen muttered. "Just untaught." Tamura stared off into Mugen's eyes as if he wanted to ask Mugen something but got lost in thought. "Hey man you're creeping me out, are you alright?" Mugen asked. Tamura paused before asking, "How old are you Mugen?" Mugen seemed caught off guard, "What brought that on?" He asked. "It's just... you seem like you've been through so much but you can't be that much older than me." Tamura said with genuine curiosity. "That's because I've been here my entire life and until 2 years ago I thought this was it for me. But to answer your question, I'm eight." Mugen began to stare off into the distance as if he was remembering in that moment what he even took interest in Tamura for to begin with, before smacking himself back down to reality. "Let's get back to your training though."
Mugen taught Tamura letters first, not with books but scraps stolen from delivery crates. They carved words into the dust that fell from the cellar and erased their work with a simple breath. Math followed. Maps came later. Language was game with each new word becoming a freedom neither of them had held before. Their bond didn't form over shared pain---it formed over their shared desire of something more.
One night, Mugen pulled Tamura toward a broken window frame where they could see the moon. "What do you think is out there?" Tamura whispered. "I'm not sure." Mugen answered, "But whatever is out there, I'm going to make it for us." He spoke with no emotion at all but his eyes held in his ambition for a future outside the creaking walls. Tamura didn't understand completely, but he felt what Mugen was feeling. "Is this place bad?"
"It teaches us what not to be," Mugen said. "That makes it useful. But yeah. It's pretty bad."
The two boys stood side beside never leaving each other unless Lady vayra forced their separation. They began to have the same dream over the next 5 years. Not of thrones. Not of kingdoms. They simply wanted this place to burn and be given the choice to choose what they believed was worth doing and what was not. "You'll be someone," Mugen told Tamura. "You already are something special. And I am proud to be the one who will help you say it out loud and with the skill to back it up."
On Tamura's 11th birthday, the boy would finally see what the world looked like in full view outside the walls. The estate guards moved him like cargo. He would be cataloged, branded, and watched. Mugen stood at the cellar window, fingers gripping and cracking the stone in the wall, watching as his brother and only friend was pulled into the outside world of Xathia. "Hang in there brother, they know your worth now and in this world worth is never a good thing for people like us."
Vayra's estate had contracts with merchants, nobles, and lesser guilds who needed unregistered assistance. Today's arrangement was with Lord Genrek, a silent investor in Vayra's estate and also a slave broker. He had been robbed on the Eastern fringe of the city. Vayra offered a solution. "A boy who won't cry. Stronger than any lowly foot soldier in the kingdom far beyond his years. The best part is that the boy doesn't mind fighting nor does he talk so you don't have to worry about any whining of right or wrong from him."
Tamura rode in a locked carriage---no windows, only faint mana laced through the iron to keep his mana subdued. The guards whispered. "I heard the boy killed a rune howler by accident." "Could've been a fluke.." "..Vayra says he doesn't speak unless punished. Freakish, that one."
They arrived at a broken caravan encampment, now crawling with street-borne raiders and a vagrants high whatever mana crystals were left in the stolen shipment. Genrek scoffed at the boy. "Send in the freak. Let's see if he's worth the small fortune Vayra is asking me for."
Tamura looked at the thugs and read their movements, scaling the risk of taking each of them on. "Twelve targets, 3 with daggers, 5 armed with rune magic, 4 unarmed." He spoke for the first time willingly to the raiders. "Let's begin."
Tamura stepped into the fray, barefoot, shirt loose, eyes blank. The raiders laughed before one began speaking to Genrek. "You speak so low of us as if we are lowly creatures, but you send in a single kid by himself to fight your battles." The wind shifted. Then one of them lunged. Tamura's body seemed to move on its own as he aimed at the raider's kidney and sent him flying sideways into one of the walls. "That's one." Tamura said without emotion. The boy had just killed his first person and his response? It was to count them down. five more ran at Tamura as he leaped into the fight. The first of the five, Tamura pierced his chest with his hand. And then just as fast as he killed the raider, he turned around to decapitate 2 more. Then, another tries to fire off a light attack. He fires it off successfully. However, Tamura appeared to be faster than the attack as he comes from under the caster's hands seemingly with an attack of his own. Tamura smacks the raider upwards with a flame charge from his hand. The raider screams and drops trying roll and put himself out. But this fire... it isn't normal. The last of the group backed away in fear with the other 6 that didn't jump into combat. they all surrendered to the 3 royal knights under Vayra. Tamura turns to Genrek who now in fear of this boy, gave him the pay along with a bit extra for Tamura to keep. Tamura says nothing and simply gets into the carriage.
Later that day Vayra gets the report from one of her guards. "Madam, that boy..." The guard was in utter fear of him. "He's too dangerous for us the house. I think we should---" Vayra stopped him. "On the contrary, I think No. 34 will prove to be a major profit increase for us." Tamura was no longer just a servant. He was now Vayra's favorite weapon.
Later that night, Mugen was preparing dinner with some of the other kids when he started to hear a rumor from two of the girls in the kitchen. "Did you hear about No. 34?" Mugen's ears twitched in curiosity but also, he was worried something had happened to him. "I heard Vayra wants him moved to the main house." Mugen's eyes began to widen in fear. He threw down the knife he was using to carve the potatoes and ran at full speed to his brother's cell. "Tamura!" Mugen screamed out. "Hey Mugen, what's up with you?" Tamura was confused as to why his brother was so panicked. "You can't go to that house!" "Why not?" Tamura more panicked now than before asked Mugen. "Listen to me! The "special children" Vayra takes in ends up missing after their fifteenth birthday. I don't know why but I have this strange feeling she--" "Number 25, what the hell are you doing in another kids cell telling ghost stories for?" Vayra was towering over the two boys, smiling and talking with an unnaturally calm tone before she slaps Mugen into a to the wall. "Guards! It appears Mugen has broken one too many rules. Wasn't that what you had just called him No. 34?" Mugen was in fear. His nose was bleeding and his secret was out. As for Tamura? He was in shock. He had never seen someone he cared about be hurt before. It was a new feeling. Mugen told Tamura to run before he was apprehended. But Tamura didn't want to run. He wanted Vayra's blood. He screamed before trying to rush the guards. The marks around his eyes started to glow a brilliant violet and his eyes, his voice, his stance, they all became feral. However, as extraordinary the boy's strength was, a prodigy is not much of a match to a veteran as cruel and precise as Vayra. The madam slammed Tamura on his face into the stone floor. "Take him to the scarlet chambers" she then looked down at Tamura's unconscious body. "And take him to my room in the main house."
The last thing Tamura could here were the words from his brother. The same one he failed to save.
"I am sorry."