The bright orange-red ball of the sun cast its rays on the damp, broken mud and wooden huts, painting the slum in hues that might have been beautiful if the air hadn't been thick with rot.
A foul stench clung to everything—the walls, the clothes, the very skin of the people who lived here. Sick bodies lay sprawled along the rocky, muddy trails, some moving, some not, their hollow eyes fixed on nothing.
People walked with staggering steps, their faces blank, their hands empty, their lives already over before their bodies had stopped breathing.
And in the midst of it all, children laughed.
Roderic ran at the head of a pack of youths, his chestnut-brown hair bouncing with each stride, his blue eyes bright against the grey of the slum.
His friends trailed behind him, their voices overlapping, their breath coming in excited gasps.
"Roderic, what are we doing today?"
"Yeah, yeah!"
"Should we go to the inner area of the city?"
"Are you an idiot? The soldiers will kill us!"
Roderic smirked, slowing just enough to glance back at them. "Why not? We can sneak in. Grab something to eat."
His friends' faces fluttered with fear, their excitement curdling into something heavier. "Are you sure?"
"We'll be banished!"
"Shh!" Roderic waved a hand, dismissive. "Don't worry. Adults are not good. They throw their weight around." His voice hardened, taking on a certainty he didn't quite feel.
"We have to start making a living ourselves."
His friends exchanged worried glances but said nothing.
They always followed.
Roderic was the one with plans, the one who spoke like he knew things, the one who made them feel like they could be something more than what they were born into.
They ran.
Their clothes were ripped tunics and worn leather, their feet bare, their stomachs hollow.
The outskirts stretched behind them, a maze of sickness and despair.
Roderic's eyes swept over the dead faces lining the trails, and something cold settled in his chest.
This is just the outskirts. How many are here in the Rajyam? How many in other Rajyams? What right do those people have to banish us? To call us Nirvasin? Exiled ones?
The stench of the slum began to fade as they neared the city's edge.
The air changed—cleaner, lighter, almost sweet. One of his friends gagged.
"Achho! The air here is bad!"
"Fool." Another friend shoved him. "The outskirts air is bad. Your nose just isn't accustomed to pure air!"
"Shh!" Roderic's whisper cut through their bickering. "Quiet down. Look."
A food cart lumbered toward the city gates, pulled by a massive bull.
The walls loomed ahead—smooth white stone, strong and absolute, crowned with a massive metal spike door that looked like it could swallow the world. Two soldiers flanked the entrance, their maroon uniforms crisp, their faces hard.
"Follow me," Roderic breathed. "Stay low. Move when I move."
They crouched behind the cart, their hearts hammering against their ribs.
The bull's hooves thudded against the packed earth, the cart's wheels groaning under the weight of whatever was inside.
The gates grew closer. Closer.
"Stop! Wait for inspection!"
The soldier's voice cut through the air like a blade.
"Go!" Roderic hissed, and they ran.
For a moment, it worked. The cart hid them, the soldiers' attention elsewhere.
The gate loomed ahead, the gap between wall and cart narrow but just wide enough. Roderic's lungs burned.
His bare feet slapped against the stone. He was going to make it. They were all going to make it—
Thud.
A cry behind him. The sound of a body hitting the ground.
"Ah! Shit! I broke my nose!"
"Who's there!"
The soldiers spun. Their eyes found the fallen boy, then the others, then Roderic.
"You stinky pests!"
Damn it. Roderic's hands clenched into fists. His legs locked. Should I fight them?
The thought was there, hot and bright, but his body wouldn't move.
In the split second between decision and action, something inside him fractured—and he ran. Not forward. Not toward the gate, toward the food, toward the life he had promised his friends.
Back. Into the filth. Into the slum. Into the hole he had crawled out of.
Behind him, the soldiers moved fast, their hands closing around his friends' arms. "No! Let us go!"
"We didn't do anything!"
"Shut up!" A soldier's voice, thick with disgust. "Your mere existence is a stain on us. You low-life pests."
Roderic ran. He didn't look back. A single drop of water traced down his cheek, and he hated it. Pathetic, he thought. That's what I am.
His feet stopped in front of a worn-out hut.
The door hung crooked, the walls bowed inward, the roof patched with anything that could be found.
He didn't remember running here. He didn't remember the streets he had taken or the faces he had passed. His feet were cut and bleeding, leaving dark imprints on the ground, but he felt nothing.
The door creaked open before he could reach for it.
"You little shit!" His father's voice was a rasp, thick with alcohol and something older, something that had been rotting long before Roderic was born.
The man lay sprawled on the ground, a bottle clutched in his hand. "Where the hell have you been?"
Roderic didn't answer.
Crack.
The bottle shattered against the doorframe, shards scattering across the floor. A few pieces lodged in Roderic's feet. He didn't flinch.
"Fuck it!" His father's voice rose, cracking at the edges. "Every one of this fucking family is an incompetent bastard. That father of mine—fell out of grace. We were enjoying the perks of being Rakshak caste." His hand slammed against the ground. "Now we're fucking Nirvasin. Exiled. Our warrior pride has been stained!"
Pride. Roderic looked at the man on the floor—the man who had once been something, who had once stood tall, who had once called himself a warrior.
Now he begged for bottles. Begged for the next drink. Begged for the oblivion that would let him forget what he had been.
Do we truly have pride?
He turned and ran again.
"Where the fuck are you going now?" His father's voice followed him, sharp and slurred at once. "If you come back, make sure you bring me a bottle. Or else you know what will happen."
The words chased him down the street, through the alleys, past the bodies that might have been breathing and might have been dead. He ran until his legs gave out, until the world tilted, until the ground rose up to meet him.
And then there was darkness.
That was the last thing I remembered. The cold. The cave. The face that was my face.
"Do you accept your sins?"
I am, he had answered. I don't want to run away ever again.
There were trials after that. Training that broke him and rebuilt him. A war in a pocket dimension that swallowed the weak and spat out something harder. And through it all, he held onto the one thing that had been missing his whole life: the certainty that he would not run again.
Clank. Clank.
The training hall of the House of Pride was vast, open to the sky, filled with the sound of steel meeting steel. Roderic watched the duels from the edge, his sword resting against his shoulder, his eyes following the movements of the fighters.
He had gone through so much. And this wasn't the end.
His gaze drifted upward, to the blue expanse above, to the sun that burned without warmth, to the sky that was the same sky he had stared at from the gutters of the slum. The same sky. A different man.
I don't run anymore, he thought. I never will again.