The wind found every gap in the warped boards of his shelter. It whistled through, a low, lonely sound that made the whole structure groan. Momen sat against the wall, listening. Sixteen years old today, probably. He counted seasons. The cold meant it was past his birth-month, so he added a year.
His shelter was a box of wood and nails on a rooftop three stories up. It kept the rain off and was hidden from the alley below.
He was always tired. A deep weariness that never lifted. Magic Sickness. Stage one. His body pushed mana away. The black stone in his sternum saw to that.
It had pushed mana away from his mother too.
She had been a Lapis, with an iron-grade stone in her palms. Weak, but useful in the slums. Then she got pregnant with him.
An Apis growing inside her repelled the mana her own stone needed. Over nine months she starved. By labor she was in late stage two Magic Sickness.
She died bringing him into the world. The black stone was found under his breastbone minutes later.
He didn't kill her with intent. He just existed near her.
Afterwards, grief curdled into blame for the community. Whispers started: *Matricide*. Murder Child
His father tried at first, maybe holding him awkwardly for a time.
When Momen was five, his father left for good.
"I can't," his father had said to the empty room. "I look at you and I see her dying."
He set down half a loaf of bread and walked out. Momen waited three days until the bread was gone and his stomach hurt.
He went to the door and people pointed and muttered.
That was when he understood he was alone. The hatred wasn't just talk anymore; it was the air he breathed. He became a ghost in the place that raised him, a thing to be avoided and cursed at from a distance.
He learned to hide. He learned to scavenge at night when fewer eyes were open. He built his shelter piece by piece over years, hauling planks and broken crates up the drainage pipes when no one was looking. The rooftop was his now. A kingdom of one, overlooking a realm that wished he would just die already and stop reminding them of what they lost.
The wind picked up again, making the wooden walls shudder. Momen pulled his knees closer to his chest, trying to conserve warmth that always seemed to leak out of him. The question surfaced then, as it did most days when the quiet stretched too long.
Why?
Why did he have to be the one born like this? Why did his mother have to be the one who was good? Why did his father have to leave? It wasn't a scream in his mind anymore. It was just a dull, heavy thing that sat there, unanswered.
He had no worth. The world had decided that sixteen years ago. He was a curse made flesh, a mistake that kept stubbornly breathing.
Down in the alley, he heard voices raised in an argument, then laughter. Normal life, happening without him. He closed his eyes, listening to the creak of his shelter and the distant sounds of a world that had shut him out at birth
The laughter faded, replaced by the clatter of a cart over stones. Momen opened his eyes. That was the rhythm of his life now: hiding, listening, moving only when necessary. He was careful to never be seen climbing up or down from his rooftop. He'd learned the hard way what happened when he was spotted.
Once, two years ago, he'd been caught in an alley at dusk by Brann, the big enforcer who liked to throw his weight around. Brann hadn't even hit him at first. He'd just grabbed him by the collar and marched him into a wider lane where people were still about.
"Look what I found!" Brann had shouted, shaking him like a rag doll. "The little curse, sneaking around. Probably stealing the air from good folks, aren't you?"
A small crowd had gathered. Momen remembered the faces, not angry, but closed. Cold. A mother covered her child's eyes, though the boy peeked through her fingers. "See?" she hissed to the boy. "That's the one. You stay away from him, you hear? He's bad luck."
Brann had thrown him into a pile of rotting vegetables then, laughing as Momen scrambled to get up, slime on his rags. The lesson stuck. He was a story parents told to frighten children into obedience. *Be good, or the Apis will get you.* *Stay close, don't wander where the curse-boy hides.*
His existence was a series of avoidances. He knew which alleys were watched by old women who would shout for help at the sight of him. He knew which water pumps were safe to use just before dawn, when the most desperate were already gone and the respectable were still asleep. He moved like smoke, leaving no trace, making no sound.
He only went out at night. The dark was his ally, a blanket that hid his shape and his face. The slums didn't sleep, not really, but the night crowd was different-other scavengers, drunks, people doing things they also wanted hidden. They ignored him if he ignored them. That was the best he could hope for.
His food came from what others discarded. Rotten fruit cores from behind the rare vendor's stall in the slightly better quarter, where they might sell wilted greens to the truly poor. Scraps of gristle and bone tossed into the gutters by butchers. Sometimes, if he was very lucky, he'd find a chunk of stale bread in a midden heap that wasn't completely moldy yet. He'd eat it fast, his stomach cramping around the sudden intake.
Money was pointless. He'd found a Solar Bit once, a tiny copper coin crusted with dirt. He'd held it, turning it over in his palm. Even if he'd had a whole Crown, what then? Walk up to a baker's stall in broad daylight? They'd take one look at his filth, at the haunted look in his eyes that marked him as slum-trash, and they'd chase him off with a broom. If they recognized him as *the* Apis, they might do worse. Coins were for people who belonged somewhere. They were for transactions between humans.
He wasn't part of any transaction. He was outside the economy entirely, a creature that subsisted on leftovers and neglect.
The question came back again, heavier this time. *Why?* It wasn't just about his birth anymore. It was about today, and tomorrow, and all the empty days after that. Why keep doing this? Why drag himself through another night of cold scavenging for another handful of garbage? Why endure the fatigue that made every movement an effort, and the deeper tiredness that had nothing to do with mana?
The answer had always been simple: because he was alive. Something in him refused to just lie down and stop breathing, even when every part of his life argued for it. But today, on this shaky calculation of a birthday, that answer felt thin. Worn out.
A different thought surfaced, sharp and clear against the fog of his resignation.
What was beyond the slums?
He knew of the city, Terrasol proper, the place within the great walls. He'd seen the walls from a distance, towering and impregnable. He knew people went in and out through guarded gates-merchants with carts, laborers with passes, knights on patrol. The slums were like a foul-smelling crust around the base of those walls, but the real city was inside. Clean, orderly, full of light from those magical Lumen-Stones he'd heard about.
He'd never tried to enter. The gates meant guards, and guards meant questions he couldn't answer and a face everyone wanted gone. But the thought wouldn't leave him.
What if he saw it? Just once. Not at night, skulking in shadows, but in the day. Like a real person might. What if he walked on those clean streets and saw how the other half lived-the half that hadn't been cursed at birth?
It was a stupid idea. Reckless. The voice in his head that always argued for caution-a cool, blue thread of thought-immediately listed the dangers. Capture. Beating. Maybe being killed on sight as a nuisance.
But another voice, a hot red whisper born from sixteen years of being nothing, answered back. *What do you have to lose?*
Nothing. That was the truth of it. He had this rooftop and an endless stretch of miserable days. If they killed him in the city, at least it would be a different place. A change of scenery for his end.
The decision didn't feel grand or momentous. It felt like giving up on one kind of suffering and choosing another, possibly worse one, just for the sake of variety. He stood up, his joints protesting. He didn't have anything to prepare. He wore his only clothes: layers of torn, stained fabric that hung loose on his gaunt frame. They smelled of damp rot and woodsmoke and unwashed skin.
He waited until mid-morning, when the slums were busy with the grim work of survival. More people meant more chaos to blend into, at least until he got near the walls.
***