The morning in Aruandor always came heavy.It wasn't just the humidity or the smoke drifting in from the old factories — it was the weight of a country stretched thin between magic, machines, and misery. A nation promising progress on paper, but handing out chaos in every street corner.
Giva rubbed his eyes as he sat up on the thin mattress.The house was quiet in that fragile hour before the children woke and reality reclaimed its voice.
Ayla, five years old, slept curled against her blanket like a tiny warrior resting after a long night of dreams. Arty, barely a year and a half, made soft noises in his sleep. Tonia breathed deeply beside them, worn out from another day juggling housework, stress, and hopes that barely fit inside the small home.
Giva watched them for a moment.A fragile peace.A kind of peace Aruandor rarely allowed.
He pushed himself up, joints protesting, mind already counting the problems lined up for the day: the late bills, the rent, the food, the motorcycle payments, the lack of steady work. The country's crisis wasn't a headline on his phone — it was the air he breathed, the fear he lived with, the exhaustion carved into his bones.
He stepped outside.The sky looked bruised, half-orange, half-gray — typical of Aruandor's mornings. Magic-reactive clouds shimmered faintly above the skyline, a reminder that advanced nations far from here enjoyed stability and miracles, while Aruandor scraped by with scraps of broken tech and diluted arcane energy.
He tightened the strap of his old backpack.Another day of odd jobs.Another day making just enough to keep the family afloat — but never enough to climb out.
Across the narrow street, neighbors moved like ghosts.Elna, his friendly neighbor, was already sweeping dirt from her doorstep. A kind woman trapped in the same poverty cycle, carrying stories she never told and fears she pretended she didn't have.
"Morning, Giva!" she called softly.
He smiled tiredly. "Morning."
He didn't have time to talk.Odd jobs didn't wait — and they barely paid.
Today he had work at a storage warehouse, helping unload shipments of cheap tecno-magical appliances imported from the richer northern countries. The kind of goods that Aruandor bought for too much and used for too long, until they burned out and filled junkyards across the nation.
The bus ride was long and packed.Giva stood the whole way, gripping a metal pole as the vehicle rattled over potholes. His mind drifted — not into dreams, but into the cold arithmetic of survival.
Food. Gas. Payments.Time lost. Energy wasted.Another day that ended exactly where it started.
The warehouse was already noisy when he arrived — forklifts screeching, crates slamming, men shouting orders. No magic here. No glamour. Just sweat, cheap machinery, and workers trying to stretch their backs one more day without breaking.
"Giva! You're late!"The supervisor, a bald man with a permanent scowl, waved him over.
"Bus was slow," Giva replied, slipping on gloves.
"Everything's slow here," the man grunted. "Get to bay three."
And so he did.The crates were heavy — too heavy for one man, but Aruandor didn't care. Jobs were scarce. Complaints were ignored. Injuries were personal problems.
Giva lifted, carried, stacked, repeated.Hours blurred.Sweat stung his eyes.His spine throbbed.His stomach clenched with hunger.
But he kept going.
Because he had no other choice.
When the lunch whistle finally blew, Giva sat under a half-collapsed metal awning, breathing hard. He pulled a dry sandwich from his bag, eating it slowly as if stretching each bite could stretch his life.
Two workers nearby discussed politics — more lies from the government, more promises from the liberal president, more outrage from the conservative half of the population. Aruandor was split in every direction: left, right, rich, poor, magical, non-magical. Nobody trusted anyone. Nobody believed anything.
Chaos wasn't an accident.Chaos was policy.
Giva finished his sandwich.Stood.Went back to work.
His body moved on autopilot.But his mind — tired and foggy — whispered a truth he hated to hear:
There has to be more than this.
Yet Aruandor had a way of crushing "more" under its heel.
When the shift finally ended, the sun had already dipped below the skyline. Giva rode the crowded bus home, head resting against the vibrating window. Magic-reactive streetlights clicked on one by one, glowing faint blue. Stray sparks of arcane residue floated like dust — useless, left-over energy from past generations of tech long outdated.
He arrived home to laughter — Ayla showing Tonia a drawing, Arty stumbling around with a toy cup. For a moment, warmth flooded him.
Then bills on the table stole the warmth away.
"Giva… we need to talk about this tomorrow," Tonia murmured.
He nodded.He didn't have strength for that talk now.
After dinner, after the kids slept, after silence claimed the house, Giva sat alone on the edge of the bed.
His chest tight.His future unclear.His instincts screaming that something in his life was about to crack — either him… or the world around him.
He didn't know that both were true.
He lay down, exhausted.And somewhere far away — in a forgotten storage yard filled with rust and abandoned machinery — something faint and blue pulsed once, as if sensing him.
A ripple.A whisper.A beginning.
Giva slept without knowing it.
Tomorrow would not be normal.
Not anymore.